Friday, December 22, 2006
TheVeniceProject beta
GigaOm published some screenshots from the VeniceProject. The VeniceProject is a mashup of television, p2p and social networking founded by the founders of Skype and Kazaa. The project is a broadband application which will harness the power of p2p to distribute TV shows over the internet. No, its not a file sharing service. This service allows users to add channels, switch between channels, join communities, chat etc.
The project is presently in beta and is accepting emails to get a invitation for beta testing.
Merry Christmas
If you are a Digg user then there is greeting for you from Google maps. The greeting is created by taking out letter shaped buildings from Google maps.
Vulnerabilities Fixed -Firefox 2.0.0.1
Mozilla fixed the following 8 known vulnerabilities in Firefox 2 with its release of Firefox 2.0.0.1.
MFSA 2006-76 XSS using outer window's Function object
MFSA 2006-75 RSS Feed-preview referrer leak
MFSA 2006-73 Mozilla SVG Processing Remote Code Execution
MFSA 2006-72 XSS by setting img.src to javascript: URI
MFSA 2006-71 LiveConnect crash finalizing JS objects
MFSA 2006-70 Privilege escallation using watch point
MFSA 2006-69 CSS cursor image buffer overflow (Windows only)
MFSA 2006-68 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.9/1.8.1.1)
If you have Firefox 2 then you must have been prompted for automatic updates which would have fixed the above vulnerabilities.
You can get Firefox 2.0.0.1 here.
Indian Roads Now on Google Maps
Google maps added in itself a detailed maps of national highways, roads and streets of all the major cities and towns of India. This is a measure breakthrough in the online mapping system in which the country is lacking a good deal of features as compared to its western counterparts. MapMyIndia was the only service which existed uptill now in this area and it is still more detailed than Google maps. But the Google map service is all set to take off because of its combination of both satellite imagery and maps.
Thursday, December 21, 2006
Top 10 Geeks
Cnet is running a series of articles on top 10 Nerds and Geeks of all times. While the list is completely agreeable, the humoristic style of presentation makes them worth a shot.
♣ Top ten Nerds and Geeks
♣ Top ten Girl Geeks
♣ Top ten Animal Geeks (yes , thats right)
The Breath Capture Gadget
The Product : Breathe Capture
"Their breath of life. A living, breathing part of them.""Air in the form of human breath is no longer simply air.
Breath is present when we laugh and cry, whisper and shout, sing and sigh. And
once captured, it can be a powerful reminder of those we long to be around. In
short, Breath Capture™ preserves not only the memory of someone, but who they
are. So wherever you go, they’ll always be close.If love is in your heart, you
will feel the closeness of your friends and loved ones with Breath Capture. And
you can keep it that way forever." [source: BreathCapture]
This cool new gadget out in the market will give you a dose of Carbon DiOxide when you are down. Whats wonderful is that it will be CO2 exhaled from your love's nostrils, so it will not harm you and keep you in high spirits. Now you can carry bacteria of your partner wherever you go and that bacteria will strengthen the love bond by transmitting diseases between each other.
Top 50 CSS designs of 2006
SmashingMagazine listed 50 beautiful CSS-based websites of 2006 with snaps, thus earmarking the end of an year full of creativity.
Dinis91.comExpiring Domain Names
It is often first come first serve. The early you do the domain name registration the better the chance of getting name of your choice. The domain names are filling so quickly that it has already started becoming difficult to get one word or modular domain names.
If you are looking for some good domain names, chances are that they are already booked, or they were booked and now are on the verge of expiring. There are a lots of domain names that expire everyday and you can choose from them as soon as they expire. This site lists domain names that are expiring with the time left to expire. You can navigate through the list to find some really cool names or make a search for domain names containing words your choice. You can also see the Google trends (to see how often they were searched on Google) for those domain names so that you get domain name that is most sought after. [via Digital Inspiration]
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Fauxto : Online Imaging
Fauxto is a recently launched, flash based online drawing/image editing service which besides basic drawing capablilities provides advanced features like layering. The service is in beta right now and possess some flaws nevertheless the service has a potential as it is flash based.The strong point of a flash based system unlike an ajax based system is that once the initial interface is loaded, operation becomes pretty fast.
