WebVibz Sensing the Vibrations/News/Ajax/Web 2.0/Google/Microsoft/Technology/Linux

Friday, January 20, 2006

[-] Project Windstone - a Universal Passport

What is Windstone?
Windstone is a set of standards and formats used to exchange information in a secure way. Think of it like this: Two students in a classroom want to talk to each other but can't talk to each other normally because other classmates and the teacher can hear what they're saying. If the two students pass notes, the other students and the teacher cannot overhear what they're saying, but if someone looks at the note, they know what's going on. If the two students were to, say, create a kind of secret code to write to each other, they can talk and nobody but them knows what they're talking about.

This is the basis of Windstone. Two WebSites need to talk to each other but don't want anybody to overhear, so they use a secret code (encryption) to talk to each other that only the two WebSites know and understand.

What Can Windstone Do For My Site?
There is literally a host of benefits of using Windstone. Namely, universal login and registration. Windstone issues a kind of drivers license to a person. That person can use that drivers license to drive all over the Internet and maybe even your WebSite. If your WebSite accepts the Windstone drivers license, then the user can simply let you know that they're going to drive on your roads and go along their merry way. Instead of issuing your own drivers license to the user, you just simply make a note of their drivers license number and let them be on their way. This way the user doesn't have to keep getting a new drivers license every time they want to use a WebSite (e.g. registering on your site).

Another major feature is universal messaging. This is like being able to write a letter to someone and the message follows them. You write a letter, send it off, and the message finds the person you were writing to and gives itself to them.

What Can Windstone Do For the Regular User?
One registration for all WebSites, for everything you need to do, and one password. You use your existing Email address as your username (you do know your Email address, right?). No juggling large amounts of usernames, passwords, screen names, contact lists, messenger programs, etc. Simplify. That's what we have computers for.

Visit Project Windstone at http://windstone.x-mirror.com/

TechnoratiTags:Internet ,Computers+and+Internet,web,Privacy

posted by lord Sam at 10:25 AM |
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Thursday, January 19, 2006

[-] Indian States Monitoring Cybercafe Users

BANGALORE, India - The southern Indian state of Kerala will join two other states in requiring cybercafes to record the names and addresses of their customers in an effort to combat online fraud, virus attacks and terrorism, an official said Tuesday.The new rules would require cybercafes to verify the identities of Internet surfers and record their home addresses and visiting times, said M. Vijayanunni, the top administrator of Kerala's government."Our police are trying to learn from the experience of our neighboring states and monitor cybercafes better," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.
Two Indian states — Karnataka and Gujarat — have imposed similar rules, hoping such records would help trace threatening e-mails or unauthorized credit-card transactions. Two other states, Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra, do some monitoring of cybercafes without having specific laws.Several other Asian countries and cities, most prominently China, require registration at cybercafes. Italy is the only European Union country to require Internet cafes to record ID information, but nonmember Switzerland does require that customers show ID.All Internet surfing leaves an electronic trail that can be traced to the computer it came from. But police need other records to trace the person that used the computer at a specified time.In December, an unidentified Internet user sent a hoax e-mail to a U.S. diplomatic mission claiming a bomb would go off in India's Parliament.The building was evacuated amid panic.The mail was later traced to a cybercafe in the town of Palayamkottai in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, but the sender has not been caught yet.Privacy advocates question the effectiveness of record keeping — which they say is hard to enforce."Such rules have proved to be ineffective and enjoy little support on the ground," said cyberlaw expert Pavan Duggal. "It is also very difficult to implement them."
Source

posted by haris at 3:22 PM |
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Wednesday, January 18, 2006

[-] Under Attack -The $million Homepage

The wildly successful pixel-powered Web page of a British university student is coming under increasingly intense DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks trying to knock down the profitable brainstorm.Check it out at Million Dollar Homepage.
Alex Tew, who created The Million Dollar Homepage to finance his schooling, has been selling pixels for $1 each since September and auctioned the last 1,000 pixels earlier this week on eBay. The technicolor site resembles a well-traveled suitcase covered with stickers, ranging from Che Guevara's image to a stop-smoking ad to a yellow smiley, all leading to paid links.
Wide media coverage of the 21-year-old's project has caused high traffic to the site. At times, it has surged to 200 megabits per second.

