Thursday, June 02, 2005

Yahoo Mail adds News Feeds

Yahoo has added news feeds to Yahoo! Mail. It can be seen on the first page after login. Here is a screenshot


I tried to find whether that box is customizable like no. of feeds etc but no feature as such. I doubt that they will add Stocks and Weather to the same page. I generally use Yahoo Messenger to see News, Stocks, Weather etc. Also My Yahoo provides them on single page which is customizable.

So, my suggestion:
1.Add, News, Stocks, Radio etc access to Yahoo Mail
2.Display only one module
3.Provide a facility to user to select any one of the module

Monday, May 30, 2005

The Wired 40

Wired 40 - They're masters of technology and innovation. They're global thinkers driven by strategic vision.

APPLE COMPUTER, Google and Samsung are leading the list. Indian company Infosys is at 9'th place, up from 11'th place last year. They call Infosys as "The Indian coding shop". Nice !

Interestingly, Microsoft is not seen in the first 9.
With release of Longhorn, it might come in first 5, in next year list

I wonder whether Google will be at number 1 next year..

Friday, May 13, 2005

Google Search via email

To search and receive Google search results thru email. Try the info given below. Just send an email to google@capeclear.com and put the text of your query in the "Subject" line. You will receive the search results as email to your mail id.

Once you get the result for the searches... u can get the contents of a URL using the below feature!! To receive the web content of a url, send email to web@pagegetter.com and subject should contain the url whose content has to be fetched

Friday, April 15, 2005

InstaColl - a product from Hotmail Cofounder

Hotmail cofounder Sabeer Bhatia unveiled InstaColl, an internet collaboration tool that converts mainstream desktop productivity tools like Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint into real time collaboration platforms. The product was completely made in India and is the only peer-to-peer collaborative tool in the market. The product is currently in its Beta version and is slated to go commercial next month.

IBM will be providing InstaColl in its new x-series of computers. Check out the product homepage. It has a flash movie demoing the product. InstaColl is also available for download on CNET and ZDNET. On CNet, it is rated 4 and half star and
1,316 downloads have been done.

Shared Spaces has a review


Leonardo da vinci Google Doodle

What a coool Google Doodle today


Nice color combination !

Thursday, April 14, 2005

Google Satellite Goes Global

Google Map goes global. You can view entire globe from zoom level.
Following are few images of India

India
North India
Himalayan Range
Mumbai
Pune - I am blogging from here

To get Google Satellite view
1. Open http://maps.google.com
2. Click on the link "Satellite"
3. Click and Drag your mouse on Map to navigate your country
4. Zoom on your country map

Have fun !!

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Google Hacking for Penetration Testers

Google Hacking for Penetration Testers is a new book on Google Search. Here is the review of the book on slashdot.

Here is my favourite part of the review
"A quick Google search does the trick. Or, suppose you found some new exploit code that only works against a particular version of IIS 5.0. Submit a quick Google query for a helpful list of possible targets. Do you want to harvest user logins, passwords (for example, mySQL passwords in a connect.inc file), credit card numbers, social security numbers or any other potentially damaging tidbit that Web users and administrators accidentally leak onto the Internet? Google Hacking shows you how, with highly refined searches gleaned from the community contributing to the Google Hacking database (GHDB) found on Long's Web site."

Related Book: Google Hacks, 2nd Edition (Hacks)
This is the first book that described the Google Hacks and showed the world new ways of finding what you want.

Update 1 : This site has the 8th chapter excerpts from the book
Google Hacking for Penetration Testers. Must read article

Update 2:
Book Review: Google Hacks (2nd ed.) and Google Hacking for Penetration Testers

"
Google is like an iceberg — a huge entity, of which only a small amount is visible. Millions of casual users find Google quite usable and helpful. Yet there are many who would like to take advantage of the full capabilities of Google. Once harnessed, Google becomes an even more invaluable and indispensable tool.

Like an iceberg, there is a giant mass hidden beyond Google's simple interface. There are now more than 30 books on Google and two of the most beneficial ones are those that detail those hidden powers of Google, namely Google Hacks: Tips & Tools for Smarter Searching and Google Hacking for Penetration Testers. Rather than overlapping, these books are complementary and focus on different uses of Google."

Google Maps Hacks

Engadget - HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map

Residential listings from Craigslist

Find backlinks to your blog

Google Blogoscoped has nice article about finding backlinks to your website

MS communicator and IBM

Businessweek reports more on info-sharing software market

Friday, April 08, 2005

Tune Up your Firefox

Firetune is the first automated tuner for Firefox 1.x. Usually you have to optimize Firefox manually by typing about:config in address bar and changing the properties of various components. It can be time consuming and difficult for the novice user. FireTune will optimize several internal settings of Firefox for better performance, according to your specific computer speed and internet connection speed.

