Now you can read past issues of Playboy (55 selected issues spanning from 1955 to 2007) magazine all for free. But you need to download and install Silverlight (a free Microsoft product aming to give real blow to Adobe Flash) to view them.
Now that war is initiated, won’t Flash offer us free issues of Hustler?
Who knows. Only time will tell.
As IE8 beta is all set to come out any time soon in August 2008, it is interesting to know how it is being build – or the programmers plan to build IE8. An outline can be guessed from CHAT transcript with expert team of IE8 programmers.
You can read informative as well as interesting full transcript HERE.
Ladies and Gentlemen, here is the world’s most stickered (laptop having pasted with highest number of stickers!) laptop:
Can you guess the proud owner of this antique – eh Unique piece?
And, can you count the stickers? At least you can give it a try!
Sorry, no hint!
Just after creating Guinness word record for most download program in a day, it had been found that FireFox 3 has a critical code execution vulnerability that puts millions of Firefox3.0 users at risk of PC takeover attacks. That may be patched soon, but there were too many problems for users that had shifted from FireFox 2 to 3.
There were reports that FireFox 3 is unable to handle Hotmail correctly. Many Addons and FireFox plugins that are meant to version 2 are not working as well (see a workaround here). I too am getting trouble running things. For example, TinyMCE is not working properly in FireFox3.
Microsoft has a big announcement today, one that should show the world they’re capable of running a search business even without Yahoo: their Live Search CashBack program will enable you to use special savings “coupons” after you buy stuff you’ve found using Live Search. (Read full story here)
Google is #1 web company delivering many superb web apps – most of them free for most users. It doesn’t mean Google had not delivered Flops.
PC word had complied list of top 10 Google flop –
1 Google X
2 Google Catalogue
3 Google Video Player
4 Google Web Accelerator
5 Google Answer
6 Google Coupons
7 Google Video Search
8 Google Voice Search
9 Google Viewer
10 Google Checkout
Read more here
I had tried Google Web Accelerator, and it simply didn’t worked for me. In my Google Flop list, I want to add Google Desktop Search. It simply had not worked for me the way I had wanted. It keeps throwing me duplicate history search results, and indexing and storing gigs of data in my HDD partitions. Carry Beagle is better, so as Windows Desktop search.
Here is the list of top blogs of 2007. Top 125 elite blogs precisely. Elitechoice.org had published the list of top 125 blogs of the year 2007. Many of them are my favorite too, and am reading for quite some time regularly – such as Gizmodo, Mashable etc.
I was a bit surprised though. I could not find Digital Inspiration in the list. It may have appeared in Technology Section. What do you say?
See the complete list here
There is a video out there in Youtube claiming to charge an iPod through an Onion. The video had been viewed 3,868,695 times and counting, and it had attracted 22375 comments so far! See the video yourself:
Not a great Idea?
Yeh, it seems. Some people in India are actually using COW DUNG not only to charge and power up their mobile devices, but to illuminate their surroundings during night hours! You can read about this in BBC Hindi article here.
Powering UP with Cow Dung.
In their posts, Amit, followed by Alok reenergized my recent wound. Actually, they have talked about HP’s technical competence – how HP had blown down its own, running data center just to show that their mission critical applications did not affected a bit. But this news made me sick. Real sick because HP had shown total technical Incompetence on me.
OK, let me tell you in detail.
I had needed a Laptop once again (My old Compaq 33 Mhz, Pentium 386, 250 MB HDD, 8 MB RAM, Win95 had died two years ago giving uninterrupted, faithful service to about eight years) so I collected information, specifications, referred laptop shoot outs, starred endlessly at comparison charts, build my own laptop about a dozen times at Dell’s site and then finally settled for Compaq Presario V3225AU. This machine looks advanced enough and less taxing to my pocket. Digit – July07 had already declared this machine as best buy in its category.
