This was one thing which I wanted to learn in school, but wasnt taught. This is certainly what I would love to learn in college, but probably won't be taught. There is very less ammount entusiasm about primary medical care, in our eduation department. I got this damn good video from http://depts.washington.edu/learncpr/, you can check for more ssuch videos, and run them on net. Yup, I remember that this is GG, and not Health Gam, but a geek or two will certainly get a CPR when required if people will know about it.
I will still suggest to consult your doctor for more information and learn the finer points about it. ANd one more thing, this is an American video, thus for my Indian viewers which forms the majority...dont dial 911 [;-)] but 102 for ambulence.
Its certainly not on my computer. Neither on my friends computer nor in my college, neither used in banks I visit, nor in railway stations. This post is not about Mac OS X, which also suffers from identity crisis in India. But talking of linux, there is a name worth mentioning, Ubuntu. Where is it?
This is first of my Poll Post, where I wont write much and would just throw a question up to grab and would wait for answers.
Q: Where is linux? What can be the reasons behind any OS-OS not gaining popularity? And why are you not using it?So friends please feel free to answer.
To start with, I have started doing yoga, and to mention I attended Baba Ramdev's yoga camp. But that was no camp if you go by numbers, cos' there were some 20k+ people who attended it daily for 6 days. But why am I sharing all this information on GG which is a geeky blog, about latest in technology, or web, or in other words anything techy to mention?
Web2.0 as I feel is more about sharing than about AJAX+Javascript+interactivity etc. But what sharing are we talking about, sharing to what limit. Am I supposed to share the names of girlfriends I have or the state of my stomach after eating a roadside chowmeen, which indeed I am not going to, and would prefer to leave it on your brain power.
Success of any new social network of any type known or unknown is based on few things:
- Getting the alpha guy or girl.
- Being an important part of communication.
- And keeping users motivated.
Getting the alpha guy/girl : You can go on Mashable and find a new social network reviewed daily. Sometimes its for papa, sometimes for mumma, sometimes for dog lovers, some times for gays and some times for not so gays also, that you start feeling that you can open a social network of own for banana lovers. But key to success of any social network is to get the alpha guy/girl/gay/mom/dad/banana lover. You get them and you get their group most likely.
So to have successful social network you need to get alpha for your beta. And let me tell you best alpha to get is a blogger(guy/girl/gay/mom/dad/banana lover) to cover your beta.
Being an important part of communication : My prime motivation behind this blog post is Robert Scoble's daily rambling about Twitter. How? Go to his blog and as of present you may find every 3rd post mentioning Twitter and sometimes you feel that he is working for them(likely not). Twitter some how became an integral part of his daily communication, and to mention he is an alpha(guy/dad/and who knows, a banana lover). Falling on my experience on which I can certainly bank on is importance of Orkut in my communication. I dont find a new friend daily, neither I scroll through friends of friends of friends, what I mostly do is communicate with people I know, and thus it is an important part of my communication. But a communication will only occur if you have active friends in your list, and not like a girl who added me as her friend and never scrapped me back, and she seldom visit Orkut now. Hell, I really feel bad, for her not contacting me.
Keeping user motivated : To understand it, you can refer the last few lines of previous paragraph, about the girl. She probably lost the motivation and now she does not feel any need to visit Orkut any more, or else there is some kind of stigma regarding social networking. And some poor news for poor Orkut didn't helped the cause either. But all in all we can sat that user lost her or his motivation to stick to a particular network. This can probably occur due to stigma factor or utility factor. For any social network like any FMCG, its utility is very important. Social networks can easily be classified as FMCG of web, or as a pack of FMCGs. Now if I find another social network which is more useful than the one I am spending most of my time currently, then I may shift keeping other two points in mind, which once again weave all the points together.
One point which I mentioned but didnt included it in the main 3s was the acceptance of any social network in a society. Acceptance derives its roots from the upbringing, complete social outlook and many other factors which are are worth of a PhD research. I don't think that a banana lover's network would be successful in India, but it may be a super hit in Banana Island. Because Indians might not find apt to share their banana eating skills or habits. Or there can be a stigma attached of 'What if?' if tell others that I eat two bananas at one go and like this there can be more and can be different for other social networks.