Google alternate Search

Google is conducting limited tests on "Alternate Search".This new interface includes a new link at the bottom of a Google results page. The link Try Alternate Searches, when clicked on, takes you to a page that includes other suggest keyword searches, you may want to consider.

Lots of other blogger are reporting about this. Here are few good ones that i spotted

Google Blogoscoped -has screenshot
WebproNews (by Olivier Duffez)
Andy Beal (Google Testing "Alternate Search) - has screenshot

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Google Patent Examined

Very good article indeed !

"Here is a quick breakdown of "history factors" we think are relevant to Google's algorithm today. Please note, each item might refer to a specific page and at the same time, also refer to all other pages associated with it.

  • How long a domain or URL has has been registered.
  • Has ownership of a domain changed after previous registrations expired?
  • Has the physical location of the registrant changed?
  • How lengthy is the URL itself? Was it registered to game the index?
  • How many pages are included in the website? (A one document or page website is not considered a highly relevant source of information.)
  • Freshness and age of document.
  • Use of anchor text (both on site and in links directed to site).
  • "Trust Factors" regarding sites or pages outbound links refer to, and inbound links are found on.
  • The "discovery date" of a particular link and the history of changes involving that link.
  • Rate of growth for new links. A sudden burst of growth likely indicates some form of link-spam.
  • Variations in anchor text used to phrase links directed to a page being evaluated. If the same anchor text is used in every inbound link, are they phrased that way for branding purposes or spamming purposes?
  • Number of searches for keyword phrase associated with the anchor text used in links.
  • Number of times Google users click on Google results by entering keyword phrases used in anchor text of incoming links. Does the page being evaluated receive visitors for that keyword phrase on Google's search engine?
  • How do users actually behave while on the page, site or document being evaluated?"

Bill Gates Think Week

"The week typically starts with Gates, 49, taking a helicopter or seaplane to the two-story clapboard cottage on a quiet waterfront. It's a tidy, relatively modest place with a small bedroom for Gates. During the week he bars all outside visitors -- including family and Microsoft staff -- except for a caretaker who slips him two simple meals a day.

He starts the morning in bed poring through papers mostly by Microsoft engineers, executives and product managers and scribbling notes on the covers. Skipping breakfast, he pads upstairs in his stocking feet to read more papers. Noon and dinnertime bring him back downstairs to read papers over meals at the kitchen table, where he has a view of the Olympic Mountains.

Facing the windows with a water view stands a desk with two Dell personal-computer monitors. To the side is a bookshelf lined with literary classics. A portrait of Victor Hugo hangs nearby. A bathroom and a small refrigerator, stocked with Diet Orange Crush and Diet Coke, have been added to the office in recent years, Gates said, so he can maximize his reading time by not having to go downstairs. Papers in orange covers litter the floor, their pages stamped "Microsoft Confidential."

On this particular day, Gates settled behind the PC monitors, which displayed a database of nearly 300 papers for this week. Among the topics: the growth of Internet video, hard-drive capacity and the diminishing advances in microprocessor "clock speed," historically the driver of PC-market growth. Other paper topics included trends in digital photography, computing trends in 2005 and ways for software to better handle languages like Vietnamese."

(Via Indystar)

New search Toolbar from viewpoint

Viewpoint's has a toolbar powered by Yahoo Search. Itis graphically enhanced with custom skin features. It has interesting features like Comparitive search, graphical search results and visual bookmarking.
check it out

MSN testing new shopping search

MSN Shopping Beta allows you to search various products.

I tried to search 1 GB pen drive which i am planning to buy, it showed results from EBay Marketplace. interesting !

My GMaps - custom maps on Google Maps

myGmaps enables you to create, save and host custom data files and display them with Google Maps.

This site looks like in very primary stage and i not very stable.
The Disclaimer of the site says:
Not official, supported or endorsed by Google. No warranty. Use at your own risk. May be insecure, may cause data loss, may break terms of service. May cause excessive small print.

Still, a very good site to give a try. You can create maps, put 10 locations on it and access them anywhere.
Here is a sample

Found Nice links about Google Map on that site
Google Maps Hacking and Bookmarklets
Google Maps Standalone Mode

Security concerns over MS Communicator 2005

Why IM viruses should worry Microsoft

In the coming months, you'll hear Microsoft chairman Bill Gates making a big deal out of presence -- the ability to communicate in real time with anyone, anywhere. With Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, a new productivity application designed to find and connect people in real time (expected to ship within the first half of 2005), users of Microsoft Office with Live Communications Server 2005 will be able to determine from within any Office program who on your Outlook contact list is currently online, and then contact them via email, chat (using MSN, AOL and Yahoo) or by phone. Like simple IM, Communicator 2005 will provide the benefit of spontaneous meetings online. That's the upside.

