April 2006 Archives

I was hearing this bbc world's clickspace.. or some program its called.. which comes as supplement to the 'click...' gadget programme. The show advices of some good websites or interesting web concepts that viewers can visit and the websites showcased are based on user recommendations of good websites.

POOMOO.COM was one of the websites referred. I went there to find that it was inspired by another project equivalently interesting.

First, poomoo.com: Poomoo though sounds funny doesn't really mean anything related to the work on the website i think. "The website has a 20/20 formula.. where 20 people were asked to describe something that they liked most in 20 secs". Interesting isn't it.. to drop by some strangers on the road and ask them to say it, then record it and put it online. You will find the website's presentation of information even more interesting.

What inspired poomoo.com: "The thought project", thats how Simon the author of this website simonhoegsberg.com calls it. Its like he went down the street, met up with some 150 strangers, asked them what they were thinking just the sec before he bumped into them. While somebody says he was thinking about his college project and gives a confusing synopsis of the project itself which could take you aback, somebody tells about a gift he bought for a friend and thought that is it worth the money and should he give it to his friend. :o)

Simple things about everyone's life, but the way its presented on the website is simply clean than you like to read even ordinary things online. Check up the websites for yourself.

www.poomoo.com
www.simonhoegsberg.com

Harpo is the other name Oprah turns for.. Oprah Winfrey, the famous talk-show host of the US, who is known for many other things than 'The Oprah Winfrey show'. A lady who has turned gold... everything she touched..

Learn more about her achievements in the below link.

The thing I liked about her was.. 'she had raised huge public awareness of child abuse,....she has fought for it and got a bill passed by America on child abuse.... as per the bill.. the government should maintain a publicly accessible database with photographs of all people charged of child abuse one time or the other in their life..

One woman that speaks the pain normally any women has to go through in a world dominated by men. I always wondered at the success of oprah.. specially since I have not felt that her shows are very special than many great TV shows that are there.. Now I understand... its because she speaks out for women. And about turning everything Gold... when women rise-up beyond odds, that's what happens.

Ha.. you are waiting for the link..
http://www2.oprah.com/about/ostory/about_ostory_timeline.jhtml

If her bio could inspires me to making this post, though I never know nothing much of her, she definitely inspires women a lot more.. And the top image says it all. Its her magazine 'O' which is considered one of most successfull magazines in america, .. and as you see the image it aptly says 'Live your best life' on one of the issues.

There was an excellent article on webopedia.com (link below)
It covers > existing hard disk drive technology,
> existing superparamagnetism problem which limits packing more gigs into a Hard disk
> the new technology

The new technology could push the current limit of 150GB max on one hard disk platter... to anywhere close to 1Terabyte on a single platter 3.5 inches wide.

Read it on webopedia.com: Perpendicular Hard Drive Recording Technology

It confuses me very often living in India. Everything is confusing here.

Democracy is confusing:
Is 'Anybody can do anything' democray. or is 'Doing and talking what is feasible' democracy. I don't know whether in any other country you can promise a goat / or a cow/ or a color TV to win the elections. That's straight forward bribing... and that too to win elections to lay hands on the big treasure of tax money.

No election commission will question this, no court-of-law would.... not even the president of india whose very duty is to have the most interest in an election process than anybody else in the country.

In India, you can kill someone in front of everybody, and just walk away cool if you have the money or the power. Thanks to jessica lal case that stands proof of concept. Till this day, this minute the killers are not charged because though everybody saw nobody narrated it perfectly to be a good enough witness. And no protection of witness act.. and this state is what we popularly boast of with the title 'World's largest democracy'

The worlds largest democracy... this certainly is because you just can do whatever on earth you want and have your way with it. Obviously Indians are sure that nowhere on earth you could get away with things you do in India starting from spitting to killing.

People are confusing:
So much action in the run up to elections everytime, people are excited and glued to news channels and those statements the politicians make..... , and so much silence aftewards.

Why are you silent after the polls. then why do we all vote.
Just by stamping the paper, pressing the button and you thought India will change.
If it was this easy, things would have already changed.

Are we expecting something like what is happening in Nepal, to happen in India, to rise up to respond.

You are good, you want to protest, but you know nobody will bother, so you sit quiet.
This is like that story I remember:
A king asked all his people to pour one boul of milk into a big pot kept in the palace to mark a ceremonial occassion. One guy thought everyone is going to pour milk so if i pour water its not going to show up and make a difference.. so he poured water and went away. Two days later everyone was done and the ceremony was to happen. But the king's men had a problem to reveal. ... the pot was full of water. Everyone thought why bother and the king ended up collecting water instead of milk.