Related: Online Drawing, Professional Sketches, Pimping Photos
Top 10 products of 2006
CRN published a detailed review of top 10 products of 2006 encompassing both software and hardware. Here are the links:
• Best Web Development Tool
• Best Security Software
• Best Networking Hardware
• Best Storage Product
• Best App Development Tool
• Best Printer
• Best Notebook
• Best Application Software
• Best Operating System
• Best Server
Google Soap API
Google deprecated their soap search api reports O'Reilly Radar. Instead Google is promoting its Ajax Search API. The site reports:
The AJAX Search API is great for web applications and users that want to
bling their blog, but does not provide the flexibility of the SOAP API. I am
surprised that it has not been replaced with a GData API instead. The developer
community has been discussing this and do not seem happy with the change. Discussion on the forums have pointed out that Yahoo! has a REST Search API. Live Search also has a SOAP API available.
Disposable Phone Numbers
Sometimes it just gets very important to get a disposable phone number for a lot of business or private reasons or simply to alleviate the problem of receiveing spam calls. Craigsnumber provides a free service whereby it generates a disposable number with validity period from ranging from one hour to one week. You can distribute this number to all those with whom you do not want to keep permanent contact. The calls to this number will be forwarded to your real number which cannot be seen by the caller. Presently, this service is for US only numbers. [via Lifehacker]
Related: Disposable Emails.
Blogger Out of Beta
I started blogging when the blogger beta just started about 3 months ago and this is the 100th post which is in sync with blogger coming out of beta. Blogger has come out of the beta phase today which means it has now become a standard with stability and reliability. All the bugs or known issues have been fixed over time. All in all blogging just got easier.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
Digg added Videos and Podcasts section
Digg, a one stop shop for buying news and interesting stories chalked out democratically, launched video and podcasts section yesterday. Although users used to post videos and podcast news earlier also, but that had to be included in the only section available - the news section. Now that videos and podcasts sections are specifically outlined, users will get a cleaner and organized experience while looking for video and podcasts. The podcasts section which requires you to sign on to access it, at the time of writing already had podcasts spread over 28 pages with "Diggnation" and "this week in tech" dugged down 5576 and 4628 times respectively.
Top 10 Security Risks or Cyber Crimes in 2007
1. Your computer will probably crash a lot or at least reboot for no apparent reason but most likely due to some patch you got through an automated update which you are told to do for security reasons because apparently security and stability are incompatible.
2. You will misplace, lose, over-write, and delete documents probably accidentally but you really can't remember if you really had that document saved or not and maybe it's this one here but you don't know because when you try to open it you get a CRC error and you'll realize that nobody warned you that the ever-decreasing life of these huge hard-drives you can now buy have fallen to just under 2 years.
3. While using emule and bit torrent you think you're being watched by the MPAA and RIAA and you seriously cut down on your downloading which makes you re-discover things you downloaded that you never watched or played before but some of the media files won't play right and you won't know if it's the codec, the program, or the file so you download more and more until your ISP jacks you with a huge bill for excessive bandwidth usage.
4. You'll get spyware and adware and everything else just from browsing distant Korean servers for torrents, swapping files with "friends" you just met on IM, and accepting SMSes from unknown people. You may also get chlamydia or worse if you troll seedy places and accept sexual invitations with as many unknown people as you do electronically so no surprises there.
5. If your phone is also a computer or your TV is also a computer or your oven is also a computer and they're running some open networking protocol like Bluetooth all the time which you never read the manual on how to shut it off, expect that bad people are happy to do bad things to them just like if you leave kids running around in public places unattended then bad people may do bad things to them as well with the odds basically being the same for all of it all happening.