The downside is that a single virus that can infiltrate email, IM and mobiles (such a triple-threat beast has yet to exist, but the tools are there now) might soon infect large parts of the Internet within 15 minutes or less. Such 'Andy Warhol' viruses have been suggested for years but have failed to materialise. Perhaps Microsoft's marriage of IM into Office will be the perfect vector for such maliciousness.

[via]

Monday, April 04, 2005

Linspire: New version available

Linspire INC annonced new operating system, Linspire Five-0. Here is screenshot of it




More screenshots available on this page.
It is based on Linux operating system. It is not available for free ;-).

Anyway..Really coool UI !!

Anyone blogger who posts from Linspire ??


Friday, April 01, 2005

GMail Infinite Storage Facts

The counter displayed on the Gmail Homepage and the storage limit indicator when you login to your account match with each other. For example If counter on homepage displays "1172.8564443 megabytes of storage (and counting) for every user." , after login your storage indicator will also show "You are currently using 148 MB (13%) of your 1172 MB."

I found this article on CNET that GMail is giving out 2 GB storage space. So is it really infinite or 2 GB? so here are my thoughts aboutthis

1. GMail is increasing its storage limit to 2 GB
2. The counter displayed on the GMail Homepage is just for fun. It will run upto a value of 2050.000000 Megabytes and after that it will stop and display a message
"
Over 2000 megabytes of storage (and counting) for every user."

Nice idea to make an announcement !

Stay tuned till midnight and watch this space for more updates..

Update 1:
Change your system date to 2nd April 2005 and time to 4:29:00 PM. Visit the GMail Homepage
And wait for 1 minute. You will experience the counter stopping and showing above mentioned message.

Update 2:
Next stop for GMail space counter is 2075.000000 MB

Update 3:
Next stop for GMail space counter is 2100.000000 MB. It seems that they are increasing 25 MB per week. With this pace, GMail storage will increase to more than 3 GB by next year. Watch this space for more update (
Ctrl + D to bookmark this page).

Update 4:
Next stop for GMail space counter is 2150 MB. The counter speed is also changed and is updated at less frequently.

Gmail: Infinite Storage space

Check this out

They are talking about giving infinite storage space. Check out following graph displayed on gmail home page(without login)


Gmail calls it Infinite + 1 plan. The page also displayes a counte.

Gmail logo is also changed(only on homepage)


Pretty cool announcement for 1st April !



Thursday, March 31, 2005

I am on Yahoo 360*. Invitations available


Finally got an invitation to Yahoo 360* thanks to Welsh View. As a courtesy, i sent him an invite to Rojo which is also a greate website with unique features.

Yahoo 360* also provides you a blog space. Since, i started this blog first, I decided to use Yahoo 360* blog as a link blog where i will be posting links to interesting stuff. Do
check it out.

If you want an invitation to Yahoo 360* or Rojo, leave your comments on this post with your blog URL. Its nothing personal, its just Social Networking ;-)

Invitations available: 94

Yahoo! Tech Buzz Game

Yahoo! Buzz Game is a fantasy prediction market for high-tech products, concepts, and trends.

As a player, your goal is to predict how popular various technologies will be in the future. Popularity or buzz is measured by Yahoo! Search frequency over time.

Predictions are made by buying virtual stock in the products or technologies you believe will succeed, and selling stock in the technologies you think will flop

This reminds me a similar game at TechnologyReview which is sophisticated and realistic. They call it Innovation Futures. There are technology tipping points like "Google will not announce before the end of Mar. its launch of a Web browser" and you have to predict its probability.

Do Check it out!

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 for Call Centers

Mitel has announced the integration of Mitel's Contact Centre Solution with Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005 and Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 to deliver telephony and multimedia presence and collaboration capability to contact centres. Mitel's Contact Centre Solution integrates voice, Web-chat, e-mail and fax routing and queuing capabilities into the powerful real-time collaboration and presence capabilities that Live Communications Server 2005 brings to programs such as Microsoft Office Outlook 2003, Microsoft Office Excel 2003 and Microsoft Office Word 2003. (more on)

MS Office Communicator 2005
Microsoft
this month began to pull together its real-time communication platform and to deliver the pieces that corporations will need to buildinstant messaging and presence awareness into their applications and networks.