To sum it all, I can only tell you one thing, try as many social networks as possible but do keep a list of them, because you never know that one of those social network start fulfilling all these points one day, and become a hit between you and your friend. And yes one more thing, best way to check that whether you are alpha(...) is to join a social network and then send invitations to your friends and then see how many of them joined it.
So we now have Renkoo, a social network for inviting friends, pseudo clone of a popular US site Evite. First of all let me tell you about Renkoo, if you haven't heard about it. Basically its a plan network , you can create a plan of certain party and then your network can finally come on conclusion. Its like cutting the hassles of When to meet, where to meet etc. There are many similar networks, I know few including Renkoo, but would suggest you to click similar pages for Renkoo on Google.
But now they are trying to come in the market of conventional social networking market, but they are doing it with difference. And to mention I loved this idea. Idea is, developing your profile based on questions asked by your friends. For an example, question could be, What is your favorite color? and your reply, say 'blue' will add up in your profile. Now you may asked why I loved this idea, because I always feel that, friends should be more inquisitive so as to strengthen the bond of friendship, but here it would be more on comical note. If you thin it in perspective of favorites and hates then it is not that bright idea, but when you look for more deeper question then it starts making sense. Since Renkoo is presently invite only therefore I could not test it, but I am really looking forward for it. (I have just got the invitation, its damn fast process.)
I am not being pessimistic, but there is also flaw, there is too much power in hands of friends, to understand, suppose, If I have few friends who already know me, might not feel the urge to ask the question. And as there wont be enough answers a new person might not feel the urge to add me in. But this is only a possibility.
As of present when I dont have any friend [;(] there are two default questions one to be answered by me and other to be answered by my friends. Questions are cool and are regularly update by and automatic process, but I dont know whether database of my answers to questions will be saved or not, to my pragmatic sense they should be. Like any social network, Renkoo also have one problem, that is lack of truth can mar the whole process. On design front I would give Renkoo a 4/5, I dont know what addition will get it 5/5 but I know that there is some thing more, that can be done. There is effective use of AJAX, on all the pages making , and this may fasten the whole process.
All in all, Renkoo is a nice attempt, to fuse two things that is social network and invites, making it a multi facet social network. I have made an account and if you want to make me your friend than contact me asap.
I love chips, this should not be mistaken with potato chips. I love semi conductor chips. This post is under the influence of echo, which is the after effect of a big announcement by Indian government. India is now with a chip policy, though it is an year late but it was certainly worth the wait. There is large amount of cheers in Indian Inc. and mind you they are right to do so.
To summarize,
Govt. will pick 20% of capital expenditure of manufacturing facility.
Minimum investment is $550 Millions for one who is aspiring.
There will be extra concessions for company opting land outside SEZ.
Land is certainly fertile but is devoid of farmers. When would the farmers would be coming? India is already on with Semindia, which will work like Maruti, working in technical collaboration with AMD, as AMD will but stipulated amount of chips coming out of Semindia, and would be providing the tech know how. But still this wonderful land can hold more than one company and waiting for market leader, Intel.
Another question could be, why now, and isn't it late. China+Taiwan+Korea are already producing cheap chips and are flooding market, and if India spends large amount of money now then its kind of waste. But I feel that such doubts are misplaced, but yes India have to carve out their own niche when it comes to type, quality and extensive R&D.
I will certainly looking forward and would be keeping my eyes on it. Because this field will provide nice job opportunities. ;)
The mechanism is very simple and yet very effective when it comes to its job.
My Friends Gaurav Pandey is the man behind it, keep it up mate.
I will be looking for more robots from his side. If you have got some interesting suggestions for improving or some other kind of ideas for stair climbing robots then please please do comment.
This is scheduled downtime, but I didnt knew about it, so for me it was not in schedule. My friend has posted his robot's video, and presently I can not watch it. Soon I will be posting it. Bye the way his Robot's name is Rusteez, inspired from animation movie Cars.
But waht can be the reason behind this downtime, are they going to bring any thing new, coz recently they had brought few new add ons, which will keep Youtube in technical lead for time to come. Lets see and wait for next.
