Rupali all the best!

twttr

Well on the same lines as the previous post – check out this sms blogging and subcription thingie . I love this: http://twttr.com

Check Vijay’s Twttr and mine …

surfing the web with sms

I have been wondering seriously about the possibility of using sms or texting (as some people call it) to browse the web or internet! Now what could be the benefit? How could just 160 characters prove that useful or valuable?

I strongly feel that its just that we haven’t given it a strong thought or used this way of info / communication channel to its maximum possible extent. So, I went ahead and thought of ways I would use it I was able to browse the internet or basically have access to webservices (after all thats what sms shortcodes do!) through sms.

• Surf a website
• Dictionary
• Thesaurus
• Wikipedia
• Email – mostly send
• News + basically any RSS
• Blog
• More sms based apps – like finding dates, restaurants and offers.

So, basically Iits like a ‘yubnub’ for the mobile phone even when you actually don’t have internet site. Just that the output is delivered back is constricted and giving commands is restricted to 160 characters . Output can actually more but there are cost restraints.

I went ahead and wrote a small php app and used the company’s shortcode 676787 (India specific) for some basic activities. Have used the keyword WEB i.e this is the syntax or protocol – sms to 676787: WEB <function> <text>. All of them are pull based and as of now the cost structure is you pay Rs 3 expensive I agree. But here is the list of smses syntax:

• web mail vinu@mytoday.com How are you doing. I have left home see you in 30 min
• web dic anarchy
• web syn magazine
• web wiki India or web encyl mac
• web news bbc or web rss <feed url> i.e web rss http://vinu.wordpress.com/rss

Yes, i have not yet implemented the actual surfing and have to do the xmlrpc of blog … Plan to do so soon. But this is what I have to say – if people just had a ‘sms’ usuable or friendly website this idea would be really practical! I think the www world should have a sms tag in the html protocol or a xml protocol.

Now when i emailed that inside my company one of my colleague sent the following reply:

IMHO this is a ridiculous idea. Be practical , Is a common man really itching enough that he would want to access a 2kb wikipaedia page and spend Rs3 for it. Accessing anything from GPRS is far-far better , but still much lesser than satisfying. Esp when you are accessing broadband in the office for 8-10hrs a day

I myself was very excited about mobile mail , and mobile GPRS internet. But now after a few days , the most frequent application I use on the phone is mobile chess

These , ofcourse are my ideas YMMV

I completely understand is point. So, the question is under the current economic structure what are the sms web apps people are ready to pay? Personally I feel for sms based ‘education / information’ services government should make them free. Common adding multi language support and translation on the lines of dictionary and synonyms and encylopedia … is only for the greater good. we should not be making a business out of it!

But of course it makes business most of the times also … if you were reading my blog – sometime back I said I help my DVD shop guy to start a blog and he is entering the latest movies that come there. He thinks its more like website … which is good enough. But I use the RSS and subscribe to the blog. That makes it cool for me. But now with sms – I have taken it to the next step – access about the latest movies he has for people who are not net savvy, who don’t have computers, who solely depend on the cell phone to use it!!

Just sms to 676787:

web news dvd

this reads the titles from the rss feed of his blog – studiodvd.wordpress.com
The output i.e the sms I get back is:

dvd: 1:SHAGGY DOG 2:INSIDE MAN 3: V FOR VENDATTA 4: ASK THE DUST 5: THE BENCHWARMERS 6: entourage season 2 7:EDISON FORCE 8: FINAL DESTINATION 3

Now, you do you think this is live and thriving business model eh?

These kinds of information, I am sure a common man will be willing to pay money for the sms {Rs 3 in the Indian context}! A religious pious person would be willing to pay to know when his local temple is having a special offering to the Almighty. A jazz enthusiast will use it to see what are the latest cds coming in Planet M.

This is in a way – web surfing. What do you say ? Any thoughts to add?

GMT

I came across this cool post from meebo blog where it shows the IM activity over the last 15 mins! The have used the GMT {Generic Mapping Toolkit} (which I was completely oblivious of!) released under GPL license, I think its totally cool. BTW – the image below is taken directly from the meebo and yes it shows clearly the ‘digital’ divide across the world and coutries to a decent extent.

