Google Buzz, Google Wave...Google + next?

Three apples have fallen too far from the same tree that have produced us such miraculously wonderful search results. Yeah, I am talking about Google.The death of "Google Wave" was just the beginning.Then it is the death of  "Google Buzz", which google has already announced and will soon vanish into the same cold oblivions to be greeted by "Google wave" and thinks like "Yahoo messenger". This shows us a trend. And the trend is that, people really have got demanding. You cannot feed them something which they are not comfortable using. Twitter on the other hand seems to hang on to its popularity also Google buzz also provided similar features.

Oh yeah if you are wondering what is the third apple that i mentioned above, well there are no prizes for guessing. Yes its Google+. Though the number of users on google+ are lot more...i dont see why anyone would do switch to google+. In fact, i find the circle a good concept, but the fact that + suddenly gets access to all my photo's irritates me. Infact, i am sure this is going to eat into Picassa's business too.

Yahoo for example tried to be inflexible and lost a lot of its audience. They gave us Yahoo beta which you could switch into but couldn't switch back. Something like the modern day chakravyuha. I hate the yahoo mail interface, its slow in loading, shows some really unnecessary ads and really is a bandwidth hog. We are in the age of broadband true, but still i dont like to give away precious bits and bytes for some garbage being sent on to my computer.

The biggest factor is that users want something new, something interesting and something that is not too complicated. There seems to be a perfect balance that needs to be struck by the developers in terms of ease of use, features and of-course privacy. You cannot force people to share data or make them learn new things.

For sometime when Facebook changed its interface i thought google had got the real chance to make hay when the sun shines. However, the fan following on FB is too big one to really get people off it.

Google i guess should concentrate on its core strengths, Email, Search, Maps etc and innovate there. Of course, Android is another story altogether. However, more importantly it should realize that competing and making products which are similar to what others have developed will just not work.

Dont try to defeat your competitor but rather try to win the game

:-)

KDE desktop on Ubuntu

After much pestering from my brother i installed the KDE desktop on Ubuntu. This can be easily downloaded using synaptic. Just search for Kubuntu desktop. The KDE desktop looks much better and has many features which are really eye candy. The one which i liked the most was the Desktop Cube. You can switch between different desktops by using Ctrl+F11, and what you get is an extremely cool animation where each desktop becomes the side of a cube and you can rotate the cube using the arrorw keys and choose the needed desktop by hitting enter key. This is not enabled by default, but can be enabled easily by using the "system settings" option. You might have to change some mouse settings ( I had to because my mouse single click was opening applications)

For now i like the KDE desktop environment. However, i know i will get bored of it sooner or later. But, it is good to have Vista like or better features free of cost. Worth a try i would say.  

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Powered by ScribeFire.

How Jaunty fooled me

One of the telebrands show has a caption which goes something like " Choose wisely, Live well". This Saturday what i did just shows that i should have paid more heed to the statement.

I saw that the new Ubuntu (Jaunty) is available. Immediately i hit www.ubuntu.com and downloaded the latest version. The download manager was able to download the CD in two sessions of 1 hour each ( Which i did in the free bandwidth timeslot using BSNL Connection :-)). I quickly mounted the ISO as a Cd using the mount command and then i tried to install using the gksu "sh /cdrom/cdromupdate" command.

While my eyes gleamed in anticipation......

Alas, nothing happened.

The Reason i later learnt the hard way is that for an upgrade, one needs to use the Alternate  install CD rather than the Desktop CD. The whole operation and 2 sessions worth of downloading had just gone down the drain. First it was anger that the website did not mention it explicitly and later it was self-realization that it was me who had chosen to ignore reading the instructions for an upgrade. There are different versions of a release some aimed at a upgrade and others for a fresh install.
You can find more information here

Finally, i decided ( or resorted!!) that i will not do this upgrade for sometime to come. I have a good system with Ubuntu running fine. I have all the needed apps. Who bothers about uprgrading :-). Please dont cry "Grapes are Sour!!".

Chinese PirateBay, What say?

How should we react to these two seemingly opposite things happening at almost the same point in time.

