Reverberations

Moving to Wordpress

2006-02-06T05:45:00.000-08:00

Its time to move to Wordpress. Not that I've many issues with blogger, even though blogger is way behind times - no trackbacks etc.(I noticed it has just started automatic pingbacks with link text).

This blog has a decent Google page rank of 5, and low but reasonable traffic (Alexa rank of about 840000) as of now. Building everything again would be fun. I've already moved all my old posts to wordpress blog.

The new Reverberations blog is at http://brajesh.wordpress.com and the feedburner feed is http://feeds.feedburner.com/Reverberations.

Fixing RSS - II

2006-02-03T05:38:00.000-08:00

Scott Karp is tackling two different extremes. On one hand there is ignorance about ubiquitous RSS feeds among most of Internet users, and then there is issue of information overflow with too many feeds for some. Fixing one of them may even worsen the other pain.

Dave Winer talks about 'River of News' mode of feed aggregation. Which is a great idea to fix the feed abundance problem, but has its drawbacks. 'River of News' model seems to be too news-centric, which is okay if you are aggregating news and blogs. Syndication is not just about news.What about syndicating a wiki, or a novel, or may be research data or online learning material, which you won't wish to miss in the 'conveyor-belt sushi'. The no-brainer is to separate the two - a river and a pond.

I'm yet to use Dave's aggregator, but the idea is compelling. Google Desktop's web clips come close to the idea - though Dave insists on a web interface, a desktop interface would be nice. But it's what I think it is, I'd still need a pond-type aggregator.

Is Google going p2p?

2006-01-31T23:58:00.000-08:00

Sharelive used to be a file sharing site. Now it resolves to Google's page. Is there anything to read like Google's p2p plans or it's just a site rip off.

Censorship : Google Censured

2006-01-29T00:53:00.000-08:00

'Do no evil' or 'Do less evil than others'. Pre - China Entry Google on Censorship-

“Google does not censor results for any search term. The order and content of our results are completely automated; we do not manipulate our search results by hand. We believe strongly in allowing the democracy of the web to determine the inclusion and ranking of sites in our search results. To learn more about Google’s search technology, please visit ...”

And now,

“It is Google’s policy not to censor search results. However, in response to local laws, regulations, or policies, we may do so. When we remove search results for these reasons, we display a notice on our search results pages. Please note: For some older removals (before March 2005), we may not show a notice at this time.”

*Google logo by Paul Bubel.

Fixing 'Really Simple Syndication'(RSS) for good

2006-01-21T09:57:00.000-08:00

No one knows what “syndication” means, unless you’re talking about I Love Lucy reruns. Syndication is a publisher-centric, geek-centric term. For most people, it’s Really Simple Huh? Most people don’t even know that syndicate can be used as a verb!

And then there are issues at the other extreme too - the problem of abundance of RSS feeds.

Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 suggests this three step solution

Call it “subscribing”

Encourage everyone to get a reader

Use the iTunes model — Search, browse, recommend, remix

One click subscription

only 4%

So what will it take to 'feed' them RSS. Either,

Wait for Microsoft to fix this - for those who think that the little blue 'e' icon is THE Internet, or,

Make it easier than browsing itself, as easy as e-mail. (RSS integration in Outlook is soooo (a))

We'll see!

Hyperwords : Cool Firefox extension

2006-01-13T03:16:00.000-08:00

With Hyperwords, all text on the web is interactive (not just the links): select your text and search, lookup, email, translate and so on.

I like it already. One of the reason being, it also includes Clusty as one of the search engines along with Google, Yahoo and Alexa(duh). It has the usual Web 2.0 blabby features- tagging, blogging and all that. And it has some 'more useful' features as well. It is going to be a truly addictive firefox extension. A 'thumbs up' from me.

Just one issue: It doesn't work with textbox, I would love it to.

.NET : Smooth Scrolling Panel

2006-01-10T01:26:00.000-08:00

Windows raises ThumbTrack ScrollEvent while dragging Scrollbar. And if your System Visual Effects are optimized for performance, window contents are updated only when scollbar stops ( unlike browser)- that looks ugly and annoying.

To solve this I just substituted all SB_THUMBTRACK messeges with SB_THUMBPOSITION. Not very pretty, but works. The following code is in C#.

public class ScrollPanel : System.Windows.Forms.Panel
{
   private const int WM_HSCROLL = 0x114;
   private const int WM_VSCROLL = 0x115;

   protected override void WndProc (ref Message m)
   {
      if ((m.Msg == WM_HSCROLL || m.Msg == WM_VSCROLL) 
          && (((int)m.WParam & 0xFFFF) == 5))
      {
          // Change SB_THUMBTRACK to SB_THUMBPOSITION
         m.WParam = (IntPtr)(((int)m.WParam & ~0xFFFF) 
                    | 4);
      }
      base.WndProc (ref m);
   }
}

Google Desktop and P2P

2005-12-28T23:28:00.000-08:00

Now this was an interesting opinion piece - Google Desktop Is P2P in Sheep's Clothing at Publish

The article says

Everybody realized that Google wasn't building the Memex, it was building an advertising empire. Blogger was the first big step. Blogger meant freshly minted Web pages at the rate of millions per year. And on those pages, freshly minted contextual advertising.

Then came Google Base.

But the problem with Google Base is that it relies on people to push data to it. The upload mechanism right now is a bit inefficient.

So now we have Google Desktop on USB drives and which can be used to automatically upload content to Google Base.