One of the benefits of the a webapps – web 2.0 ajax outcome? to a very common or a application becoming common by the minute! I think wordpress should come out with something like this. And yeah – look there are decent of Indians out there!!

mobile trends

Carlo Lognino from MobHappy says:

A post over at the MEX blog lays it out pretty clearly: Mobile users don’t search, they locate.
Marek Pawlowski makes the point that mobile users are “mission-driven”,
meaning they’re after something in particular when they surf, rather
than just generally browsing. So the perfect mobile search isn’t
necessarily search, it’s something that delivers people the right
information when they ask for it…

Heard about narrowcasting TV? This is about using your mobile phone to your TV! I find it amazing .. i am very sure my mother who just doesn’t like using a mobile phone will use this to see photos. We can even extend this to read Text i.e Newspaper folks a new delivery module? See movies and more …. I think in a country like India where where TV and mobiles are almost equally prevalent – TVs being slightly more as of now, this would definitely make more sense.

Quotes++

Bjarne Stroustroup in an interview part 1 & 2:

It’s always easier to say what not to do, rather than what to do, so I’ll start that way.

I had a lot of problems explaining that to people and never quite understood why it was hard to understand … And once we think we know the answer, it’s very hard to learn something new.

Fortunately, it’s more important to have the right problem than to have the right solution, because at least when you have the right problem you can eventually solve it.

If you go back to the roots of C++, you will find things considered very hard that are now considered obvious, and you have trouble understanding why people had problems with them. I don’t quite understand why I couldn’t teach those ideas, but I too have learned a lot since then.

adaptable design

Leander Kahney writes on Wired.com – “Why I love Apple”. Amazingly good observation. I think this is one of the reasons I have actually believe me ‘empathy’ when I use apple products. Even if my mac does hang (yes it does sometimes) its like – man I was running too many applications !! I think its all about user experience – attention to detail + beauty embbed seamlessly. Leander says:

While I was adjusting the width of the columns, I noticed that the
date changes format depending on the width of the column. If the column
is wide, the date is displayed as “February 27, 2006.” But if you
narrow the column, the date changes to a shorter format: “Feb 27,
2006.” If you narrow the column even further, the date format changes
to the shortest format possible: “2/27/06.”

In addition, the time an e-mail message is received is also
displayed — if there’s room. If the column is narrowed, the time
disappears altogether.

And almost all of Apple’s products display these touches. There’s
the iPod’s slick scroll wheel that accelerates down a long list of
songs the longer you turn it; iChat’s phone icons that exactly match
your model of phone; the instructions for adding more RAM printed
inside the machine’s casing; or the light around a PowerBook’s A/C
power cord that tells you if the batteries are charging or fully topped
up.

Not all of Apple’s products are like this, of course (Aperture jumps
to mind), but most of them are. They generally display an astonishing
– almost fanatical — attention to detail that makes them not just
easy to use, but a pleasure.

Other companies do this too. IBM’s ThinkPads are marvels of clean,
sturdy engineering; Nokia’s cell-phone interfaces nicely anticipate the
user’s intentions. Even Microsoft’s Xbox 360 interface is pretty slick.

But again and again, Apple delights with its focus on the user
experience. Its engineers and programmers obviously work through every
aspect of how the product will be used, and refine it until they get to
the slightest detail — like matching the date format to the width of
the column.

there are 10 kinds of people :-)

Just a nerdy joke to start the blog post. Here ’10′ refers to ’2′ in binary ha ha … Anyway got this from Scott Berkun’s post – a simple fact but well said. I actually like a the guy have somehow managed to land at his homepage randomly doing google searches and really take away profound statements some which I have implemented in life and seen in working! from the post :

There are two kinds of people: people that make things complex and people that simplify.
Complexifiers are averse to reduction. Their instincts are to turn simple assignments into quagmires … These are the people who write 25 page specifications when a picture will do and send long e-mails to the entire team when one phone call would suffice. When they see x=y, they want to play with it and show their talents, taking pleasure in creating the unneccesary (23x*z = 23y*z).

Simplifiers thrive on concision. They look for the 6x=6y in the world, and happily turn it into x=y. They never let their ego get in the way of the short path. When you give them seemingly complicated tasks they simplify, consolidate and re-interpret on instinct, naturally seeking the simplest way to achieve what needs to be done.