The company announced the imminent release of Microsoft Office Communicator 2005, the corporate client for its real-time platform. It also announced upgrades to its Live Communications Server 2005 (LCS) instant messaging/presence platform and Live Meeting Web conferencing service. (more on)


What's On Bill Gates' Mind

"Bill Gates is thinking hard about video on the Internet. So reports the Wall Street Journal today. During his twice-yearly Think Week last week, the paper reports that the growth of Internet video was among the topics of the 300 papers he plans to read, and he spent a 30-minute walk on the beach—the first time he left the cottage last week—pondering the topic."

"According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 69% of Americans say the Internet is a good way to entertain themselves in daily life, and 88% say it plays an important role in their daily routines, which include finding a wealth of information at thei fingertips. Given those findings, the opportunities for Internet video seem endless: New ad revenue from sponsors, with endless airtime, more ways to split your "channel" to increasingly finer demographic slices, maybe even deliver customized content presentations that users can slice together—and interact with?-- according to their own interests."

(via)

who-remembers-me.com

Today received an mail from anonymous person who kindly sent me a reference to http://www.who-remembers-me.com/ site. The website is designed in a way that will enable everyone to look up Family, Friends, Neighbours/neighbors, Colleagues or even just acquaintances from the past, right from your very childhood to the present day.



Wednesday, March 30, 2005

Brazil: Adopting free softwares

Check this article on NYTimes

Mobile Answers.com

If you are user of answers.com and have smartphone, access http://mobile.answers.com/ via your smartphones and see the magic

Intelliseek announcess BlogPulse 2.0

Intelliseek Announces BlogPulse 2.0, Featuring Faster Performance, Deeper Search, and Graph-Creation Capabilities. BlogPulse 2.0 provides faster data retrieval, a six-month index of blog posts and data, a daily count of blog activity and analysis, and the ability to create customized graphs that track themes and issues appearing in the Blogosphere.

Check this Yahoo 360*, Gmail trend. Very unique feature.

MCI Says Yes to Verizon

Verizon has won the bidding($7.6 billion ) for MCI Inc. a second time, agreeing to pay $1 billion more for the long-distance telephone company, and yet still considerably less than a rival bid($8.45 billion) from Qwest.

Detailed posts on Yahoo News,NYTimes

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

Java: Happy 10 years

I may be late in reporting this but java is 10 years old now
Best wishes to all Java community.

Some facts about java
  • 4 million Java developers.
  • 1.75 billion devices run Java.
  • Java is Everywhere.

Monday, March 28, 2005

View Historic Maps

Great collection of historic Maps

Battle of the search engines

Good article on current state of Search Engine war

Winners of Google india Code Jam 2005

20-year-old Ardian K Poernomo from Singapore, was declared winner of Google Code Jam 2005, hosted at the Google R&D Centre in Bangalore. Ardian, an undergraduate student was chosen as the best among the 14,000 entries from South Asia. Three Indians made it to the top five. Interestingly, four of the five toppers of the contest are students. Pascal Alfadian from Indonesia stood second, Rajsekar Manokaran from Chennai stood third, Nishant Redkar from Mumbai came fourth and Sreeram Ramachandran, an Indian-born lecturer from Singapore finished fifth.

There were three algorithms problems for final round. The first was to find out the unique URLs (universal resource locators); the second was trying to find the shortest possible path and the third was to calculate the probable winner among the two in a competition.

The first two winners received $6,900 (Rs 300,000) and Rs 200,000 ($4,500), while the Indian winners received Rs 125,000, Rs 75,000 and Rs 50,000.

Saturday, March 26, 2005

Firefox 1.0.2

The Mozilla Foundation, has released Firefox 1.0.2, a month within the release of version 1.0.1.

A critical vulnerability, a GIF processing hole, was discovered by Internet Security Systems (ISS) and the flaw if exploited would make Firefox users running earlier versions of the browser vulnerable to buffer overflow attacks.
In February the Mozilla Foundation fixed 17 security vulnerabilities with the release of Firefox 1.0.1. Mozilla though is not planning to have a regular release of patches. Symantec in this week's Internet Threat Report allegedly said that during the second half of last year, 21 vulnerabilities affected Mozilla browsers and 13 flaws affected Internet Explorer. However, only seven of the flaws in Firefox were considered "highly severe," compared with nine in Internet Explorer.

I immediately downloaded and installed the new version of firefox and i am posting this article through it. One strange thing is the default bookmark "Firefox Start Page" in "Firefox and Mozilla Links" folder which was hosted on google site is no longer available.