6. You will get emails from your bank or paypal where you have to log in there to verify a transaction which then by all means you will use the link in the mail because we all know we don't always bookmark the websites we use so often in our browser and also because you're just being click-lazy and so then bad people steal your identity and your credit card numbers and try to buy stuff and ship it to Indonesia but your bank calls to alert you that they canceled your card and will send another to you in 3 to 4 weeks but you trip on the way to the phone and get a nasty bruise on your knee.
7. Your bank will add more small print and find new ways to charge for internet-enabled things they save money on but they call it a new service so you pay more for it.
8. The cool new software you buy will ask you for the CD-Key and no matter how many times and with caps or not that you type it that damn 24-character code and wait for it to call home the message repeats that it already exists because some punk copied out of the box in the store for his pirated version and so you have all the pain and expense of going back to the store where you end up also buying some USB stuff you didn't need which ends up not really working right anyway.
9. The sweet girl from procurements with the pink-laced keds gets caught selling toner cartridges on E-bay which she stole from your office printer and she tells the boss that she didn't know it was from there because you gave it to her and when they go to investigate they find some work documents on your personal USB key drive that you needed to move files to another computer in a department with a printer that still had toner along with a file full of MP3s and spreadsheet full of numbers you'd been toying with to see if it's feasible to start your own competing business.
10. You're new video and tv-capable mobile phone will have a feature to download certain programs and ringtones wirelessly but you don't get a chance to try it because someone steals it off the conveyor belt at the airport security checkpoint.
(Source: Institute for Security and Open Methodologies)
2. You will misplace, lose, over-write, and delete documents probably accidentally but you really can't remember if you really had that document saved or not and maybe it's this one here but you don't know because when you try to open it you get a CRC error and you'll realize that nobody warned you that the ever-decreasing life of these huge hard-drives you can now buy have fallen to just under 2 years.
3. While using emule and bit torrent you think you're being watched by the MPAA and RIAA and you seriously cut down on your downloading which makes you re-discover things you downloaded that you never watched or played before but some of the media files won't play right and you won't know if it's the codec, the program, or the file so you download more and more until your ISP jacks you with a huge bill for excessive bandwidth usage.
4. You'll get spyware and adware and everything else just from browsing distant Korean servers for torrents, swapping files with "friends" you just met on IM, and accepting SMSes from unknown people. You may also get chlamydia or worse if you troll seedy places and accept sexual invitations with as many unknown people as you do electronically so no surprises there.
5. If your phone is also a computer or your TV is also a computer or your oven is also a computer and they're running some open networking protocol like Bluetooth all the time which you never read the manual on how to shut it off, expect that bad people are happy to do bad things to them just like if you leave kids running around in public places unattended then bad people may do bad things to them as well with the odds basically being the same for all of it all happening.
6. You will get emails from your bank or paypal where you have to log in there to verify a transaction which then by all means you will use the link in the mail because we all know we don't always bookmark the websites we use so often in our browser and also because you're just being click-lazy and so then bad people steal your identity and your credit card numbers and try to buy stuff and ship it to Indonesia but your bank calls to alert you that they canceled your card and will send another to you in 3 to 4 weeks but you trip on the way to the phone and get a nasty bruise on your knee.
7. Your bank will add more small print and find new ways to charge for internet-enabled things they save money on but they call it a new service so you pay more for it.
8. The cool new software you buy will ask you for the CD-Key and no matter how many times and with caps or not that you type it that damn 24-character code and wait for it to call home the message repeats that it already exists because some punk copied out of the box in the store for his pirated version and so you have all the pain and expense of going back to the store where you end up also buying some USB stuff you didn't need which ends up not really working right anyway.
9. The sweet girl from procurements with the pink-laced keds gets caught selling toner cartridges on E-bay which she stole from your office printer and she tells the boss that she didn't know it was from there because you gave it to her and when they go to investigate they find some work documents on your personal USB key drive that you needed to move files to another computer in a department with a printer that still had toner along with a file full of MP3s and spreadsheet full of numbers you'd been toying with to see if it's feasible to start your own competing business.
