Audio Blogging

The popular audio blog Audioblogger which provides service for Blogger is going off the air starting november 1st. Audioblogger provided audio blogging services for Blogger by providing an US number which can be used to post directly your audio through phone.

A very good alternative is Gabcast which provides paid as well as free services. For select countries blogging numbers are provided. SipBroker provides good free voip services.In order to record from your machine as it was in my case you can download some VOIP tool. I downloaded Express Talk, a soft VoIP tool from NCH which provides machine dialling facilities. It can be downlaoded from here by providing your email address. Now in order to blog on gabcast you have to dial sip:422@sip.gabcast.com and record your sound. This sound can later be heard from gabcast or its code may be copied to your favourite blog. You can check My Voice section on the right side of this page for sample.

My In-House Artist

Today I discovered a great singer, nowhere but inside my room-mate. Lets see how you like few of his creations (these are Hindi Songs).

Dil se Dil tak
Lafzon mein
Janneman

I think they are gr8, what do you say?

Whats Cooking Inside My HardDrive

The things that go inside the hard drive when you read, copy paste or delete something are explicitly shown with real life Hard Drive. Notice the movement of head in different situations:

Google Earth Workaround

I found a lot of tiny dots on the most beloved Google Earth (download it here). There are a lot of places marked by other and I am sure you will find one which is near your place of interest. My work started by searching Google. First I searched by keywords like "Google Earth Placename", later started searching with keywords like "site: filetype:kmz" or "site: filetype:kml". But then came up this great site containing a good amount of information on geographical locations. Tageo contains a lot of information about even the smallest of towns of the world alongwith latitude and longitude information, but on top of that it provides a link to KML/KMZ (to be opened with Google Earth) file for each place.

Now that I have located my place on Google Earth, in order to share it I must upload somewhere. In order to accomplish this "this wonderful site" came handy which allows the upload of KMZ and KML files. So finally I am able to share my location with you right here.

Sharing My Bookmarks

Until a month before I used to bookmark on a lot of sites, sometimes dedicate special blogs for it. But as my favorites grew at the speed of light I thought making one the chosen one and full stop. I chose Delicious. And until a day before I used to post links from my bookmarks to my blog. Now in order to increase the effectiveness and decrease the redundancy I got like "why reinventing the wheel" or for that matter why "Reposting the Wheel"(?).

Here's the thing: My Delicious Bookmark

Independent Music

If you are one of those singers who sing really well and their music do not get recognized for life or who simply who wants the world listen to her creation coz nobodys at home cares for it, or you are just a music lover tired of hearing from the same old artists. Here's a life for you. Independent Music comes under no piracy laws and their contents can be distributed and procured freely.

"In , popular music indie music (from independent) is any of a number of genres, scenes, subcultures and stylistic and cultural attributes, characterised by perceived independence from commercial pop music and mainstream culture and an autonomous, do-it-yourself (DIY) approach." (Quote:Wikipedia)

A few of the sites of note that I have noticed in recent time are as follows:

• GarageBand
• IndieMusic
• WebCDs
• MusicIndie
• Independent Music Network
  

Sure Shot Search Engine for Video,Audio,Torrent etc.

As in Google no special keywords, no special signatures and you most of the times direct links when it comes to audio, video, torrent, documents or manual. Thats what Briefli is all about. What is beautiful is that you get links from both Amazon and the good old sites who share everything for free , direct links in the later case. Its upto you to choose from legal or illegal. One more thing, it is built upon the Azaxian Technology, so no more getting blanks between page loads.

Google's New Customized Search Engine

Google released its customized search engine facility called Google Co-op that allows to perform customized search limited to few chosen websites. This search engine can be owned by anyone with Google Account. Moreover you can customize it so that other users of your search engine can add relevant links/sites. More details on Techcrunch.

Check out my search engine Latest Tech Search Engine which I have customized to search only a few good tech sites such as cnet, slashdot, techcrunch, digg etc.

Firefox 2.0 Released

Mozilla just released its much hyped version of firefox. It can be downloaded from its FTP Server.

• For Windows 5.6MB
• For Linux 9.2MB
• For Mac 18 MB

Well, later I found that Mozilla still has not announced the release officially which is scheduled on Tuesday even though it is in its FTP server. Probably it's because Mozilla don't want heavy traffic building upon the FTP server ahead of time that could cost it a large amount of bandwidth charge.

Maps and Maps

Find from a single channel how Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, NASA locate your home !! FlashEarth provides a single interface to access maps as shown by different vendors.