MSN Music Scenario

The Scenario is an exclusive experience suitable for enthusiasts of the online entertainment. The Scenario represents an unique virtual space, where youths can get in touch with 10 of the most renowned DJ from USA and talk with each of them over MSN Messenger. Scenario comes only a few days after Microsoft released the MSN AdCenter service. (via)

The Scenario lists the Playlist of each Dj and offers download of the song via MSN Music. Now i can get popular songs of those DJ's by sitting here in pune. I love The Scenario.

p.s. Is the name 'The Scenario" suitable for this service?

Will GMail go fully open to public

Yahoo is offering 1 GB storage space to its popular email Service. This offer will be open to all and not invitation based
Whats up GMail? When you are planning to go fully public?
Currently most of the GMail users are offered with 50 invitations. Even if you send 50 invites your quota is again increased to 50 almost overnight. It seems GMail is going public in different manner. I wonder how many GMail users will be out there?? Any guesses ??

A Google OS ?

OSNews has an article on Google OS.
CNet also has same kinda article.

Interesting !!

Friday, March 25, 2005

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Crossfader is Out

Crossfader is an online community for the global electronic artist. It is in Beta(like my blog) :-)

Crossfader also have own blog which says
We are building this tool to help you connect with people who share your love for creation, great music, technology and modern culture.

Gonna check this out today.

Does Opinions turning against Google?

Really good article!! worth reading it.

Google spokesman Barry Schnitt says Google is not bothered about problems like GoogleX clones, Butler, scrapping and aren't big enough for Google to take action. cool.

This reminds me something
When a Big Fat elephant passes by, stray dogs bark at him. But the elephant is never bothered about it because he knows what its all about. He continues do what he does the best - attracting more and more people.

My Blog is in Beta

Hello dear reader,

This post is a formal announcement that my blog is in Beta. You may find the change in title of my blog. Why to keep blog in beta? Because i am continuously making enhancements to my blog template, working on writing skill, formulating ad strategy and above all, trying to make my blog a source of quality content. During this beta period you may encounter some problems. Please dear readers, help me by providing your valuable suggestions and feedbacks by adding them to comment area or mail me on bytebuzzer at gmail.com.

Happy Blogging..
ByteBuzzer

p.s. Anyone else has blog in beta ;-)

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Idealab Desktop Toolbar

Snap’s parent company, Idealab, has just come out with a desktop toolbar for Windows. It resides as a button in the upper left of your screen. When you click on it it slides open to the right and gives you options for searching dozens of sites on the Web . It also lets you simply type a program name to start it. Type “word,” for example, and you instantly get two options, MS Word and WordPad, assuming, of course, that they are on your computer. Click one and it launches.

I was amazed by the number of sites i can search. Also, You can customize your own site for search. Really Nice ! Following image lists the various sites.


Idealab Desktop Toolbar Posted by Hello

Few observations:
1.The Search button always remains at the left hand side of the desktop and slides vertically upwards and downwards
2. When clicked on Search button it always shows 4 search boxes. It cannot be reduced. Please make it customizable.
3. The search button will always remain on top of every application.

Yahoo! 1 GB email and YDS update

Yahoo! will be offering free 1GB storage space to its Yahoo! Mail customers, up from 250 MB. Currently, Yahoo offers 1 GB space to paid customers. Yahoo! Mail also announced that it has expanded its powerful suite of security tools with virus cleaning for free, from Norton AntiVirus™, in addition to the virus scanning already offered. Also, it will expand its Yahoo! desktop Search to search Yahoo! Messenger IM messages and Yahoo address books. It has added Yahoo! Address Book contacts to the YDS index, so you can search all of your Outlook and Yahoo! contacts in one convenient place. Like the Messenger integration, your contacts will be searchable both online and offline. Pretty Coool haa !!

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Free Goodies from Yahoo! Mobile India

Yahoo has completed ten years, and as part of the Yahoo! Mobile Megafest celebration, it is offering users here, free mobile downloads. As part of the offer consumers will be able to download select ringtones, wallpapers, polyphonic tones, mobile games, logos and picture messages free of cost through the Yahoo! India shortcode (8243) service

To avail of this service the user is required to SMS to 8243 with the word 'FREE', which will further guide the user to download free content. Users also have the option to visit Yahoo's website for more details.