Let us see some of the main specifications of Compaq Presario V3225AU: –
Processor – AMD Turion64 MK-36 2.0Ghz
OS – Windows Vista Home Basic
Chipset, Memory --- Blah blah…., but they were the best in their category.
Telling you only two main specification has a reason – I just want to tell you where HP wounded me and had shown me its utter technical incompetence.
As you had seen above, this laptop contains an advanced 64 bit AMD Turion mobile processor. To get most out of it, you MUST install 64 bit OS and applications on this laptop. But I got first jolt after purchasing it – it was supplied with 32 bit Windows Vista Home Basic! I had never imagined this kind of technical backwardness from HP!
The outer cover shows you the picture of a castle, but inside it is only hut!
I got more jolts later. The laptop contains no genuine installation media – instead, instruction manual told me that user must first create his own backup of installation and OS through Recovery Manager Program. I tried thrice but failed.
Further, my life goes all hell again – Compaq online registration dialogue box comes pop out every ten minute or so even after registering successfully at least five times. I finally got rid it by deleting its executable file that needs your time and patient to hunt down it.
So, don’t you think - HP had blown me off to show its Technical Incompetence? I am feeling cheated. Really cheated. What do you say?
Want to try out Joost - the ultimate TV experience on your PC?
I have all the invitation with me! So, if you want one, just mail me or leave your email address as comment.
Here is the mail I received from Joost which I want to share with you:
Tag joost,invite,television,joost tvSubject: Now you can invite all your friends to Joost
Hello Ravishankar,
We hope you're enjoying your Joost experience.
We'd like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the new Joost beta - Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost. To access your invites, log onto Joost, go to My Joost and fill in your friends' details in the Invite Friends widget box.
If you're running out of friends, you can make new ones by letting people know you've got invites. To help with this, we've made a few goodies especially for you, which you can find at http://www.joost.com/share/goodies.html.
Last but not least, we invite you to enjoy the variety of new shows we're introducing each week. This week we bring you a host of new channels from Universal Music, great science fiction like Earth Final Conflict, and Creature Comforts from Aardman Animations.
We've also got swimsuit models and snowboarders, anime and animals, and much more. But that's just the beginning. Each week we'll launch new channels - making sure you can watch what you want, when you want. So stay tuned...
If you've got any questions, feel free to check out our forum http://www.joost.com/forums, and don't forget to send us feedback on what you like and things we could improve.
Enjoy, and see you on Joost!
The Joost Team
Obviously, I now have all the Joost invitations with me. You can mail me or leave your e-mail address as comment if you want one.
There were 5 funny videos from CNET TV which tells you about worst 5 products in 5 different categories.
And, They are:
Top 5 Apple flops:
5 - Apple 3
4- Newton
3- John Scully
2- G4 Cube
1 - Puck Mouse
Top 5 crapware apps
5- Store brand utilities
4- Trial ware Quicken
3- Toolbars on Browsers
2- ISPs
1- Antivirus
Top 5 worst download of 2007
5- Healing Stress
4- Driving
3- Soda Tracker
2- Harold search network YouTube browser
1- USA green card lottery simulator
Top 5 Most embarrassing Gadgets
5- Third Generation iPod
4- PDA
3- Spot Watch
2- Original Nokia N-Gage
1- Over Size cell phone head set
Top 5 worst product of the decade
5- Furby
4- Pocket Mail
3- DigiScent iSmell
2- CueCat
1- Microsoft BoB
And, what are the top 5 product in the respective category?
For that, and the reason why these were rated as best or worst product, watch the respective video by clicking these links:
CNET TV: Top 5 bottom 5s
But, at least this I can tell you - according to CNET TV, the best top 5 product in a decade are-
1 iPod
2 TiVo
3 Google
4 Napster
5 Firefox.
What do you say? Do you agree? Or, do you maintain a different list?
