Religion is the banana skin, Spirituality is the banana.
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Yahoo! has recently launched their micro-blogging service, Meme. On first look, it may look like a Tumblr clone, but let me assure you it is a smart investment.
Also feature wise too, it isn’t a mere clone of tumblr or twitter , the latest internet sensation. Here is a quick comparison of three services:
| Meme | Tumblr | |
|---|---|---|
| You can post text, link to an audio or video content. | You can post text, audio, video, quote, chat or a link | You can post only text and links to other types of media hosted elsewhere. |
| No character limit for posting content. | No character limit for posting content. | Message has to be at most of 140 characters. |
| You can repost others’ content. Origin is always credited. | You can reblog others’ content. | You can retweet others content. Crediting the origin is optional. |
| You can comment on content posted by others. You can also refer to friends by “/friendname” | You can “like” others content and comment on it. | Commenting not available. However you can reply to one’s tweet using @friendname. |
| You can listen to music inline and also watch embedded video without leaving the site. | Possible in tumblr too. | Not possible. |
| Offers site in multiple languages – Portuguese, Spanish and English | English only. | English only. Though you can post content in any language. |
So what is unique in Yahoo! meme? How does it expect to beat competition? IMHO, it is relying on two key Yahoo! strengths:
1. meme’s amazing visual design, which makes you come back and post more content.
2. Yahoo! ‘s huge network of 500 mn users.
Yahoo! started launching this website from Latin America, slowly bringing it to more and more users with new languages. It has a good chance to succeed if they capture the markets which are untouched by tumblr and specifically twitter. Then they can wage a full scale war against twitter. But this has confirmed one thing, the game is far from over. Watch out for more in coming months !
The war for becoming the largest social network on planet is still on.
..like maggie noodles, that is. All you need to do is, visit http://elgg.org
They provide an open source social networking framework. Download the zipped file, unzip it on your web server where ever you want and you are good to go.
Cool. Isn’t it?
In the last post, I discussed a few statistics on browser market share. While it’s pretty obvious why Internet explorer rules (comes bundled with Microsoft Winows OS, which has ~ 90% of market share), rise of mozilla’s firefox must be appreciated. All of a sudden, Google, the traditional supporter of firefox, comes out with a browser! What’s cooking, Google? They don’t want to give you the right answer. Read on if you want to believe.
Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. They have used their leadership in search to realise their mission. Most of their products have been search centric. Do I need to remind you of the ‘omniBox’ feature bundled with their latest offering chrome? Well, I believe their is much more than just search in their minds this time around.
Google already holds a significant market share in text advertising. But it’s not true in display advertising where Yahoo! is the undisputed king. Won’t Google love a bigger pie in the $10bn market? How do you get it if you don’t have enough infrastructure (data on browsing habits, which is the single most important thing to be able to target relevant ads to users).
Solution ! Come out with a browser. Promise to make the web better, and behind the scenes, add a clause in the ‘End user license agreement’ saying:
“By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. ”
Don’t smell a rat? Okay! Read on to know why it’s significant. Another clause says:
“11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this license shall permit Google to take these action”
Other than that, they will store all the queries you make using their OmniBox, which includes:
i. search keywords.
ii. websites visited.
iii. IP Address.
Now combine all the three things and you get a wonderful data collection system to map individual users (recognised by the IP address) to their browsing habits which enables you to track user’s interest dynamically. Folks at Google are smart enough to build a system which can utilise this data to target display ads with 99.99% relevancy.
If people notice the clause 11.1 and 11.4 in the EULA (99.99%, including me will not, till explicitely told and explained), tell them that you are working on EULA and youwill come out with a better version of EULA with a stable release.”
TIP OF THE DAY: All Google products are always in public beta.
Google, I wish, I could have a better business mind. Kudos !
According to a chrome (Google’s new ewb browser) team member,” Browsers are not developing as fast as the web is. Google has decided to change it. Lot of web applications use Java Script which runs very slow on current browsers. Chrome team has done a wonderful job to change the scenario.”