10. You're new video and tv-capable mobile phone will have a feature to download certain programs and ringtones wirelessly but you don't get a chance to try it because someone steals it off the conveyor belt at the airport security checkpoint.
(Source: Institute for Security and Open Methodologies)
Monday, December 18, 2006
Linux equivalent of Windows Softies
If you are one of those who abandoned the plan to switch over to Linux because of sheer lack of full feature softwares, then this post could be of some help to you to overcome your fear and go opensource. LinuxEq like the name suggests maintains a good list of softwares for Linux family of OSs with its windows counterparts. The apps range from equivalent of photoshops, office, itunes, netmeeting to notepad.
iPhones are OUT - but from Cisco's factory
The news of Apple launching iPhones which was doing quite a round in the past weeks, got a death blow when Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco Systems unexpectedly launced the coveted gadget. The iPhone will harness the power of VoIP with the two freely available services that is Skype and Yahoo Messenger. The users will be able to toggle between the traditional phone to VoIP with a single click of a button. The iPhone could also be used to transfer multimedia contents and can be combined with video cameras besides accessing the internet which will depend upon the range of models provided below. Only snaps are provided below, you can follow the link for detailed description.
» iPhone Cordless Internet Telephony Kit - CIT200 - Available globally through e-commerce retailers, retail stores, and VAR partners. Estimated Street Price: $79.99.
» iPhone Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit - CIT300 - Available globally through e-commerce retailers, and VAR partners. Estimated Street Price: $99.99
» iPhone Dual-Mode Cordless Phone for Yahoo! Messenger with Voice - CIT310 - Available in the U.S. through e-commerce retailers, and VAR partners. Estimated Street Price: $99.99
» New!! iPhone Dual-Mode Internet Telephony Kit for Skype - CIT400 - Available immediately in the U.S. through e-commerce retailers, and VAR partners. Global availability through e-commerce retailers, and VAR partners is expected for Q1 2007. Estimated Street Price: $179.99 
» iPhone Wireless-G IP Phone - WIP300 - Immediately available in North America, Europe and Asia through distribution and authorized VAR partners. Estimated Street Price: $219.99
» New!! iPhone Wireless-G Phone for Skype - WIP320 - Immediately available in North America through distribution, online retailers and VAR partners. Europe, Asia and LATAM availability is planned for Q1 2007. Estimated Street Price: $199.99.
» iPhone Wireless-G IP Phone - WIP330 - Immediately available in North America, Europe and Asia through distribution and authorized VAR partners. Estimated Street Price: $369.99
Do you have a secure password.
A recent phishing attack on MySpace revealed thousands of passwords in public. As the number of passwords revealed were quite large, it provided a thrust for analysing the present trend in passwords. While the most of the MySpace passwords were alphanumeric and did not contain dictionary words, there were some quite common. The point forgotten while keeping these passwords were that these passwords could be familier to anyone, not just you. Below are the few points of the analysis, check whether your's is well protected.
» Top 20 Common Passwords (in order) : password1, abc123, myspace1, password, blink182, qwerty1, fuckyou, 123abc, baseball1, football1, 123456, soccer, monkey1, liverpool1, princess1, jordan23, slipknot1, superman1, iloveyou1 and monkey.
» As expected, English vowels are by far the most frequent occurring password symbols (E, 48 percent; A, 46 percent; I, 34 percent; O, 33 percent). Other high-ranking letters included R (35 percent), S (32 percent), N (31 percent), L (28 percent), T (25 percent), C (21 percent), and M (21 percent).
» Numbers were used in well over half the passwords. The number 1 appeared 45 percent of the time, followed by the numbers 2 (22 percent), 0 (16 percent), and 3 (15 percent). Numbers 4 through 9 appeared roughly 9 to 11 percent of the time.
