Recent Addiction

I have a natural affinity to Physics. I remember my Physics lessons vividly and still occasionally get time to read something on the same line. Lucky that I either got a good Physics teacher at school or compensated that in my tuition classes. My Physics teacher used to start every unit with this statement: "What is Light? Define light?" After many students trying to guess, he would say, "Light is nothing but Light!". Experiments used to amuse me, I liked the way how candle flame used to get inverted through the convex lens and the Pendulum experiments.

Recently one of my friends tweeted about this new addiction, yeah, it's a game! Gravity Master (http://www.gravitymaster.net/),a game based on Physics. You have a rolling ball, you have to move the ball to the glowing black circles. That's it. Looks simple. Now it's left to your imagination how you reach the destination. Drawing lines, shapes are all left to one's imagination. My room mates, friends and many around me started to play. Incidentally I introduced my friend and she sat thro the night and mailed me in the morning that she completed 21 level in one stretch.

So addictive it is! Right now, I'm stuck with 23 and really need a mouse to play it, because it's hard to work with this insensitive touch pad mouse. Try it, have fun.

P.S: If you are a computer scientist don't miss Box 2D and Crayon Physics in the "Thanks To" section.

Why should I be reborn?

Reborn Digitally...

First try answering who you are? or who I'm? Let me take the task of identifying the person who is named "vijesh". I'm being dumb and dependent on (my favorite) search engine Google. I type in "vijesh" (quotes for clarity) in the search box and hit search. The screen reloads in 0.04 sec. Look my blog is there at the second place as on this date. Scanning down, there is one that points to my blogger profile page, that gives some more information about me.

Here is an interesting example of my friend or rather many of them did. When her dad sends them a matrimony profile, via email. Simple! they just log into Orkut (atleast its popular in India). Use the search effectively, spell the groom name and his city correctly to find the target. Ok fine, after getting the profile, go to the communities section and see which company interest group he is a part of. This will cross verify if he's the right groom. Next scan his photos, then his scrapbook, scrutinies his friends and their scrap for his reply. :) His testimonials. (you can't guess how deep the rabbit hole is...) Next get hold of her friend in the same organization and ask them if they knew some details about him.

This way, and more interesting ways an online identity of a person can be sketched. What is his/her interest? What is their favorite, their location based information, their employer (Linked In). Using such public data, one can form a digital image of any Y. Even worse they can know what one is doing right now if they are active in twitter. Online spiders could use this identity for making the online experience better.

Humm, All of them are voluntary by the person. It is oneself who is making these data public and explicit. So we don't have anyone to blame about. So should there be a trade off between whats public and whats private? Maybe yes! Understand a simple phenomenon, when its there for any bot to find, then anyone (yes literal sense anyone who can connect to the Internet) can view your details. So you can consistently use a nick name! Can you recollect how many user accounts you have created in those numerous number of social networking sites, web portals, user accounts to download software? I cannot even guess a number. Its so much, even maintaining passwords has become a pain in the ass. Thanks to those openID's its much more simple now.

Try this, take a paper and do all hacks known to get your identity yourself. You will be surprised to note the amount of details.

So be responsible, know what you are on the Internet.

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.

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.