DhirajGupta.com

Adobe InContext Editing: A whole new editable web?

admin — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 23:35:21 +0000

InContext Editing: A whole new editable web. All over again.

Adobe has just announced the preview of their upcoming technology, InContext Editing which purportedly allows Dreamweaver designers / developers to create static web pages and let their customers edit just parts of the web pages themselves.

The technology seems to be based around a public web based editing service (that’s run by Adobe) to allow people to use (surprise, surprise ) just their browsers to edit the page’s content. The designer is free to use locked zones where (Dreamweaver’s template features will no-doubt hook in) to create their designs and to pre-designate editable zones that the end customers can directly modify at will. All they need is their web browser with the Flash Player installed (9.0.124+) and Local Storage enabled (for the InContext service to store temporary data, probably).

Will this usher in a whole new wave of pre-designed, (and thus, much better looking) web pages that can be cheaply designed by graphics and web developers to look great and yet be editable by the end users themselves? Sounds logical:

Web designers can concentrate on what they’re good at, designing graphical, good looking web pages. They can completely ignore the nitty gritty details where the “developer” needs to get involved, data persistance, and dynamic UI, which they’re not good at.

End-users can get much more direct access to their websites without being forced to pay the web designers an arm-and-a-leg to create all the dynamic infrastructure that is needed to allow them to manage their own content.

The developers can concentrate more on where they’re really needed (building Rich Internet Apps ? ) and like being anyway - I mean who really likes to code “basic” dynamic web pages, anyway, right?

Looks like a win-win-win situation to me.

InContext Editing is currently free, at least in this preview stage.

The Dark Knight

admin — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 00:07:23 +0000

Batman: The Dark Knight is the best darn movie I’ve seen in a long, long time. Top notch acting, direction, action, gadgetry, effects, storyline, everything just works!

And as expected, in Batman movies that have The Joker in them, the overshadowing of Batman’s character is almost inevitable. Christian Bale does manage to hold his own, but Heath Ledger’s Joker is the performance of a lifetime, sadly also his last.

Update: I just noticed that The Dark Knight has managed to top the IMDB Top 250 movies of all time, beating even The Shawshank Redemption. And it’s been what …. 3 weeks since it released? Amazing!

HowTo: RSS Owl 2.0 rendering problem

admin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:55:04 +0000

After the recent move to Ubuntu

…for my primary computer’s operating system, I’ve mostly been happy, but as always there are a few gripes.

I finally managed to eliminate yet another one: RSS reading. I’ve always been an avid RSS consumer, and while I retain GreatNews as my RSS reader on my now secondary Windows computer, I was unable to find one to suit my advanced needs for Ubuntu.

The one RSS reader that I knew would probably work out for my tastes, simply refused to do it’s job. I’m talking about the RSS Owl 2.0 reader of course, (known as boreal, to some). The main problem I was facing with this one was that it would simply would not show the posts in the main view!

RSS Owl looked like it was working fine - i.e. it was displaying the standard Eclipse RCP UI, progress bars, everything but it simply would… not… render.. posts. Nothing would happen when I would click an RSS feed. I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the problem was, but there was absolutely no symptoms as to why this was happening, so I gave up on it, (incorrectly) assuming it to be a bug with the (afterall preview milestone 8a) release and decided to wait for the next version.

Then, on a repeat round of surfing some blogs, and missing subscribing to them by an RSS reader, I re-visited the boreal, in hopes of a new release. Didn’t find a new release, but I did find an interesting post in the boreal FAQ, and I quote:

What are the steps to use Mozilla as Browser in RSSOwl?

Note that you can only use the rendering engine of Mozilla inside RSSOwl. Any other feature of Mozilla or Firefox can not be used from within RSSOwl. Download XULRunner for your operating system:

Windows: xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.win32.zip

Linux: xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.linux-i686.tar.gz

Mac: xulrunner-1.8.1.3.en-US.mac-cocoa-pkg.dmg

Then follow these short instructions on how to complete the installation after the download. Make sure to restart RSSOwl. It will use XULRunner from now on automatically until you uninstall it again.