» When number 1 was used, it appeared 78 percent at the end.
» Cuss or profane words were very popular.
» Words, colors, years, names, sports, hobbies, and music groups were very popular. FYI, your girlfriend or boyfriend’s name isn’t that uncommon in most cases. I, too, luv Brandi, Bob, or Joe.
(Courtesy: infoworld, schneier)
Online SQL
Few days back I posted a list of online compiler. This is an add on to that in that it helps you to learn and play wiht SQL online. These online tools come handy when you do not want to go through the overhead of installing costly and bulky database systems, or you want to test a SQL statement on the fly. This list by no means is complete one, there exists a lots more, its only for the sake of add on that I am posting this.
» Sqlcourse : Tutorials for MS SQL, Oracle, MySql, DB2, Access
» W3Schools : Home of best resources for training. Covers a very wide area besides sql and the tutorials are laid out in a lucid and comprehendable ways with hands on with almost all of them.
» Grussel : SQL tutorial
» SQL zoo : SQL tutorial
ZCubes : The browser, your home.
ZCubes is a new webservice that is creating quite a buzz. But for me it was only after I tried it personally did I felt the buzz. The slick interface combined with almost all the contents you could think of makes it a unique experience. And boy this ajaxian interface is fast enough unlike online OSs that I discussed earlier (YouOS, EyeOS).
As the site claims:
ZCubes is the world's first website that seamlessly integrates browsing, searching, editing, painting, freehand drawing, cursive hand-writing, audio-video media
management, publishing, and much more into a pure BROWSER-BASED PLATFORM.
I think it really is what it claims to be. You can browse, search, paint blah blah. But the feature that interested me most was the drag drop of images, youtube videos etc from the sites open inside ZBrowser. Yes, you can drag and drop any html element from the ZBrowser to what they call ZSpace, what if its an image or a link or just a paragraph. It claims to support upto 30 file formats, so you can integrate PDF, Shockwave, Powerpoint, Word, and more. You can save your work on hardisk or publish directly on web.
The service as I see has some future in this Web 2.0ish world where every now and then innovative solutions appear.
Off Wits
I receive a lot of adult humors in my mailbox. I could not share them with you on this blog for obvious reasons - "Adults don't like someone making fun of them". But this one isn't an adult humor, this is a saga of a boy's wit where he comes over the challenges of really terrible riddles with his presence of mind.
A first-grade teacher, Ms Neelam (Age 28) was having trouble with one of
her students the teacher asked,"Boy. what is your problem?"
Boy answered, "I'm too smart for the first-grade.My sister is in the
third-grade and I'm smarter than she is! I think I should be in the third-grade
too!"
Ms Neelam had enough. She took Boy. to the principal's office. While Boy.
waited in the outer office, the teacher explained to the principal what the
situation was. The principal told Ms Neelam he would give the boy a test and if
he failed to answer any of his questions he was to go back to the first-grade
and behave.She agreed. Boy. was brought in and the conditions were explained to
him and he agreed to take the test.
Principal: "What is 3 x 3?"
Boy.: "9".
Principal: "What is 6 x 6?"
Boy.: "36".
And so it went with every question the principal thought a third-grade
should know. The principal looks at Ms Neelam and tells her, "I think Boy can go
to the third-grade."
Ms Neelam says to the principal, "I have some of my own questions.
Can I ask him ?" The principal and Boy both agreed.
Ms Neelam asks, "What does a cow have four of that I have only two
of?
Boy., after a moment "Legs."
Ms Nee lam: "What is in your pants that you have but I do not have?"
Boy.: "Pockets."
Ms Neelam: What starts with a C and ends with a T, is hairy, oval,
delicious and contains thin whitish liquid?
Boy.: Coconut
Ms Neelam: What goes in hard and pink then comes out soft And sticky? The
principal's eyes open really wide and before he could stop the answer,
Boy was taking charge.
