Yahoo launches MyWeb2.0 beta

Similar to del.icio.us Yahoo launched its new MyWeb2 service. Now you can save your bookmarks or links and tag them. And the links can be shared with users in your network. And even the shared links can be searched using the tags as well.

Yahoo is integrating its services one-by-one, buit around the Yahoo 360.

I am famous!

Saw this image anywhere?

This was created by me last year for a colleague's blog, When I was working for ESN Technologies, Hyderabad.

One of my friends, sent me this recently via some junk mail, I just looked at the image, and how strange internet is! When I look at the image I feel like its my own hand writing .. I still rememeber the layers the Arrow creation I've done using photoshop.. really Internet is a strage place.

So finally I am famous .. anonymously!

Google vs Yahoo

Of late I am thinking about google .. I am now almost convinced that Google is going to hit a wall eventually.And I am not into Search-Research related software development, instead I am focusing on Enterprise Software (Small-Medium) .. I think more IT penetration is needed in that sector. Innovation was the major reason of google success till now and it will continue to be.

Google is very geeky and developer-centric.The culture google created has certainly been impressive and brought so many changes in the industry.
Its competittor Yahoo! is trying to be a Media company rather than fully-innovation driven company.

The asset of google is that its still in control of Larry and Brain for now .. but after some-time the control might not be in their hands .. down the lane that is bound to happen for a IPO'd company. Google is different from them when you compare with Oracle, M$FT and oracle and the only company I believe that has very high level of IP is Sun and you know where sun is right now. Google's strength and problem is innovation .. oracle doesn't invent anything new ..
they just provide the services,Unlike Sun which has one of the most advanced research projects going on even right now,that every one needs every day .. and they survive and even make profits on them .. and the google's very existence is based on their innovations.

Being just a bunch of innovative engineers doesn't make anyone win the software market. That's why I am expecting the fall of google .. not pretty soon by the way .. :). Google's life depends on Yahoo & Amazon's innovation as well.

Windows Installer XML

WIX is Opensource tool to create Windows Installer packages .. might be useful for people who are developing Software for windows. It helps in creating/compiling the MSI packages.

Dev, Thanks for the link!

Old but Funny

YOU ARE ATTEMPTING TO INSTALL WINDOWS 2000, ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO CONTINUE?

- Yes.

ARE YOU REALLY SURE?

- Yes.

ARE YOU REALLY REALLY SURE?

- YES!

OK, THEN. JUST SO YOU KNOW, WE'RE REQUIRED TO ASK YOU THAT NOW. IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT FOR BEING A PICKY CONSUMER AND SUPPORTING THAT WHOLE "ANTI-TRUST" NONSENSE. INGRATE.

- Just get on with it.

ATTEMPTING TO INSTALL WINDOWS 2000. FIRST WE NEED TO CHECK YOUR SYSTEM FOR COMPATIBILITY. THIS COULD TAKE SEVERAL DAYS.

- Groan.

THE INSTALL PROGRAM HAS DETECTED SEVERAL POSSIBLE PROBLEMS AND WILL NOT LET YOU INSTALL ME.

- Problems? What problems?

THE VIDEO CARD YOU ARE USING APPARENTLY DOES NOT WORK WITH THE MOTHERBOARD.

- But I'm using it at this very moment.

THAT IS IRRELEVANT.

-But if the video card isn't working with the mother board then I can't very well see this warning message telling me that the video card wasn't...

DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FOOL ME WITH LOGIC, I AM A MICROSOFT PRODUCT. LOGIC DOES NOT WORK ON ME. I HAVE ALSO FOUND THE FOLLOWING MINOR ERRORS: WINDOWS 2000 IS INCOMPATIBLE WITH THE FOLLOWING HARDWARE - MONITOR, KEYBOARD, MEMORY CHIPS, MOTHERBOARD BIOS, WEB CAM, SCANNER, SOUND CARD, USB CONTROLLER, CD/R DRIVE, MICROPHONE, AND FLIGHT STICK.

- All that?

YES. AND THE HARDDRIVE IS RIGHT OUT TOO. WE DON'T LIKE THE MANUFACTURER.

- Well what *DOES* work?

THE MOUSE.

- The mouse?