And as Google's desktop applications land on more and more hard drives, I wouldn't be surprised if we saw Google get into the P2P space. Imagine searching, not only the Web, but also the information that other people make public on their hard drives. Next year, don't be surprised if there's a little check box during Google Desktop's installation which says "Share my files."

Farfetched, but interesting. But the idea that the content has to be uploaded on 'the base' makes it essentially non P2P and just a brute force workaround with limited scope - storage doesn't come free, even for Google.

RSS Integration in Outlook 12

2005-12-25T23:25:00.000-08:00

Michael Arrington at TechCrunch has posted that next Outlook release will have RSS integrated as announced by Outlook program manager Michael Affronti. Surely, a step towards widening the user base of RSS.

It's easy to make people try out new technologies on a browser with hype and curiosity, but majority of such audience is ephemeral.

Bring it to the desktop - if it's truly valuable, it'll change people's life.

History of Search Engines

2005-12-19T03:45:00.000-08:00

I just stumbled upon 'A brief history of Search Engines'. I liked the part how search engines were named like Archie, Veronica, and Jughead, that came up in the pre-bot era.

Searching has changed over the years, and it is getting increasingly difficult to organize the data if it continues to grow as it is. Tagging is one way. But then, wouldn't it be expecting too much from content creators? And how scalable is that!

On the other hand, there is this comment in Tim-Berners Lee's blog, talking about how it should be easy to create and publish content, not just through blogs and wikis, but even otherwise. How would we ensure that all of it is accessible?

Blogs are not the right media. See how it devalues the archived content. The content becomes practically inaccessible once archived. Problems of wikis are evident from so many caveats you see in Wikipediia these days.

G2G is dead

2005-12-14T09:28:00.000-08:00

As predicted, Google had let G2G know that their website is against Google's policy. And so, the G2G is dead now.

AJAX, nice but just too much error prone

2005-12-06T23:21:00.000-08:00

AJAX is just too much error prone. I have had so many Gmail pages locking up within last few days. Moreover, sometimes page doesn't refresh itself when tagging a message or marking unread/read.

Perhaps, the requirements are so complex that even mighty Google cannot churn out bug free interface.

Every time I see an AJAX implementation bug, I recall my earlier post on AJAX viability.

G2G : file-sharing the email way

2005-11-30T08:19:00.000-08:00

Gmail provides more than 2GB space, and pseudo hard drive utilities like GMail Drive and Roam Drive have already been developed in the past. Someone has come up with a way to use Gmail account to share files. Its called G2G Exchange.

The site was down yesterday due to bandwidth issues. Its up again as of now with more than 900 users registered and a new version(0.7). The G2G FAQ page is also up.

Google will have something to say about this because of the potential for piracy. But its an interesting idea nevertheless.

Firefox 1.5

2005-11-30T05:17:00.000-08:00

I've just installed Firefox 1.5. I managed to update most of the extensions from my previous setup (1.0.7). One 'Alert Link Type' and 'Wiki-Quick-Find' are still missing. Tab rearrangement is inbuilt now, something good to have. I got this 'Colorful Tabs' extension and it looks great.

There is a Firefox 1.5 review at NewsForge that mentions faster browsing with new Firefox. I'm yet to be convinced.

Earlier, Firefox window sometimes used to just disappear and re-appear in taskbar, I hope it's fixed now, as well as some memory usage issues on WinXP.

P2P File-Sharing and Music Sales

2005-11-26T18:11:00.000-08:00

How does P2P file-sharing affect music sales? I found this interesting paper on relationship of economics of P2P file-sharing by David Blackburn,a Harvard PhD Student, mentioned at "The Long Tail" (and posted it on Slashdot faithfully). I also found this compilation of studies on P2P.

The findings are not surprising as the paper essentially states the obvious. The hits at the top of the charts lose sales, but the niche artists further down the popularity curve actually benefit from file-trading.

"Artists who are unknown, and thus most helped by file sharing, are those artists who sell relatively few albums, whereas artists who are harmed by file sharing and thus gain from its removal, the popular ones, are the artists whose sales are relatively high."

But then some of the conclusions are shocking, e.g.

"File sharing is reducing the probability that any act is able to sell millions of records, and if the success of the mega-star artists is what drives the investment in new acts, it might reduce the incentive to invest in new talent. This is, at its heart, an empirical question which is left to future work."

Is finding new talent outcome of investments by big labels. Hardly!

With so much 'noise to signal' ratio in music industry, big names give headstarts for sure, but they hardly have incentives to find new talents in an economy of abundance. Big companies were relevant at the time when technology wasn't cheap and cost of producing and marketing music prohibitive- not anymore the case.

P2P notwithstanding, independent music is going to proliferate on its merit. Music needn't big names to sound good.

Now a Media Player with built-in P2P

2005-11-25T13:56:00.000-08:00

From an Engadget post, a Dutch company LamaBox is launching a media player with built-in peer-2-peer functionality. It plugs directly into TV, provides search and download support for all the major P2P services like Bittorrent and Kazaa, has a DVD burner and plays any image/audio/video format.

Will it be bait for more litigations? Probably not. Engadet writes - "The Dutch supreme court ruled long ago in favor of the then Netherlands-based Kazaa and only classifies the upload of copyrighted material as illegal. As the LamaBox FAQ responds to the question of the legality of downloading films and music, “downloading from the Internet is always legal.”

So no “affirmative steps to foster infringement.” as in US ruling aginst Grokster. Bait for debate it'll be.

Simple Sharing Extensions: Turning RSS bidirectional

2005-11-21T22:23:00.000-08:00

Ray Ozzie, the Microsoft CTO, has proposed Simple Sharing Extensions(SSE)- a new specification that extends RSS from unidirectional to bidirectional information flows.