Tag desitoons,desitoonz,humour,desicartoons
Ever since Sun Solaris had gone open source, I had desperately wanted to try a hand on it. I tried to install Solaris Express Developer Edition in my multiboot-multi-partitioned machine but nothing worked. Recently I learned that OpenSolaris new live CD version had been released. I simply could not stop myself to download the ISO image of OpenSolaris Belenix 0.6 live cd.
At first, I tried to run it in MS Virtual Machine environment. My machine's hardware spec is quite new and good - 3.2P-4 with HT, 1GB RAM. The OpenSolaris Lice CD refuses to boot in to my Virtual Machine and it keeps rebooting automatically after initial splash screen and a few dialogues. I tried to change various settings of both virtual machine as well as OpenSolaris Belenix 0.6, but it simply failed to boot, and that too, without giving any reason.
Then I tried to boot My PC through OpenSolaris live Belenix 0.6 CD. In initial dialogues I had chosen KDE as my desktop. Here again, the OpenSolaris live Belenix 0.6 failed to boot in to graphics mode. I tried different types of X configuration in its initial X-11 configuration dialogues but it failed every time. Even, selecting SVGA failed - and strangely enough, its initial VGA splash screen worked well. I had in my machine - hugely popular, basic, medium end Graphics card - Intel i-845.
This reminds me of my initial days with Linux - about 8-10 years ago - when we were forced to configure each and every aspect of Linux configuration to simply work out things. Today, most Linux distribution do not require any advanced tweaking during their initial installation - most things work out-of-the-box and distributions like Xandros have simple, 4 click install options.
It looks like OpenSolaris needs to travel a real long way, and journey has just begun.
Tag opensolaris,belenix,sun solaris,solaris
Suddenly everybody is talking about cheap PCs. The OLPC created the debate and now Intel's Classmate had brought the cheap PCs come full circle.
Tag worlds cheapest pc,olpc,classmate,pc price
If you are perusing any personal software project that comes within the range of FLOSS (read on further for clarification) then here is good chance for recognition as well as a small financial support.
I am producing a mail received from Mr. Gora Mohanti, Sarai-CSDS in the subject:
Hello all,
Below is an invitation for proposals for the RGF-Sarai CSDS programme for short-term FLOSS fellowships. Please feel to circulate this far and wide.
The deadline for submission of proposals is the 25th of June. Please feel free to address any queries with regards to this to floss@sarai.net.
Regards, Gora
--------------------------------------------------------------
Call for proposals:
RGF-Sarai, CSDS, short-term FLOSS fellowships
1 Introduction
The Sarai programme of the Center for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi (http://www.sarai.net) is pleased to announce fellowships for projects related to Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) activities. This year, we have partnered with the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation (RGF) who are providing support for work in the specific area of computing, and localisation in five Indian languages, namely, Assamese, Hindi, Kashmiri, Oriya, and Urdu.
We also invite proposals from projects in other FLOSS areas, especially ones that are relevant to educational, social, and community needs. Any project that meets the criteria given below is eligible for the fellowships, but we are particularly interested in:
o Indian language computing, including work on fonts, rendering, locales, input methods, spell-checking, etc., as well as in advanced technologies like OCR, handwriting recognition, and speech-to-text.
o Localisation into Indian languages of user interfaces, and translation of help documents for FLOSS applications. o In the interest of sustained development, we would like to see the enhancement of, and extensions for projects funded as part of past Sarai FLOSS fellowships.
In particular, we draw attention to NewsRack (http://newsrack.in), Hindawi (http://www.indicybers.com), and ApnaOpus (http://apnaopus.var.cc).
o Documentation for users of FLOSS tools, particularly in the area of Indian language computing. The production of video tutorials would be welcome.
o Development of graphics, multimedia, and publishing tools. This would include applications for audio/video editing, animation, and desktop publishing. Enhancement of existing FLOSS tools is especially encouraged.
o Putting together, distributing, and supporting a complete Indian language distribution, using FLOSS operating systems, and tools.
o Collaboration software, and groupware solutions. o Writing Linux device drivers, and front-ends for common hardware, such as wireless cards, graphics cards, scanners, and printers. The other significant difference from past practice is that we will be asking for more of a collaborative approach from the fellows, both among one another, and with people at Sarai. The collaboration need not be in the actual development, but can consist of an ongoing conversation about one's work, its direction, and current status. While this has been an implicit expectation in the past, this time we are making the requirement explicit.