1. Court jails Pirate Bay founders
   

2. Google offers free music downloads in China

Now in the first article, John Kennedy chairman of IFPI states
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"There has been a perception that piracy is OK and that the music industry should just have to accept it. This verdict will change that,"
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And in the second article

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If you can't beat 'em, join 'em......[.....]

Most Chinese users get their music for free anyway, thanks to rampant online piracy. [....]
Google wants to increase traffic and catch up to its competitor Baidu
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So now does that mean PirateBay founders should have chosen China over Sweden for their servers? Or does it mean that if you belong to a nation with stronger muscle power then piracy is acceptable. You decide.


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Google talk in Firefox

 If you are a google talk fan, and also are not able to download the software and install it on your pc then this might interest you.

I did not like the google chat feature available in gmail because it somehow doesn't feel good like a real chat client. At the same time due to restrictions on the computer i had i was not allowed to install gtalk also. Here is something that I found out on the net to get the same effect as gtalk with firefox. Here are the steps to do this with your firefox installation.

1. go to this link using firefox and bookmark it. http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client
2. After bookmarking it , it will apprear under the Bookmarks menu in firefox.
3. Right click on the bookmarked link and choose properties.
4. Use the checkbox which says Load bookmark in sidebar.
5. Close the window. Again go to bookmarks and click on the bookmark.
6. You should be able to see the google talk like interface load in the side bar.....

One more reason to use firefox :-). This will work on Ubuntu as well.

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Vista Codec Pack

At times i do search for software stuff also on the web for my pc. In such a spree i found this codec pack which might be of interest for vista users.

I have so far stayed away from VIsta and have been happy with Gstreamer plugin's in Ubuntu.

Why should we Ubuntu

The say Love is blind.....And i am in love with Ubuntu....so maybe that is why this post.

So what are the reasons one should start using Ubuntu..

• It is free and for once i can do a hell lot of things using a completely legal system
• There is almost every software equivalent in Ubuntu for the software's present in Windows.
• If you do not mess-up with installations and do not posses extremely non-standard hardware then there is nothing to worry about. Ubuntu works like a breeze.
• If you do mess up anything there are a lot of ways by which you can restore back your system, You got a live CD and with an internet connection you can fix almost anything.
• It comes PRE-INSTALLED ( in windows terminology) with everything needed for web-browsing, chatting, listening to music, file unzipper, dvd-writing software, chat-client etc etc. Note that some of these are not available pre installed in windows ( ex. a office suite!!)
  

And finally if you do not want to give up windows applications, there is something called WINE. This can run your windows applications on Ubuntu as well.

Why not other disto's of tux? Ok i do not have a very technical answer to that. However, Ubuntu live cd was the first thing that really made me confident that i too can probably own an LINUX system. I know that even today LINUX is considered exclusively designed for geeks. I am sure the people will change their view if they have a look at UBUNTU.

Infact, a lot of organisations ( colleages, cyber-cafes) are moving over to open-souce OSes. I hope the trend continues....





 

Mozilla shared b/w Windows and Ubuntu

I like Ubuntu as i have already stated in my earlier posts. However, I am not a Linux geek and I am quite dependent on Windows for everything which is more difficult than 2+2.

However, a fast internet connection and loads of info available on the internet is making my life easier on my attempt to go the open-source way.

Recently, I wanted to import all my settings for Mozilla including plugins, bookmarks etc from Windows partition to Ubuntu. This is how a achieved it.

Step 1. Create a symbolic link from Ubuntu partition to the windows partition where the Mozilla settings exist.
In windows it exists in the following path by default c:/Documents and Settings/{USER_PROFILE}/Application Data/Mozilla where USER_PROFILE is your profile name.
In Ubuntu it exists in the following path /home/{USER_PROFILE}/.mozilla

To create a symlink use the following command
ln -s /media/WinHome/Documents and Settings/USER_PROFILE/Application Data/Mozilla" /home/deepak/.mozilla
Step 2. This happens typically because in Linux folder names are case sensitive. i.e home is not same as Home. So you will have to rename the folders in the .mozilla link to all lower case. i.e extensions and firefox. That's it, Just close the firefox browser and reopen it. You should be able to see all your plugins enabled and the bookmarks loaded properly. Ubuntu Rocks :-)

Forwarding Forwards!!