Replace the king with 'India' and milk with 'our responsibility' and we know what we are doing to ourselves.

The man who spits thinks... what the hell.. this is one corner...its not going to dirty everything around. So is everybody with everything.

Just because I don't drink, smoke, spit, shout,... i dont become a good man.. Do I protest when something is going wrong... that makes me one.

If we are silent longer, ... "Too much silence is like mourning already.."

Politicians are confusing:
This is not happening you thought.. and top politicians migrated loyalties. Sometimes worse, they do that after the elections and you wanted someone and someone else came to power.

There's something called an election manifesto... its after all paper. What you can write on paper is not what you can do...or with politicians ..what they will do.

Here in Chennai one politician promises Rice for 2Rs/kg if he comes to power, and immediately his rival annouces that rice goes Free if they come to power. What nonsense. Whose rice, and where is all that cheap rice they are bullying on. Madam Condoleeza Rice would be worried if someone told her that her name is being used here.

What a politician will do after the elections is something that is based on his character not the paper. But we are tempted by the media into analysis. To analyze the best feasible manifesto and vote for them.

Analysis is a word which can have no meaning when the situation is unstable. How would it be if the CEO of a major software firm all of a sudden resigned to join a rival software firm as the CEO. Will you call up your stock broker to action something.... or sit quiet and watch. It should not be any different when political parties and candidates shift loyalties and beliefs from one corner to another just like that.

How to grow:
Did somebody think that just because the finance minister made a good budget, the country's economy got boosted. Where are we hiding the amount of hard work those Tata's, Birla's, and software guys are putting in, all-day all-night, struggling to prove that in India that work can be done with little higher benefits to business. Where are we hiding all the recognition the business gurus deserve for making something that was thought impossible.. possible with resources in this country.

Its like praising the father of a guy, for having such a capable son, who won the olympic silver for the country. He didn't do it just because his parents had him, but because he believed in him and struggled to get there.

Everytime on Indian Media, the first question they ask an achiever from India is, "Who all inspired you, who all would you thank for this"... ... as if just inspiration, and guidance will take you places. If you thought so and get misled into things, you will not realize until you fall from somewhere and struggle your way back to being a fighter.

Whatever happens, But the bottom line is, "Just by stamping a paper, or pressing a button to post your vote, India is not going to change.. .neither are the states that are going for elections.

All major hardware providers are eyeing changes.. A new era of computing is started. 64bit computing.
Every time the computing platform changed, from 8 to 16 to 32 bit computing that we have today, the change has indirectly had major possibility additions to IT infrastructure.

More bits mean more computing power and more possibilities with new same-size or less-size hardware. And even totally new industry of hardware could be born because there's more power.

When 32 bit happened it invited many capabilities because of higher processing power, and one major industry that spawned out was computer gaming. Because computer gaming by its nature requires lot of support from the hardware of the machine, more processing power lead to invention of new powerful graphic cards, rendering engines like DirectX and so on.

So, 64bit becoming bigger by the day, is inviting more technology and automation.

One thing I am pretty excited about is whether there will be a new world called 'computer robotics'.. given the need some people have generated with robots even entering hospitality industry, those crazy toy dog robots, there could be something bigger. Something like cutting down of costs on home robotics allowing for more people to enter the cravy market of gadget homes.

Storage media:
Also, chaging is the space issue. While some companies are trying to find evaluation markets for currency coin sized 80GB hardDisks, the fighting in the DVD market between blu-ray discs(25gb to 50gb) and HD-DVD(15gb to 30gb) formats, continue.

The 64bit players:

As usual Microsoft is trying to play giant here too... and has tie-ups with AMD and HP on their 64-bit platforms.

And there's the new player Apple which has come out a new ripe apple, with proven new innovations of ever smaller & cleaner computers and devices. Cleaner here means they are miniaturizing technology rather than forcing all existing ones into a small box.

The next computer giant :
...obviously, this will be the better 64bit guy. Whoever it turns out to be. Currently only server hardware is considering serious change to 64bit.

PCs will take time. As of now, 64bit PCs still have to support running 32 bit applications, and in fact current 64bit PCs have only a handfull of 64bit applications running on them other than the operating system. Because, all that software we use till date which are 32bit cannot be thrown away or upgraded to 64bit at the press of a button.

With the new Intel Mac being in the spotlight, and Intel being seen more focussed on Apple, a lot of market watchers are having all the questions that any media would thrive to make a cover story of.

Is AMD gaining on microsoft's OEM provider radar as against Intel?
While Intel seems more closer to Apple... Microsoft looks closer to AMD these days..
Given that AMD is the only other big processor guy who can possibly compete with Intel in the market, every new tie-up, press-releases, product, and every new news from these guys is considerably important to IT itself than just for the companies.