On a hunch, I did some checking, and found that while I did have a xulrunner installed, it was version 1.9.x and it looked like RSS Owl was expecting 1.8.x! Fired up synaptic manager and yup, found a xulrunner 1.8 that was not installed - installed that and…. voila! RSS Owl was showing up the feeds just fine!

My Point?

The fact that I solved my RSS reading problem is not really what I wanted to talk about here. I just wanted to put down, and this is especially true for open source projects depending upon support from the community:

NEVER assume that your users are all knowing. I did not realize that I’d be needing a separate component just for reading, and that too just on linux. And mind you, this is not a secondary function in a software that is meant to perform other duties, it’s called an RSS READER for crying out loud! If there is a dependency, it should be ideally packaged, or at least stated!

NEVER assume that when people have problems with your software, they will immediately stand up or raise their hands and tell you about it. At least 95% of people who face problems in “getting it to work” or even have questions will simply move on, and only if they really, really liked what they saw (or have a compelling enough reason - like no better alternative) will they ever even come back.

A new beginning?

admin — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 21:46:35 +0000

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

- Various Cylons, Battlestar Galactica.

Ah well, another engine move, dhirajgupta.com is now on Wordpress. Seeing how cyn.in v2 is doing great as an Intranet collaboration and knowledge management software, (as opposed to being re-purposed for my personal blog) I thought I’d take the time over this weekend to move my site over to a minimally customized Wordpress.

Hopefully this will mean I’ll blog more as well.

Stay tuned,
Dhiraj.

All along the watchtower

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 04:37:09 +0000

Watching Battlestar Galactica in DVD quality video has been a cinematic trip by itself, for me. To imagine the kind of triumph in visual effects, story telling and sheer drama on TV is insufficient, one must watch to know what it feels like - the budgets of the Battlestar Galactica franchise must truly be astounding.

Presented here is the much favorited season 3 finale of BSG (as it’s popularly known) and I simply cannot get the theme song out of my mind. This is a rendition by composer Bear McCreary of the much covered Bob Dylan original. Do go here to listen to the CD version on youtube as well - I recommend it. You could buy the original soundtrack from Amazon, as well (much recommended).

Waiting till the season 4 start (mid 2008!?) of Battlestar Galactica is too much torture - that too, the whole franchise has yet to show up on Indian television, I doubt that it ever will, as well. The content of the show is for a bit more mature audience than what is targeted currently, at any rate.

Lyrics
“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief,
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief.
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth,
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth.”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke,
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke.
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate,
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late.”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.

– All along the watchtower
Bob Dylan (1967)

Not an addict

admin — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 04:39:33 +0000

Had to include this youtube video on my site when I found the live/unplugged version. This is a song by K’s Choice, a Belgium brother-sister band that features eclectic vocals backed by a mild rock sound. You might also be interested in watching the original “plugged-in” version.

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side

The deeper you stick it in your vein
The deeper the thoughts there’s no more pain
I’m in heaven, I’m a god
I’m everywhere, I feel so hot

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)

It’s over now, I’m cold, alone
I’m just a person on my own
Nothing means a thing to me
Oh, nothing means a thing to me

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)

Free me, leave me
Watch me as I’m going down
Free me, see me

Look at me I’m falling
And I’m falling………

It is not a habit, it is cool
I feel alive I feel…….
It is not a habit, it is cool
I feel alive

It’s not a habit, it’s cool
I feel alive
If you don’t have it your on
the other side
I’m not an addict (maybe that’s a lie)

I’m not an addict, I’m not an addict, I’m not an addict.

- K’s Choice
“Not an Addict”

QR Codes

admin — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 07:07:27 +0000

Jpsykes has a nice piece running on their blog about QR Codes. This looks to be much better than standard bar codes, and I’m sure I’ve seen these sort of codes on the back and insides of a lot of hardware (GSM phones and batteries especially).
Stumbling across an explanative tech for something that had aroused your curiosity a long time ago, is so typical when you’re looking around on the web.