Virtual World

The world, initially a vast stretch of never-ending terrains,seas and deserts, started evolving slowly but with a very fast pace. The whole of the world is now at your finger-tips, thanks to the virtual revolution brought by digitals. Here is a collection of virual realities which have changed our way of life in recent past.

• Maps and satellite and Ariel Imagery:
  
  While the baton is carried by Google Earth and Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth(combines MapPoint and Local Live Search) and Yahoo maps are making the competition tougher.OpenLayers ( an Open Source venture) and Ask.Com are also catching the race. Most of these include local search with GPS functionality which helps giving driving directions and lots more. There are also freely availabe APIs for these maps, so that they can be embedded in your site at your disposal and convenience.
  
  
• Virtual Computers/Platforms
  
  The virtual computers or platform helps to test all varieties of application to check for compatiblity different hardwares and platforms. Gone are the days when one used to acquire a lot of hardwares to test a single software.VMWare provides players for virtualization over windows and linux systems. Microsoft's Virtual Server provides a virtualization platform that runs most major x86 operating systems in a guest environment, and is supported by Microsoft as a host for Windows Server operating systems and Windows Server System applications. Microsofts Virtual PC also provides a similar though slightly depreceted facillty.PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software package that permits a heterogeneous collection of Unix and/or Windows computers hooked together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers.
  
  
• Virtual Keyboard
  
  Tired of typing SMS or emails on your Cell or Handheld? The solution is in the virtual world where you can project a virtual qwerty keyboard from your handheld onto any flat surface and could experience a real keyboard typing. Shown here is an example of I-Techs's Virtual Kbd which both infrared and laser technology to generate an invisible field and project a full-size virtual QWERTY keyboard on any surface.


• Chat Bots
  
  Chat bots are chat robots, who are such programmed through artificial intelligence that they give very human like answers in a chat session and they learn more and more as they go through the length of chat with wide variety of people. Here is a good list of these online artificial nerds.
  
  

Web Pages That Suck

Once in a while we come across a site that does nothing but sucks, the site's layout,patterns, user interactivity everything is enough to drive you nuts. Well, now before anyone sees your site and start advertising it as the Uggliest Site, in order to take a precautionary measure check www.webpagesthatsuck.com. This site has some good articles on the topic and they even list real world examples of real sucking sites (Hope they have not already listed your site !!!).

3D Engine Animation

Being a Mechanical Engineer I always had a passion for the knowledge of inner workings and structure of an automoible engine. But even if an engine lies totally uncovered before you its not easy to get into the details of its working, and i faced the same problem back in my college days. Our lab was full with diassembled engines but we really have to work hard on our imagination to see all the parts working together in synergy.

Now here is this video that shows everything in 3D view much like you have imagined in your mind (or is it). I guess it explains nicely every detail of a typical car engine.

Its Diwali Time

So here comes another diwali, the festival which brings with itself ulimited joy, energy, hope and of course lots of sweets and crackers. Diwali is a very special festival of Indians. The following links have a great details in them of the significance of diwali.

• Greet2k.com
  - Send flash e-cards.
  Funmunch - Diwali
  - Offers free resource for diwali including ecards, recipes, fireworks, origin and lots more.
• eGreetingz - Diwali
  - Send free e-cards.
• Bawarchi.com
  - Indian recipes for Diwali.
  Sscnet.ula
  - Information on Diwali.
  Diwalimela.com
  - Send greetings and gifts, shop online.
  Theholidayspot.com
  - Information on Diwali, send e-cards.
  Rumela.com
  - History of Diwali.
  ReachGujarat.com
  - Site about Diwali, history, tradition, information.
  Matiyapatidar.com
  - Covers the origin and significance of the five day festival.
  Indiaexpress.com
  - Small collection of traditional recipes.

And heres a message for you on diwali(dont't cry at his mimicry, he is only wishing u happy diwali)

Final release of Internet Explorer 7

Yesterday microsoft release final and stable version of IE7 which is more secure and employs many cool features (such as tabs etc) which makes ones browsing experience more pleasant.
Grab your copy now http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx.
You can also download it from here. Remember you gotta have Windows XP with sp2 to install it.

Meanwhile its interesting to know these "20 things you don't know about death".

Orkut open to all

The orkut, google's online community portal (very popular in India,Brazil,Pakistan and Iran) finally opened its door to all. It means that now you do not need an invitation from others to open account with orkut. Orkut has added some extra features like instant reply of scraps , deleting multiple scraps etc. More details can be found at Dreamchaser's blog.

