The biggest star

I stumbled on a video which show how small we are in this mighty universe. Sun is compared to various other stars which are gigantic. The background music they have made a mockery of Sanskrit shloka "Asathoma"

xoopit on revision2

Screencast using Capture Fox plugin for Mozilla

Firefox has released plugin for Mozilla called CaptureFox. Capture Fox can be used to capture the activities just inside the or the entrire desktop. It is a nice bit of utility to create a tutorial along with voice.


You can get the pulgin from here click here. Currently it is available for Xp and Vista.









Once you install the Capture fox plugin, you can start capturing by going to Tools->Capture Fox.



Here is a video of the capture that I did on my desktop using CaptureFox.

How to get run command back in MS Vista ?

This video from tekzilla showz you how to get the run command that we are so used to on XP onto Vista.

How to turn your junk PC to a robust firewall ?

This video shows how to turn your junk PC to a robust firewall using ipcop www.ipcop.org

Build your own NAS (Network Attached Storage)

I was watching an episode on Systm on revision3. This episode shows how to turn your old PC or laptop into NAS using www.freenas.org

nice tutorial!

Get more hard disk space on windows

This video shows how to get more hard disk space on Windows by reducing the space used by recycle bin

Killer features of Google Chrome !

I have been using Google Chrome from that day it was made available to public. Though it crashes some times, There are some nice features not available on other browser like easy download management, most recently used page and enhancing the size of the text box, viewing the source and so on. To be frank I dont feel like using any other browser now.

Prank : Invert ur screen on Windows and OS X

I was watching Tekzilla on Revision3, where I came across this. Nice prank to play on ur friends and colleagues.

I google myself

I found a nice video called "I Google Myself" ... Google has become synonynmous of web search.

"Google" is now officially a verb in the Oxford English Dictionary. Google already is a verb in some other dictionaries, but the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is considered the most authoritative dictionary of the English language.

Google as a verb is defined in the dictionary as;

intr. To use the Google search engine to find information on the Internet. trans. To search for information about (a person or thing) using the Google search engine.

Tragedy of linked list !

Unacceptable content on my blog !!!! LMAO

I had put google adsense on my blog. So as usual I got a reply that my blog would be reviewed. I got a mail from Google Adsense yesterday saying that

Hello Naveen,

Thank you for your interest in Google AdSense. Unfortunately, after
reviewing your application, we're unable to accept you into Google AdSense
at this time.

We did not approve your application for the reasons listed below.

Issues:

- Unacceptable site content


Probably some on who reviewed my blog got pissed off after seeing my blog on Eric Schmidth and Knol ( I wanna reiterate that Knol is pathetic , if google is thinking of making it an alternative to wikipedia they must be dreaming ! )

Well google adsense is not the only option to put ads on your blog, I am looking out for other options now. Do let me know if any one knows other alternatives better than adsense

Visualize the Internet with Akamai

Akamai is a company that provides distibuted computing platform for Internet Content and application delivery aka CDN (Content Delivery Network/ Content Distribution Network).

Akamai transparently mirrors content—sometimes all content including HTML and CSS, and sometimes just media objects such as audio, graphics, animation, and video—from customer servers. Though the domain name (but not subdomain) is the same, the IP address points to an Akamai server rather than the customer's server. The Akamai server is automatically picked depending on the type of content and the user's network location.

The benefit is that users can receive content from whichever Akamai server is close to them or has a good connection, leading to faster download times and less vulnerability to network congestion or outages.

Akamai claims it delivers 20% of the Internet traffic !

On their website , you can see continually-updated visualizations that provides a picture of global Web traffic, viruses/attacks, the speed of data moving between major cities, and the volume of data and users on the Akamai platform.

Real time web monitor

Real Time web Monitor

Net Usage Index , which are updated every 5 minutes
Click here

You can get a Desktop widget too from here
Get it here

Here is a video of Jeff Richards , talking about CDN

"Here comes another Bubble" wins Webby award

"Here comes another Bubble" from Bubble won the Webby award in viral video category. Its my favourite video about web 2.0/. Check it out , you will love it :)

Yahoo Glue ! = backdoor entry to Google search results ?

Yahoo Glue pages has been launched in India. So what are these Glue pages ? Glue pages unites classic search results with visual information from website anywhere in the world. Some people have gone on to describe glue pages as back door entry to Google search results.