4.5 Gigs in 3 and half years, that is the size of my official mail box which i backed up recently. From what i can remember right about 30% of this mail is just forwards about some person trying to either tell me that I will win lottery if i forwarded it to 10 other victims like me or some other story of that sort. About 5% of this size is contributed by the disclaimer which is attached to each email warning about misuse of the email and about how we should destroy it if one is not the intended recipient.

What this shows is that about 60% of the traffic that is generated in corporate networks is really what is needed and the rest is something that is caused due to forwards, spam and other insignificant communication. However, I guess reading forwards and forwarding them again is what makes emailing fun!!

So as long as our companies are happy to provide us with bandwidth, I am sure we software Engineers will definitely get their share of fun by forwarding forwards!!.

Spear and Nib

Two more things that i did to idle out my time. Inkscape rocks for me so far
                                                         

         

Ancient tried and tested Weapon!!
[ Could not get the overlap of the spears perfect, still Inkscape illiterate!!]



The Nib is mighter than the spear....-Deepak ;-)

Inkscape and me

After getting throughly inspired by Mahesh bhat's art....and also because i was amazed by what he could churn out using free tools, i too tried my luck with inkscape. and  this is the result. I dont know if it worth a dime... to others...but i like my first inkscape creation..

 I will not say that i could understand everything with inkscape, but i could grasp a couple of things here and there, like drawing lines and terms like fill, stroke gradiant....and how you can make rounded rectangles etc etc. But then there is a very long way to go. I am still stuggling to merge diffent strokes ( ex. each of the eye hair patterns is drawn separately)....Let me see how long this interests me :-).

ScribeFire - A useful Firefox plugin

The two most versatile tools or let me call it "Software Tool suites" I have come across so far in my  IT career are eclipse and Firefox. The former is a extremely extensible IDE for a multitude of languages and also has features to extend its functionality immensely. The latter is an extremly cool browser which probably will soon become the most widely used browser, especially after the recent security alert sounded by Microsoft.

Though blogging is still very new to me, i tried to explore what are the tools available to ease this experience. And guess what, I found atlest half a dozen tools that are meant to enhance your experience on the internet. I smiled at myself and thought, hey how about if my browser could support this ? I would have a single window to do everything. I tried to search the firefox plugins which could help me with my blogging. ScribeFire is one of the plugins i found and right now i am typing this in the scribefire window.

ScribeFire has a bunch of features likes storing your blogs as drafts so that you can upload them later, read previous blogs, create new categories for your blog and do a lot of formatting etc. F8 is the default hot key for this plugin. You can choose the options page and set your preferences. The setup is one time so you need not bother about keying in your login Id and Password everytime. However, you might not want to do this incase your pc is being used by multiple users, though the settings are profile dependent i believe. Providing links and attaching pictures as painful as a mouse click.

Hence, for those like me who love to have everything packaged into one tool and also are trying the waters of blogging, Scribefire is a very good option.

µTorrent - using it with Kerio

If you are using torrents to download stuff (legal or illegal ;-)), you would be aware that it works based on the rule that
"The more you share, the more you get to download".
There are lot of forums where people have asked the million doller question; "How do i increase my download speed?". More often than not the answer is that "you should share more". If  you are someone like me who connects to the internet world through a router you would have to do something known as port-forwarding. If you are someone who spends a lot of time on Internet then i expect you to have a firewall.

I use Kerio Firewall in the free mode and µTorrent Client to download stuff via torrents. By default, Kerio will not allow in coming connections to your µTorrent client; Even if you have the port forwarded... You have to keep an exception in Kerio firewall to be able to accept connections from other peers. Which means unless you allow Kerio to allow to peers to connect to you, µTorrent shall not give you a very good download rate.

Now if you are wondering how you can do this? It is quite simple. Here is small guide

1. Right click on the Kerio icon in the lower right hand side.
2. Go to the configuration screen and choose the Network Security subscreen.
3. Click on the Packet Filter button
   
4. In the new screen that shows up click on Add
5. In the screen that shows up fill in details as shown below. In the section called Local the number 39313 is the port that µTorrent is using
   

  Once all this is done you can test if th port is really getting forwarded properly by http://www.utorrent.com/testport.php?port=PORTNUMER



You should be done!! Happy downloading!!