From the FAQ page on SSE at MSDN

SSE defines the minimum extensions necessary to enable loosely cooperating applications to use RSS as the basis for item sharing--that is, the bidirectional, asynchronous replication of new and changed items among two or more cross-subscribed feeds.

Essentially, an RSS (and OPML) extension to allow two-way communications over RSS*.

The draft specs for SSE are released under a Creative Commons license – Attribution-ShareAlike. By the way, Creative Commons has made a note of SSE and its CC-license release, saying something to the effect of it's too good to be true.

For me, SSE is a potential blockbuster. Too early to comment though.

*Is that Really Simple Sharing in OzzieSpeak or Really Simple Syndication?

Two on Two

2005-11-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

I got two stories posted on slashdot in last two days. And all that while I was digging deep through Code Obfuscation. I feel great now.

The first story on Apple iTunes security flaw getting discovered and the other one on P2P after seven years from the release of Napster.

There were a few earlier. Update on Standards and CSS in IE7, the one about P2P getting declared a crime by EU, P2P trends and one related to Wikipedia editorial control found a place in slashback.

On-demand movie downloads available via P2P Distribution

2005-11-18T08:27:00.000-08:00

I believe that peer-to-peer is the future of content distribution over Web. In a progressive step, NBC Universal has agreed to make few movies available for on-demand downloading via peer-to-peer distribution early next year. The P2P technology partner is Wurld Media.

The business model built around P2P might be in a nascent stage as of now. But, with the proliferating bandwidths and aging traditional business models, it is poised to evolve.

From a news item at Reuters, the proposed revenue model goes like this-

Peer Impact users will be able to view the films for a 24-hour period once they hit the "play" button on their computers. The file will remain on a user's computer for 30 days in an effort to hasten the download speeds of other Peer Impact users who purchase the same titles, because P2P gains speed and efficiency with each additional copy of content on the network.

Consumers log on to the secure network, where they can preview clips of all available content. Payment is due upon checkout...

All your Base are belong to Google

2005-11-16T09:47:00.000-08:00

Anything by Google is either criticized or praised, but never ignored. Nevertheless Google Base had to be the big thing, being speculated for some time now.

First experiences of Google Base Beta, just as inaccessible as many of Google's recent beta launches have been. Ah, I guess, I derive some sort of sadistic pleasure out of these errors :-). Its not me alone by the way.

Only once it allowed me to login, and I was able to setup a ftp account. I'm rather disappointed being unable to upload anything though.

Krypton Toolkit, a UI controls lib for .Net, released

2005-11-15T01:50:00.000-08:00

Krypton Toolkit Released

"Take your application to the next level with our free library of user interface controls. Designed to work with Visual Studio 2005 and the .NET Framework 2.0 they allow you to create professional looking applications in a fraction of the usual time.

Combine the new MenuStrip and ToolStrip controls with the Krypton Toolkit to create professional Microsoft Office style applications.

Download the free library right now."

Moreover, Component Factory are offering single developer licence of the latest DotNetMagic library for free for spreading the word.

VistaDB 2.1 database for .NET has been released

2005-11-14T06:55:00.000-08:00

VistaDB 2.1 database for .NET has been released

VistaDB is a small-footprint, embedded SQL database alternative to Jet/Access, MSDE and SQL Server Express 2005 that enables developers to build .NET 1.1 and .NET 2.0 applications.

VistaDB features SQL-92 support, 500KB embedded footprint, free 2-User VistaDB Server for remote TCP/IP data access, royalty free distribution for both embedded and server, Copy 'n Go! deployment, managed ADO.NET Provider, data management and data migration tools.

This 2.1 update includes over 60 improvements, including new support for .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.

I've used VistaDB in some of my applications earlier, and I must say it works like a charm with its incredibly small footprint, instant cold-connect and warm-connect. Here is a well-written review of VistaDB comparing it with MSDE and Jet/Access.

Estimating file download time

2005-11-14T00:59:00.000-08:00

Bram Cohen (the BitTorrent creator) has posed an issue with estimating download times for files. Bram writes

"It turns out that estimating time left to complete a download is non-trivial. What BitTorrent currently does (simplifying a little) is to average total download over total time for the first half of the file, then for the second half of the file to update estimated time left as each piece comes in by assuming that the amount of download averaged over for the current estimate is equal to the amount of download left. This approach gives a fairly reasonable estimated time left under almost all circumstances, but it has a significant artifact."

There are a few approaches suggested in the comments on the post. Whenver I have faced the same problem in the past, I applied this 'trivial' work around- estimate the time left with current download speed and remaining file length - a reasonable approach I guess. Lets see if Bram proposes something easy to follow.

Birds of a Flock

2005-10-24T08:04:00.000-07:00

Flock came, and was more jeered than cheered.

Here is a comment by someone that aptly summarize what I wanted to say about Flock-

"If Flock is the poster child for Web 2.0 then I have got to be honest, I am disappointed! It seems a lot of window dressing on top of a normal browser (FF).

FWIW, I think Flock is more like Web 1.1a SP1 than Web 2.0."

Indeed, integrating del.icio.us, Flickr, RSS feeds in a browser itself is a good beginning, not the end of the road. Social bookmarking is much wider concept that most people think it is. Bookmarking isn't limited to the web. The web is only part of the larger picture. There is whole lot of content lying on the millions of desktops. Then there is Google Print, trying to solve the problem of lack of online content by the same 'brute force way'(TM) it always does (Just add your C:\ Drive twice in the Google Desktop Search, it'll index it twice).