The idea: turn his home page into a billboard made up of a million dots, and sell them for a dollar a dot to anyone who wants to put up their logo.A 10-by-10 dot square, roughly the size of a letter of type, costs $A136.He sold a few to his brothers and some friends, and when he had made $A1,365, he issued a press release.That was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites to casinos to real estate agents to The Times of London were putting up real cash for pixels, with links to their own sites.
So far they have bought up 911,800 pixels.

posted by lord Sam at 8:47 PM |
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006

[-] Firefox Next

The first alpha version of Mozilla Firefox 2 codenamed "Bon Echo" will be released on February 10, 2006 while the final public release of Firefox 2.0 is expected in middle of this year.Mozilla plans to have an early alpha version of Firefox 2.0 in users hands by February, with builds of Firefox, Camino and Thunderbird for Macs running on Intel processors available the following month, recent
statements from company developers indicate(Betanews).For more visit mozilla wiki. Continuing the tradition, Firefox 2 will use a pre-release code name taken from a public park. Bon Echo Provincial Park is located in Ontario, Canada. The name literally translates to "good echo".Mozilla Firefox 2.0 will have the following new features / improvements:( Firefox 2 Feature List Brainstorming):

Provide an easy access to History and Bookmarks, enhancments to Live Bookmarks
Tabbed
browsing UI improvements - Aim is to decrease the learning curve for
new users and make the whole tabs approach more intuitive.
Improve the process of adding new RSS feeds
Extension Manager enhancements - option to blacklist firefox extensions
Search Engine UI improvements - make adding search keywords more easy. Simplify adding or deleting search engines.

Technorati Tags: firefox+2

posted by haris at 9:29 PM |
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[-] Performancing 1.0.1

I was checking some blogger tools ...mmm I found a sleeky tool that can be addon to your (our) favor Firfox buddy.I blog from this publisher -"Performancing" for Firefox.Performancing is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.
Add Technorato tags,browse while you blog,you can save the notes,add custom logins,add style sheets,all those rich text formatting you can get the necessary arsenals for free.Just drag the contents(even pictures!) from the window above your editor and drop it ,its cool!!The blogger editor takes a long time to load for me,but this tool is gonna save my time.Sound tool in a sound browser. No much extra load for browser too.I just love this tool as its easy for taking quotes from other sites.Check out yourself ,you will definitely like it.For those designers out there,the makers are inviting for $1000 Peformancing Firefox Campaign Competition! Link
Screenshots:

Technorati Tags: Blog, tool, Mozilla

posted by haris at 8:54 PM |
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[-] Bleezer

I m blogging from Bleezer ,which is a powerful blogging client.Good n too simple
* Blog from anywhere. Work on Windows, OS X, and Linux.
* Work with any blogging service. As many as you want, even Blogger.
* Add tags for any tag service. Technorati, del.icio.us, or anything else.(I personally liked itdue to its ease)
* Create custom markup. Define your own key combinations for custom HTML markup.
* Spell check. Ensure everything is speeled spelled ok.
* Advertise. Ping Technorati, weblogs.com, ping-o-matic, Pingoat, or any other service.
* Work online or offline. Compose posts offline and post them when you want to.
*And its Free..
*U can Upload Files(In some tools it maynot work

Technorati: Blogging Tool
del.icio.us: Blogging Tool

posted by haris at 5:17 PM |
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Saturday, January 14, 2006

[-] Billy Goes Indie

Virtual India is a research project by Microsoft Research India, in collaboration with the Government of India's Department of Science and Technology, powered by Microsoft Virtual Earth technology .A multilingual map on India.Mera Bharat Mahan Billy dude done a good job.Business at the speed of Indian streets?.They currently have fairly limited data -- 1:1M India-wide data as well as 1:8000 Bangalore city data.The site can be viewed in English,Hindi,Kannada,Tamil.The language on map is available on Kannada .Minister Maaran made his success in making Tamilian map on net.Even though the underlying technology can scale very well,the current site is fairly small and implemented on 3 servers (yup the site is too slow for me)-- and can easily get swamped if too many people try to use the system. They have not yet enabled the multi-lingual soft keyboard or the ability to *add* public pushpins.They have street-level maps only of Bangalore (you can zoom down to Bangalore and view the street map of Bangalore in multiple languages).This is a research prototype and the company isworking closely with the Survey of India on this project. With Virtual India you can add and edit places that are seen by all VI users.View maps of India in English,Kannada,Hindi,Tamil.When will it be in Malayalm??Hey Google do u hear??More here

posted by haris at 9:39 PM |
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Friday, January 13, 2006