YES. AND THE 5 1/4 DRIVE.

- I don't have a 5 1/4 drive.

YES YOU DO.

- No I don't.

WHAT'S THAT THEN?

- It's a 3 1/2 drive.

NO IT ISN'T.

- Yes it is.

.. HEY, WHAT IS THAT? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? IS THAT A DISK? WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT DISK? YOU'RE NOT PUTTING IT IN THE DRIVE ARE YOU? YOU ARE! WHAT'S ON THAT DISK. IS THAT LINUX? YOU'RE INSTALLING LINUX?? WHY WOULD YOU INSTALL DOS WHEN I AM INFINITELY MORE POWE..........

KeyHole is now Google Earth

I used Keyhole - a 3D - Satellite-World Viewer software, after it has been acquired by google. It was the trail edition then. Now its been rebranded to Google Earth and like all other google tools its FREE! You can download it from here.

Its one of the most interesting software I've ever seen. You can view the satellite images to the finest detail available using this. There's one more software that does the same: NASA's Worldwind.

Download Google Earth and check for yourself. One of the most beautiful software evermade, of course only for geeks! :)

The Flower Blog

Here is one of the nice blogs I found on random blogspotting... luz e cor

Rain Rain Come Again!

Seems like summer is over here in chandigarh. It was a rainy day till now. Clouded and very nice weather after a long time, although little humid. Temperature is down to 29Degrees and the Humidity is 85%. The temperatures during the summers have been 44Degrees+. The forecast for the next four days shows thunderstorms, so the rainy days are here finally .. Another summer ends on a rainy note!

XAMPP

From the site

XAMPP is an easy to install Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP and Perl. XAMPP is really very easy to install and to use - just download, extract and start.

I know the amount of time and understanding neded to install all the OpenSource Apps, and then make them work properly with each other. The configuration does take time. I stumbled upon this peice of software just now. I downloaded the windows installer version and installed it. There's an integrated control panel for starting/stopping Apache, MySQL, FileZilla FTP server and Mercury Mail server. It's fairly straight forward.

The StartMenu programs for XAMPP are start/stop XAMPP Services and also a link to the Apache htdocs folder. MySQL 4.1.12 is already started without any worries. Wow! Great work.
And after installation and starting the XAMPP services through control panel, there's also a home page with great tools like: phpMyAdmin(for MySQL administration), Webalizer (Webtraffic analysis), PHP Switch ( for switching betwenn PHP 4 / PHP 5).

All in all a very good tool.

LAMP has always been one of the best platform for web-application development, other than Java. And major websites like Yahoo!(PHP) and Google(mostly Python) use this as the preferred platform.

Chandigarh - Topview

The Google Map's view of The City Beautiful. On the top-right corner you can see a large waterbody. Its the sukhna lake near sector one of chandigarh. Here's the link.

End of One more month

As usual the End-Of-Month-Economic-Crisis strikes again. I'd to get the money from Emergency Relief Fund (a.k.a The Coin Storage). I counted them today and it was Rs.150+, Can you believe it? I am rich!!!

I picked a handful of coins to feed my bike, he was almost on empty-stomach. I went to the petrol bunk, after filling him with one litre, I gave the bunch of coins to him, the sales guy looked at me in a sarcastic way. And told me that he doesn't want coins, he got a ton of them already .. I smiled and said, that's what I got. And he went on explaining in punjabi, I enjoyed those noise :) I couldn't make out single syllable of the word. But using my gesture-analysis-knowledge-resources I could understand that he was very embarrassed to take the coins. Phew!

I live here!!

Here's the photograph of my house in Chandigarh(Mohali). I live at Sector 71. In the first floor. Its a bedroom + kitchen & all that I need .. A double bed, A/C, Small TV with 5.1 DVD home theater System, Kitchen, Geyser for summer, all in all .. Home sweet home. And my true companion of all times .. My blue-bike (TVS Fiero FX!). I love it! I used to go a lot of places on my bike. And now a days, this guy doesn't have much work to do. Couple of drives to office and back home, and weekly four days to the guitar class in the evening. I am planning a good trip for him in the next month after a basic health check-up is done. It might be towards shimla or haridwar. A weekend shimla program is still pending. I am not sure when I'll be able to make it. Because I've taken up more interesting assignments lately.