Blogging about blogging is one of the crappiest thing on blog, but its is also one of the most satisfying thing. This is not a review post, but a preview post of my another blog. It is IMWMI, that is the abbreviated form for 'I am Weaving My Ideas', this is my idea blog. I felt that few things should not be mashed up together and therefore I kept my idea blog away from Geekgam. My personal views about my friends and more of my personal and literary life is on Kattak. This makes three blogs which I keep regularly updated.
When I dont have anything to do I bring up new ideas, and create them in forms of Slogs, though none of the have been successful since they become too manual, but I still think they are very interesting concepts. Here is a list of my slogs, which are currently quite dry at this moment.
Obit-I : This is about writing a personal obituary.
This is a very interesting concept, it is not just funny, and a kind of jibe towards 'The inevitable', but also a nice management exercise, where in a large amount of analysis can be done on your obituary. To send in your own obituary, mail us at obited@gmail.comListed 10* : This is about sharing lists of 10.
I have always felt that lists serve more purpose as compared to other things. List provide simple yet crisp information, and since this is being done on a blogging platform, there will always be possibility of great numbers of comments. And these comments account for intelligent discussion over a simple list. Now if you want to submit your list then mail it to 10listed@gmail.com, from there I would bring it on blog with your name, and then send you its link. This is a manual task and that is why a slow process, and I am trying to bring in few more people to make it fast.
Then there are few kinky use of Google co-op by me:
Torrentry : Meta search for torrents.
Jobooze : Meta search for Jobs.
Socialitis : Searches few social networks. And it really works finely.
Picasa from Google is a well known software for image management + some tweaking options. But when it comes to Picasweb situations turns out murky. Google model for this service is different from many other online photo storage services like Photobucket, Imageshack etc. Picasaweb is like an internet partner to Picas and both are seamlessly integrated, with easy uploading options. Though Picasa is not a necessity for uploading, which means it also have normal uploading options. There is no mention of bandwidth provided but they give user some 250MB, which can be upgraded to 6GB for $25/year, which in itself is a good bargain.
Navigation on Picasaweb is very good, and swift, sharing facility is also great, which is the viral part, like any other such service. There is an option for print ordering also, which is very much in phase with other services. And very much similar to other such services there are all those tagging, commenting, HTML links etc. But when it comes to social aspect it is a big zero. Just to understand Flickr is such a success not because it is a photo storage service but it is very social friendly, you can spend hours surfing on flickr. Go to my Album, and you will not find a single way to search any other album, but my favorites, and currently I am not having any favorites, because none of my friend is using PW and I am not able to search any other album, which mean even I am facing a dead end. They are offering a video upload option, and also an option to uploads friends album, but hey I haven't got a single friend on PW and neither I am able to make any as I am not able to search any.
If you think that there is no way out, then I am not going to buy your view. My logic is pretty simple, integrate Gmail(which now is an open network), Orkut(which is also an open network), Blogger(which was open and will remain open) with PW. And then what you get is a killer application, with killer web service.
Google has really got something wrong when it comes to create social networks around their service. One of the key feature of Wordpress which by many is regarded as a better blogging platform than Blogger is their social nature. Google answer also turned out to be a debacle and Google would soon like to forget it. Google groups is not at the top of chain, and if there wouldn't have been up to blogs then you might have probably missed many of their services.
While Google creates any new service or buy out a new one, you can try their old ones, and comment on this post.
I believe that girls write with greater grace than boys who are more brutal in their writing. Humph...there are few more things which girls do better than boys and can be incorporated in their blogging. But I will leave any such thing for psychologists.
My point is from where would the chances of Blogger's Setting would come, if there would be no female bloggers, and more precisely female bloggers. I have discussed about technology with my friends for hours, and many future hours would be spent on it. I have discussed about technology with many of my friends who eventually were girls but they do not blog. So the final set up says that I don't have a single female blogger to drink coffee with, or have a nice dinner. Leave dinner and coffee there has been no female blogger who commented on my blog besides my sister who did commented so as to encourage me.
If you are guessing that this post is an after effect of another single Valentine, then keep on thinking , but dont dare say it, because if I don't like your comments then all the curses of Tutenkhamen and his family be on you.
On some serious note, this is really a serious trouble, there must be a kind of chi balance in blogosphere which is some what balanced toward male dominance. We need more feminine views, because I don't see any other media where we can talk of equality at magnum opus scale.
