Amount of hype(for good reasons) is already bringing Facebook some new members. I now have 9 friends in Facebook and 8 are new. Pretty interestingly Facebook is also showing a revved up performance in India all over. Globally also Facebook is seeing a rise in daily traffic. Which is pretty much clear from this graph.


One very interesting thing which can be seen is that Facebook's graph is showing an increasing trend where as other two are quite static. Though F8 can not be pointed as a specific turn around point but indeed it caught my attention. What Facebook did in F8, is now being sought by MySpace, that is, they want to open up themselves.
Hey, enlighten me, didnt we had third party apps, finely integrated in Myspace profiles, adding up lots of clutter and feeding a big parallel tertiary market. MySpace is already quite open, and its openness have already been utilized by few intelligent miscreants. To mention Facebook is like orkut a closed network, where you have to login before watching any kind of profile, they are not available as web pages.
So all in all as it seems from thousand of miles away from the place where few people are burning fuel to make MySpace more open is nothing but surfing. Surfing? yes they too want to ride on the wave of openness, want to gain some media mileage by telling every one that they are more open. Though there is high scope for opening up, but as history tells me, Myspace gets irritated when there is some high traffic gainer app on the profile page of various MySpace users. Bye the way, MySpace is being thrashed all over the park, just like Sachin did yesterday in Ireland, after they created a Youtube clone.
Orkut presently enjoys 2nd position in India as most visited website and facebook is on 29th. So there is lot of catching up required for Facebooks where Indians only constitute 0.8% of visitors. and this percentage is as high as 15% on Orkut.
At present Orkut is boring me a great deal, and the social networks which needs some opening up or some major overhaul is Orkut. And till then I will be resending invites to my friends so as I get more friends on Facebook.

PS: All the data is from Alexa.com

This is not at all a post to reckon with, and this site might not be listed by any of the A list bloggers, for a very simple reason that this is not a out of the world web application. This has been done by many others and would be done by many more. Wiredness is a simple image manipulator, but what strikes is its utter simplicity. You go on site and you know that you have to upload image, only one at a time, and do some manipulation, save it, take your image and go away. Written using Prototype.

All this is fine at its own place, but this is not more than a project for the guy who made it. One can be sure after seeing the simplicity that there is no big organization behind it. Only big site which is as simple as this is, is Google.

There is still one thing which is itching my brain, what kind of money making model can be there behind any image manipulator over the web. With Picasa from Google which is not a very big application and having some kind of roots in webosphere is more than enough for minor editing. Then why would some one go to such image manipulator. The only possible situation when I will go to online image editor is when I would be with my bags, i.e; traveling. And whole world is not packing its bag. Not talking about Wierdness in particular, any image editing option available online does not excite me more than being a good piece of code. There are already big players with some editing tools, and there are few with experience. Even the person behind wierdness would be knowing that he wont be getting any thing VC funding from what he did, and the max he would be getting will be some highly valuable experience, and a good thing to put in his CV.

Only thing which I can say to every one, and to self is, keep creating.

Twitter is slowly and slowly becoming more and more popular. And this is the reason I become more anxious when I get a new friend. I mostly use it via instant messenger and I get regular upadtes of what few people are doing(those few people does not include my friends) and how they are leading their lives and sometimes it becomes an interseting read. But as I said, it really make me anxious becuase soon there would be advertisement's rain in this structure. ANd when that happens, the interest will decrease, at least for me.
bUt still this is a small charming web app, which I loving to use but still not addicted.

By the way if you want to add me on twitter then here is my personal twitter page.

I recently found about Postful, a new service which coverts an email to a snail mail, and then delivers it. I dont about America, but this is a very old thing for us in India, bing executed by state run Postal department and that too fro a meager sum or Rs 10/-, where as Postful will ask for some $.99/- that makes it approximately Rs 40/-. Epost service from Indian Postal department is very much same to what Postful is offering. Only thing which is making a difference is that Postful is doing it in more moder manner than Epost, which is not providing information in correct manner, unearthing any iformation on Postful about their service is easier as compared to Epost. And such things are not minor in any sense.
But when it comes to modern day web service you must be very clear in outlook and must be crisp, and there should be no need to explain users, that what you wish to do. Because if you are doing so, is signifies that you are not sure about your product, whether it would be able to convey the message on itself or not, and if that is the case then it wont be able to do so.
In India I can see the use of Epost but in places with higher internet penetration I find that gaining trction for such a service would be a tough job. In India it is a different story, if you now about this service then you are probably a literate and if you are literate then in most probable cases your peers will be literate and in that case you will be using email rather than a conversion service. And if you are illiterate then you probably don't know about it. But all that siad I would really love to see a much better ePost portal than what it is now.