I believe in simplification. Infact – simplifying things is sometimes complex! contradiction uh? but most of the complex work is done internally , instictively in finding metaphors and finding simpler ways to explain to people!! So, what are you?

flickr profile

I think that image is supposed to change, anyway as I blog this was the image then:

I have more than 6000! snaps on flickr actually Just renewed by account recently. I think the first service on the web I am paying a renewing! And its a second service I am paying for sshhh first one was yahoo webmail and I totally regretted it …

creative advertising

Advertising and Marketing is something that i always hold close to my heart. Sometimes, I just wish I had taken that line of profession – not that I regret what I am doing now. Advertising has a lovely mix of learn + work + play and of course culture + logic + humour + irrationality that is what I want do daily … got some cool ads as forwards just posting this over here: Whats stricking is pure simplicity

Power of sticking!

Power of Bass!

Muscle Power!

Sale Power!

Atria mall

making money of APIs

Got this of the O’Reilly Radar blog when they were taking about GData:

That’s the strategy if you want to make money off the use of the APIs and you want to own the services. Google doesn’t look at in the same way. I pushed Chris DiBona on Google’s take on APIs and he said, “we just want so many developers using straightforward HTTP and XML that it’s impossible for someone to introduce anything proprietary that would weaken Google“. Google doesn’t need the proprietary ownership of the services, they make their money when people use the Internet. The biggest threat to Google isn’t that someone else will implement the same Calendar API as Google, it’s that someone will make web pages uncrawlable through proprietary extensions to HTML or HTTP. They need web standards so firmly entrenched in common use that nobody can break the Internet from under them, and this pits them against proprietary evilness.

Note what Nat says in the about article – google’s biggest threat or biggest advantage is ‘open source’. They have to be at the cutting edge technology and lead development to keep their advantage. I think this is where Google beats Yahoo and MSN as they are dependent on open source stuff! And as they are are dependent – it keeps them on the edge i.e ahead of the competition. Basically success comes as long as the adrelin is kicking

links for the day

Well, I just happened to dive into the blogosphere yesterday for around 2 hours and came up with these cool articles. Bookmarking / sharing!

• Finding great podcasts
• Me-centric Information structures
• very useful I think when it comes to mobiles – its just about me!
• also a lovely book mentioned ‘Leonardo’s laptop’
• Geek to Live: control you workday
• Get one things done before you check your email (i would also add blogs!)
• choose you Most Important Tasks
• get priorities straight
• post work appointments
• wrap-up alerts
• Technique for proucing ideas {I feel mobile wiki and camera will really aid here!}
• 1: Gather new material – specific and general
• 2: The mental digestive process
• 3: Drop it
• 4: Poof idea comes
• 5: Work it
• I do this usually – just have the problem in step 5!!
• 10 ways to motivate geeks {I think it applies to everybody mostly!}
• 16 rules I live by! {ones I also believe – }
• get out of your comfort zone
• never give up
• you are closer than you think when you are ready to quit
• worried: make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be
• Take things a day at a time
• never let anyone push you around
• don’t take yourself seriously
• there’s always a reason to smile – find it!!
• Visual IDs and icons {pretty cool i think}
• Concepts on a waiting list! {really cool design amazing ones!

Humans vs Machines

I saw this quote in the Book ‘Leonardo’s Laptop‘ by Ben Shneiderman – MIT Press. I love the title of the book. One of the aims in life is to combine arts + technology and apply it to society. Hope to read it soon. {you can crack into the book by type /pdf/chapterx.pdf after the url}

Coming to the post, I loved this quote by Arno Penzias, ‘Ideas and Information’ (1989), 179

Unlike machines, human minds can create ideas. we need ideas to guide us to progress, as well as tools to implement them …. Computers don’t contain “brains” any more than stereos contain musical instruments … Machines only manipulate numbers; people connect them to meaning.

Well AI may someday be larger than numbers. But untill then things like comman sense and new ideas and giving meaning will be left to humans.

recording skype conversations

My Mami (maternal aunt) mailed and said she wants to record the skype music lessons for my cousin sister. I had once recorded my mami’s and mom’s conversation and put it as a podcast. On the skype music lesson, my cousin sister who is in the first grade in the US uses skype to learn carnatic music (south Indian classical music) from a teacher in Europe! She is skilled enough to start skype and dial and have the class at the required time all on her own Talk about 7 year olds learning technolgy!