More on Autolink

More on Google Autolink

Check out this 46 minute program where Doctorow, Scoble, trademark lawyer/blawger Marty Schwimmer debate the ethics and legality of Google's new Toolbar Autolink feature.

additional reading:
Danny Sullivan, Google Toolbar's AutoLink & The Need For Opt-Out
Fred von Lohmann, Who Owns Your Desktop? You Do!
Eric Goldman, Google AutoLink and Copyright Law--A Fuller Explanation
Cory Doctorow, Why You Should Love Google's Toolbar
Martin Schwimmer, Google Auto-Link Function Raises Copyright/Trademark Discussion
Robert Scoble, My New Stance on Linking Technologies, Six Guidelines to Judge; A Couple More Guidelines
Dave Winer, Google's Toolbar and Content Modification

Monday, March 21, 2005

The Blog Cycle

Anil Dash publishes a typical Blog Life Cycle
He says
there is no "blogosphere". There are hundreds
of blogospheres.

Interesting !!!

InterActive Corp to buy Ask Jeeves

InterActiveCorp, the Internet company headed by Barry Diller, is close to an agreement to acquire Ask Jeeves Inc., the fourth-largest search engine company, for about $1.9 billion (via).

Here is the NYTimes story about it

Also, Yahoo acquired Flickr.

Who is next ??

Google X lookalike

Jason Johnston blog has OSXBar. I found this link via http://shiwej.com/googlex/. However, Jason's OSXBar looks really smooth.

I will try to add one to my blog ;-)

MSN AdCenter

Access MSN Adcenter thorough this link.

However it looks like its still under development.

Update: MSN AdCenter will begin testing in two markets -- France and Singapore. Microsoft is vague about when the test will begin, saying only that it will be within the next six months. By serving as a competitor to Google Adsense and Yahoo! Overture this is expected to lower some of the costs per click.

Creating an open source firewall

http://tips.linux.com/article.pl?sid=04/11/23/2022252&tid=100&tid=47&tid=35

cool. really cool

MS & Cisco over VoIP

CIOL reports that there is clash of titans over VOIP.

"Microsoft Corp. develops software for advanced telephone systems that work over the Internet, it is on a collision course with Cisco Systems Inc., another industry titan with similar ambitions."

"
Cisco estimates that corporate business spending on VOIP will more than double to $10.9 billion in 2009 from an estimated $4.4 billion this year."

"Microsoft says that it will work with multiple VOIP hardware vendors to offer its advanced telephony software. It is betting that companies will want to enhance their communications systems by tapping into existing Microsoft software technologies, such as its network directory system, personal contacts manager, and instant messaging systems."



Cisco arranging Webinar for IP telephony

http://www.cmpnetasia.com/welcomeipc/

It covers topics like
IPC for Large Enterprises
Special IPC Leasing Program

It is conducted by experts from Cisco, HP, IBM etc


what more?? First 20 to logon to the webinar gets a copy of "Road to Telephony".

Added BlogMap

I have added BlogMap to my blog page (via). BlogMap is based on the work of Chandu and his team. Great work Chandu...

Currently , there is only 1 more blogger on the BlogMap. But i am sure that there are number of other bloggers out there. I hope everybody will take some time to add them to BlogMap. One benefit of adding yourself to BlogMap is we could arrange a Blogger dinner sometime.

Friday, March 18, 2005

More on IE 7

Amit Agarwal reports good information about IE 7. He is an indian blogger from Agra.

Does anybody knows when IE 7 will be out?

More on Odeo at ETech

Odeo podcasting software/portal demo by Evan Williams.

What is Odeo?

Firefox - Optimized for Apple G5

Before you go for it let me tell ya these are UNOFFICIAL firefox builds.

Here is the initial post about it.
http://www.beatnikpad.com started building G5-optimized Firefox, pulling from the latest nightly code. These unofficial builds have been created with optimizations for Apple’s G5 processor, found in the more recent Powermacs and the latest iMac models. They should be faster and more responsive than the official builds. Here is its citation on Mac website

AT&T & VOIP

ZDNet reports

"AT&T's Internet phone service, CallVantage, had a paltry 53,000 subscribers at the end of 2004--a lesson in how millions of dollars in marketing and a well-known brand name don't always guarantee success."

"SBC has told federal utility regulators that CallVantage will continue to operate after the merger closes, which should be this year or next. CallVantage will also likely be a centerpiece for future generations of SBC services, once the carrier's fiber-optic upgrade of its antiquated local phone network is completed, SBC executives said."

More on GoogleX

Previousy, i published about mirror sites of GoogleX. Now, other version of GoogleX is available.
Jason Schramm has come up with his own GoogleX. Really smoother !! But the images when minimized doesn't look sharp.

A suggestion to Jason. Add some line breaks at the top so that the text box and the images will be vertically centered on the page. It will increase look and feel of your page.