Google Reader

2005-10-07T03:15:00.000-07:00

Now this one was due from Google, and appeared without the usual Google Chaos. A RSS Feed Reader competing with Bloglines, My Yahoo!

Being web browser based it has all the usual drawbacks and advantages. AJAX goodness on one hand and "Arrgh! The page has been corrupted" on the other.

Not a completely polished product yet, e.g. very few loading messages to notify user of any processing as in Gmail ( Alex Bosworth's Ajax Mistakes #1)

OPML importing from current feed reader(Suace Reader) failed on the first time with adding just one feed, and the second time it took ages to import. I am still not sure it has imported everything.

As of now it doesn't seem usable enough for me. Even Google Sidebar is much more useful than Google Reader.

The AJAX Paradigm

2005-09-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

Paul Kedrosky has made an interesting comment over what we should expect from the new generation AJAX apps. He makes a comparison with Desktop.com in the bubble times.

Many people are making same mistakes again. Om Malik mentioned Writely as a thin client. Why would I need a word processer over web, the inherently unreliable media. And even if I do, why would I trust keeping my documents with someone [and somewhere] else.

To quote Paul:

"What I really want from Ajax apps is for them to do stuff that it’s too hard to do with binary apps. I want them to be sensibly integrated with online resources; I want them to support realtime collaboration. I want them to do different stuff from Word/Excel/Powerpoint, not just do the same thing with a different engine under the hood."

Can't agree more.

Visual Inconsistencies: WinXP

2005-09-20T10:30:00.000-07:00

Properties Window everywhere in WinXP adorns MS Sans Sarif font, glaringly diffent with otherwise "omni"present Tahoma, even that would have been a reasonably consistent UI scheme. But what is surprising that even the fonts across tabs are not consistent.

The font in 'Summary' tab is Tahoma, while all other tabs have MS Sans Sarif. For UI-challanged, look for a 'C' in 'Summary' tab and that in any other tab.

The Win2000 has Tahoma everywhere but the Properties window, which has MS Sans Sarif, consistently.

Take this proclaimed expert of Visual Design.

Peer-to-Peer Techniques in Searching

2005-09-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

So far searching web has been mostly centralized affair (Google et al). There have been few attempts to develop a distributed search framework, Sun's JXTA being a prominent one.

A new European Commission funded research project aims to produce a prototype p2p search engine that's been described as an attempt to create a "P2P Google".

"The aim is to produce a system that offers higher quality results and more robustness than a centralised system such as Google," says Dr David Hales from Bologna University, a researcher working on the project. Professor Gerhard Weikum from the Max Planck Institute, who's leading the effort, and which involves computer scientists from across Europe, says "We're in the early stages of the project but are making rapid progress."

Non- English Web World

2005-09-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

Cache mining of traffic from Wikipedia pages shows that English Wikipedia pages are accessed more than any other language(35%). The figure is surprisingly lower than expected considering demographics of Internet users and dominance of English speakers. Even more surprising was the fact that most Wikipedia usage from a country is from Japan(22%), which also explains the high figures for Japanese segment of Wikipedia. US and Germany are next, while India lying much below with 1%.

Is it just me

2005-09-02T09:59:00.000-07:00

I havn't been able to log on Google Talk more than just twice within last two days. There has one in two chance of being able to open Gmail. Even if I do, Gmail pages are getting currupted now and then. Even Google searches are timing out. Orkut is as unreliable as it has always been("No Donuts for you"). Is Google gobbling up too much than it can handle?

Desktop Abound

2005-08-26T01:58:00.000-07:00

Google's Desktop Search tool had its limitations. Perfect to search through web/file cache, unusable otherwise.

Now, with the launch of Google Desktop 2 (still Beta). The newly added Sidebar may be usable for some, but for me, instant search capabilities are much more important. I have used Copernic Desktop Search in the past, and found it much better performer in this regard earlier. Though, God knows why, Copernic is determined not to push their already good tool - adding a few features, and a bit of marketing won’t harm the cause.

Now something about Google's Sidebar. "Web Clips" works great (it automatically subscribes the syndication, if available), but "News" takes forever to load on my desktop. "Scratch Pad" is a nice idea, but yet to find usefulness of "Photos". Newly introduced "Quick Find" is working very well.

Along with previous limitations of not being all-purpose search tool, the other draw-back for me is search results display in the browser, it's even slower than that in previous version. And Google probably has already realized that browser is not a good interface for desktop applications. So With this Sidebar, Google Desktop is not a browser app anymore.

Somebody calling the end of desktop. Not yet, not yet!

Now even Google talks

2005-08-24T01:16:00.000-07:00

Google has been hogging limelight over past 48 hours, with its new IM client. First came the speculations, then the news and GOOG market-cap rose almost a bn within an hour.

Apparently Google Talk is running Jabber, which is an open protocol. All one need is a Jabber-compatible Instant Messaging client (such as Apple's iChat, or GAIM), and a GMail address.

So whats all this hype about. There has been talks of Google talk coming with VoIP features, and which would be in direct competition with Yahoo and Skype. The latter being the big daddy of VoIP messaging. While Yahoo is well-known Jack of All Trades, though has been victim of Google's success in search business.

Skype, with over 51 million users, is celebrating its second anniversary next week by opening up its platform to anyone who wants to integrate Skype’s presence and instant messaging services into their website or application.

Now, Jabber, which Om Malik calls "Voice-over-IM Technology", is linked with AOL too. Do I see some extreme interoperability here? Wait and watch!