Ok, if you are a girl, and felt that you should start blogging so as to tilt the balance then I will suggest leave text blogging go for vlogging. That would be something for which our future generations will thank you.
While I would take this opportunity to thanx my sister, didi thnx yaaar... you kept my spirits up even when I did'n got a single reader for months...and how do you get so many people to comment on your blog. Bye the way you all can check out what she is writing at Buddhu Box.
To just get hold of its market potential one can just look at this fact:
Yahoo spends some $10+ on getting MyBlogLog in its stable.
Now you can see My Blog Logs on every next blog(overstatement). But yes for new bloggers it is becoming a nice tool, you go on other blogs you leave your characteristic imprints, very much like animals roaming, over there. By the way dogs pee to leave their characteristic imprints.
In this post I am going to look at Mybloglog and clones.
MyBlogLog: I dont know whether they were first or not, but they were certainly first to make it big. We had imbedded chat clients like Meboo on many blogs but they never came to prominence like Mybloglog(+), some how they never attracted me, one of the reason can be the time difference between countries.
MyBloglog got initial rave reviews from people who mattered most, yup, Ivy league of bloggers like Micheal Arrington and peers. Concept was simple, you put their code on your blog, then you can see when other members of MyBlogLog left their characteristic imprints. [;)] This thus became viral, you see log in sidebars, get interested and get one for your blog.
This was not it, you also get an option to build community for your blog, which get members under the law of mutual appeasement. Finally you get few members who remembers where your blog is.
Who's On My Page: This is also one such service which is one made for MySpace. Does things in pretty similar way with also mentioning number of comments. But they have got completely different approach for it, they ask you to download a toolbar for Firefox, and then getting instant results. To go anywhere ahead you need to download their toolbar, and then fill you profile etc.
But this is not something universal like Mybloglog but is limited to few social networks. Bebo, Friendster, Xanga, Hi5, and Myspace are supported networks.
Spicypage: To sum up this site, this is fusion of Digg and Mybloglog. You vote for blogs and pages and can also get a widget for your blog to get voted, again it is viral in same sense as is Mybloglog. But I would like to mention that I came to know about this site via Mybloglog, how there was a personal message by some lady which mentioned about this website.
There are few more services like Trakzor which is focused on Myspace, none of them had done it in the same way as MyBlogLog.
Community is one word to define Web2.0, and when blogs fuses with community building are network building then its like twin blade sword.
If you know of any other such service then feel free to post a tip.
Recently I covered Future Bazaar here. I got comments by so called CEO of Future Group, but some how as there is no back link I am not believing him. If they are correct, then they should mention it here.
But lets come to my point, I am looking for a mobile phone, and am thinking to try out some online shop. I some how zeroed on Nokia 5300. Then I used my fingers on my keyboard and went to few online shops for India.
Univercell
Future Bazaar
Rediff
Indiatimes
To tell, first two are retail e-outlets, and other two are part of portals.
@ Univercell >>> Rs. 10,999/-
@ Future Bazaar >>> Rs. 10,846/-
@ Indiatimes >>> Rs. 11,340/-
@ Rediff >>> Rs. 11,336/-
Its for everyone to see, from where I my buy, but still I may buy from shop in my town, because I feel that I may get a better bet over there, Hey, I cant go down with some 10k without bargaining!
Bye the way when it comes to details provided online, it was Rediff which was a notch ahead than others. And when it came to easy navigation then it was Univercell who I felt was better than rest. If you know of any other online mobile shoppe then please bring it to my knowledge.
I can not hide my child like feelings and when everI get any such cool thing then I put them here and thats it.
I came to knew about it via Technix Update,
You can get such clipping from Fodey...
I am one person who enjoys going to any kind of bazaar, whether it be sabzi(vegetables) or kapada (cloth/clothes)bazaar. But here I am not discussing about me and my shopping instincts. Internationally WalMart is a well known franchise, and as of Indian perspective, they are coming soon to this old land, in partnership with Bharti. But this again is not what we are going to discuss. India is opening its retail market and next budget round the corner people(companies) are hoping for more freedom in FDI(foreign direct investment). But Wal*Mart wont be first to enter in as retail business, and they would be striving real hard to get the bigger chunk of retail pie. There are 4-5 chains which are doing great job nation wide, and the news of WalMart has led to market consolidation, as few bigger player have bought few smaller yet powerful regional players. But again economics is not in which I can call myself a Genghis Khan. Now let us zero on the main theme, bazaar on net, Big Bazaar which is one of the few big players in retailing are already gearing up to face might and experience of WalMart not only on land but also in wires. Mother company of Big Bazaar, Pantaloon Retail (India) Ltd., has floated out its online shopping arm, in form of Future Bazaar, though I am not sure what future are they talking about, because online shopping is not something new, and there are already few player in India for online shopping.