[-] A must eCondom

Safer surf,thats what firefox provides,where IE can't.Users are suffocated with adwares,spywares,unwanted BHOs(BrowserHelpObjects) due to the blue surfer.The "Always use protection" Firefox ad, showing a condom wrapped with the Firefox logo, tried to associate Firefox with safe sex. And now, the developers of Registry Cleaner are trying a similar trick to protect IE - they have actually created a condom for IE!!.Adware, spyware, malware, keyloggers, rootkits.... Internet browsing is becoming more and more dangerous.AMUST eCondom for Microsoft Internet Explorer is designed to make your Internet browsing safer, and reduce your exposure to malicious web sites. A recently discovered IE .WMF Exploit in Microsoft Windows can be used to infect a PC with spyware and currently there is no official patch available for the flaw. This is a so-called "0-day vulnerability" because exploits for the vulnerability appeared before any updates or patches were available.eCondom tries to block access to malicious web sites that use the latest, yet not fixed by Microsoft , vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer.

eCondom reduces and eliminates the risks by allowing you to run Internet Explorer in a SafeBrowse™ mode.To be clear, eCondom is a supplement to, rather than a replacement for, other security products for your computer -- antivirus, antispyware, firewall, keyloggers, rootkit, latest Windows and MSIE updates, and other protections. What eCondom does is limit the potential damage of malware to a user account rather than your entire system.Microsoft is planning to introduce a new feature called Internet Explorer "Protected Mode" in the next version of Windows - Windows Vista. eCondom offers you the same "Safe Mode" functionality for Windows XP today.Installation is recommended.econdom is free.Download.
A review can be read here

posted by haris at 9:43 PM |
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Thursday, January 12, 2006

[-] YahooMusic adds Webjay

Yahoo with its "talent" shopping spreads its business in online music.Yahoo acquires Webjay,a playlist community site and playlist authoring tool which exports XSPF playlists.Yahoo has its Yahoo! Music Engine,the Windows-based client software for Yahoo! Music, which uses XSPF as its native playlist format.A couple years back, Lucas Gonze created Webjay, a site for easy creation and playback of playlists from the Web. Users can create playlists using music/audio/video from around the Web (with a simple Web form, from scraping a Web page, or with a fancy Ajax interface created by a 3rd party using Webjay APIs), share them with others, include them on their Web sites, browse other users playlists, play the playlists in any media player, or cannibalize the playlists to create new ones.MP3 players like WinAmp, iTunes, RealOne, and Windows Media Player can be given a list of songs to play. Most of the time the songs are on your computer, but they can also be on the web. Webjay is all about playlists of songs on the web.Playlists that link to web-based files are portable -- anyone with an MP3 player and an internet connection can create and swap playlists without having to transfer the actual songs themselves. This means you can email your small playlist file (actually just a specially formatted text file) to your friend, post it on your web site, or take it with you to work.But DO NOT POST LINKS TO UNAUTHORIZED SONGS!!,Webjay says.Eventhough it had not raised any outside capital, and is based in Honolulu, Hawaii,the man behind the site is well deserved for an undisclosed amount from Yahoo (and a shift to California)to his dedication to a Web2.0 based webapp.I think Yahoo need to compete with Apples iTunes.
Its based on Xspf("spiff").XSPF is the XML format for sharing playlists.It is open portable well-engineered .Its a playlist format like M3U,XML like RSS,MIME type application/xspf+xml.
If u need more info on xspf go here.Yahoo Groups link
mmm a small hack !
Append "?Accept=text/xml" to any XSPF URL and you'll get XML formatted in the way you need.Just as reading an rss link inside a browser(Try to open rss feed link in browser )
eg:-http://webjay.org/by/lucas_gonze/organism.xspf?Accept=text/xml
Download some mp3s from net and hav fun......

posted by haris at 5:08 PM |
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Saturday, January 07, 2006

[-] Yep Its Out

But not for linux :( ?.The Google pack is for Winxp .The pack is out for those who find difficult to install software in Windows !!!!.The pack contain 13 google gifts -6 of them Google products ,others common home s/w s.Norton Antivirus 2005 (special edition) and Adaware notable is there(Google's Ad Sense?).Download for free.Future download arena.I donnn care abt those softwares.But the way its been installed...mm Hurray I got the Microsoft's red face on my desktop.They way it happens..Here is the secret.