I didnt noticed it earlier, but found it interesting...Google's April Fools day joke...it was to archive all the emails in your inbox.
I found it as a nice option to include and they should not take it as a joke, because I some time really feel bored after sitting for hours in front of computer and then long for reading it all on paper, while lying down on my bed. They can, or rather they should bring this option up, so that we can get selected emails in a proper printing format, with all the data arranged as in a real letter, because most of the times emails are not proper format, and thus sometimes become a difficult read.

Top 100, I would die even before naming top 10. This is from Read/Write web, and compiled by Charles S. Knight. Its one of my favorite blogs all due to very cool'n'crisp analysis on it.
Here is what list looks like, I dont know most of the names from the list, but would surely have a look of them in times to come.To read complete analysis please visit here. They are going with such list as an monthly post, which I think is too frequent for such an category which does not show major changes as per one month time period is concerned. One more thing to note its not a list of conventional search engines but of alternative search engines. And the difference among two categories is very much same as in medicines and therapies.

AllTha.at	www.allth.at	The search engine that keeps on looking.
Ask Mobile	www.m.ask.com	Mobile search engine from Ask.com
ASK VOX	www.askvox.com	A second talking female user interface.
AnswerBus	www.answerbus.com	Ask in English, French, Spanish, German or Italian.
Blabline	www.blabline.com	Podcast / videocast search engine
blinkx	www.blinkx.com	Video Search
boing	www.boing.mobi	Search the Mobile web
bookmach.com	www.bookmach.com	Searches for posts related to your keywords.
ChaCha	www.chacha.com	Human Guides are available to aid in your search.
ClipBlast!	www.clipblast.com	Video Search
Clusty	www.clusty.com	Clustering search engine
collarity	www.collarity.com	Behavioral personalized search / Collarity Compass
CONGOO	www.congoo.com	Searches for Premium Content
crossEngine	www.crossengine.com	Searches Search Engines; formerly mrSAPO
d e c i p h o	www.decipho.com	Behavioral personalized search / Social Meter
Ditto	www.ditto.com	Visual search engine
Dogpile	www.dogpile.com	MetaSearch Engine
dumbfind	www.dumbfind.com	Featuring the Two-Box search method.
exalead	www.exalead.com/search	Web / Image search with a European flavor
factbites	www.factbites.com	Search Result snippets are complete sentences.
fazzle	www.fazzle.com	Search engine that emphasizes Boolean Search
filangy	www.filangy.com	Personalized Search Engine
FIND FORWARD	www.findforward.com	Multi-featured search engine; check this one out!
FindSounds	www.findsounds.com	Search for sound effects and musical samples.
FyberSearch	www.fybersearch.com	Parent site for some interesting new search engines.
GIGABLAST	www.gigablast.com	A multi-featured search engine.
girafa	www.girafa.com	Visual search engine - results are thumbnails
gnod	www.gnod.net	Oustanding recommendation search engines
gnosh	www.gnosh.org	Metasearch engine
GoLexa	www.golexa.com	"COMPLETE page analysis for each result."
goshme Beta 3.0	www.goshme.com	A search engine for search engines. Top 10 pick.
GoYams	www.goyams.com	Metasearch engine where you select the mix.
grokker	www.grokker.com	A multi-featured meta-search engine.
GRUUVE	www.gruuve.com	Groovy music recommendation search engine.
hakia	www.hakia.com	"Meaning based" search engine
ICEROCKET	www.icerocket.com	Blog search engine
ixquick	www.ixquick.com	Metasearch engine
KartOO	www.kartoo.com	Visually appealling clustering search engine
Lexxe	www.lexxe.com	Natural language processing (NLP) search engine