So here comes Google taking Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (market share ~ 73%) and Mozilla’s open source browser firefox (Market share ~ 19% and gaining) head on. Google has been strong supporter of firefox yet has decided to come up with its own ‘open source’ browser ! Reason are yet to be ascertained.
Now a quick look at what chrome has to offer:
(1) Chrome uses process architecture to alleviate a very common problems with browsers- all tabs crash if even one misbehaves. You can even right click on the title bar, click Task Manager and see how much resources are actually being used by individual tabs to handle them efficiently.
(2) Gives you one place to search and browse. While you type something in the bar, it displays suggested sites and search terms. You can change your search engine from default Google (remember Microsoft was sued for not allowing that).
(3) provides one ‘InCognito’ mode which ensures nothing(browsing history, searches, cookies) is stored when you browse the web. (Similar to ‘InPrivate’ mode offered by IE8 beta)
(4) Most simplistic GUI makes you happy if you are sick of those toolbars ! Yet allows you to use them as efficiently as ever with a single button just next to the address bar.
(5) This button also allows you to create application shortcuts on your desktop which can be opened using Google chrome.
(6) Another bit which I liked about the control button is the ‘Developer’ option which allows to see Javascript in a cool console and also provides a Javascript debugger.
(7) Tabs can be popped out and again pushed back in if you want. Swank and simple !
(8) It warns you if you are about to go to a phishing or malicious site.
To see above features in action, see the video:
I am yet to test it to see how much faster it is than FF3 (forget IE) and how better does it handle bad scripts which are the prime reason why Goggle came out with this piece of software. But I am game for the first feature, it was long due, at least for me 
!
Read the chrome philosophy and architecture (a comic released by Google) here.
Download Google Chrome here and file bugs .
UPDATE: On the other side, funniest part about chrome is the pop up blocker. It does not actually block the pop-ups. It drags them down to bottom of your screen such that only the ‘title bar’ is visible just above your task-bar. Now that’s a weird way of ‘blocking’ pop ups.
Planning to dive into *nix world ! There are so many options available…unix, fedora linux, red hat linux, freebsd, suse, solaris and countless others ! Confused ? I would suggest you to start with Ubuntu. Ubuntu is a free debian-derived linux based operating system. It is good for beginners because it has sophisticated GUI tools to handles most of our needs.
First big thing, Ubuntu fits in a single CD. Basic kernel needs only ~700 MB of space on CDs. Everything else can be installed manually after the OS has been installed.
It gives you an option of partitioning the disk while installing. Even if you are opting for a dual-boot system, you don’t have a separate logical disk to install another operating system (ubuntu in our case), you can easily resize your physical hard disk using ubuntu and install it without loosing your windows or any other operating system for that matter.
The installation CD is also available as a live CD. You can start working even before you install the operating system.
One of the biggest problem newbies face with *nix environment is installing software packages. The biggest pain is resolving dependencies and installing them before you can install the actual package. Ubuntu has got a nice GUI based package manager called ‘Synaptic’ which can handle dependencies pretty well too.
The next problem arises when you want to listen or watch songs/movies (what else you expect newbies to do). You will die solving the audio/video related problems. Ubuntu has got nice inbuilt audio player and it’s very easy to install amarok and vlc players using synaptic or even command line.
Updating packages is quick and automatic.
You can enable fancy visual effects.
Windows migration tool – The new migration tool recognises Internet Explorer favorites, Firefox bookmarks, desktop wallpaper, AOL IM contacts, Yahoo IM contacts and imports them in Ubuntu. This offers easier and faster migration for new users of Ubuntu and individuals wanting to run a dual partition. In addition to single accounts, you can migrate several users’ settings in Ubuntu automatically.
It has got good support for networking services including wi-fi networks. Development tools are very well supported.
Installation of third party softwares and plug-ins like Flash, java etc has been made very easy by synaptic.
Sudoku is in-built as a game
So here is your copy to starting out in *nix world….