"Do more with less".. the line that steve ballmer launched in campaign of windows server 2003, is now sported by AMD on its products also. Is it just the Microsoft line that is getting into AMD or, the 'preferred provider' status also?

To add up, Steve ballmer speaks in support of AMD 64bit platforms on AMD's website.

As far as 64bit computing seems, a "coalition IT giant" is emerging, rather than one giant company like Microsoft is today. And my guess is the coalition could well be,
'Microsoft -AMD 64bit processors', in the Server market,
while... it would be 'Microsoft -Intel 64bit processors' in the PC market,
'Apple -Intel 64bit processors', in the multiMedia computing market...but Apple is still small, and has diversified vision compared to Microsoft's.

By the way, will Microsoft windows based applications run on Mac since they are powered by Intel?
A few microsoft applications already run on Mac much earlier than the new Intel Mac's.. Examples are Internet explorer for mac, word 2004 for mac. Go to www.microsoft.com and on the search box there try 'mac'.. to find results related to microsoft applications for mac.

What's new though is.. you can run Microsoft windows xp operating system on the new Intel powered MACs through a technology called bootcamp. Windows OS on MAC was not possible earlier.

Related reading:
PCWorld's: Are You Ready for a 64-Bit PC?

Everyone knows its bad to use CRT computer monitors since constantly seeing the monitor harms the eye, ..but still they sell it. Constant use of Mobile phones subjects the brain and our most sensitive organs in the head, to constant high frequency wave bombardment. ..they will still sell it.

"There are these small small things that are bad, but still we are living better", says our conscience already ..before we think of complaining.

Are we living better really? Are these health hazards small issues that we can ignore?

Asbestos is bad for health: We returned a French ship which tried to get dismantled in India, but if you want to buy asbestos products, we have lots here.
When indian newspapers were hot with the arrival of a French carrier said to have around 500 tonnes of asbestos, the asbestos market here took a dip. The nation-wide association of asbestos dealers made advertisements in leading newspapers that what they sell is not harmful.. their justification-"Asbestos comes in many forms, the form that is harmful is '...', while we don't make that in India, we make only '...' form of asbestos which is well below the limits of hazard".
Two weeks later, one newspaper (which also carried the earlier mentioned Ad), had an article that said whatever the form, asbestos is proven to be a hazard, quoting public experiments and technical papers. It had one line which mentioned that although we know some technologies or products are bad, we are unable to ban things because a big market would already be established and thinking otherwise.

That's business for you.

The big Sale
"What is making money, can't be bad to health"... and even if it is, so what, "I will have the money to take care". So, it ends up like a compensation for accepting the issue.

Would you bother if somebody said, Air conditioners actually spoil your health.. but.. its true. You still don't bother switching off.

Everyone knows that cola drinks are better cleaning agents for our toilets, than cooling agents for our body. And that they are packaged with lots of carbon-di-oxide gas. Who bothers. Coca-Cola is said to be the most recognized brand the world over.

The world works on events...like in programming. As long as nobody is said to have died drinking a bottle of coca-cola once in a while, then its ok to be sold. (Even if they would die, I am sure cola people would market it as coolest poison with the same spirit).

"India is our fastest growing export market".. said the American President Bush when he visited india in March 2006. Now, he should have definitely said that to every country he visited with a change.. replace country name with the current country. That's how marketing works.. Bush is not the only one who does that.
Every marketing person does that.. and in every industry.. be it good or bad.

There is a democratic and polite way of marketing something.... even if its know to be bad.
Very good examples are cola, tobacco, alchohol, ... and very importantly missed in such hazards, 'weapons'.

They could sell weapons that kill lots of people between two democratic countries, because of the sincerety they have in growing.. and nobody questions...because the marketing say its in the country's defence interests.
That's the world today.

Harm's distance
Is all this happening only today, or was there health hazardous technology way back also. Why are we blaming it on the growth we have today, is it just because we want to quickly point at things and close the issue.

It could be said that Technology hazards were actually more in earlier days, since those days there weren't much protection options or proper treatment for the hazards. We were growing and we had to take it.

We could say something like Harm's distance. This distance was there in old days. But today, small children use computers, starting to harm themself quite early... and its bad because they didn't choose it, we force it.

I read an article a long time back somewhere, which clearly stated how children getting to learn computers are indirectly having to waste lot of time knowing about things like computer virus, restarts, using the mouse..., and all those things that they won't use and quite unneccessary until they are adults.
So true. Why the hell should a four year old kid be so eagerly encouraged to learning Microsoft Windows.. more than watching butterflies in the backyard...When will he watch them, when he is 18?