""BITS transfers files using leftover bandwidth. For example, if you are currently using 60 percent of your bandwidth, BITS will only use the remaining 40 percent. BITS also maintains file transfers when a network disconnection occurs, or a computer needs to be restarted: When the network connection is re-established, BITS will continue where it left off.""Link

I installed Google PackScreensaver(same as My Pictures Slideshow).Easy install.But online install.The idea is nice(Tughlaqian) !!.Earlier we hav to download and then install.But now install any softwares from online directly (as messenger installs ).Anyway google knows OS secrets.Hackin Xp and make use of it.The Google will update its pack.We can select softwares only if we want.The google pack is for broadband users :(.No forced AIO package.But I didnt see the downloaded files.Where is the installer files downloaded to the disk??.Its not in the temp folder.Larry Page might have thought,why should waste space?.May be fear of freeware piracy!The softares are updating frequently.But google can provide updates ?.We will be forced to go to vendor site as usual?.No need,Google Updater grabs the latest updates and installs everything automatically, for multiple vendors (that they support).No pop-ups, no stepping on other installations.
I donn like the pack personally.I get softwares from magazine cds or download manually.What will I do after formatting my system?.Go for google pack instead of backup cds?Nah!!

posted by haris at 8:24 PM |
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Friday, January 06, 2006

[-] A small step for Google.....

Godfathers of Google , Sergey Brin and Larry Page, were named as “Men of the Year” for 2005 by Financial times.Both 32, were picked for the distinction because of the effects their 7-year-old company has had on Internet users in the past 12 months, the global business news outlet said. Google has become the panacea for those knowledge hungry people.It had provided information to those will say “I feel Lucky”! Google is not a company concentrating on search engine only,but also a numerous ventures has been undertaken for promoting business in the Internet market. Its "soaring stock price" didn't hurt either, the newspaper noted. Google's stock market value has climbed to nearly $130 billion, positioning it close to IBM and outranked only by Intel and Microsoft among its technology industry rivals.

“The most esteemed researcher at Stanford [University] 10 years ago didn’t have the kind of access to information that somebody who is close to an internet café in Bangladesh has today,” said Mr Brin.

Ofcourse they are to be the end-of-year accolade for last year.The numerous amount of services they have done for the tech sector is really rewarded.I wonder if Google wasnt here in the cyberworld,we might be just another unsatisfied retro “Yahooligans”.

Technology meets society through market.The business world has its own aim in the sense of blind profit making.Google has become one of the top competitors in the Internet market.Does it lead to monopoly where people only use Google search ? I m not a financial xpert.But anxious about future.Google is the leader of open source revolution.I donno whether thats a biz play..

Online reports speculated that Google will be offering up videos for sale on the internet and going into content partnerships with CBS, ITN and the National Basketball Association.The pay-per-download video service, dubbed the Google Video Store (upgrade to Google Video), is one of the most ambitious attempts to bring traditional television content to the internet.The search company hopes to position the video service as the web’s first “open digital content marketplace”, (why open buzz word is used ??bizzy techniq?? let us see how much “open” it will be….)where owners of video content can make as much of their material available as they want, according to the person familiar with its plans.

Everone is doing that.Videos are for sale and make money.Its business.Next is “GOOCASTING” rival of Podcating????Wait n see…

Will they sell ‘FRIENDS’ seasons??? Dudes TV Rips are available on P2P Kingdom.

The web search company will also contribute to a “bundle” of consumer software that will be offered free over the internet, marking an attempt by Microsoft rivals to cement their position on the PC desktop before the launch of the next version of the Windows operating system

A speculation has been spread that Google is about to launch a package of desktop software called the Google Pack, in a bid to rival Microsoft’s own desktop offering.

This will is expected to combine Google products such as search, Google Earth and Google Talk with a suite of third party software including the Firefox browser, Norton Antivirus, Adobe Reader, Trillian - software that allows different instant messenging services to speak to each other, Lavasoft anti-spyware and Real Player. The applications will be made available for download in a single installation bundle.

I read a review about the Google’s new steps here.

