Google + Yahoo + AdSense = Better Web

A Small Step for Man, A Giant Leap for Mankind!
-Neil Armstrong

This time it was Jerry Yang! Earlier in the week, Google announced that it will share its AdSense for search and AdSense for web page content on their US and Canadian market. Also more interesting was their interoperability in instant messaging service.

Official blog post.

Desktop

Desktop has many interpretations. Here I refer to the graphical home page when every operating system boots up. Literally, its the first screen from which the users starts using the system and will the last screen from where the user stops using the system. A desktop would contain a background, few icons, taskbar and few widgets (occasionally). Have a look at what one of my colleague's desktop.

Its an art to maintain a Desktop. Just ask your friends to send their desktop snapshots, you can keep on enjoying it for hours. There are so many different kind of desktops that are around us, some I have observed are, Default desktops are ones those have their default wallpaper and settings when they are shipped. There would be icons flooding around the screen. Many project managers and HR's would be having this (You can wonder why... :)). Default - but changed desktops they are those where the wallpaper of the desktop would be changed but set to some of the default set provided already. I guess managers would have this kind of desktop. Plain desktops are those with a plain background (may be a selected color is filled, usually would be a dark color) and few set of icons will be are present. This gives a clear visibility of the icons that are present. I guess technical lead would have such desktops. Next would be some self portrait desktop where a picture of yourself that came around good in the last picnic or last family party would be seen. Come on no guesses, only a girls desktop would look like this. Some times they keep flower occupying the screen, cute puppies and kittens also get a place. A guys desktop would have a cool sports car or a freighting bike poster else a sports person or some latest bollywood heroine. Mr.Organized desktop, this is some kind of professional desktop that has things organized. Like similar icons are grouped and pushed to one end of the screen. Recycle bin in bottom right corner and few set of application launches are at one corner. These kind of desktops can be seen with some experienced software engineers who are slight geeks who doesn't want to waste time in searching. Also many are launched using keyboard shortcuts, since mouse clicks are costly. What a mess desktop, ah ahh here is the famous category of desktops. They can be spotted at developers pc's. :)

There are lot of tools available to organize them and give a new look and feel often. But only a few are using them. Finally if at all these 2D desktops are bored, try looking at future desktops like bumptop

You got some more interesting desktops, write back to me!

Energy Conservation

Here is a mail that hit my mailbox this afternoon. With prior permission from its owner taking it online. Thanks Harshad for taking effort and sending this across. We will do our part! As a part of this, I will create a notification program initially to remind people to switch of their work stations during evening hours by sending out an email. Just in case you want to be on the list, just drop me a comment or mail - kvijesh at gmail dot com

>>> Harshad Sovani 10/25/07 12:17 PM >>>
Hi folks,

You may have heard about the global warming process umpteen times. But, now these words have become so common that we turn a deaf ear to the appeals made to us to conserve energy.

I routinely come across so many systems in our office where our colleagues keep their systems and monitors turned on when they've left office. I've been turning off all the monitors I come across on the way to the exit. Sometimes, I'm tempted to just press the power button and just switch off the systems, but obviously cant do that! I'm amazed at how ignorant and careless we could be! I asked one of our colleagues why he wont shut off the system as left office for the weekend, and pat came the reply 'Ah.. who will do that man? Why should I do it? I've to anyway use it on Monday!! '

Would we do the same had it been in our homes? Definitely not! Why? To cut down on our electricity bills. So, why not here? Electricity bills will be cut down definitely, but more than that it should be done as a part of an effort towards conserving energy.

There are a number of articles out there on the web on global warming and energy conservation. Just to list a couple of them:

Natures-Switch
How-Your-Computer-and-TV-Add-to-Your-Energy-Bills
Wiki

Some of the many things that we can do, we must do:

• Switch off your monitor when you dont require - when going out for meetings, when going for lunch, when checking out of office. An easier solution is to use power management in your system to switch off monitor automatically after inactivity of 2 to 5 minutes.
• Hibernate your systems / put them in sleep mode when you leave office.
• Switch off monitors in other cubes when you see that there's nobody occupying the cube (doesnt matter whose cube it is, wont do any harm!).
• Try to conserve energy everywhere.. not just in office.. but at homes.. yours and others.. switch off fans, lights, TVs when not in use.
• Spread the word and follow it religiously
  

I hope none of us will simply ignore this mail, and will do our bit as a responsible human being to save our planet from meltdown.