Update: Google Talk is indeed available for download, and interoperable with other clients as expected, though voice facilities are available only with Google's own client, requiring Windows.

Abusing Wikipedia

2005-08-15T09:36:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia is vulnerable. Anyone can change it the way (s)he desires. A case has been reported of an atricle on Wikipedia about a fictional character potraying as a real person. The fictional character Kane belongs to an online alternate reality game from BBC.

There has been lot of debate over the reliability of Wikipedia as a trusted source of knowledge. But the point is, such a system is self cleansing. The fact that the truth came out so quickly is good indicator of the effectiveness of the design.

Now, some argue that "The premise of Wikipedia is that continuous improvement will lead to perfection. That premise is completely unproven". Apparently it is. But the past has shown, just as this time, errors don't go unnoticed on Wikipedia. If someone is interested in the reliable information, just combine the discussion page with article and one will get all the different perspectives on issue of the quest.

Someone will always be able to abuse any system, or may be Wikipedia is vulnerable to abuse, but it is made by design to correct itself over the time, and that is Wikipedia's greatest strength.

Is it the age of Web Applications

2005-08-07T15:16:00.000-07:00

There has been quite a talk of AJAX based thin clients replacing Desktop Application and thus eliminating dependence on Windows or any other OSs.

Now, indeed AJAX is a huge step in the direction of making browser based applications more efficient as in how the data is being handled. Traditional web interface has to reload every time to show any new data and that means redundant traffic over precious bandwidth. AJAX techniques let the client call data as it requires instead of traditional brute force reload. Google's GMail is one of the first applications to use AJAX in its present avatar and Google Maps perfected the art, though the concept of AJAX itself is not entirely new. Wikipedia has plenty of information on the evolution of AJAX.

It would be a bit too far-fetched to think that AJAX based applications can replace desktop apps altogether. Browser is a great tool to make cross platform apps, but there are certain limitations of Asynchronous JavaScript,CSS,DOM and XMLHttpRequest, and it is very easy to mess up with all of this. Alex Bosworth's blog has articles on potential AJAX mistakes.

Besides that, there are other unavoidable limitations using browser as a user interface. There are certain quirks of each and every browser, and that won't be very easy to tame for AJAX developers. Moreover, browser based application will be unreliable as the data has to travel through network and there lies the bottleneck. And I haven't even said anything about security, and what about offline interactions.

The more plausible scenario would be close interaction of web with OS, something like what KDE trying to do with Wikipedia in their planned collaborative development. And what Microsoft calls Smart Applications - applications which interact closely with the Internet, and utilize local computing hardware. Besides, there are unlimited possibilities to develop a user-friendly interface with desktop apps, which a browser cannot provide. There are simply too many browsers to take care of. So OS is certainly not going to be irrelevant. AJAX is exciting and but there are even more possibilities with desktop apps getting "smart"er.

Google leaps into Global Top 100

2005-07-15T14:38:00.000-07:00

With the market capitalization of more than $83bn (as I am writing this) Google riding over its phenomenal share price advance, having defied most predictions by more than tripling in the ten months since the firm made its stockmarket debut at $85 a share, has leaped into FT Global top 100, a jump from 279th as on March 31, 2005 to 95th as the ranking been compiled on stock value as of June 30.
The leap is unprecedented by any standards. Yet few people are casting doubts over the long term sustainability of Google valuation. There is lot of mist built around Google, as this article in The Economist mentions that

Now valued at more than $80 billion, Google has left in the dust the other three internet Wunderkinder—Yahoo!, eBay and Amazon—and even passed media stalwarts such as Time Warner. How does Google do it?

At least in part by shrewdly manufacturing a winning mystique. No outsider today can prove definitively that Google is not an office park full of geniuses who could at any moment announce, simultaneously, world peace and a cure for the common cold. That is because no outsider today can say anything definitive about Google at all. This is intentional. Google makes itself totally opaque by camouflaging itself with lots of what journalists call “colour”.

Interesting take on an organization, that is widely respected and admired even by the techies all over the world, even though it failed to push any significent advances recently in its core area of searching in the world of ever increasing content to explore. Though the recent surge in the popularity of AJAX techniques (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) can be attributed to its use in Google's Gmail, Google Groups and other prominent interactive applications.

Past threatening the future

2005-07-01T12:08:00.000-07:00

Bram Cohen, the author of BitTorrent is under legal scrutiny for something he wrote back in 1999.

A technological activist's agenda
"I am a technological activist. I have a political agenda. I am in favor of basic human rights: to free speech, to use any information and technology, to purchase and use recreational drugs, to enjoy and purchase so-called 'vices', to be free of intruders, and to privacy.

I further my goals with technology. I build systems to disseminate information, commit digital piracy, synthesize drugs, maintain untrusted contacts, purchase anonymously, and secure machines and homes. I release my code and writings freely, and publish all of my ideas early to make them unpatentable.

Technology is not a panacea. I refuse to work on technology to track users, analyze usage patterns, watermark information, censor, detect drug use, or eavesdrop. I am not naive enough to think any of those technologies could enable a 'compromise'.

Despite my emphasis on technology, I do not view laws as inherently evil. My goals are political ones, even if my techniques are not. The only way to fundamentally succeed is by changing existing laws. If I rejected all help from the political arena I would inevitably fail."

The big fishes are already after Bram's blood for developing BitTorrent. Oh Bram, don't get into trouble for not knowing the future and writing this parody. "They" blame you for failure of their outdated business model. But why hinder the evolution of technology. BitTorrent is the present and future of how data will be transferred over network.