Numeric only Max. 7,089 characters
Alphanumeric Max. 4,296 characters
Binary (8 bits) Max. 2,953 bytes
Kanji/Kana Max. 1,817 characters

Presenting….. DJ Munks!

admin — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 10:36:44 +0000

DJ Munks is in da’ House!

Or so it seems, at any rate.

Munks has just released 3 new remixes of an old Bollywood classic, do check it out!

He’s looking for feedback, be sure to listen and fill out his survey, as well.

Here’s to challenging your dreams, and having the conviction to know that when you work hard enough to convert your dreams to reality, you will achieve success. Here’s my toast to Munks’ first few (and crucial) steps towards his journey to success,

Cheers mate, and do keep ‘em coming.

Unbelievable yoyo tricks

admin — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 14:41:16 +0000

This guy is so tricked out, seeing is believing. I’ve seen the video around 5 times, and I still can’t believe some of the stunts this guy does with his yoyo are real. Tell me what you think.

Nothing to Fear

admin — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 14:19:12 +0000

When I found the music video to one of my favorite songs on Youtube, I couldn’t resist posting the vid, here. The song is Nothing to fear by the inimitable Chris Rea, and the video looks to be about a bedouin tribe and also an arab village-town and is a stylized, idyllic take of the life there.

As an aside, have a look at the screenshot below, of the google result. Google, post its acquisition of YouTube finally seems to be listing results from the videos there directly in the search results, that’s how I found the video in the first place!

Tread Softly

admin — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 02:52:42 +0000

Had I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-W.B. Yeats (1865-1939)
“He Wishes For the Cloths of Heaven”

Alive

admin — Fri, 01 Jun 2007 03:25:06 +0000

Alive
“I want to feel passion,
I want to feel pain.
I want to weep at the
sound of your name.
Come make me laugh,
come make me cry…
just make
me feel alive.”

- Joey Lauren Adams

Chasing Amy

Google Analytics gets an update

admin — Wed, 16 May 2007 03:08:46 +0000

Logged into my google analytics account after quite a bit of time, and I checked out the new Google Analytics release. The width, depth and length that they’ve gone to is quite impressive!

Of particular interest was the compare to past feature - you see dual graphs of comparative date ranges - neat! As is wont with Google, they tuck-away this feature, hidden inside the date range selector on the top right, but I guess their audience is that way too.

I don’t particularly like the blocky, and over simplified statistics, though. It might have been intended to provide a neat-and-tidy, and/or easy-to-use feel to the whole thing, but this has worked against them, I think.

For those of you who haven’t got the update yet, or are just too darn lazy, you could go through the new google analytics tour, as well.

Spiderman and Mary Jane Watson

admin — Mon, 14 May 2007 04:25:58 +0000

Should Spider-man 3 have been called Mary Jane Watson 1, instead?
I think so. It quickly became the epitome of everything that should not be done in a super hero movie. And it’s a long, long movie that spreads out the (few) action scenes in between long, drawn out emotional sequences that pretty much have no place in a super-hero movie. Really.

Tobey Maguire’s Spider-man
Spiderman bawls and cries his heart out, throughout the movie. I mean, c’mon! Spidey is a super-hero, not someone who keeps sniffling throughout the length of the movie. Tobey sucks as Spider-man, sucks even more as Venom, sucks worse when he bawls in the over-melodramatic emotional scenes in the movie, and worse of all goes running to Harry Osborn for help in the over-contrived climax, who (surprisingly!) true-to-character refuses him outright and then rescues him in the end, of course - what more could go wrong, in this movie?