Anticipation is running high for Larry Page’s speech to the Consumer Electronics Show , but Google watchers already had plenty to talk about after several sources claimed to have scooped the contents of its co-founder’s presentation.

posted by haris at 9:52 PM |
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[-] About Speegle

The name is Speegle,Speaking Google!.But its not Google’s,a talking search engine developed by a company called CEC Systems on the lovely Morrison Street, in Edinburgh.Its been in the net for an year.But I donno how many people use it.Its good idea,but not yet caught by Google?.The female voice is good,but creeply male voice.Some glitches do occur,otherwise smooth for a low baud connection should expect.The tool can be helpful those who cant read ?,mmm,difficult to read??.May be helpful for silver citizens and blind ones.The company have some other stuffs to show.They are developing speech based tools for mobiles.There is a speaking news service Speakwire."Autocasting" is an automated form of podcasting that allows bloggers and blog readers to generate audio versions of text blogs from RSS feeds is also provided by them. The difficult illustrations can be

There is a product called the Audio Dictionary the Speegle desktop addon for the Firefox browser. It explains in spoken English what a word that you highlight is. The Audio Dictionary is the spoken definition of a highlighted word it will explain what the meaning of the word is while you pause or continue to read the rest of the page. It works on any Internet page and when you come accross a word you don't understand you will highlight the word then select the The Audio Dictionary definition link from the drop down. It can be downloaded from the Firefox browser page or here.

PanaVox™ is a ground breaking technology in Website accessibility and instant communication by voice.They use PanaVox Speak Perfect technology on e-com sites like http://www.cezine.net which adds value to the images. It describes something which is difficult or unnecessary to illustrate. Speech can add quick understanding to the complexity of a technical drawing or image. This link is an example.

posted by haris at 9:49 PM |
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Thursday, January 05, 2006

[-] Vibrant Welcome Party!

Personalised home pages seem to be the flavour of the season. Being a hardcore Google fan meant that I used the Google personalised home as my own page. For those like me who have slow net connection it is boon especialy since I crawl a lot of blogs and subscribe a lot of feeds.
It was recently that I heard a lot of praise for Net Vibes from Hary. I was sceptical given my Google loyalty but I was really blown away. The best one I have used. It would be tough to up this. A lot of good feeds by default. Ane the interface is very clean.
The feeds are really easy to read. They launch into a new window inside the webpage and list the posts in order. Very funky and readable.
It supports GMail and Yahoo mail and even gives a preview of the messages. There is a very useful to do list in ehich u can cross the done entries.
Overall a very fast and useful personalised page.
Highly recommended! *****

posted by Unknown at 11:34 PM |
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[-] Gooogle Logo for Blind!

Google unveiled a new Google Doodle celebrating the life and birth of Louis Braille. Google is in a way recognizing the efforts of great minds that have made the world more accessible to people with disabilities.
This is one of the more brave logos for Google because it distorts the letters to the way you can’t read them anymore (without knowing Braille, that is).
When I clicked the logo it went to google search for Louis Braille — Date of Birth: 4 January 1809 ,a wikipedia page came top.Link.You can learn more about the renowned brave human who lived for the blind's dreams.

Braille invented a method used by blind and visually impaired people for reading and writing. Braille is read by passing one's fingers over characters which are made up of an arrangement of one to six embossed points.

Each Braille character or "cell" is made up of six dot positions, arranged in a rectangle containing two columns of three dots each. A dot may be raised at any of the six positions to form sixty-four combinations, counting the space, in which no dots are raised.

Braille has been adapted to almost every known language, from Albanian to Zulu.

Google logos have a wonderful significance of such a branding technique by making the Braille characters as its logo.

"TheBraille version is a wonderful acknowledgement of an important audience".. says Imedia Connection.They have a wonderful review on Google logos.Article is here

posted by haris at 9:02 AM |
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Wednesday, January 04, 2006

[-] Bloggy Journalists

Journalism is meant for wordy minded people?Do the spaghetti verbose satisfy the readers?.I think its difficult to make an article with simple and most effective way to be attractive and brief.May be due to inexperience or my ignorance.Blog world is very popular.Many are involved in this field.An article is shared among many blogs and information is raced in information superhighway every second.The tagging and all those bookmarking,feedburnings etc serves as the tools for the hungry minded info hunters.I was "digg"ing through some tags and found an article in Orielly network blog.
In an article by Spencer Critchley talks about the tips for bloggers.....I had some revelation abt the concepts thats add up here

"Respect the value of people's time....Know ones point, get to it quickly, and make the content dense with value ."