Bram Cohen on Slashdot

2005-06-20T12:21:00.000-07:00

While skimming through Bram Cohen's comments about Avalanche on his blog, I came across his views on Slashdot discussions.

"I've generally avoided slashdot discussion, due to the poor quality of discussion there.The other day I fiddled with it a bit, and set the value for 'funny' to be -4, the minimum to display to 3, and display to nested, and suddenly the quality of discussion is altogether more reasonable.
This presents a bit of a theoretical problem. I've long held the opinion that in trust metrics someone else's positive cert shouldn't be counted as a negative cert, because it's trivially gameable, and yet here it is, exactly that technique is working quite well. I'm not sure what to make of it."

Some discussion followed this entry:

Uke : "funny" isn't positive or negative--it's a dimension. (well, at least one dimension.)if you admit the possibility that opinions could be negatively correlated, then you get a lot better results from reputation systems when you reliably disagree with someone!
Bram: I might buy that if I didn't like things which are funny. I do like things which are funny, the problem is that the vast bulk of things labelled 'funny' on slashdot aren't funny at all, they're obnoxious.
Uke : That's why I said that it was at least one dimension. On slashdot, "funny" maps to a positive opinion for some people, and a negative one for some other people. "Funny" has no universal meaning on slashdot, just like it has no universal meaning anywhere else in the realm of human language.

My views; well sometimes what modded "funny" might not funny at all, but then there is meta moderation, which eventually eliminates bad/incompetent moderators. Isn't it here even the wiki concept shares grounds with this. The system eventually corrects itself (or gets extinct, I must add). And obvious but obligatory, "funny" is an individual perception. You can't lay all the reliability on the moderation system, as it'll always have all the shortcomings of a democratic system(read anonymous moderation, in this case). IMDb's rating system is much more flawed in that sense, and no-one should take it as the ultimate truth, yet these scores do give a general idea of things.
Perhaps, a more reliable system would be weighted moderation, everyone who rates has a weight associated with him/her (Google page rank?), or even custom weights assigned by the reader. Would it be scalable? Yes! certainly.

Really Simple Syndication

2005-06-03T14:07:00.000-07:00

I heard of this term almost 4 years back for the first time. Really Simple Syndication (RSS) has evolved leaps and bounds in a very short period.

What is RSS? "Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable "What's New" for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet, and more). RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services." - Source www.webreference.com

I have become so used to it now, that sometimes I wonder what would I do without it. Yahoo! provides a pretty usable RSS aggregator with MyYahoo. But I prefer a destop based aggregator viz. Sauce Reader. Its free for personal use, though still in beta (every other product is running in perpetual beta these days). The earlier version 1.1 was on .net plateform, but synop decided to shift away from .net for some performance issues. I still rate version 1.1 above 2.0 in some respects, perticularily quick link downloads, though there were some memory issues with .net.
Sauce reader feed says - "Sauce Reader 2.0 is a complete rewrite and no longer requires the .NET framework. Using .NET for Sauce Reader v1 we were never able to achieve the level of performance we considered appropriate for a heavily used productivity application. .NET is a compelling and powerful platform, but currently unsuitable for widely adopted client side applications."

Well, I disagree...but then, whatever.

Why smart people defend bad ideas

2005-05-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

This was an interesting essay written by Scott Berkun. Well...he had plenty to write, few obvious things and many insightful comments.

The obvious - "The problem with smart people is that they like to be right and sometimes will defend ideas to the death rather than admit they’re wrong."

The insightful - "The primary point is that no amount of intelligence can help an individual who is diligently working at the wrong level of the problem. Someone with wisdom has to tap them on the shoulder and say, “Um, hey. The hole you’re digging is very nice, and it is the right size. But you’re in the wrong yard.”"

Overkill of an analogy, but still-
"I was never very good at pool, but this one guy there was, and whenever we’d play, he’d watch me miss easy shots because I tried to force them in with authority. I chose speed and power over control, and I usually lost. So like pool, when it comes to defusing smart people who are defending bad ideas, you have to find ways to slow things down."

And he says-"If you want your smart people to be as smart as possible, seek a diversity of ideas. Find people with different experiences, opinions, backgrounds, weights, heights, races, facial hair styles, colors, past-times, favorite items of clothing, philosophies, and beliefs. Unify them around the results you want, not the means or approaches they are expected to use."

Something about Scott- "He left his comfortable industry job to go after a life goal: filling the bookshelf near his desk with books he's written". I'm impressed.

huh

2005-05-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

There is something very human about "sarcasm", which perhaps, the machine could never ever imitate. huhcorp has plenty of devilishly satirical site content and the dead-serious Google ads. btw, that huh chick is looking amazing.

I have quite a backlog, as to what to read, and watch. The wishlist is growing large. I would like to read "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" sometime. I am not hooked to the Star Wars series, but would like to watch Revenge of the Sith anyway, for the sake of completion of the series perhaps. Want to read something literary too, but there is a right time for everything..and I ain't in a hurry.

Cool Hand Luke

2005-05-14T18:58:00.000-07:00

Paul Graham is one essayist I respect, not only because he says the things I'm most likely to agree to, but also because he says them with lot of conviction. Hell, I want to be able to write like him.
That apart, his latest essay is about hiring being obsolete. The Point being, "The three big powers on the Internet now are Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. Average age of their founders: 24. So it is pretty well established now that grad students can start successful companies. And if grad students can do it, why not undergrads?", even though he accepts that "The 1/10 success rate for startups is a bit of an urban legend. It's suspiciously neat. My guess is the odds are slightly worse."