So, here is the tutorial to record sound on your computer and convert them to mp3. In the following post, I will tell how to put it into a podcast.

Requirements: Headphones, Microphone, Software: Audacity and Lame Encoder (for mp3 conversion) and of course a bit of patience and exploratory nature to poke around the software a learn more

Step 1: Download – Audacity (free open source sound editing software) http://audacity.sourceforge.net/ {download the stable version} and also download the Lame encoder (click here) for mp3 conversions.

Step 2: Install Audacity

Step 3: Unzip Lame encoder software into a directory. I have do it at C:/Program Files/LameEncoder Do it at any place but remember the location.

Step: Open Audacity and this is how it looks. I would advice you to play around with it a bit – best way to learnany software.

Step 5: Go to Edit > Preferences and if you are not doing high quality recording lower the sampling rate to 16,000 kHz (good for interviews and general conversations). As my aunt is doing music classes I think she may go for 44,000  but I wonder if the voice quality of skype is hardly that much! And change Sample format to 16 bit if you want smaller file sizes from 32bit. Again this depends on quality.

Step 6: Click the ‘File Formats’ tab in the preferences itself and click the library button under mp3 export. Find the Lame dll – the place where you unzipped the encoder.

Change the bit rate here if you want to. I would recommend 128 usually for music but if its just conversations you may push it to 64 easily. (note:all this to reduce file size if you are concernec abut space or bandwidth)

Step 7: if you want to record conversations you will need to mix the line in and line out and let the software know this. you can choose to do what you want to do by selecting the format in the drop box in the main window. Stereo Mix or Mono Mix.

Step 8: now start your skype conversation or anything for that matter. if you want to record only your microphone input choose microphone. If you want to mix – choose mix and choose the volume of line in (speaker icon) and microphone volume. Kind of adjust the setting before hand and you are good to go!

Step 9: click file save as – will save in audacity format. If you want to save in  mp3 format – export it now you are good to go. You may have to experiment a bit with the setting I mentioned in the steps before to get the best or optimum sound quality and size.

Step 10: BTW put the plugins if want! And also you can do multiple tracks. you can add echo, give bass boost and more stuff basically play with music like you do with photoshop! you can cut sections out make ringtones for your cell phones and then transfer via bluetooth and more …… Have fun and let me know by the comment section if you have any suggestions, comments or yeah of course doubts!

I am sure my cousin will learn this easily if given some time to play around. Imagine the power of editing sound, images and publishing – all the technology need by the big media houses at affordable prices and simplicity and mostly for free! The next generation is basically going to breed in a ‘Free Culture‘, a cut and paste culture in its true sense – learn at a massive pace and exchange and consuming media in its truest meaning And I am glad I am going to be part of it …

Will follow up this post soon with one on how to put them on the internet and create a podcast! For people who can’t wait – I use this service and I just love it http://www.pod-serve.com/

remote please … ? ;-)

Recognise yourself or more importantly those you flirt with (source: flirt blog – flirtomatic!)

Aries: “Okay, let’s do it again!”

Taurus: “I’m hungry pass the pizza.”

Gemini: “Have you seen the remote?”

Cancer: “When are we getting married?”

Leo: “Wasn’t I fantastic?”

Virgo: “I need to wash the sheets.”

Libra: “I liked it if you liked it.”

Scorpio: “Perhaps I should untie you.”

Sagittarius: “Don’t call me I’ll call you.”

Capricorn: “Do you have a business card?”

Aquarius: “Now let’s try it with our clothes off!”

Pisces: “What did you say your name was again?”

o mrs punjabi!

One of my friends got a spam comment on his blog regarding Sahara One – an Indian TV channel and believe me he is shit pained! I agree – I wonder if this is Sahara one spamming everybody or someone against Sahara one sending bad messages on the blogosphere! Anyway – I think Sahara one should rectify this as early as possible. The author in the comment said Mrs Punjabi (IP: 203.92.54.2 , 203.92.54.2) ! email: punjabi@gmail.com … Here is my friend’s response “Sahara One – Stop spamming” – and the comment:

Hi to all my friends and fans… Iam Mrs punjabi… a hip hop, tip top celebrity… I love bollywood and bollywood loves me. I am a movie buff and i also occasionally watch my own movies, u see i am actor/socialite/page 3 regular etc etc.. u guys must have seen me in all the hip and happening places, and guess what… im coming on another hip and happening channel… thats Sahara One on saturdays and sundays from 7:30 onwards… So if you want to check me out then just check Sahara one.
Anyway i m your door the wonderful life of bollywood and bollywood personalities…
Ill catch you guys later, now u take care and illl chat with u later

Ciao
Mrs punjabi

Its time even Indian companies start blogging and pay attention to the power of social media i.e wikis and blogs!