Value is the important criterion I think, otherwise people wont visit frequently to your blog,the quality and truthness of information.

"Opinions are not facts, even your opinions. Opinions make personal journalism lively."

As he said ,eventhough I abridge his article , I m free to add up my opinions in this information free cyberworld.

"Have a strong focus, and relate everything to it. A good focus is a simple idea that people care about--in a newspaper story."

As webvibz concentrate on new web technologies and happening arounds in net,I think its responsiblity of a netizen to spread and contribute knowledge to people.In an article unnecessary scribblings can divert readers from the topic.That may lead to loose interest as I usually experiences reading some blogs.
I think its difficult to develop a lede for this weblogazine in a short time.It will come from experience.

"Use plain speech, and talk like a real person. Too many people have been trained to use big words and complicated sentences to build an edifice to hide behind. If a simpler word can be used with no loss of meaning, use it."

Its the right way for a journal to follow a simpler verbosity...

"Reputable pro media outlets use professional fact checkers
People may be citing you as a source, so try to get the details right. Related to this: spell-check!"

I think extreme care should be taken not to provide falsy infos that will affect ones reputation.Its easy to spread the info very fast.So Beware.

Identify your sources. Just asserting a fact is unpersuasive--even in ALL CAPS with lots of exclamation marks!!! --and it contributes nothing to a discussion. Your audience needs to know where this information comes from, so they can judge its credibility.

As he said courtesy for the articles must be made as a an etiquette for the blogging ...

For the article visit here

Be Simple and humble........

posted by haris at 8:19 PM |
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Tuesday, January 03, 2006

[-] Mana for the Messenger banned!

Webvibz has changed my life! :-P
Seriously! I started looking more into ajax based websites and my final year project may be based on Ajax.
This review is on an excellent Ajax application. (AJAX: A platform. Asynchronous Javascript and XML)
I read about Meebo in the Techcrunch feed in the Net Vibes page. (More on Netvibes in my next post...)

So what is this Meebo (queer name!)?
To cut to the chase Meebo is a web instant messenger. It allows an user to use messenger from the comfort of a web page. No need for any downloads!

Is my favourite service supported?
Well, most of you would be happy. Yahoo is there (Indians happy!), MSN is there ( I think it is the de facto in Britain), GTalk+Jabber (the eL33t ones) and AOL+ICQ(Americans happy!). No Gadu Gadu and others which I don't know much (well, anything!) about.

Good...
Well it is very fast. Infact GTalk module is faster to load than the original. I tested all except AOL+ICQ as I have no account. Everything works quite fine and fast too. You can even be invisible and change your status. The obvious advantage is the elimination of download. It is a mana for those whose network is blocked to messenger traffic. Our College network :-)

Bad...
Well, the animated smileys don't work like ROTFL, Crying etc No voice chat or video chat. This stems from the lack of system driver access for Ajax.

and theUgly!
Nothing!
Pssst, Don't brag around and let your system administrator know. He can ban the site!

posted by Unknown at 11:13 PM |
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[-] XHTML Friends Network

We are into new form of social softwares .Cyberpunks told us about the surge of genetically barcodes for human beings in future .Do this tagging phenomenon in this virtual world a rise of another civilization where oneness of human consciousness emanate??

XFN™ (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. In recent years, blogs and blogrolls have become the fastest growing area of the Web. Its introduced by the Global Multimedia Protocols Group (GMPG) which was founded in March 2003 by Tantek Çelik, Eric Meyer, and Matt Mullenweg. The group has developed technologies to represent human relationships using XHTML called XHTML Friends Network and XHTML Meta Data Profiles (XMDP), for use in weblogs .The "XHTML Friends" is an XFN search engine/crawler/visualiser. It searches the web for pages with links with XFN attributes and then displays the information.Social network search engines allow people to find each other according to their XFN social relationships. XHTML Friends Network allows people to share their relationships on their own sites, thus forming a decentralized/distributed online social network, in contrast to centralized social network services.XFN enables web authors to indicate their relationship(s) to the people in their blogrolls simply by adding a 'rel' attribute to their <a href> tags, e.g.:

<a href="http://jeff.example.org" rel="friend met">...