Here is what Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience , has to say about Glue pages :

"Searching on Glue Pages Beta will result in an experience that promises more than just web links. Users will receive more relevant, visually appealing search results from across the Web in one topical page. The new Glue Pages Beta feature for Yahoo! India Search supports our strategy to make Yahoo! the starting point on the Internet and demonstrates our commitment to provide a compelling online search experience."

The url is

http://in.glue.yahoo.com/


From my first impression, you get everything about what you are searching for from wikipedia, flickr, youtube, Yahoo! news, Google blogs etc etc ... on the same page.



Here is what a search for Steve Jobs on Yahoo Glue had to offer.











Here is what Search Engine World has to say about Glue page

Irony - Google CEO uses Yahoo email :)

Check out Eric Schmidt (CEO, Google Inc) website, apparently he still uses Yahoo mail =)

http://ericschmidt.com/

Top 50 Linux quotes of all time :)

I came across top 50 Linux quotes somewhere. Enjoy !

I personally liked quote 5 ;)

50. I develop for Linux for a living, I used to develop for DOS.
Going from DOS to Linux is like trading a glider for an F117.
-- Lawrence Foard, entropy@world.std.com

49. Avoid the Gates of Hell. Use Linux.
-- unknown source

48. I've run DOOM more in the last few days than I have the last few
months. I just love debugging ;-)
(Linus Torvalds)

47. By golly, I'm beginning to think Linux really *is* the best thing since
sliced bread.
-- Vance Petree, Virginia Power

46. Linux poses a real challenge for those with a taste for late-night
hacking (and/or conversations with God).
-- Matt Welsh

45. Linux is obsolete.
-- Andrew Tanenbaum

44. Your job is being a professor and researcher: That's one hell of a good excuse for some of the brain-damages of minix. (Linus Torvalds to Andrew Tanenbaum)

43. I still maintain the point that designing a monolithic kernel in 1991 is a fundamental error. Be thankful you are not my student. You would not get a high grade for such a design :-) (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)

42. We all know Linux is great... it does infinite loops in 5 seconds.
- Linus Torvalds about the superiority of Linux on the Amterdam Linux Symposium

41. People disagree with me. I just ignore them.
(Linus Torvalds, regarding the use of C++ for the Linux kernel.)

40. Some people have told me they don't think a fat penguin really embodies the grace of Linux, which just tells me they have never seen an angry penguin charging at them in excess of 100mph. They'd be a lot more careful about what they say if they had.
-- Linus Torvalds, announcing Linux v2.0

39. Other than the fact Linux has a cool name, could someone explain why should use Linux over BSD?

38. “How should I know if it works? That's what beta testers are for. I only coded it." (Attributed to Linus Torvalds, somewhere in a posting)

37. "Problem solving under linux has never been the circus that it is under AIX." (By Pete Ehlke in comp.unix.aix)

36. "Besides, I think Slackware sounds better than 'Microsoft,' don't you?" (By Patrick Volkerding)

35. "And the next time you consider complaining that running Lucid Emacs 19.05 via NFS from a remote Linux machine in Paraguay doesn't seem to get the background colors right, you'll know who to thank." (By Matt Welsh)

34. "...Deep Hack Mode--that mysterious and frightening state of consciousness where Mortal Users fear to tread." (By Matt Welsh)

33. Sigh. I like to think it's just the Linux people who want to be on the "leading edge" so bad they walk right off the precipice. (Craig E. Groeschel)

32. Microsoft Corp., concerned by the growing popularity of the free 32-bit operating system for Intel systems, Linux, has employed a number of top programmers from the underground world of virus development. Bill Gates stated yesterday: "World domination, fast -- it's either us or Linus". Mr. Torvalds was unavailable for comment ... (rjm@swift.eng.ox.ac.uk (Robert Manners), in comp.os.linux.setup)

31. Who wants to remember that escape-x-alt-control-left shift-b puts you into super-edit-debug-compile mode? (Discussion in comp.os.linux.misc on the intuitiveness of commands, especially Emacs.)

30. It's a bird.. It's a plane.. No, it's KernelMan, faster than a speeding bullet, to your rescue. Doing new kernel versions in under 5 seconds flat.. (Linus, in the announcement for 1.3.27)

29. Those who don't understand Linux are doomed to reinvent it, poorly. (Unidentified source.)

28. "How do you power off this machine?" (Linus, when upgrading linux.cs.helsinki.fi, and after using the machine for several months.)