Kirsten Dunst’s Mary Jane Watson
Mary Jane Watson got way too much screen time. Kirsten Dunst is a total misfit for the role of MJ, I felt this in the first movie, the second only strengthened this belief, but Spiderman-3 left me feeling that the movie was mistitled! Kirsten is a walking talking contradiction: throughout the first movie she was her usual bubbly, freckled self, throughout the second she was mopey and kept bringing the pace of the movie down. In the third part of the series, Kirsten has outdone herself, at times drawing a collective yawn from the whole watching crowd, while the movie insists on revolving around her and what she feels.

The thing about MJ is that she’s everything that Kirsten is not and cannot portray - the original Mary Jane character is a feisty red-head with green eyes, and has a temper that has Spider-man constantly heckled. Kirsten is mopey, keeps her feelings to herself and looks nothing like MJ is supposed to.

The Super-Villains
The super villains in this third part of the series are a worse let down (hard as that may be) to both the previous movies’ villains. Venom’s screen time is paltry, all gone in favor of the long drawn out romantic and over-emotional scenes, and the interlude in between, when Peter Parker uses the symbiote’s agility, while not in costume. None of the evilness that is the Venom character really came out in the movie, probably because the movie hardly gives any time to Venom, and rather concentrates on MJ and Spiderman.

Sandman is a confused (but well-fitting, surprisingly) character who keeps tilting between being a good guy, then a not-so good guy, then a bad guy when he teams up with Venom, of all the things possible, in an attempt to defeat Spider-man. In the end, in a weird turn-around that looks wholly unplanned and last minute, Sandman actually apologizes to Spider-man for murdering his uncle, Ben Parker, that too, by mistake!

Miscellania

MJ sings an entire song in the movie, and then promptly gets fired from her theater job for having an awful voice. Good for her!
The wicked Peter Parker (under influence of the symbiote) is actually not that bad as a character, the dance sequence in the bar that MJ takes up a job, later is nice.
J Jonah Jameson has some genuinely funny moments.
Spider-man finally throws the web bullets that were present in all the Spider-man games that came out.
The sequence in which Flint Marko is transformed to Sandman was well done, but ended up feeling contrived like the rest of the movie.
The New Goblin character (Harry Osborn) dies, courtesy Venom.
Sandman befriends Spider-man and goes away weeping, while Spider-man keeps up his usual sniffling bit.
Spider-man exploits Venom’s weakness to sound waves to kill it using one of the New Goblin’s bombs.
There’s so much forcefully stuffed into this movie, it feels like all the characters refused to commit to a part 4 and so were all stuffed together into one long, painful movie.

A Conclusion
Do you really need one? I’d say give it a pass. Die hard Spider-man fans beware! This movie can cause a temporary, alternating sensation of nausea, sleepyness, and might cause an urge to hurt someone / something in the most dedicated fan.

A puzzle of logic

admin — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 04:25:42 +0000

Sometimes, the good old riddles are amazing tests of logic.

A girl is stuck in a labyrinth, and after many hours of wandering through it, comes upon two majestic doors, with large, round iron door-knockers with ancient symbols on them. A wooden sign placed in the middle of both of them, states thus:

Behold!

Two doors stand before you,
One door must speak the truth,
One door only utters lies.
One of them leads to certain death,
The other, to sanctuary and beyond.

Knock on each door, and you may ask it a single question.
Listen well, lest it’s answer be your last.

Choose wisely.

How does the girl get out of the labyrinth?

Fight Club Quotes

admin — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 03:20:20 +0000

Fight Club, one of my favorite movies is always a good watch, even after all these times of watching it over and over again. There’s always a dialog or a particular scene that you just can’t remember seeing.

When IMDB put Fight Club in one of it’s top 10 quotes from movies I just couldn’t resist the temptation. I actually went through the whole thing, there are a few repeats, but most of the movie’s best dialogs are here.

I do wish they compiled all the “I am Jack’s…” dialogues together, though; now that would be something.

Read it. For sure.

The I am Jack’s….. lines, in no particular order, of course:

I am Jack’s smirking revenge.
I am Jack’s cold sweat.
I am Jack’s raging bile duct.
I am Jack’s colon.
I am Jack’s complete lack of surprise.
I am Jack’s wasted life.
I am Jack’s inflamed sense of rejection.
I am Jack’s broken heart.