like	www.like.com	Visual shopping engine; see also riya
liveplasma	www.liveplasma.com	Attractive music / movies clustering / recommendation engine
Local.com	www.local.com	Search for local businesses, products, and services
lurpo	www.lurpo.com	Searches for custom Google search engines
mamma	www.mamma.com	metasearch engine
MetaGlossary	www.metaglossary.com	Searches for definitions, phrases and acronyms.
mnemomap	www.mnemo.org	Clustering search engine
Mojeek	www.mojeek.com	Customize your own personal search engine.
Mooter	www.mooter.com	Clustering search engine
mrquery	www.mrquery.com	Metasearch engine / metasearch providers
MS. DEWEY	www.msdewey.com	Unique user interface - enough said.
Omgili	www.omgili.com	Social community search engine
onkosh	www.onkosh.com	Arabic / English Search Engine
Pagebull	www.pagebull.com	Visual results search engine
pipl	http://pipl.com	People search engine
PlanetSearch	www.planetsearch.com	Metasearch engine
PolyMeta	www.polymeta.com	Metasearch and clustering search engine
pronto.com	www.pronto.com	Metasearch engine
qksearch	www.qksearch.com	Multi-featured "3-in-1" multi-search engine
Quintura	www.quintura.com	Clustering search engine with a new interface
Quintura for kids	http://kids.quintura.com/	Search engine for kids by Quintura
RedZee	www.redzee.com	Search Engine with nice preview results
retrievr	http://labs.systemone.at/retrievr/	Visual search engine
riya	www.riya.com	Visual search engine; see also Like
scirus	http://scirus.com	Scientific information only search engine
searchbots	www.searchbots.net	Have a little fun, create your own searchbot.
SearchTheWeb2	www.searchtheweb2.com	Search The Popular Head and The Long Tail
sidekiq	www.sidekiq.com	Multi-category search engine. Very nice.
Slideshow	http://slideshow.zmpgroup.com/	Displays search results as a moving slideshow.
Slifter	www.slifter.com	A mobile shopping search engine.
soople	www.soople.com	A simplified version of Google's search options.
Speegle	www.speegle.com	The speeglebot talks to you.
Sphere	www.sphere.com	A blog search engine.
Sproose	www.sproose.com	Social search engine
S R C H R	www.srchr.com	Metasearch engine
SurfWax	www.surfwax.com	Meaning-based search engine
Swamii	www.swamii.com	Search engine that keeps on searching for you.
Swoogle	http://swoogle.umbc.edu	Semantic Web search engine
thefind.com	www.thefind.com	Shopping search engine
Trexy	www.trexy.com	Follow "trails" and "trailblazers" with Trexy.
turboscout	www.turboscout.com	Metasearch engine
TWERQ	www.twerq.com	Multi-category search engine with tabbed results.
UJIKO	www.ujiko.com	A fun interface where you can vote on the results.
url.com	www.url.com	"Search with many" community metasearch engine.
VMGO.com	www.vmgo.com	Vote on the search results with emoticons.
WASALive	www.wasalive.com	A new member of the list.
Web 2.0	www.web20searchengine.com	Web 2.0 search engines
WEBBRAIN	www.webbrain.com	Clustering "see the web" search engine.
whonu?	www.whonu.com	Deluxe metasearch engine.
WIKIO	www.wikio.com	"Live information from 33981 media and blogs"
Windows Live Mobile	www.wls.live.com	Windows Live Mobile search engine
WiseNut	www.wisenut.com	Clustering search engine
Yahoo! Mobile	http://m.yahoo.com	Yahoo! Mobile search engine
Yahoo! MINDSET	www.mindset.research.yahoo.com	Intention-driven search; commercial versus research
yoono	www.yoono.com	People-rated community web search
yoople	www.yoople.net	Yoople! = Yahoo! + Google + People
yubnub	www.yubnub.org	Use command lines to search the web.
ZABASEARCH	www.zabasearch.com	People and Public Information Search Engine.
zapmeta	www.zapmeta.com	Metasearch engine
Zippy	www.zippy.co.uk	Search engine for webmasters
ZUULA	www.zuula.com	Multi-category, multi-search engine, with good tabs.

