Thursday, November 24, 2005

my analytics: all for free 'e'!

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I just checked up my Google analytics account for this blog and voila - I was impressed. Especially with not much of writing over the past month! So, if anyone is reading this now - watch out for this post I have really cool things to share and write about. Atleast I feel motivated and assured that I am not crying out into the so called world wide web with no one reading me ;-0

Also a very timely post 'Seven deadly sins of bloggin' lists these points:

1. Using Free Blog Hosting Services
2. Ignoring the Basic Principles of Good Web Site Design and Usability
3. Being the Jack Of All Trades
4. Not Posting Regularly
5. Publishing Badly Written Posts
6. Spamming and Stealing
7. Failing to Establish a Personality

I strongly agree to 2,4,5,6 and 7.

Disagree to 1 and 3. Anyway there will more or less reasons. atleast here I can voice my opinion ...

Also from now on -

a. the cool podcasts I listen to will be playable in my blog thanks to the delicious team for writing the playtagger script.

b. Also I may put the flickr sets as slideshows in the blog itself! checkout this hack.

Makes my life simple as it is for putting pics from flickr. In the same way, as this VC explains about 'life at the edge' on the web atleast rocks! :-)

Time for some kewl Deals!!

I am back in India and its Thanksgiving time in the US! Looking at the rush for XBox360, i am sure there are lot of people who would love to look for great deals for thanksgiving especially Black Friday deals.

Now with 'RSS' into picture - getting deals onto ur news reader should be really cool and easy.

http://www.dealazon.com/
Dealazon - Searches Amazon's API and stores the best deals. You can subscribe to complex RSS feeds such as "lcd monitors on sale for 40% off or more, and less than $300".

Pete Freitag gives all the deal sites in one place => hope this is useful for someone.

I am yearning for a LCD Monitor. If anyone is coming to Bombay and is reading this then do contact me asap!! :D The price difference in electronice is too much! I wonder why. After all the stuff is made very near to India - Thailand and Indonesia but the difference is almost 80%. I am looking was 19in LCD monitor and in India the cheapest is Rs 38,000 and I am sure I will get for $200 (Rs 9,000) in the US aaargh this sucks big time .... talk about luxury! and apna desh.

My personal favs for deal sites were:
http://www.bensbargains.net/
http://www.techbargains.com/
http://www.slickdeals.net/

Happy gadgeting all of you. Kick off the holiday season in style!! n yeah - Happy Thanksgiving. Do enjoy your time with the family as I am doing here :)

Thursday, November 03, 2005

a page full of utilities

This is one helluva compilation! The article "I want to - a page of uitilities that help you do stuff you want to" is a really cool page". Some great apps.

The ones I would recommend: {I am not giving the link in this page - just google with the name and mostly it will be the first link}

Flickr => Free, commercial version available. Allows tagging and pooling of pictures
YouSendIT => Files up to 1GB
Writely => Meeting notes, team calendars, signup sheets, proposals, you name it.
Linkedin => Find people, jobs, make new contacts. I use this one myself
Trillian => Chat to friends on mIRC, AIM, ICQ, MSN, Yahoo!
Odeo => Listen, Sync, create your own (New)
Orb => Connect to your desktop from your laptop or PDA
Voo2do => advanced task and priority management for busy, ambitious individuals
Del.icio.us => is the best known of all these services. Try this one first of all.
http://www.google.com/ig iGoogle => customized google.
Start => Microsoft start RSS 'my page'
Bloglines => It's the one that I use as my newspaper
Wink =>D/l the software, create your own walk thru tutorials. Free and easy to use. Fun too!
Wikispaces => Create a Wiki, Free service (New)

Enjoy the new Web 2.0 or (Live - as microsoft puts it experience)

Wednesday, November 02, 2005

Who owns the internet???

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I just read this article from Techdirt " SBC: We Own The Internet, So Google Should Pay Up ". I personally see internet as the place built by the people. Yes, cable companies did invest. But what is their worth with out the people using them and the companies offering serives.

Coming from India - the government is trying its so called best as frankly speaking it feels there are more pressing mattes in hand and longer we delay more better will the technology will be. For example in terms of policies - voip inside the India (internationally its ok!) is not allowed untill 2007 i think (somebody correct me). The policy is so as to give the telcos enough competitive advantage to break even with the investments they have made. Makes no sense!! who is the loser here?? The people of course ... There is no need to use a car just because you bought it when cycling is faster, cheaper and makes sense. Politics and lobbying is what rules in the Indian scenario atleast.

Consider the US Scenario, the whole US is dependent on the internet for its economy existence and functioning. Right from the travel industry, seeing maps, communicating => everything is on the internet. What would happen if suddenly SBC decided to say => 'oops sorry we don't want to provide you internet! for these services ...' The outcome would be worse than a powercut! It may not come as a surprise to me with where the net is going with blogging, podcasting, video downloads, torrents. The entire mass media channel which government used to treasure. Due to its control and influence .. and yeah - the kick backs is getting routed in a totally another new medium which can never be controlled centrally!

Of course that would never happen (in the immediate future) - Money talks instead. The companies and Politicians will settle things on their own. Its all about getting greedy - result of a 'purely' capitalist economy with not much ethics in place. If instead of accepting these paradigm shifts and finding way to work along, they keep fightin - the ultimate loser will be the government. Because people realize for the first time that the don't have to depend on the government on this matter ... its 'THE PEOPLE' who are in the drivers seat. They are going to take off irrespective of whether the government 'in' or 'out'!!

Finishing in the spirit of 'Diwali' - let there be light (knowledge) and let the good win over the evil. Happy Diwali folks:
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Update: Read this article posted recently (nov 6 2005) "Don't buy DSL ..."

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

chilling at TagCamp

I know this is very late blogpost. You can find right now 176 blogposts on tagcamp on google blog search. And around 820 pictures on flickr. And even me!! Pics taken by me at my photoset 'tagCamp'.

My thoughts:

My first kind of interaction with the 'energetic' people at the Silicon Valley. Hope I will be coming to the US or any other place in the world where I can feel the energy. The details of the event can be got at tagcamp.org. Came to learn a lot about usability. Met lot of interesting people. Saw cool new products and concepts i.e Riya and justStudents particularly struck my cord. Also mobido and kaboodle. Was also able to meet folks from cool companies like Ning, zvents and simplyHired.

A sesion on the bizModels regarding tagging and Web2.0 has been put up by Mike Arrington from TechCrunch. The debate started off after I asked Jeff 'why' should Yahoo make money off the ads from my pics!!! Shouldn't I get some cut out of it?? Then Dave and Keith sparked a debate on ads, blogs and money. Was pretty cool to sit down and to hear it. You can listen to the podcast make by Mike.

Just posting some interesting pics taken by me:

Art of Taggin :-)
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Down to biz at TagCamp
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Product launches at TagCamp
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Mike taking the Podcast
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Dave Winer
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Jeff
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Mike bloggin I think!
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Me taking notes => on the debate that ensued! ;-0
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Fun at tagCamp => building the TagCity
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Discussions - day two
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clash of media - podcast/blogging (iPod) vs newspaper! :-)
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A flickr moment - lensbaby very cool lens
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All in all a nice time spent before I go back to India. Just quit job. Had a chance to network with people to get job. But rest assured I am not going to miss the action. Podcast, blogging and video casting will keep me updated. I just can't work things out 'live'!!