Other favorites:

Narrator: When you have insomnia, you’re never really asleep… and you’re never really awake.
Narrator: On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Tyler Durden: The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is - you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. Third rule of Fight Club, someone yells Stop!, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes. Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight.

That’s you in the spot-light!

admin — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 21:43:12 +0000

For those of you who just can’t resist the big bright white light, now’s your chance for online glory!

cyn.in is running a spotlight campaign for the best looking blogs, websites and usage of cyn.in. All you have to do is register your free site, customize how it looks and put up your thoughts, ideas and posts on your own cyn.in site. Remember to publish to the Web Space if you want your post to be visible to the public reviewers.

When you feel your time for fame has come, hop on over to the official cyn.in blog and let them know. Or you could be cool and put an intro in the support forum as well (accessible within your logged in cyn.in site).

Claim your fame. Now.

Happiness has a formula?

admin — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 12:03:20 +0000

Was reading through my RSS feeds this morning when this gem from the Dilbert blog came to my attention.

To be happy, truly skipping-along-all-day happy, you need to be successful in the following 3 areas (and I quote):

“

Relationships
Health
Income

Realistically, you will only have time to accomplish any two of
those goals while bitching about the third. The day isn’t long enough
to do them all.”

I think happiness is a matter of balance. A person who can skillfully balance all 3 areas of happiness successfully is probably going to find himself/herself deliriously happy most the time. Such persons would definitely be violating some natural law and are only waiting for “the universe to smite them”, of course.

No cellphone. No email even.

admin — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 23:03:13 +0000

Could you do without?

That’s the question that NBC’s Today show special posed to Dennis Kneale from Forbes. He let them take away his cellphone, blackberry and email for a whole week. He lasted 3 days before giving up, teary-eyed. Watch the video to see Dennis’ plight.

In these days of cellphone network congestion, I meet and know a lot of people who depend on not one but two cellphones. Not having both cellphones with them for a whole work week would be quite close to their worst nightmare, I think.

via Sanjay, Gizmodo

Software Editioning: A new beginning?

admin — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 03:45:49 +0000

A new beginning to editioning of Software releases?
I don’t know.
I don’t think every customer is gonna require a geek to tell them which Vista to choose.
Good for the geeks, either way.

Streamburst: No DRM

admin — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 07:17:31 +0000

Streamburst is a company that offers a purchased video download service, that seems to be headed in a more correct way IMHO to solve the video playback rights problem.

Coming to the online purchased video market with unique piracy deterrent methods, the service would be quite effective if it could garner the support of Hollywood studios, but expectedly, the big studios will not be walking into Streamburst offices any time soon - Streamburst doesn’t DRM the content they sell, instead, it quite simply brands the video to show the end buyer’s name at the start of each video. Buyer’s themselves will not mind purchasing such video since not only does the service not DRM their content, they actually offer the same content in high quality formats for a choice of devices, which as I noted in a post earlier, would be quite cool as well.

Currently, the service is favoring documentaries like Ewan McGregor’s Long Way Round motorcycle diaries, but it’s a good start.

via an excellent review on arsTechnica

Orkut Spammers!

admin — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 23:46:59 +0000

Time and again we’ve seen it happen. A site / online system gets popular. Really, really popular. Then the spammers move in and abuse the system to it’s utmost. Recently, I’ve been getting all sorts of spam messages originating from within the orkut social networking system.

I’ve gotten friend requests from unknown people, whose profile pages only have the standard go to such-and-such websites and please click the powered advertisement under my site name lamer pitch to steal advertiser dollars. Exploiting a pay-per-click system by getting random people to click on the said advertisements has, sadly, become quite a thriving industry over the years.

I’ve gotten spam messages that have been sent to entire orkut groups promoting some ridiculous get rich scheme that is surely a scam. Everything from schemes which give you $6000 just to signup to check some email messages (!?!) to the above mentioned “Click my ad, please?” messages to the click the email message schemes.