If you want to suggest some more feel free to do so and if they have missed some thing outright then go RWW and mention it to them. Here you can find January's list.

This is a pre-holi news, and a big one. If blogospher is to be believed then( as I haven't found a direct Adobe link till yet) Adobe would be launching online Photoshop it any time in coming six months. This would surely be a toned down version, and might be very much like what is already available. When it comes to desktop photo editing Photoshop is a market leader, and it is quite clear that they want to use their name in online world. They would be taking on Google who is a currently a online app king. But I think Zoho is also doing more than few correct things. But when it comes to photo editing I think an online version would serve two purposes, first it would bring them some revenue through advertisements and second this will probably attract customers to buy their desktop software. You can find a free copy of Photoshop from place you surely know, and this is hitting Adobe in a nasty way. What I would love to see is some kind of point system which could later be in cashed as a discount for Photoshop. It just an idea, but I suppose it will encourage users to work more on online photoshop this will gradually add some more money in Adobe's pockets. Other good thing they can do is to bring up API for their online product very much like Google earth. This reason behind this ideas is my belief, ' more seen>more used>more revenue.' We all know what a simple community driven widget in sidebar of a blogger can do for a website. When people can use some app for free, they start feeling a kind of bond with that service provider, then it doesn't matter whether that company do some evil or not. And this love generates revenue, we all know it don't we?
If you want a following, and this one also go for bigwigs, then you must show a free friendly face on internet, your advertisements should not be to bright to make user feel that he is being used, and this will keep the relation friendly, for long time. This also brings us to one other big question, will Microsoft do something similar, are they ready to be a force in online world, who knows...
I think Adobe's Illustrator is also one good contender to be an online app. Will COREL jump to this online wagon?(Do you remember COREL?) One more thing which strikes to me, will some open source application also come in an online application form, who knows? GIMP may be next. With the rise of Flash and Flex as one of the preferred set as rich media generator, Adobe is really on steroids.
One thing leads to other, one thread leads to other, and scientists also say that this world is made up of strings. When we talk any thing online we some how also bring mobile devices in bigger equation. One can simply go on and think on using Photoshop on his iPhone! And other string lead us to one heated problem, What about small fishes who spent few caffeinated nights for developing online image, video editors?

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.

Blogging was like a precursor to web2.0, and would certainly become precursor to web3.0. Blogging has got so much facets that you can not pinpoint a certain aspect of blogging, but one thing is for sure it has become third type of media, or in other words it is main content of media over internet. With the birth of zillions of blog every second and accompanying them the birth of zillions aspirations of having s successful blog, though this point will stand in debate lane. Somehow something or to say some products to fill those aspirational needs were required and now we have many.
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 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.

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.

When it comes to feed reading, then its Google Reader for me. I once trried few others, but the ease which it provides is certainly beyond comparison. Lets start whole topic with why I love Google, and its products. Not because they are on some what anti Microsoft stand but the are dynamic. And If you are on net then you must be dynamic.
Reader, is on with a new add on, that is trend. This little new feature allows to user to watch the previous trends which he had followed while he read his feeds.
They have not only divided statistics on the base of most read and almost inactive feeds but also the most active time and days, which make an interesting read. And not only a interesting read but also helps to unload some of feeds if you find them as dull, and static. And I think Google have used 'Tags', as they nearly always use 'Labels' for the same purpose. This might just help them to be the market leader in feed readers.
One of the few complains which I have with google is that they are really weak with community developing. Looking for an example.... http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08826823285193384074
That URL is address of my feed blog. I certainly can not remember it.
One more trouble i with its sharing option, it is not providing any customization option in sharing field. I think I should be given an option to share few feeds with my friends only, and not with whole world.
But of Trends, its really a nice service as it will help in prioritizing feed reading if in 11th hour. More over one can just share his feed reading trends, and certainly Robert Scoble would like to do so. I certainly think that this is a mere coincidence that in my previous post I discussed about a guy named Yuvi from India who has done a detailed study of Robert Scoble's blog Scobleizer and even of his feed blog, Robert on his blog have repeatedly written about his affection for Google Reader. Hey I am not in for doing a study on Scobleizer, as I have to study for the end semester examinations which are just around my neck. By the I think Google should continue with the same spirit to bring up some thing new, and keep their ever growing empire dynamic.