Future Bazaar holds only one major advantage which is keeping it above its competition is their experience and a bigger catalog. But as a website it has nothing innovative. Its same conventional online shopping website. Website design is not inspiring, and neither are the discounts. Only thing which I liked about it was the product viewing which is like set of few images which are enlarged on mouse roll over. This is only thing which it has done better than the cliche. One more thing which I can mention as their plus point is sites speed, its fast, it had faster upload time per page, and registration was also pretty quick.
Finally if you ask whats my take, then I would say, it has got a big catalog, and a name to bank upon, but as a website there is nothing which would get you hooked, and this is probably due to flawed mindset, which does not consider online shopping to be big. Yes I agree that Indian buyers are probably most fussy in the world but they don't sue after finding something wrong. And if you think that this will make your job easier than let me tell you, no, it won't, you wont realize and one day you would find even a single customer to log in. I would certainly be trying future bazaar in near future, but would also hope that they ring out something innovative to get their merchandise rolling before the big bad boy comes in.
I some how stumbled on it, and was astounded by it. Its high on simplicity, and is pretty useful and addictive. Three things which I reckon are essential for a good startup, or any new web service. Though there are always more things required to make a killer product, but for a successful product the above three things are very important. But this is not why I was astounded while going through Quizlet, I would tell it after I finish what Quizlet is all about.
We all know that flashcards are nice learning tool, if you didn't knew about it then also Quizlet will keep you busy, why? just because it is informative in nature. It is very simple flashcard using tool, you can create a set of your flash cards, and then use it for future use, and keep on using them. But thats not all, yes, its social, which means that you can learn from others flashcard. Not only this much but it also provides multi user editing, much like a wiki. So your set an be more than your set but can be your groups set as it also provides option to create a group. Since it is focused on vocabulary building and similar things therefore a simple statistic tool also works beautifully.
Now comes the astounding part, this whole website is a brainchild of a child, rather I should say teen, his name is Andrew Sutherland, and is just 17 and launched Quizlet when he was 15. As he has mentioned, it took some 420 days for him and him alone to make Quizlet, and few more days to become president of his startup firm Brainflare.
Thats not all, what I found more admirable was outlook towards his job, he does have a definite business plan for Quizlet, in his words...
Quizlet is free and will remain free to all users. The current plan is to offer targeted advertising on the non-studying pages. I'm hoping to make some deals with some educational and test-prep companies and perhaps some universities. If you're interested in advertising to my userbase of highly-motivated high-school and college students, shoot me a note (see above right).For future I wold love to see its mash ups with flick images or Google maps and anything else, which can make it more interesting. Much higher on want list would be a web widget of Quizlet which we can put on our web pages or blogs. He is an intelligent kid, what it seems from here, and soon we may fine such things.
I didn't noticed it when I logged in, happy valentine post became my 51 post, and this is my seconds after I realized that I have crossed an important milestone, crossed half century. I am thirst for more so be sure that you are going to get more and more stuff, things will certainly become more exciting, both in terms of content and in terms of the logic behind them. Now on I will try to bring post with strong data in support, so as to bring some useful information for you all.
Now on I will try and avoid long holidays...but still examinations are in someway very important.
But still today is very nice day, I crossed my half century....njoying
HAPPY VALENTINE TO ONE AND ALL. THE THING WHICH WAS BEFORE YOU AND ME AND WOULD REMAIN AFTER YOU AND ME WILL BE LOVE, THE PURE LOVE.MAY ALL GADGETS AND GEEKY OBJECTS BRING YOU PEACE AND GOD BRING YOU EVERGREEN LOVE.