The distressing part of all this is that there seems to be a growing segment of orkut users who don’t even understand the way these falsified revenue systems work. Simply watching a neighbouring user do it, they pick up the nuances (or some half baked ideas of their own!) and go ahead and abuse the system. Why am I distressed? Think about the volume of users who would potentially fall into this “I don’t know how this works, but I saw my friend do it, and it appears to be a great way to earn side income and I want to try it out” segment. And then tell me you don’t get distressed with thoughts about what would happen if they all started to do this.

It’s rapidly degenerating into sufficient time-wasted on my personal email account that I’m contemplating setting up an Outlook Mail rule that filters all orkut mail into a separate folder than my Inbox. This will mean that all orkut emails will mostly be ignored until I figure out it’s time to mark-as-read all those emails which stack up in folders other than my Inbox.

Did the spammer’s win this battle?
I don’t know. Maybe if sufficient number of users try these kinds of stunts (aren’t there enough already?) orkut will be forced to review their message sending policies. Maybe I should just go to orkut and “tweak” the settings to not send me emails whenever someone sends me a message in orkut. I think that would defeat the whole purpose of having orkut around in the first place, though.

Never in my wildest dreams had I thought that in the real-life (read: physical) socially disconnected world that I live in, my buddies, my pals from school, college, etc. would somehow find me and communicate with me. I wouldn’t have a way to figure out who got married, who’s doing what, where they are. Nothing beats the reminiscent smile that lights up face when an old, old, buddy sends me an orkut message.

One of the most surprising things about orkut is the amount of users it has. A large number of users stumbling around in orkut space, going from one profile to another, and one group to another, and so on.

My point?
With it’s closed off borders (you still require to have an invite-in, I believe) orkut is really beginning to harbor a haven for spammers, who are, currently at least, going away unpunished. I’d hate to see orkut become yet another social network that I am forced to disconnect from, because it went sour.

All around me are familiar faces

admin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:55:10 +0000

All around me are familiar faces,
Worn out places,
Worn out faces,
Bright and early for the daily races,
Going nowhere,
Going nowhere,
Their tears are filling up their glasses,
No expression,
No expression,
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow,
No tomorrow,
No tomorrow,
And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It’s a very very,
Mad world,
Mad world,
Children waiting for the day they feel good,
Happy birthday,
Happy birthday,
And I feel the way that every child should,
Sit and listen,
Sit and listen,
Went to school and I was very nervous,
No one knew me,
No one knew me,
Hello teacher tell me what’s my lesson,
Look right through me,
Look right through me,
And I find it kind of funny,
I find it kind of sad,
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,
I find it hard to tell you,
I find it hard to take,
When people run in circles,
It’s a very very,
Mad world,
Mad world,
Enlarging your world,
Mad world

–
I originally found this haunting song when I saw Donnie Darko, a movie that is best left unexplained - I must recommend it be watched when you are quite sure that you want to screw up your head for a day, or two, or more.

When I first saw the movie, I didn’t quite catch on to the song, although I do remember looking for it.

Then, in a recent gameplay trailer for Gears of War, the XBox 360 game, I heard it again and did some research and voila!

It’s a sad song, very thought provoking. Makes quite a few people wanna drip a tear or two.

Originally by Tears for Fears, this rendition by Gary Jules for the movie is much slower and disturbing. Watch the video, tell me what you think.

Why do we blog?

admin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:35:17 +0000

JP, over at Confused of Calcutta puts down a few thoughts about blogging, teaching and learning that are well worth the read, as is usual with him.

Most of the times that I do blog (although I admit that it’s become quite a rare occasion these days), I do it pretty much with the one simple reason, the one that I suppose the whole meaning of web log takes up on. I mean, it’s usually late, I’m pretty much slipping out of my computer desk’s chair (the good ole’ faithful recliner that’s been in commission since longer than I can remember) in sleep when I usually put down my ranty, long, admittedly difficult to read pieces simply because I have to get it out of me.