Technorati Tags: google, google reader, geek gam, feed reader

I came across this new service as one of my friend pointed it to me. Nowthen is one nice simple service, doing nothing more than what it is stating, with a very clean, calming interface, with a smooth scrolling image viewer. Its not blogging in pure sense but it is very much same. For messaging a MMS it is open only for US and UK(as usual). But people from other countries can send their text as well as multimedia messages as an email, which is a nice option. This USP of this service is the instantaneous of send the messages, its not like flickr or any other similar service, but is targetted for some casual mobile photography, so that you can share your pics with your friends on go, and 'on go' is the main part of USP.

They will be providing mobile alerts and from wha ever I read it seemed that they are not charging any thing for that. Then as usual they are providing links to feed the MySpace and networks.

I think they are just running it for fun as there is no obvious revenue generating system,and I think it will remain so. Soon they might start a video blogging on similar lines. And it will be good option.

The only thing I wish is that they shoud keep it simple and thats it, they should not try to match Flickr or others and should concentrate on mobile market.

I dont know if there are any other player like them, but I think there would be some similar players, doing round about similar thing. So this topic squares on a single point, the service which would be faster to penetrate in youngsters life, and simpler the service faster it would grow.








Technorati Tags: nowthen, mobile, MMS, blogging

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Sanskrit Voice... its a very simple startup without any intentions for profit. First of all I would divulge in the beauty of this site. Its simple, and it knows what it wants, its creator is not making some overstating claims, but just giving some tools to promote the coolest language present on earth. And during promotion you can learn the language by building its vocabulary or you can perceive the other way round. Sanskrit is a semi dead language, but technically most sound language, and phonetically its the best in international lot. Moreover Sanskrit Voice provide educators and teachers a minor platform to educate others about sanskrit.

Another beautiful thing about it is that it is doing so by providing glossary in form of RSS. They should also have a mailing option. It also want others to share resources of sanskrit, making site more of a resource bank.

Promoting is done by providing a RSS widget to put on blog or websites and promotion buttons.

This is pretty fine... and pretty good but...

I would like to see few more things on the website.

1. A wiki, only for sanskrit
2. An audio and video section.
3. A chat room.
4. A whiteboard.
   
   

None of the above things need hevay coding and most of the mcan be placed using other services, but they should be there. Seshu Karthick the man behind this startup can possibly do it himself, an wont prefer using third party widgets. This will make the site more dynamic, which in present status is not. This can be of three reasons, 1- He want it to be like it, 2-He didn't thought about it, 3-He didt had time to do it. Whatever it may be, but he should be sincerely behind this project.

Bye the way I am behind this beautiful language, what about you.



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Spresent, its another flash presentation made easy, website. I previously covered Toufee, which runs on the same line. But first discuss about Spresent. It looks cool and they have tutorial videos on Youtube, which certainly is a good move to reach much bigger audience. Its functionality is nice and the processing is fast. Which certainly a plus point to its competitor. There drag and drop interface is also up to the mark, and is just like spoon feeding to make presentations. The other things which you would notice at once are the options which its interface provide for a single item, which allows lot of flexibility. The other thing which clearly make Spresent a nice tool is the scaling capacity of the vector graphics and vector graphic animation.

Here is the link to its youtube tutorials. Hey the video is not very clear but still if you want to understand than it would be helpful, and yes you can clearly feel an accent.

Now comes the problem set for Spresnt. Its is not very social as it only provides mailing capacity. And I don't think that mailing is the best option, because we often skip mails from friends having something as attachment unless and until its important. Then the other thing is that it is very much limited to presentations only, whereas it have potential to do much more, because there interface is real chick. And one more thing, they should do away with google colours, there login space looks very much similar to the google's login space.
One can certainly try it out, but the real question which now arise, is Powerpoint that bad? Here is one piece of news, MS is going to attack Flash which was till now a sole player in its class, with their new product which will be out of beta in first quarter of coming year.