More on Google Ad Links

Google Adsense has introduced one more way to show ads on your site. It displays ads in the form of very neatly placed links which take you to more ads about that topic. I have added that to my blog. I really liked it. It seems like it is part of my blog. But so far it has shown links to Google Toolbar, Deskbar and Blogger only. It doesn't match my contents as such. However, if you click on the links it shows more ads but those are also not relevant to my content. I tried placing normal banner ads and it works good. So i decided to place both the ads on my blog for a while and will decide which one to keep.

Currently, i am experimenting with positions of Ads on my blog. Please forgive me if Ads on my blog trouble you a bit. Happy AdSensing !!!

Mercury News goes RSS

Mercury News has started RSS feeds for its content. I remember it was a subscription only service few days ago. Good !! i don't have to remember one more password ;-)

Google Opensource

Google Blog reports about code.google.com

We're very happy to be launching code.google.com today. To begin, we're releasing some developer-oriented libraries and tools. A number of engineers have used their 20% time to ready these tools for release, and will also help build the communities we hope will form around them.

We're also featuring links to all current Google APIs. Come check them out and if you'd like more information, please join our group, subscribe to our feeds, or if you're shy, email us directly. And happy coding!

Thanks Guys. Lots of code for this weekend.

The Open Source Projects page lists few projects from Sourceforge.net. Each project has Discuss link which takes you to the corresponding Google Groups page
The site also lists all the APIs from Google.



Free Podcasting Kit for you

Carl Franklin has published a Podcasting kit (via). It will definitely help beginners like me. I heard about Podcasting but i think i should take it seriously. If you are beginner like me first go through his What is Podcast page. The site also lists Podcast Client Software. Carl also does a Podcast named .NetRocks. Wow !!

Thursday, March 17, 2005

Universal Currency Converter

http://www.xe.com/ucc/

really Coool !!

Mysterious Magneto

Will it replace Blackberry?
Lots of buzz about it
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1234000517026446/
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,,1774726,00.asp
http://www.gigaom.com/2005/03/16/microsofts-mysterious-magneto/

Amazing use of Amazon WebServices

Check this out http://amaztype.tha.jp/US/Books/Title?q=Dev

It uses Amazon web services to search the item provided and piles it up. Very interesting !!

Use your own search items at http://amaztype.tha.jp

Sharing videos, clips, trailers and fun

Metacafe is a cool community for sharing the best video clips, trailers, games and funny stuff available on the Internet. Just install it and start getting new content every day, delivered straight to your computer. You can customize your experience by selecting channels and filtering content. Metacafe is ad free: No adware, spyware or pop ups.

Now MP3 Player Calls on VoIP

Ezmax of South Korea is building a MP3 player which allows you to to make VoIP calls by connecting the device a PC using a USB 2.0. In addition, the device is capable of voice recording, comes with an FM radio.

More at PCWorld (Via)

Synergy - Multiple computers single keyboard and mouse

Synergy lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware. It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk since each system uses its own monitor(s).

Synergy is open source and released under the GNU Public License (GPL).

Redirecting the mouse and keyboard is as simple as moving the mouse off the edge of your screen. Synergy also merges the clipboards of all the systems into one, allowing cut-and-paste between systems. Furthermore, it synchronizes screen savers so they all start and stop together and, if screen locking is enabled, only one screen requires a password to unlock them all. Learn more about how it works.


Yahoo! 360� -

Yahoo! 360� - What is Yahoo! 360�? New social networking tool from yahoo. It offers facilities like
Blog- Create your own blog or online journal. Share thoughts, ideas, experiences, pictures.
Mobile- Send text and photos from your mobile phone to your blog.
Photos- Let your friends view your Yahoo! Photos albums
Lists- Recommend books, music, movies, TV shows
Blast- Share a quick communication your friends can reply to -- an idea, attitude, question, or web link.
LAUNCHcast Station- Let your friends listen to your Yahoo! Music station.
Reviews- Rate and review local restaurants and businesses.

Badnews is it is not open for public yet. But you can register for
Beta waiting list.



Yahoo buying Flickr ??

alarm:clock alarms yet another hint about Yahoo buying Flickr.
Here are some links where the buzz is going on

http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/03/yahoo_360_yahoo.php
http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2005/02/scoop_siliconva.php

Interesting point to note is that Flickr is still in Beta. :-)


Microsoft Office Communicator 2005

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 is an enterprise messenger that integrates communications capabilities (including instant messaging, rich presence, PC-based voice and video, Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), and enterprise telephony) with productivity and other communications applications.

Microsoft Office Communicator 2005 will be the recommended client for Microsoft Office Live Communications Server 2005, which provides a standards-based, enterprise-grade, instant messaging (IM) solution and an extensible, real-time collaboration platform to connect people, information, and business processes seamlessly in real time.