Sometimes the thoughts just need to get out, you know?

At other times, it’s because you’ve got something to say to the people who come looking for you on the web. Something along the lines of “I thought of that too!” Or perhaps you want to post that mystical, all-important question along the lines of “What’s the meaning of it all?” but need to do it in your own way, perhaps in a way that puts down your own twist to the whole sordid mess we euphemistically call Life.

Sometimes, in moments of rare insight and perhaps some amount of clarity, when you can sufficiently organize a bunch of thoughts that somehow relate together in the weird, jumbled up micro-world which revolves around seemingly the same sets of questions and answers, that we call a mind, bloggers like me have the unique (if slightly disturbing) opportunity to put it all down, quotes, questions and exclamations notwithstanding, into the open journal they maintain that they call a blog.

Put it down to be read by their often unwary, unassuming visitors. Where it might ignite a spark, a ray of hope or even a furious debate.

Or even cause the said unwary reader to learn a few things, if not by actual tacit cajoling, then by slapping them around with the prodigal (and oft proverbial - at least of the chatrooms that I used to lurk in) trout.

And if the reader takes the moment to contribute in the discussion that the blog has become then so much the better, because like JP says, the teacher likes to learn too.

And take it from me, and I’ve said this earlier, the true blogger is in it not for the money (payperpost and others would seem to disagree), not for the fame (A-List … Bloggers ?!?), not for the audience, not for even the notoriety (read: fame) itself, but purely because they need to get their stuff out of their minds.

At the risk of repeatedly sounding one-offish, (selfish even?) I say again, I’m doing this, for me.

Digital Media and online shopping

admin — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 00:33:58 +0000

TechCrunch’s new contributing author after Marshall Kirkpatrick’s exit, Natali Del Conte says: “When customers buy “Superman Returns” at Wal-Mart, they can choose to pay $1.97 more to play it on portable devices, $2.97 more to play it on PCs or laptops, or $3.97 more to play it on either portable devices or PCs/laptops.”

While this offer may interest the casual customers of WallMart (who seem to account for 40 percent of all DVD sales in the United States according to the CNN release), I do wonder if it addresses the actual target shopper for the online digital movie download.

Thord Hedengren at BlogHerald was irked enough to post about what he feels would be ideal in the online shopping scenario for DVD movies, instead of them joining the PlaysForSure brigade.

Thord says: “Wal-Mart folks, how about this: Sell the DVD, offer an additional downloads package with every bloody format known to man for $2 extra, and don’t be asshats about the licensing. Let me play my movie where I want, with easily accessible downloads if I want it for my new media player, and you’ll have one happy and returning customer. It’s boring to re-encode movies in new formats, better if I can throw you some change and save the time.”

I think some of these ideas are quite profound. It’s time that digital movie download vendors wake up, smell the coffee and realize that their first target audience really is…

…the Geek.

The Geek with little or no time, or even the patience to find the right DVD cloning/copying clone and use it.

I posit that the geeks among us would be quite willing to let go of miniscule amounts of cash to forego the pain associated with acquiring that movie that they want to collect, archive it and keep transcoding it repeatedly to watch it on their owned devices. These devices usually require video to be in a specific format that is native to them to be able to play it.

YouTube has emphatically proven that transcoding video on-the-server is a better idea than leaving it up to the end-consumer. Let’s take this theme forward and try to reach the devices, directly instead of the current Web2.0 wave of only converting it to the (now universally playable) Flash video format (FLV). Like Thord ideates, offering a point blank whatever-format-you-want-it-in option seems much more ideal than the gradiented repeated value-increase model that WallMart is currently pitching.

At least to a geek like me.

I own and regularly drain the battery of my PSP by normal usage. I do play games on it (Racing away in Burnout Legends is my idea of a healthy break) but primarily I use it for, listening to podcasts, reading RSS through my specially formatted RSS aggregator, and yes watching video. I’d love to see some online support for this device’s video capabilities which IMnsHO leaves the other players in the dust with it’s hardware capabilities.