27. I've discovered that using VMS is a lot like driving a nail with your head: sure, you eventually get something practical done, but it usually results in a headache and some blood loss.
(submitted by Sean A. Simpson)

26. "... being a Linux user is sort of like living in a house inhabited by a large family of carpenters and architects. Every morning when you wake up, the house is a little different. Maybe there is a new turret, or some walls have moved. Or perhaps someone has temporarily removed the floor under your bed." - Unix for Dummies, 2nd Edition (Found in the .sig of Rob Riggs)

25. If Bill Gates is the Devil then Linus Torvalds must be the Messiah. (Unknown source)

24. LILO, you've got me on my knees!
(from David Black, dblack@pilot.njin.net, with apologies to Derek and the
Dominos, and Werner Almsberger)

23. Anyone can build a fast processor. The trick is to build a fast system. (Seymour Cray)

22. We can use symlinks of course... syslogd would be a symlink to syslogp and ftpd and ircd would be linked to ftpp and ircp... and of course the point-to-point protocal paenguin. (Kevin M. Bealer, commenting on the penguin Linux logo.)

21. A multithreaded file system is only a performance hack. (Andrew Tanenbaum to Linus Torvalds)

20. I did this 'cause Linux gives me a woody. It doesn't generate revenue. (Dave '-ddt->` Taylor, announcing DOOM for Linux)

19. This message was brought to you by Linux, the free unix. Windows without the X is like making love without a partner. Sex, Drugs & Linux Rules win-nt from the people who invented edlin apples have meant trouble since eden Linux, the way to get rid of boot viruses. (By mwikholm@at8.abo.fi, MaDsen Wikholm)

18. Be warned that typing killall name may not have the desired effect on non-Linux systems, especially when done by a privileged user.
-- From the killall manual page

17. Only wimps use tape backup: _real_ men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it. "
--- Linus Torvalds

16. Linux is not user-friendly. It _is_ user-friendly. It is not ignorant-friendly and idiot-friendly.
---Source unknown

15. `When you say "I wrote a program that crashed Windows", people just stare at you blankly and say "Hey, I got those with the system, *for free*".' (By Linus Torvalds)

14. "If you want to travel around the world and be invited to speak at a lot of different places, just write a Unix operating system." (By Linus Torvalds)

13. "Are Linux users lemmings collectively jumping off of the cliff of reliable, well-engineered commercial software?" (By Matt Welsh)

12. "Linux: the operating system with a CLUE... Command Line User Environment". (seen in a posting in comp.software.testing)

11. “See, you not only have to be a good coder to create a system like Linux, you have to be a sneaky bastard too.” (By Linus Torvalds)

10. "What happens when you read some doc and either it doesn't answer your question or is demonstrably wrong? In Linux, you say "Linux sucks" and go read the code. In Windows/Oracle/etc you say "Windows sucks" and start banging your head against the wall."
--- Denis Vlasenko on lkml

9. "...you might as well skip the Xmas celebration completely, and instead sit in front of your linux computer playing with the all-new-and-improved linux kernel version." (By Linus Torvalds)

8. Linux hackers are funny people: They count the time in patchlevels. (Seen in the .sig of Gerd Knorr.)

7. Linux: the choice of a GNU generation
-- ksh@cis.ufl.edu put this on Tshirts in '93\

6. "Not me, guys. I read the Bash man page each day like a Jehovah's Witness reads the Bible. No wait, the Bash man page IS the bible. Excuse me..."
(More on confusing aliases, taken from comp.os.linux.misc)

5. What's this script do?
unzip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; gasp ; yes ; umount ; sleep
Hint for the answer: not everything is computer-oriented. Sometimes you're
in a sleeping bag, camping out with your girlfriend.
(Contributed by Frans van der Zande.)

4. I'm an idiot.. At least this [bug] took about 5 minutes to find.. Surely, Linus is talking about the kind of idiocy that others aspire to :-)
(Bruce Perens in response to Linus Torvalds's mailing about a kernel bug.)

3. One OS to rule them all,
One OS to find them.
One OS to call them all,
And in salvation bind them.
In the bright land of Linux,
Where the hackers play.
(J. Scott Thayer, with apologies to J.R.R.T.)

2. ...the Linux philosophy is "laugh in the face of danger". Oops. Wrong one. "Do it yourself". That's it. (by Linus)

1. We are using Linux daily to UP our productivity - so UP yours!
-- Adapted from Pat Paulsen by Joe Sloan

Paranoia Mix

I stumbled on a Paranoia mix featuring a cute small girl on reddit . This video is amazing check it out :)

People getting psyched out due to Apps flood on facebook :)

Here is a well made video on ever growing list of Facebook application :)

Apple iPhone versus Google Android platform

           versus

So its a Open source (Android) against Closed source (iPhone) again ! Well the competition is good, at the end of the day the customer is the winner as it pushes the competitors to come up with innovative features.