XFN puts a human face on linking. As more people have come online and begun to form social networks, services such as Technorati and Feedster have arisen in an attempt to show how the various nodes are connected. Such services are useful for discovering the mechanical connections between nodes, but they do not uncover the human relationships between the people responsible for the nodes.

XFN outlines the relationships between individuals by defining a small set of values that describe personal relationships. In HTML and XHTML documents, these are given as values for the rel attribute on a hyperlink. XFN allows authors to indicate which of the weblogs they read belong to friends, whom they've physically met, and other personal relationships. Using XFN values, which can be listed in any order, people can humanize their blogrolls and links pages, both of which have become a common feature of weblogs.

In sufficiently modern browsers, authors using XFN can easily style all links of a particular type; thus, friends could be boldfaced, co-workers italicized, and so on. It is also the hope of the authors that this practice becomes widespread enough to allow the creation of a service that charts personal (as opposed to purely mechanical) links between weblogs and the people responsible for them.

For more informations visit
http://www.xhtmlfriends.net/?
http://gmpg.org/
http://rubhub.com/main/

posted by haris at 10:43 PM |
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Sunday, January 01, 2006

[-] The Web 2.0 Sensation ?

Web 2.0?? (or is it 3.0? now).Everyone is gotcha addicted to Web2.0 vibrations.Most of the people hav Gmail accounts now.Most of you have personalized desktops(i will call ‘web’tops).Are u not yet Web 2.0?.Donn worry,it will come for u......Last year web was under influence of the maya of insurgence of Web 2.0.The waves of future technology is hitting on to the desktop shores.I was also mesemrized by it.So I chose for a web 2.0 as a final year project (a web based CRM based on ajax framework under development ).Visit these sites listed here ,these web 2.0 applications which influenced me..most of them are free too...there r more but i willl go for it though coming posts with tips and tweaks..

My Picks:

Netvibes :.The most fantastic one I think I was stunned by this site as it provides the ultimate personalized web.It will provide a wonderful start page.While many of the major Web companies like Microsoft and Google now Yahoo are offering competing products, none of them are yet very good I think.There are a rapidly growing number of Ajax start pages that allow your favorite content to be displayed, rearranged, and viewed dynamically whenever you want but I will say this is best from my personal experience.This site is a must hav for a web surfer to be personalized with.Best of 2005

Del.icio.us : You guys can bookmark our articles in this pick-up-from-anywhere social bookmarking sevice.U can bookmark any link and make it public using tags.U can categorize subjects.Even my browser is clogged up with bookmarks.But how much i can store?Let information be passed to all.U can make public ur bookmarks.Anywhere geekz got hunted.This site being bought by My Yahoo!.Yup they started another social bookmarking++ and other Web 2.0 service as My Web2.0 (beta). But del.icio.us remains the best, largest, fastest, and most elegant social bookmarking service on the Web. In fact, del.icio.us is the benchmark that all others use. If you want access to your bookmarks anywhere you go along with engaging and satisfying functionality, this is your first stop. Live with tag cloud.Its all in one Linkpark….Best of 2005

Flickr:Most of you are the users of flickr service.Most people share their images through flickr.Its based on Ajax.All those image resizing etc online done bye the technology of Web 2.0thus reducing page loads as u feel. Also acquired by Yahoo! earlier this year flickr. Flickr provides an open API, prepackaged licensing models for your photos, tagging, a variety of community involvement mechanisms, and a vast collectionof add-ons and mashups. There are other sites but none of them compare yet. Flickr is one of the Web 2.0 shiny icon anda good hub for blogsters for sharing pics.Best of 2005

Other Picks n bytes:

All though I m using only some of the services from Web 2.0 world.I want to tell some other services.

Digg: As some of you hav noticed the side bars used here .They are rss feeds put on website through rss to javascript converters.Digg is a technology news website that employs non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allowing an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.Visit the site.Make it a del.icio.us one..Will u?