Well, someone(anonymity intentional) wrote me this-

"So, I hear you're starting your own business?

Welcome, welcome.

Welcome to 16 hour days, and your employees earning more than you. Welcome to heartache and racking your brains for something to give you an edge, calling on experience you don't have yet. Welcome to doing boring and tedious tasks that if you fail, can land you in prison, like accounting and keeping receipts. Welcome to trying to protect your ideas from much larger and more powerful companies who will take and exploit them in a heartbeat.

Welcome to getting your first solicitor. Welcome to earning far less than minimum wage for months on end, and lets not forget that you may never get anything back. Welcome to friends and family slowly becoming more distant as you have no time to devote to them, welcome to becoming a fanatical zealot, welcome, oh yes, welcome to compromising most of your ideals just to stay afloat.

Welcome to management - you're the boss now! Welcome to having to see both sides of the story, welcome to slow or non paying customers, welcome to learning how to manipulate your fellow man to achieve your ends, welcome to grey hair and addiction to mild stimulants.

Welcome, welcome, one and all. Do stay a while.

And that light at the end of the tunnel you are striving for?Well I'm not sure what it is, exactly, are you?"

well, every word above said is true, 100% of it, but remember the goal is to kick ass. Yes, indeed.

Of five points and bad karma

2005-05-07T13:20:00.000-07:00

Recently, I got moderator access on slashdot for three days, which meant I had five points to mod up or down any post. I have been active on the forum, as a result my karma level has been fluctuating lately.
Slashdot is an interesting concept, that too a pretty successful one..a perfect example of self-sustained organically growing entity. Other examples, I can think of are wikipedia and experts-exchange... orkut had shown some promise and grown pretty quickly in its early days..but somewhere it lost track. This is not to say that I am comparing orkut with slashdot. Of course, there can't be any comparision. orkut has almost five times more users than slashdot, orkut is just one year old, while slashdot is around for 8 years ,yet, the level of participation on slashdot is much larger and much more intriguing.

Side note: New blog

2005-05-01T17:30:00.000-07:00

I've added a new blog. I've certain plans with both the blogs. I hope to see myself more consistent with blogging.

Why Ronin : this is what dictionary has to say about "Ronin"

"In Japan, under the feudal system, a samurai who had renounced his clan or who had been discharged or ostracized and had become a wanderer without a lord; an outcast; an outlaw"

Well...I feel being pretty close to this word.

Disclosing New Worlds

2005-04-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

Came across this piece while browsing about Ludicorp , the makers of Flickr, which has just recently been acquired by Yahoo!, perhaps to keep up with Google's Picasa. And I really loved it.

"Disclosing New Worlds: Entrepreneurship, Democratic Action and the Cultivation of Solidarity" by Charles Spinosa, Fernando Flores & Hubert Dreyfus (MIT Press 1997):

"Business owners do not normally work for money either. They work for the enjoyment of their competitive skill, in the context of a life where competing skillfully makes sense. The money they earn supports this way of life. The same is true of their businesses. One might think that they view their businesses as nothing more than machines to produce profits, since they do closely monitor their accounts to keep tabs on those profits.

But this way of thinking replaces the point of the machine's activity with a diagnostic test of how well it is performing. Normally, one senses whether one is performing skillfully. A basketball player does not need to count baskets to know whether the team as a whole is in flow. Saying that the point of business is to produce profit is like saying that the whole point of playing basketball is to make as many baskets as possible. One could make many more baskets by having no opponent.

The game and styles of playing the game are what matter because they produce identities people care about. Likewise, a business develops an identity by providing a product or a service to people. To do that it needs capital, and it needs to make a profit, but no more than it needs to have competent employees or customers or any other thing that enables production to take place. None of this is the goal of the activity."

The goal is to kick ass. Yes indeed!

In the beginning there was nothing....

2005-03-12T06:11:00.000-08:00

....God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better.
Just read the essay by Pual Graham "How to Start a Startup". Inspiring and informative piece, full of profound advices.
Carving out theories behind success and failure of businesses, and to make out predictive pattern out of those, is indeed favourite pastime for some,and for some it is even their livelihood, yet the list of various B-School case studies and theories is never ending. Every now and then, people came up with some new explanations.
3 years back, I had written one of my course TermPaper on the Analogies between biological and business systems. And while doing that, I'd come with the notion that just as the "mutation" in the evolutionary biology cannot be predicted, can only be accounted for, business systems follow the same logic(or non-logic) of evolution.
Now coming back to the essay, it had some solid points, advices, humors and rumors.."Does your product use XML?"...its a good read anyday.

Close encounter of a third kind

2005-03-05T01:48:00.000-08:00

It was 4 am. I just came back home. feeling hungry, i looked for something to eat. not a thing in the fridge. i thought, lets forget it, this is not my day. just sat..reading newspaper, couldn't hold it for long..."explored" the kitchen cupboard, damn, nothing readymade in there. came back again...after five more minutes i was in the kitchen again, opening the cupboard again...

Now...my cooking CV includes 5 omelettes(first one of which was burnt beyond brownness), 8 tea, and once 2-minute noodles....all of which are my achievements of past two months. and yeah i can chop onions too, have done that twice or thrice, helping my flat-mates.
i could see flour, which i was sure i couldn't make a thing of....and then there was rice...ok..decided..i'd cook rice...