Cheers!
~ harshad

Black Out

Yes, this would be my first step towards energy saving. Its obvious fact that white pixel (RGB - FFFFFF) consumes more power than dark pixel (RGB - 000000). Hence even Google made its Homepage blacked out for one hour in San Francisco Bay Area. This is an on going effort with lightsoutsf if you fellow bloggers also are interested join us. I will remain like this for some time!

Further on this effort I thinking on ways to save power, I created a custom theme on Gnome that blacked out 80% of my monitor display. Now other applications also have a view like my favorite terminal. What else can you think of saving energy. Open to comments.

ELCOT Student Laptop / Desktop Schemes

Good news finally for all students of schools and colleges of Tamilnadu (state) India. ELCOT (Electronic Corporation of Tamilnadu Limited) has announced "Student Laptop Scheme" that sells laptops with decent configuration with reasonably cheaper price when compared to the Indian market. All of the are preloaded with Suse Linux (yeppee its from Novell) and many other open source software bundles like Open office, Mozilla, GIMP, Postgres and more. This is good news for the student community where they can save nearly 10,000/- when compared to market price.

• Intel Core duo T2300 @ 1.66Ghz(Intel Core Duo Processor / 1.66 Ghz Clock Speed with 2 MB L2 Cache running at 667 Mhz FSB.)
• LCD : 15 XGA
• Chipset : Intel 945GM
• 1 GB DDR II Memory
• 120GB HDD
• Opticals : DVD+/-RW
• FSB : 667Mhz
• Gfx : Intel GMA 950
• HDDs : 120 GB
• bla bla bla accessories
  

This cost Rs 31,250.00 which is very attractive.

They also offer Desktops, Laser Printer, Projectors, Digital cameras at a cheap price when compared to market. Thanks for the Tamilnadu government to taking such initiatives. Rush for your piece, FCFS basic. Students, are you planning for a Sony Viao, DELL Vostro? then think again. :)

Sankar earlier wrote on ELCOT adopting Suse Linux and cost containment for it.

Office Suite - Battle Ground

Few years back, I used to hit the browsing center to get some materials data from internet for my Assignment or Packages (I know it might sound ironic, but still believe it). I need to do it quick and save money. But as soon I have opened multiple sites and try copying the contents to a word processor, so that I can save it as a single file! Baammm! You will get a prompt saying bla bla bla. The software would actually not work. Which will screw you up! I visioned those times, why can't I do this editing, processing online and save the file to my floppy. But now I can.

Yes its possible through online web applications like Google Docs, Zimbra, Writely, Zoho and more. I would say they are coolest online apps available on date. With the internet infrastructure they work like offline apps. Responsive, neat and more cool sharing options that you don find in offline apps. I mostly use Google Apps for the majority of the time. I like the latest addition of Google Presentation. I quickly created a presentation and published it here. Have a look at it.

Here are some of the points I infer:

• Offline Office applications are becoming bulkier and costlier for user to get and deploy.
  
• It is very evident that almost 80% of the offline apps users use only the basic options available in those spreadsheets, Word processors, etc,.
• Growth in Internet infracture has mode offline apps a step behind.
• Online apps are Free! :)
• Good tools for startups to save money.
  
• They are quick and contains most of the basic feature needed for a primitive user.
• Better sharing which is well explained in this Google video.
• Popular vendor are migrating their softwares to online clones. IMB made its Lotus Symphony free. Yahoo buys Zimbra. Microsoft brings Office live.

Now my vision would be a computer as a hardware device without a software preloaded on it. Let your operating system be online, switch on the machine and connect to your online space and work. Windows becomes Windows Online, SUSE Linux online why not even Google OS.

Yahoo Hackday - Bangalore

Yahoo hack day India is announced. It happens right here in Bangalore. This is the first external hack day in India I guess. So block your seats soon. If I get it right, I will meet you there.

Register here

FOSS.IN - They Are Back

It was Barcamp last month! Here is one such announcements. FOSS.IN is one of the world's largest and most focussed FOSS events, held annually India. Over the years, it has attracted thousands of participants, and the speaker roster reads like a "Who's Who" of FOSS contributors from across the world. Held at IISc, Bangalore. Here is the official announcement. Subscribe to their feed more updates.

Note: Extracts from http://foss.in/

Awake

No! I was not sleeping or forgot the fact that I need to write something here. Every week I tried to post and I was not able to. Held up on certain things! Lots to write from my side of the month. But to begin with here is a coffee code conversation with one of my colleague here. He marched to the white board and wrote this,

{
printf("suresh\0kumar");
printf("12345\06789");
}

doesn't it look simple. try your C skills on this. Solution at the end.