Furl: It is your personal web site where you can store bookmarks and archive web pages. You can also learn what web sites others find interesting. Furl gives you 5 gigabytes of web space to store pages. Furl allows you to save anything you view on the web.You can download extention for Furling..You can furl this page and publish in ur blog just a click .Go Furling…

Voo2do: Ever more of the software we use on a daily basis is moving online, from e-mail to feed readers. To-do list managers are no exception. Its online to do list manager.Any software engineers there?Join voo2do.Donn forget your TPS reprts…

Katrinalist.net: Web 2.0 and people..Katrinalist.net , it remains one of the best examples Web 2.0. Katrinalist was an emergent phenomenon that triggered the peer production of vital information in the aftermath of this year's hurricane disaster in New Orleans. In just a handful of days participants created XML data formats, engineered data aggregation from RSS feeds, and harnessed volunteer efforts on-the-fly to compile survivor data from all over the Web. This led to tens of thousands of survivor reports being aggregated into a single database so that people could easily identify and locate survivors from the Katrinalist Web site. All this despite the fact that the information was distributed in unstructured formats from all over the Web with no prior intent of reuse. David Geilhufe made Katrinalist happen.To influence the society is most important part of technology, and its powered with web 2.0.

Writely:Easy to set-up, fast, free (in beta), and familiar to those with even a passing familiarity to MS word, Wrietly is an effective and easy to use online word processor. With its WSIWYG editor, users can change font and font size, spell check and insert images (up to 2MB). It also uses tagging and version control, both excellent features for any word processor. A very useful word processing tool, especially for those who can't afford to buy MS Office. In addition to being a word processor, Writely.comalso serves as a collaboration tool. Users invite others to collaborate on a certain documents via email. It is can also serve as a tool to help a user blog and publish. Built with an AJAX user interface, it maximizes many of the new features available with Web 2.o. It ends, once and for all, any uncertainty that productivity tools can and should stay online. Writely is the best out there but just by a nose.

CalendarHub Online calendaring is a rapidly growing product category in the Web 2.0 software arena. The fact is that a lack of good, shareable electronic calendars is still a real problem these days. I'm fond of saying that the software world has vast collections of synchronization utilities and integration capabilities, yet it's incredible that we still can't routinely do simple things like keeping our personal, family, and work calendars synchronized…

I m sure the list is not enough.Market is nourishing.Its a new cyberworld world .Where will those url artifacts go?To a web museum??I m sure that todays web surfing wont look the same in experience tomorrow..feel news waves..

Expect more vibz in coming posts..

posted by haris at 9:34 PM |
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[-] Browser Wars : Whats up in 06?

Last year had been a major advance of sort for the open source community and philosophy as a whole. The year, arguably belonged to Firefox. They put a serious dent in the Microsoft fort. I can't imagine how the people who use IE as their main browser is living peacefully! Firefox had the out of box advantage of being elegant and inuitive and most of all small. The power users could tweak it more with the help of themes and extensions or even develop their own stuff. The defining thing for the user as far as the web is concerned.
Opera was made freeware, but still it has not got the appeal of Firefox. Personally, I don't much like opera. Too unweildy for me. There are news of a buyout going on. One week it is rumored to be Google and the next day Microsoft. Though I strongly feel that Google will be the one to bag Opera.
So to our title...

What up in 06?
Firefox is going to improve. But Microsoft is going to hit back with IE 7. It is rumored to be very good with tabs and extensive support to RSS feeds. Opera may be improving its status as well depending on its new(?) owner.
But theres a small browser which I feel is going to be a player in the market. Enter Flock!
Flock is a speciality browser built on the Firefoxe engine to say in a few words.

What all does it do?
It has got a tight integration with De.Li.Ci.O.us. Delicious is a online bookmark system. By using it you can add the links to delicious and access it from anywhere in the world. A very nifty tool which is useful to a lot of people.
An Integrated Blog Editor. This baby is quite basic but enough for your daily needs. It can save drafts and access almost all online blogging systems like Blogger, Livejournal, Typepad etc.
Since it is made from Firefox it is as fast as the fox.

The Catch?
It is in a transition stage between alpha and beta release. Available as developer download only. I have been using it for a couple of days now. It never crashed on me though. But I could not blog this post using Flock as it is not showing this blog in it right now. (I just joined a 45 mins back.) It takes more resource than the Fox atleast initially.

Verdict???
Too early to call the shot. I feel it has got some potential. Though a mainstream appeal is too much of optimism, it can achieve a sort of title as geeks own browser. That is not necessarily a bad thing as all good things were once that way. Remember Computer???

posted by Unknown at 12:18 AM |
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Sensing the vibrations in the web since Jan'06.......