What can be todays million dollar question...
Can he do it again?
Who? That can be your question, and the name I will give will be Alex Tew.
Again many of you would ask me, Alex Tew?, Is he the one who do the Dew.
My answer would be no, then I will say, The Million Dollar Homepage, now some of your mental chords would be vibrating and you will be remembering about a site which sold each of its million pixels for one dollar.
I got the news from Tech Crunch, that Alex is planning to launch another site by name Pixeletto, and add some kind of lottery to it. This time around he is planning to ask for 2 $ for each pixel. Now the million dollar question or to say 2 million dollar question is would he be successful second time.
Before I express my thought, I would like to share one quote which my dad often give to me,
"There is no dearth of fools in this world, search for one and you would find hundred, but what these all fools need is a person who can make them fool". But he also tell me that, " If you want to remain on top for longer time then you must be sure that, the path you followed to reach at top was clean or not". The first quote is pretty apt for this case, which means that Alex would be successful even this time. Because there are plenty of people who want to own a piece of history.
Idea in itself is superfine and will remain so, but is it effective, yes its effective because it create a hype around itself which helps it to move swiftly.
But this time around Alex will get 2 million$ bit late then he would like, just because hype wont be that high.
Hey bye the way, I don't need much money and Rs. 1 Million would be enough for immediate needs.

Yes the Panda, I named it Kaju(cashew nut).
You can get one from bunnyhero labs, for your Myspcae, Xanga etc. profiles or blogs. Its some simple flash and yet funny. I would like it to do some things on its own, presently one have to hover ones mouse in the white box, to make it do things( do it yourself). And yes audio capabilities will also do wonders.

Its an India centric social network, that is trying to woo users by offering them free Ipod(shuffle-old), for them reaching over 100 friends or become heavily popular. A nice go, but I think is not that effective.

Its a invite only social network startup from two NRI, and looks pretty cool, in flickr pink and parrot green. Its single theme is highly ajaxed up, and it does every thing, it have an integrated chat client, an integrated mailbox and every thing else which you can find on a social network. But... yes a big *BUT* there is no option for customization of theme, which makes it monotonous, higly monotonous. It is fundamentally inspired from MySpace and then named it to make india centric, but added nothing to make it Indian. One more thing which I didnt liked is that I can only devide my friends in groups of there liking, i.e., on the basis of city and educational institutions/jobs, thats unfair, and by know I havent found a way to remove field boxes from main page. If I dont have any media content even then the media box will keep on showing on my main page.

How they are running this network is also unknown, because I havent heard that there is some big VC funding behind them nor there is any advertisement on its pages, to sum it up, they are not having any revenue generation options, which means that they can some day vanish from netsphere and I can loose my contacts.( Lets hope otherwise).

There are few things which I loved about yaari, one is that they are proving mobility feature, which makes it quite indian centric, then it is there color code, and finally there name.

They have to do something out of the box, to penetrate deep in Indian mass.

ALIPR:- Automatic Linguistic Indexing of Picture- real time.
Pretty interesting indeed. I have been saying it for quite some time, that common image search which google or for that matter any other search engine does is not up to the mark. Riya broke the mould and they once again did it with Like. But what they did was something with great fanfare , here alipr is a site which is being developed without any fanfare, and thus might not be attracting any big crowd. ALIPR is more of a scientific taste and does not have any tadka of commerciality.
It is being developed by Jia Li and James Z. Wang.
As its title indicates they are trying to classify an image using words. Their system have a vocabulary of 332 English words, which though is not big in figures but is highly effective.

ALIPR version 1.0 is designed for color photographic images. ALIPR 1.0 is not designed for black&white photos, manipulated photos, objectionable images, cartoons, sketches, framed photos, etc. ALIPR's prelude was our ALIP system, published in 2002.

They are doing some great job in image annotation. For more of there work go here.
Future of image search is in meta data or computer analysis.
They are basiclay on research project so we might just not see them on web 2.0 map, but yes they are doing there bit for web 2.0 by their own way.