Meanwhile, final results are out for the "Most uggliest vegetable in Britain" contest and the winner is a parsnip grown by Mrs Hillary Nellist.

Get Free Online Certification

I know many people ( including myself) who want to do a lot of certifications but not willing to pay a penny (cuz sometimes they are not sure of clearing). The certifications on resume certainly gives it a professional and heavier look, its not bad for self-accessment either.

Well your/our problem is solved. The Brainbench offers free certification over a wide range of categories ( including computers, finance, management etc). To get the hard copy you have to pay a little, but they do provide an url of your result/transcript which you can easily share or even put up into the resume and it remains valid for 3 years.

MP3 Search using Google Search Techniques

There are a lot of techniques of searching google for specified filetypes (such as .mp3) and contents ( in url or title). This is another good place to search for different filetypes, here filetypes are arranged in alphabetical order and you can perform a good search.

The MP3 searching hack of google has been levereged by this site to get a good result on search by artist or album name.

A word of caution though, even though its so easy to locate them its not always legal to download and use them.

Google Suggest powers Firefox 2

The recent release of Firefox 2 web browser has included the Google Suggest ( which is built upon Ajax technology) feature into its toolbar. Not only this but now your Firefox can work as a calculator without you being pressing enter or equal to key. All we have to do is to key in the expression into the search toolbar. It looks like there is some implicit implementation feature of the calculator feature of Google Search.

Web Services - Solutions over web

The routines and daily lives of todays techno-homo-sapiens are shaped in a way like never before by employing the power of web services. A web service seeks to solve the computing problem of an individual over the web. Gone are the days when you need to code your own program to solve problems. As the solution delivered over web is XML based, it can be transefed by the standard HTTP protocol and all you need is a web browser to acces them. The W3C defines web service as "A Web service is a software system designed to support interoperable machine-to-machine interaction over a network. It has an interface described in a machine-processable format (specifically WSDL). Other systems interact with the Web service in a manner prescribed by its description using SOAP messages, typically conveyed using HTTP with an XML serialization in conjunction with other Web-related standards."

Here's a list of some useful free webservices:

http://www.lionwap.org/validationtest.html
Validates the email address first by checking if its syntactically correct ( better to use client side script to do this) and later checks whether an email server is found at this address. Check out the error message at the bottom which gives a good clue.

http://centralops.net/co/
http://www.ippages.com/
http://network-tools.com/ or http://nwtools.com/
http://visualroute.visualware.com/ (includes visual search)
www.tracert.com/cgi-bin/trace.pl
Solutions for ipaddress to domain name or location( lots more),email validation, root tracing, path tracing (great to see what path the data traverses from source to destination), getting your browser details etc. These are implemented through basic ping,traceroute,nslookup etc commands besides looking up the HTTP Header. On top of that you can get source code of all their services.

http://www.xe.com/ucc/
http://www.x-rates.com/calculator.html
Online Currency conversions, can also compare/plot graph for the history of currencies.

Services By Google

There are a hell lot of services being offered, most of them can be found here.
Some of the less known and used services I have listed here.


Translate

Translate text between some of the common languages or translate a whole webpage.



Currency Conversion
To use our built-in currency converter, simply enter the conversion you'd like done into the Google search box and hit "Enter" or click the Google Search button
Example:

    3.5 USD in GBP
    currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
    5 British pounds in South Korean money
    2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre

Definitions

To see a definition for a word or phrase, simply type the word "define," then a space, and then the word(s) you want defined. If Google has seen a definition for the word or phrase on the Web, it will retrieve that information and display it at the top of your search results.
Example:

    define World Wide Web

define Computer

File Types

Google has expanded the number of non-HTML file types searched to 12 file formats. In addition to PDF documents, Google now searches Microsoft Office, PostScript, Corel WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and others. The new file types will simply appear in Google search results whenever they are relevant to the user query. If you prefer to see a particular set of results with a specific file type (for example, PDF links), simply type filetype:[extension] (for example, filetype:pdf) within the search box along with your search term(s).


Q&A

Want to know the population of Japan? What currency is used in Algeria? The birthplace of Bono? Hit us with a fact-based question or query (like "population of Japan") by typing it into the Google search box. We'll search the web and display the answer at the top of your search results page. We also link to our source for this information so that you can learn even more.



Site Search

Searches a specified site. To search a site key in "site:sitetosearch.com query" into the search box.



Google code APIs

Google recently released APIs for its products and services which can be found at http://code.google.com.

Watching what is happening when a web service is called. Also provides some useful web-services.

http://www.mindreef.net


Here is an elegant list of web-services.