So what is this Android platform from Google?

Android is a open source mobile phone platform that will be freely available to all handset makers. At the moment Android is just software as opposed to iPhones complete package. Google has already teamed with 34 companies to run Android operating system.

With the entry of Android, the competition heats up in the mobile operating system space among  Symbian, Windows Mobile and iPhone. Being open source Android definetly has an advantage.

Here is a video about the capabilities of Android powered phone.

Steve Horowitz talking about Android, it sounds promising.

Encyclopedia from Google - Knol !

http://knol.google.com/k#

Knol is a Google project where in you can find artciles on range of topics written by users. It was opened to beta for public on July 23,2008. 

Knol is the brain child of Udi Manber, who is also the author of agrep and glimpse. He is currently employed as VP, Engineering at Google. He previously served as Chief Algorithm Officer at Amazon and was the CEO of A9 , a subsidiary of Amazon which specializes in Search Technologies.

Here is how Udi describes Knol as "pages that are meant to be the first things someone who searches for the first time will want to read". Google defines Knol as "unit of knowledge".

Many see Knol as a competitor for Wikipedia ! But personally I felt that Knol is no where close to wikipedia and not many people are aware of existence of Knol. Knol has already attracted criticism from various corner , with some people describing it as "wasteland" of article copied from other sources, entries which are outdated and seld promotional.

Knol articles are licensed by default under Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 license ( which allows any one to use to material by mentioning the name of the author. But authors can choose CC-BY-NC-3.0 license prohibiting commercial reuse.

Knols employs "nofollow" outgoing links, to prevent links in its article from influencing search engine rankings.

Lets wait and watch whether Knol would ever be considered as an alternative to wikipedia.

Get paid for searching the internet with Scour !

Scour is a meta search engine which gives you back the search results of Google, Yahoo and Live Search. 

Scour plans to reward users with a certain point value for each search conducted through Scour Toolbar and at the website. Users have to be logged in to get credit for their searches. Once users have accumalated a certain amount of points they can be redeemed for cash.

http://www.scour.com/

You can grab the toolbar from http://www.scour.com/goodies/

As you can see above Scour returns the search results on Google , Yahoo and Live search along with page rank in each of these three search engines for any search.

I am definetly going to use Scour . Why use just Google ?  when you can get the search results from three popular search engine at the same place and get paid for searching on Scour!

Every member is awarded one point for every search, two for a vote and three for a comment with a maximum of 4 points a search. Once you aggregate at least 6,500 points you can cash them out for a $25 Visa gift card

Dream Speech by Martin Luther King Jr

Martin Luther King Jr - I have a dream speech - Aug 28 1963

Great Speech

I was randomly browsing and stumbled on this video on youtube. It is one of the best speech I have heard.

Higgs Boson experiment

Scientist are hoping to unlock the secrets about the atom and the origin on the universe. How are they trying to do that ? By collisions of highly charged photons in Large Hadron Collider, located 150 meters underneath the earth near northwest suburb of Geneva on Franco-Swiss border in CERN, the worlds largest particle physics laboratory.

So what is this Higgs Boson particle aka God Particle ?

Higgs boson also known as BEH mechanism is a hypothetical massive scalar elementary particle predicted to exist by the Standard Model of particle physics. It is a Standard Model particle not yet observed.An experimental observation of it would help to explain how otherwise massless elementary particles cause matter to have mass. More specifically, the Higgs boson would explain the difference between the massless photon and the relatively massive W and Z bosons.

What are they trying to achieve with LHC (Large Hadron Collider) ?

They hope to discover new particles—Higgs-Bosons, also termed ‘God Particles’ , which they theorize are responsible for mass of atoms. The particles are named after Kolkata-born Satyendra Nath Bose (1894-1974 ) and UK-born Peter Higgs, both eminent physicists. The LHC is the largest and the most costliest experiment in the world ever at over $9 billion.

The LHC is a large 27-km ring surrounded by superconducting magnets, with a number of accelerating structures boosting the energy of the particles travelling in the ring.

Inside the accelerator, two high-energy particle beams travel at close to the speed of light before colliding with each other ; the beams travel in opposite directions in separate beam pipes—two tubes kept in ultra-high vacuum. The beams are guided around the accelerator ring by a strong magnetic field, achieved using the superconducting electromagnets.

Did CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) build the Doomsday machine ?! [:)]