Poured in some water and put rice on the gas..came out of kitchen...after 5 minutes i heard some strange noises from kitchen...rushed..all the water had evaporated and i could see the rice grain was only half the size of normal cooked rice.i poured in more water and this time i decided to stand there, chopping onion..past experience was reassuring...but i needed a knife.."the one" was somewhere in pile of dishes in the sink, which i couldn't dare break in...the other knife was a 12 inches long thing, i always wondered why would somebody use it..i could now see why!

I looked through my window..somebody from the opposite apartment,which is across the road(approx 20ft away), was peaking through the window (not THAT window!, kaushik, the one below that),..i didn't realize i was making so much noise....anyway..i waved to the person..assuring- nothing wrong here, buddy!

now the rice was almost ready..there was more work to do..i had seen people cooking fried rice.....i poured the rice on pan, but rice stuck on it...oh i forgot to put oil..damn..did the mending...onions, salt..perfect...

i was ready to taste my first ever real cookery accomplishment...i
couldn't wait for "the moment"..but i decided to make it really royal..so,switched on the TV, now i was ready....and...no anti-climaxes here.... It was the tastiest thing i have ever eaten...forget pizzas, the Taj
food, iitk wala dhaaba...

G:/personal/bin/

Koders: code search on the web

2005-01-26T02:12:00.000-08:00

Recently came across Koders BETA while I was seraching for something on piece tables.
This is what it says about itself
"Koders is a search engine for source code. It enables developers to easily search and browse source code in thousands of projects hosted at hundreds of open source repositories."
Perhaps this was a much needed initiative in terms of reducing the time and effort involved in the relevant code searching. Google search is just not good enough. You get all kind of furnitures, chairs, chess, some Katmandu dinner set for "piece table", all on the first page, but to get what you are looking for you need eyes of a hawk.
Koders requires the code website to make itself listed to be searched, which is pretty reasonable, considering the ease of search that follows. Perhaps more of search niche search engines will come up in near future.

mind your desktop Part-II (can't help it)

2005-01-10T01:59:00.000-08:00

Well...I have been using the Copernic Desktop Search tool for sometime now. It has some amazing features apart from being very "light" on the system. While Google Desktop Search requires 1GB of space on C: to conveniently locate the index of your entire electronic existence, I didn't find any such requirements for Copernic. Copernic doesn't index secure web pages in its index, which Google does. Probably it is a good thing, you don't want your visits to secure web pages to be available at the first place..meant to be secure include bank websites, Gmail and other e-Commerce sites.
So by its design itself Copernic seems to offer more security(?)...whatever that means. But overall I found myself more comfortable with Google Desktop search.
Any way, instant desktop search is a revolutionary concept, whatever the tool be...so, bye bye old days of Windows Search Companion which used to take painfully long time to search a mp3 or a file containing a phrase with unreliable results.

mind your desktop

2005-01-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

"I can find anything online in under a minute, but it takes me days to find an e-mail address on my PC." Slate@msn has come up with comparative study in the background of the recent rage of desktop search applications-Google, Ask Jeeves, HotBot, and MSN already slugging it out, and Yahoo is poised to join the fray very soon. But surprisingly rather lesser known Copernic stole away the honour of being the top pick.

The Lion is wounded again

2005-01-02T09:17:00.000-08:00

As it seems, the big news is that Microsoft is abandoning one of its most contentious attempts to dominate the internet after rival technology companies banded together in opposition and consumers failed to embrace the PASSPORT.net.
After the reports of eBay, far and away the most popular U.S. shopping Web site, ending partnership forged in 2001 came out, pretty much underscoring consumers' unwillingness to embrace Passport outside Microsoft's own MSN Internet network.
These developments conclude the foiling of one of the most ambitious attempts of Microsoft after xBox failed big-time to overcome SONY Playstation 2 by 15 million vs 70 million. Nevertheless, supposed and rumoured release of xBox-2 next month or by March followed by that of Playstation 3 promises the battle revisited and this time it is supposed to be even fiercer than last time.

new year

2005-01-01T02:03:00.000-08:00

the new year...hmmm...whats the difference....01/01/2005...another day as usual. But we people need "excuses" to celebrate, a birthday or an aniversary, diwali or holi, pongal or baisakhi, eid or x-mas,a sunny day or a rainy day, a sunday or a friday. A significent market is driven by and driving these moments of celebration. Everything seems so artificial at times, as if we are forced to be part of this whole thing, just because everyone seems to celebrate and its cinical not to be involved.

why blog

2004-12-03T10:45:00.000-08:00

Why!!!!because you can't avoid it eventually. It becomes the menifestation of the identity, and I have realized that over the period of time. the mother of all blogs- Slashdot makes you beleive in power of blogging. If something could scavenge through the mega-pool of information generated by millions of bloggers everyday, just how "romantic" the world of internet would become.
On second thoughts, just search "blog" on google-129miliion results. That's the order of the problem and for text search engine like Google it's impossible to even dream to scour relevent information.
And this was a blog on blog...21200 results on google....arghhhhh and none of it on the first page is relevant enough

Naivadya

2004-08-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

I am new to this world of blogs, but was thinking about it for quite sometime. I have to start someday.so why not today. nothing special about the day, so is everyday, isn't it. life goes on, one day after other, and when we look at the past, dates are forgotten, months too, only years remain, that is probably only because there have been very few so far in my life. I can imagine myself remembering only the phases of life some years from now.
the regular bullshit apart, why am I here. firstly, to make myself present on web, secondly, writing diary daily is too much to expect from me(used to do it sometime back), and is very boring sometime, and thirdly, it is in fashion these days.
So....should be enough for a first post.