Mumbai Rocks n Rolls … again!

Never say die spirit … of mumbaikars stays on. And so does India’s Yesterday marked a total of around 12 blasts in India on one single day! 7 in Mumbai (bombay) and 5 in Srinagar (capital of Kashmir).

I was coming back to office at 6:30pm, having just stepped with my friend Aparna to get a medical report, when her husband called up and said there have been some bomb blasts go be at some place safe. We immediately when to the Airtel showroom in the ground floor of the corporate park my office is … Channel V was going on the large 42in LCD TV. Asked them to change it to NDTV as we got a call saying there were bomb blasts in the city on the trains. They switched on and soon saw images of injured people, bodies in the bath, mangled train compartments and of course the police running hamper scamper! Within seconds there was a silence in the room – everyone was assimilating what has happened and soon the calls started flying out …

We came up to the office and people in office had come to know as someone’s wife had called after seeing the TV. The blasts had rocked the entire western line of Bombay’s (a.ka. Mumbai) railway system – (article on wikipedia – User generate content is that fast!!)

I was anyway on my way to my house – decide to drop couple of more people enroute – didn’t want to wait in the office as I travel by car and that too in the opposite direction where people live. Came back home grabbed two DVDs to relax and take my mind off then tension. Dad came home safe and sound. One of my school friends from Madras also came over as he lived in western lines – the trains had been stopped and traffic on the road was bizzare. Two good movies – 16 BLOCKS and Eight Below.

Morning Newspaper headlines reads the following …

The mobile phones got jammed but the GPRS was working and we were checking news in the car from our own site http://m.mytoday.com (web version http://www.mytoday.com)

So, yeah that was all the rocking part! Took people by shock. Making people nervous. Especially the city has been at taking a toll this week – heavy rains for two days and then the bloody jobless Shiv sainiks burning down buses and calling bandh on sunday – i am sure they wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow if something had happened to Gandhi’s Nehru’s statue. Just wanting to show their political muscle! But well, today morning Mumbai is back and rolling again … People will take the trains even now – there is no other option. The roads and the traffic are pathetic. Rumours were running of another blast in andheri (just now as I am writing) I am sure in order to panic the people.

But this is what I will have to say from what this city has seen – the riots, the series of blasts in 1993, blasts here and there over the last years, the heavy rainfall last year and now these blasts – people will keep going. Last thing we want to do is give in now …

Also wanted to that the people who dropped in mail, called, smsed, scrapped on orkut, enquired on flickr that – I am doing good. Thanks for enquiring, luckily no casualties from my side. Everyone is okay as far as I know. Actually one of my friends is getting married now – in couple of hours! Myself: just hoping I hold on to myself to all the negativity around me and I come out of my low spell soon

you decide who wins!

Wired magazine’s adapted version of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of

More, copyright © 2006 Chris Anderson, to be published by Hyperion in July. Chris Anderson (canderson@wiredmag.com)

is Wired‘s editor in chief.

But now the audience is turning to a distribution medium that
doesn’t favor the hits alone. We are abandoning the tyranny of the top
and becoming a niche nation again, defined not by our geography but by
our interests. Instead of the weak connections of the office water
cooler, we’re increasingly forming our own tribes, groups bound
together more by affinity and shared interests than by broadcast
schedules. These days our water coolers are increasingly virtual –
there are many different ones, and the people who gather around them
are self-selected.

The mass market is yielding to a million minimarkets. Hits will
always be with us, but they have lost their monopoly. Blockbusters must
now compete with an infinite number of niche offerings, which can be
distributed just as easily. Justin Timberlake still makes albums, but
today he has thousands of bands on MySpace as rivals. The hierarchy of
attention has inverted – credibility now rises from below. MTV and
Tower Records no longer decide who will win. You do.

Wiki Bios

Add to my online Bio here – thats in case you know me decently well I love this concept!

Wikibios.com – Vinu’s page