For more info check this post on MSDN blog

Google X Vanishes

The new baby from Google labs is no longer visible. still u wanna look at it ? check it out at these mirror sites
http://home.comcast.net/~rymcvpics/googlex.htm
http://www.theplaceforitall.com/googlex/

MacDaily points out the Google Labs Disclaimer which says

These technologies are still in the beginning stages of development, so they may disappear without warning or perform erratically. If something's not working on this page, please come back and try it again later.

ZDNET reports that
Apple has sought patent protection for the "Genie Effect" used in the Dock.

Separately, Apple and Google have a licensing deal for search. Google provides a resident search box in Apple's Safari Web browser.

Important point to note here is the blog entry on official GoogleBlog in not taken down. very Neat ! :-)


Wednesday, March 16, 2005

Password reminder problem

Kevin Fox writes about typical password forgot scenario. I think almost everybody goes through this scenario when they visit any site after 2-3 week interval.

Currently, IE and Firefox both provide facility to remember password for any site. Firefox has a very good UI for it. You can easily remove any stored password if you want. Maybe Microsoft will introduce such kinda feature in IE 7. The problem with this is if anybody has access to my machine they can visit my account. But this functionality is really handy for sites like MercuryNews.

Toolbar Developers(Google, Yahoo, MSN, ......) should consider this opportunity. This will definitely enrich the browsing experience of users.

Wanna Free Gmail Invitation


As a part of promoting my blog i am offering free invitations.
Just drop your email address in the comments area and write your view about my blog. If you have a blog add me in your blogroll and do link me from your site ifyou findmy articles interesting.
There is discussion going out about GMail is going public very soon. So Hurry up and book that special email id of yours. ;-)

Happy Blogging

iPod Etiquetts

I am planning to buy an iPod. may be i will go for iPod-shuffle. Knowing this a friend forwarded iPod etiquetts to me.

Remove both earbuds:
  • During a job interview
  • Taking your driver’s test
  • When your sweetie calls

Remove one earbud:
  • Listening for your flight
  • Buying groceries
  • When a coworker calls

Leave ’em in:
  • Visiting the inlaws
  • At the laundromat
  • When your boss calls
I am planning to update this list with more items. Plz leave ur suggestions in comment area.


Pay via Mobile Phones

Mobile phone payments for both physical goods and digital content are set to become a mass-market reality. Don't believe? Check this out (via). Thearticle says

Vodafone has already begun contacting service providers to clarify that such services will now be allowed to launch. The operator gives examples of music downloads via the Internet, ticketing, and films delivered to an email address, all paid for via premium SMS. Aggregators like MX Telecom have also begun contacting clients.

does that mean Mobiles will replace our wallets? Nice !
Hey mobile crazy generation, r u ready for it?

Google X

New product from Google Labs - GoogleX
More details on GoogleBlog

lets see when it replaces the official google homepage ?

Butler - Hurting Google where it feels most

IT seems some people are really angry about Google releasing Autolink feature with Google Toolbar. Found this article on Google Blogoscoped which displayes a photo of page which
1. It links to Google's competitors
2. Removes ads on most Google pages
3. Links to other book sites on Google Print and removes google's link

Future versions are planned to also remove ads in Gmail. This battle of "Autolink" is getting hotter. So far it was limited to war of words on blogosphere where bloggers like Scoble, Tim Bray and others expressed their view about autolinking. This is first time anybody has come up with a tool to "hurt" Google and its main revenue generation source - Ads. Lets see how google reacts to this issue. I think they may come up with some standard on this issue like they introduced "nofollow" tag.

Is GMail out ?

Google Blogoscoped posted an image showing a link on Google Homepage to open account with Gmail. It seems they are planning to make yet another product open to public. Interesting point to see would be whether they still call it Gmail Beta. Lets see.

Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Must Have Software List

Following is a list of softwares who always resident on my machine(Windows XP):
1. Firefox 1.1
Installed with Extensions

Theme

2. OpenOffice 2 Beta

3. IrfanView and Picasa 2- great softwares for photo management

4. ATNotes - Sticky Notes freeware

5. SmartFTP

6. Yahoo Messenger

7. Free Download Manager

8. Winzip 9

10. Wordweb Dictionary

11. AdAware Se Personal Edition

and our infrastructure people install other softwares like MS Visual Studio.Net, Oracle 9 Client and other stuff so that we could actually work.

I am reviewing few softwares and will publish info about them soon.

Hello Blogosphere

Hello Blogosphere,

This is my first blog entry and my first step into your world. I am planning to publish interesting material found while browsing through the internet. I promise you to provide good food for thought.

Do post your comments and visit often.

Stay Tuned,
ByteBuzzer