Photos in Blogger

Finally .. its here! The feature I've been waiting for. Blogger has photo upload! Here's the link. Now I can merge my two blogs into a single one. I'll update the blog with new Images from manali trip.

Here's the one of the best picture from Manali-trip. The trip was a lot fun. And all the pictures are taken from my mobile phone. This one is taken en route to the basecamp. A walk through tall pine trees. Just happened to look up and got the glimpse. It was really good scenery.

The Flickr badge

I'm loving Flickr a lot. Clean interface, excellent features. Now the latest feature is the flickr badge Look on the navbar ... pretty cool, isn't it?

Photos from Manali Trip

Manali trip in the last weekend had been great. The complete albums are here. Some of them are also on my photo blog @ photos.vijaykiran.com

Essential Software for Linux

Or the ones I think I must have after every upgrade/install of new Linux Distro:

• Languages : Ruby, Perl, Python, gcc-suite, Java5.
  
• Internet: Firefox, Evolution, Gaim, Liferea.
• Programming: JDK, Netbeans, Eclipse.
• Servers: Tomcat, Apache, MySQL.
• System tools: Synaptic(for Debian-based systems).
• Productivity/Office: Scribus, OpenOffice2(now in beta), GIMP.
• Games: Frozen Bubble :)
• Multimedia: XMMS, Noatun.
  

Back from Manali

This weekend we went to Manali for an Adventure camp at manali (pandrah meel - 15th mile ). After two days of activity, came back today early morning. The activities we've done .. Rappeling, Rafting, Traversing and trekking .. and above all sitting in a stupid bus for 11 + 9 hours :)

Pictures are being uploaded to flickr gallery, some of them will also be posted to the blog .. more than 100 photos are being uploaded, all from my mobile phone ... stay tuned for the links.

Upgrade to Ubuntu Linux 5.0.4 complete

Phew .. after 6 hours of downloading, the upgrade to new 5.0.4 release is complete. Task for tomorrow to install Java and Eclipse & Related plugins, And also the Kubuntu :)

Migrating to Ubuntu

After 6 months of using debian, I am now migrating to Ubuntu Linux. I always wanted to keep my software at the bleeding edge, wanted to try all the latest features first. I've used many Linux distributions including Slackware, Redhat (7.2 - 9.0 ), Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, Gentoo and Debian. I've been searching for a good one, which retains the taste of the original look and feel of the applications, instead of making them look more like their corporate branded Linuces. Redhat and SuSE linux look very different, they completely change the look and feel of the original software (GNOME and KDE) in the name of useability.

One more issue with these distributions is ability to keep up with the OSS release cycle. I've not yet seen Gnome 2.10 in Debian till now. So I thought its time to change. But during the past six months of usage, I've grown to be a big fan of Debian Linux, but I am frustrated with the old packages. Finally the debian current version is frozen. I hope to see faster release cycles in Debian.

So finally I am settling down to Ubuntu Linux, which is based on my favorite Debian Distro and has all the shiny, new softwares. I've even got 10 free CDs with warty release of Ubuntu. Just now I've installed it and I am blogging from it. I'll be upgrading it now to the latest 5.0.4 (hoary) relase.

BTW, check out photographs of weekend trip to Manasadevi Temple and Fun republic at Manimajra, Chandigarh.

New looks and new blogs

New template for the blog. This template is from http://blogger-templates.blogspot.com.

I've got a new mobile: Nokia 3230, loaded with tons of exciting features. I've just setup a flickr account. Flickr is really a great photo sharing service. I send a mail/MMS to flickr address, it grabs the photo stores it in flickr, makes it bloggable, and publishes the post automatically. I posted a couple of pictures to this blog. But the overlapping of the side-bar made them look awful. So I've started a new blog for my gallery. Its exclusive for my photographs.It will be available at http://photos.vijaykiran.com

I am also starting another blog for my projects. I'll be starting simple projects from monday, mostly experimental. I'll be sharing my thoughts on them through this blog. It will be at http://projects.vijaykiran.com

And this blog will be for all other stuff, life, articles blah blah blah etc..

The DNS propagation might take a 24 hours, so the links might not work right now. The links are already added in the Links in the side bar as well.