In my first employment I had the chance of working with a school principal for some time. The lady used to say so very often that children should not be forced to studies or technology stuff, because kids are there only for seeing colors, playing with objects, being curious with butterflies trying to catch them, etc.,

Keep the distance
Firstly, May children be children and they don't need to start having symptoms of carpal-tunnel syndrome in their wrists because of too much use of keyboards, and stuff like that. Dont be so eager to see your kid be the youngest one to clear a Microsoft certification.

Second, when you are at home, consider yourself a normal human being and give yourself the pleasure of being that.. 'Away' ..from your office, your technology gadgets like mobile phones, and if possible wear a soft thick glove before you put your hand into the microwave. Take care like somebody in the hospital would...because if you land up there, you will not have TV, microwave, or mobile phones in the hospital, so when you have them use them only when needed.

Third, We cannot avoid health hazards...unless you makeup to be a buddist monk or dalai lama.
Live with it. just like you can't do anything to stop that email Spam.

Keep selling / buying hazardous Technology, but do make attempts to discourage yourself and others from using it.... atleast Future would be sensible then.

NASA has a website called 'Blue Marble', where they post very high resolution images of their Earth observatory,(meaning could be used for publishing), and even some analysis images. I found an interesting set of analysis images wherein you can see how the northern hemisphere of the earth really freezes and defreezes in the winter.. While pictures taken in Jan show lot of snow or white, the consequent months show rise in temperature..

January 2004

April 2004

Cool :o)

More pictures are available here:Blue Mable

If you are the crazy guy like me, click on the small round Earth image (top of this post), to open bigger image...right click on it to set as wallpaper.

Recently I learnt about a technology called 'widgets', actually a framework or skeleton system which allows easy creation of small, neat, clean, and handy gadget like software.

My excitement to using widgets increased after seeing a wonderful Desktop Weather widget.. which comes part of installation of something called Yahoo! Widget engine.. And as we all know, if Google or Yahoo! aquire something, they break the technology in there.. to easier pieces that a layman can not just use but also develop on it. Same things to say with Yahoo! Widgets.

You don't have to be programmer to download and use widgets.. its just like any other downloadable software.... actually much easier than that.

It seems that the idea of widgets has been there for some years now (firstly thought of in 2000 by one person 'Arlo Rose').. and later became known as 'Konfabulator', which was later aquired by Yahoo! to be renamed and branded "Widgets"... just like Gadgets in electronics.

The digital clock Image in this post is a worldTime widget that I created. Download it here. To be very specific, worldTime is a Yahoo-Widget since it requires Yahoo-widget-engine to run, .. Apple's version of widgets (& probably Microsoft's version also) are different in widget implementation.

Learn more about Yahoo-widgets here.. widgets.yahoo.com
Learn more about Apple-dashboard widgets here..http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/dashboard/

Vista Gadgets
As usual, good guys at Microsoft have got excited about the possibilities of widgets which first came out with Apple's Mac OS Tiger last year, ... and Vista has it and calls it 'Vista Gadgets'

Current Internet time is @078beats said a website... i clicked to find out what is internet time, and landed up with the below information (read from TimeAndDate.com)

The swiss watch company 'swatch' came up with a new internet time concept.

As per this, all machines connected to the internet can be referred to be in one timezone with one time calculation. And the units for this will be 'beats'... instead of dividing a normal day by 12 day hours and 12 noon hours which invariably differ across timezones, swatch came up with the beats where a day is divided into 1000 beats, and one beat is approx. 1min and 23 secs. All machines on the internet can start on the same base and have beats as the time under which an action is performed.

This way, the lots and lots of redundant code that exists on all internet run websites and applications can be done away with and things could be made easier. That way this internet time concept is good..

But, swatch has given the internet time some disadvantages, by opting to have a new timezone called BMT instead of GMT or UTC.. BMT means Biel Mean Time, which is the place in switzerland where swatch's head office is located (hey.. swatch is looking for obvious brand benefit, if the concept becomes popular).

This... giving up of GMT for internet time and introducing another mean time, which could only make the problem more complex, finally hasn't yet got a people following and just remains a concept unused.
Another drawback seems to be its system of calculating beats on a fresh mechanism of 1000 beats per day, ... instead it could have been better if the unit time seconds where to be used.

Though swatch missed the concept in inventing a new concept.. that's "make it people friendly if you want people to use it".... ... it seems like swatch has not missed the concept on what a good usable website is.. swatch.com's design and usability is great. and i loved it. the image posted is from the website. have a look. www.swatch.com