Boy.: Bubblegum
Ms Neelam: What does a man do standing up, a woman does sitting down and a
dog does on three legs? The principal's eyes open really wide and before he
could stop the answer...
Boy.: Shake hands
Ms Neelam: Now I will ask some "Who am I" sort of questions, okay?
Boy.: Yep.
Ms Neelam: You stick your poles inside me. You tie me down to get me up. I
get wet before you do.
Boy.: Tent
Ms Neelam: A finger goes in me. You fiddle with me when you're bored. The
best man always has me first.The Principal was looking restless, a bit tense and
took one large Patiala Vodka peg.
Boy.: Wedding Ring
Ms Neelam: I come in many sizes. When I'm not well, I drip. When you blow
me, you feel good. Boy.: Nose
Ms Neelam: I have a stiff shaft. My tip penetrates. I come with a
quiver.
Boy.: Arrow
Ms Neelam: What word starts with a 'F' and ends in 'K' that means lot of
heat and excitement? Boy.: Firetruck
Ms Neelam: What word starts with a 'F' and ends in 'K' & if u dont get
it u have to use ur hand.
Boy.: Fork
Ms Neelam: What is it that all men have one of it's longer on some men than
on others, the pope doesn't use his and a man gives it to his wife after they're
married?
Boy.: SURNAME
Ms Neelam: What part of the man has no bone but has muscles, has lots of
veins, like pumping, & is responsible for making love ?
Boy.: HEART.
The principal breathed a sigh of relief and said to the teacher, "Send this
Boy to IIM Ahmedabad, I got the last ten questions wrong myself!"
Time : Person of the Year
As a consequence of what the year 2006 was all about, there is no surprise that Time magazine selected YOU as the person of the year. YOU the blogger, the symbol of freedom of expression, the protagonist of world social network. As the article says
"It's a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It's about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people's network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes."
The Web 2.0 has really dissolved something in the life vinegar of the Global citizens as apparently now you say what you feel, what you always wanted to , what you have never said. Now you just take out your camcorder, go to streets and and build over your newly found passion and engagement. And to hear you, to support or reject your opinions you have a global audience. No boundaries.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Cogmap - Wiki of Organisational Chart
It happens at times that you need to know about an organisation, its corporate structures and governance. And if you are a reporter or an interviewer it just becomes more than necessary to keep an updated version of who's who of an organisation into your head. If you think it is a problem, then solution has arrived.
Cogmap, a wiki of organisational charts, ajax powered, maintains the structure of an organisation in a graphical format as shown in the snap. Anyone can add an organisational chart and anyone can edit to rectify the errors or put some new nodes. Now the next time you need to know who to call upon in your organisation for a problem or see organisational chart of any corporation you can just make a search on Cogmap and get to know about personalities holding crucial positions.
WengoVisio : Let your users call you
WengoVisio recently went public about offering there click to call widget that can be embed on any page to let your viewers call you. As an example a widget has been added to this blog. Check out the left side bar. Sign up is easy in 3 simple steps.
About two months back I added a Meebo chat widget to this blog, but latter removed it as it took some amount of time to load and I had to remain online from the Meebo's site. But with this WengoVisio's widget one can remain online on my own site. Just click on "Admin" on the widget and you will be asked for password to continue and you become online.
Is Vista ripped off from Mac OS X
David Pogue in his typical sarcastic way shows three examples of Vista copying OS X. Though this video drew a lot of controversies and Microsoft actually never did that, its fun to watch the whole sarcasm. This video was originally posted on NYTimes.
Tiny apps : Free and efficient Apps
There is a good collection of apps at TinyApps which are free and run on your system without much overhead on your CPU. Almost all of the apps are freeware(?), less than 1.44MB in size, does not require VB/MFC/.NET runtimes and they claim they are not adwares(?). A good number of their apps come with source code, requires no changes in registry, 100% self contained withing their own directory, do not require installation. Free apps for Palm and OS X are also available.
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