In my office one can see the friendly chameleon sketches stuck in many walls. Some even started coloring them with their own style. :) The SUSE hack week started this Monday (June 25th). Look this video of how it really started :). I was just reading & listening to some of the ideas. They looked cool hacks.

An interesting thought struck me yesterday night. Most corporate citizens have X allowance and Y allowance, so here is one to include in that boring list. "Auto Allowance" - applicable for Bangalore makkal alone. But now the question arises how will you reclaim this allowance, since the Finance dept will ask for the bills. I have a suggestion for that too. Install prepaid tickets issuing counters at very close proximity (say every BMTC Bus stop). Let it be automated, where we type in and get the ticket. Also pay the autowala with the prepaid amount. But how will you be sure of the genuineness of the tickets. Suggestions?

Next bloggers around me were really active and wrote many. Out of them few I found interesting like this and this and this. I had been very dormant when compared.

I saw Shivaji on the 3rd day, Our Super Star is back at his best. A through full time entertainment of 180 mins. Vivek's comedy, Music, screenplay, dialog, theme everything was good. For a fan its eternity after watching this film. A nice review was here and here

solution: suresh12345789
because 067 is ascii equivalent of 7 in octet.

P.S: Suggestions/Feedback/Critics/Anything else ↴ leave a comment

In Love of NUMB3RS

This post will definitely help fellow Bloggers to enhance their blogging experience and might motivate new bloggers!

Long since I have kept track of many Google's beta. Once such was this "Google Analytics". Analytics is a free service offered by Google that generates detailed statistics about the visitors to a website. Its main highlight is that a webmaster can optimize their AdWords advertisement and marketing campaigns through the use of Google Analytics's analysis of where the visitors came from, how long they stayed on the website and their geographical position. Today my older interface was automatically migrated to new Ajax rich interface. That I fell in love with immediately.

You get what you need. Thought I don host a commercial website, the figures that are displayed make me understand about the visitor who visit my blog. Some new features that caught my eye was Ajax rich User experience. The graphs and dimensional summary I get regarding my blog. My favorite of the all is the export as pdf option. For the report I give a perfect 10. Of late I was googling of how to upload files in blogger. The first link said bloggers disallow uploading files for security reason. But I din want to use third party servers to host my file. Finally with a little scratch of my head I found a method and uploaded my pdf report here.


Quick Glances:

• I found this post on Universal search interesting.
• Here is my Feed Reader. All news & blogs are read using it.

Zero's & One's

0's & 1's - for some this might look as a familiar title, for some its strange.

Yes today, I decided to write up what that actually surrounds us. In a warm up to this post, I asked few of my friends and colleagues as what surrounds them? One said "people", one said "system", one said "Nothing" :) and even one said, "anna... Heavy lunch... Thookam na...". So people have different view to it. Even some strange on me, when I asked them this question. But my view was different. I realize and see 0's and 1's surrounding us. My ethereal tracker said 95 packets crossed in and out of my Ethernet with my system in idle state. So everything are composed of 0's & 1's. For every Phone call we receive, Every mail we do, every song we listen its composed of 0's & 1's. So we haven't realized the importance of them. Now the question is are there sufficient 0's & 1's to satisfy our need? The present says yes, but the future?

Let me take up one small area the amount of 0's & 1's we consume daily. On an average a Software Engineer nerd, would go about consuming the following ways. So, I consider me as a test subject. I send up to 5-10 personal emails a day, it reaches around 30 recipients. I randomly chose a mail and found it had 382 characters, so its totally 8(mails) * 30(recipients) * 382(char) = 91680(chars). So its almost 91kb of data. Some increase exponentially as mail threads increase. I can recollect my class discussions going up to 80-90 replies. I atleast post a blog weekly. I get news alerts, my rss feeds, orkut scraps/communities Chat conversations I make, I lines of code (obviously less) and many more. So on an average an individual consumes/produces around 10-15mb of digital data. Now consider the average number of internet users. Billions! So think of the Digital data thats produces every second, its stagerring. Will there be resources to sustain it. We hope we have.

Now what if these resources get depleted one day! Is "The Matrix" a reality. yes of course, if we move at this pace. We might be ruled by others. Just because data and computation has increased around us. Research say, the average temperature would increase by 10 degree by 2080, some large ice caps melt and increase sea level. Where are we heading too?

Updates:

• Interesting links are bookmarked in "Useful Scribbles" section at the right.
• Many friends entered blogosphere.
  
• In the verge of beginning my professional career.
  
• Graduation May 28th.