This is not a very unique post, and neither it is breaking news. Stumble Upon is already having nearly 2 Million users who are stumbling over new sites daily and are pressing stumble button on stumble upon tool bar which must have become an integral part of their web surfing experience. One thing we all know that normal search engines leaves lots of logical sites which should have been there in search. But public is not a algorithm and thus services like Digg and Stumble Upon are very useful. You just click on a single button and will get a site submitted by a discoverer from a topic of your choice, you also get an option to search another topic. Most often than not you stumble on a very interesting site, and if you are one person who thinks that there is nothing exciting on internet or lazy enough to not to search for your choice of topic on conventional search engines then you must get this for your browser. This small toolbar will sit there at top pretty similar to Google search toolbar. Stumble upon is now also offering video stumbling which they will soon bring up in their toolbar.
I am not sure whether I would write about Powerset or not in near future, but I am sure that I am going to write more about user generated search results.
For now we have Google at the helm of internet search, they are biggest and fastest though by few milliseconds but still they are not perfect. I have one open question which have potential to run few brain mills wild. Should Google buy a user generated search engine and add their results to their conventional search? Bye the way to make your search on Google more intelligent you can go for advanced Google search.
I went out of my study table limits and covered GooTube integration with Orkut. (here) . Things which I have been saying since long time are getting in shape, and this proves that there are intelligent people working for Google. Recently they have been putting few tips to for their service users to work in tandem with their other services.
Heres one example...
The above mentioned example was already present, and you can see it working on this blog also. But having a service and having a known service are two different things and they are making people aware of what Google have up their sleeves to offer. And its good.
There can be few people who feel that this is unwanted, but I think that as a big company they should certainly promote users to use their service, because better integration will always save time.
Heave you noticed any other example of any such integration then you can certainly send a tip off.
I am back, and this time, its going to much more quick, more kinky, more intelligence as some tadka, and as always more geeky.
In the mean time I would like to tell, that few days back, I chated with Abhishek Bhatnagar, he also blogs on technology at Technix Update, and does that very nicely. He is one cool guy, with level head on some sturdy shoulder. I am having one eye on him and other on how his blog shape up in future.
Oh yes, I came and blogged which I wasnt meant to do, as my exams are on run, and I am trying to catch them red handed. But one thing compelled me to do this, yes after so many messages of suggestions which many others including me must have posted to orkut about including videos, we finally have them. It was quite simple, they are having one of the biggest library of videos, yes You Tube and still they didnt had video option for their social network. But now they have that. And yes it wasnt there yesterday.
They also had (for one day) a navigation button for pics in orkut album, which they removes after few hours or so, I dont know the reason behind, but that was a good add on.
Google can still integrate few more things on orkut just from their very own stable. They have many for that. And one certainly would be Blogger.
Googlers please add just one more button...on profile page for Blogs. And thats it.
And yes yes please remove the 12 image cap from album, we want to upload more, and yes few more personalized options for increased privacy. Like by whom we want our photos to be seen, because recently there have been few cases in India regarding this problem. As of currently any one visiting my profile can see my album, which was primarily meant just for my friends as orkut was a closed network. But late last year they made it open, and now we have more problems regarding privacy.
One more thing...yes for orkut...why dont they update there news section
Before ending lets discuss what this service is, its not a stand alone video sharing service. You upload your videos on two of the Google services, that is You Tube and Google video, which I think amount to largest user generated(and not so user generated) video library, and then put its link on your Orkut video favorites. So this makes it more like video blog entry without any possibility of any kind of write up. If google is in any plan to monetize videos for users than this can be a double edged master stroke. I dont understand one thing, why after making Orkut a open social network they are not providing easy url for profiles for example my profile url is http://www.orkut.com/Profile.aspx?uid=6074091533297241425 , this is some thing which I can not remember, at least that number is beyond my mental reach.
As of videos one more thing which I should mention is that this service is only limited to You tube and Google video, this means that if you are having your videos on some other services that you can not show them on your orkut profile. This is not at all good.
Beside adding an option for video they have also tweaked one thing for good, that is in scrap book, now they wont be telling you some out of world time for your scraps but would be telling local time and also relative time. Oh thats one great relief.
Even in present format Orkut is far from being complete, its not as big as Myspace but yes it does have potential to be so. Now they should try to make it much more secure, they should also look at privacy factor because that was one of their USP when they launched it.
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