The exact details of these will be worked out with the selected fellows, but will include things like discussions over IRC, email, and postings on the Sarai Project Resource Centre (PRC) mailing list. Fellows will also be asked to prepare a timeline for the projects, with intermediate milestones, and will be expected to adhere to them.
2 Applying for the fellowships
We invite students, developers, researchers, and practitioners interested in the FLOSS arena to apply for the fellowships. While there is no prescribed format for the applications, we expect them to be in sufficient detail for a reviewer to sensibly evaluate them. Attention to details, such as a plan of work that addresses what is possible to accomplish within the limited project period, a projection of how the work might be continued after that, and a discussion of the possible impact of the project, is strongly recommended.
In particular, we will look favorably on projects aimed at eventual deployment, rather than development per se. Please mail your application, along with a resume, to floss@sarai.net , with the subject line of "RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowships". As this information is intended to be public, also subscribe to the PRC mailing list at https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc, and post a copy there, failing which your final proposal will be forwarded there by one of us. Enquiries are invited at floss@sarai.net , and on the PRC list, including questions on how to frame proposals. The last date of submission is midnight IST on Sun., June 25th, 2007.
The projects will run for a total of about six months, with a final workshop to be held at Sarai, CSDS, Delhi, where the fellows will be expected to present a summary of their work. Besides this, as part of our engagement with the RGF, we will be holding workshops in regional locations, and the FLOSS fellows will be asked to be present at events local to them. The total amount of the fellowship will be Rs. 70, 000.
3 Conditions
Applicants should have a valid bank account in any bank operating in India. These are support grants, and the fellows are free to pursue their primary occupations in parallel, as long as they keep working on proposed projects. The fellows must be willing to make a release of their final work under any open-source license approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI). Please see under http://www.opensource.org/licenses for a complete list. Proposals from teams, partnerships, collectives, and faculty on the behalf of a group of students are welcome, so long as the grant amount is administered by a single individual, and the funds are deposited in a single bank account in the name of an individual. ----------------------------------------------------------------------
Knowledge is power... share it equitably! _______________________________________________
prc mailing list
https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc
Tag Sarai CSDS,FLOSS,free libre open source software,sarai fellowshipDo you have any idea - how many dollars a blogger can earn? It is virtually limitless. Well, tell me the other way - How many dollars an ace blogger is earning per day?
$1000 ?
$5000?
Or $10000?
If you believe the googledoc spreadsheet prepared by Paula, Markus Frind's daily income is about $10000 per day from his blogs only.
Paula's other estimation about ProBlogger Darren Rowse's income of between $120K $1.2 Million per month is true.
Well, those are lots of money indeed!
India's top blogger Amit Agrwal is not in the list - probably due to ignorance of Paula.
btw, how many $$$ are you earning through your blogs? Can you share your earnings with me?
Tag paula's list of blogger salaries,blog income,blog earning,adsense income
In its Official blog, Google announced that Now you can Blog in Hindi.
In fact we, the bunch of about 500 odd Hindi Blogger were blogging in Hindi since last 4 years! And majority of us are in Google's Blogger platform - for which Google has made announcement.
I myself had started Hindi Blogging since June 2004 (the first one by Alok named 9-2-11) and since then I had posted about 300 posts!
What I think is that Google Blogger had added Hindi transliteration tool in its bloger writing tool, and wants to announce it the other way. But this announcement is entirely misleading.
May I hope a clarification in this regard from Blogger - err Google?
Tag hindi,blog,transliteration,blogger