Signs, signs, everywhere the signs

admin — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 12:59:04 +0000

I don’t know about trespassers but I bet this sign definitely causes a measurable amount of stress in people who are passing by it!

DhirajGupta.com now runs on cyn.in!

admin — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 04:44:37 +0000

I recently announced to commenters that they would be getting invites to my new cyn.in based blog. Since then I’ve been busy readying our partner program, the cyn.in professional edition (Gratis up to 2 users!) and other assorted related activities. I finally took the time over the weekend to check the imported entries from my earlier blog and customize the site’s settings and appearance and I think I’m finally getting to settling in.

So what’s new?
Lots of things:

A new commenting system: Cyn.in features a registered user commenting system - to comment you’ll have to create a Guest Cyn.in user account once and you’ll be able to post comments to my site (And all other cyn.in sites too!) without having to type your name and email out every time. The cyn.in user verification system should also help me eliminate the spammers who kept flooding my blog earlier.
No Social Bookmarking Links (for now): The social bookmarking templates which were quite popular have now been removed. If you want to download them, drop me a line; I’ll email the template across to you.
AJAX: You’ll notice the new AJAX interface that Cyn.in provides. You can click on the page slider above to scroll to any page that you want, for example. Posting of comments is AJAX based too!
RSS Feeds: Cyn.in provides feeds for every SlashTag (The category menu you see on the left side) you can consume a particular SlashTag’s feed if you’re interested only in a selected set of my posts.
The Intranet: I’ve cleaned up all the personal and family stuff that was present on my blog. This has been moved to the Intranet Space, where I’ll be sharing private media (photos and videos, mainly) with family members and friends. If you happen to be on that select list and haven’t got your account yet, drop me a line and I’ll arrange it.

What’s next?
More posts, for one. Cyn.in makes it exceptionally easy to create and publish new content. I’ll hopefully be publishing much more content now.

Richer content: Cyn.in makes it really easy for me to upload pictures, audio, whatever. Expect richer content from now on.

Newsletter subscription system: For those of you who read my blog often, but can’t figure out all this RSS, XML and other tech stuff that I keep throwing around, I had started off a subscription based newsletter that would email you every day’s updates (courtesy FeedBlitz). This is now defunct; I’ll be moving the existing subscribers to a new system that allows better features soon; you’ll be able to subscribe to it soon after that.

Keep watchin’ there’s a lot more to come.

Bio Life

admin — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 22:09:02 +0000

Click on the image on the right to watch one of the most amazing videos you’ve ever seen.

This one seems to be from Harvard and is titled “Life of a Cell.”. It looks like a sci-fi attempt at explaining the inner working of a cell. Really, really cool.

Little light of Love

admin — Sun, 22 Oct 2006 05:30:21 +0000

From a little light of love
I was born and in my cry, my cry
Was a little light of love
For the honouring of life
And the Pharos of my soul
Is this light of love
Precious little light of love

As a candle burning on
In the breezy shades of night
I keep up my faith and underset my hope
To call on a realm of light

A treasure
Your shimmer
In the middle of a shady desert
Brings on a field of light
In a light of love
Fairy light of love

-Eric Serra, The Fifth Element.

On this happy occassion of Diwali, I thought I’d remind all you kind folks out there to keep a light on in your heart and minds for all those who are without.

Have a happy, safe and light filled Diwali.

Podcasts are belong to us!

admin — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 08:10:53 +0000

I’ve just put up an article on Podcasting on the official cyn.in blog.

Podcast are an easy way to get your recorded interviews, spoken thoughts, musings, etc. to your entire listening audience. Until now, podcasting audio files has always been problematic, requiring you to learn a whole lot of jargon, concepts, etc.

cyn.in makes it absolutely painless to set up a podcast enabled site. You don’t even have to know what RSS means, cyn.in automates all of the background technology for you.

About the title: For all the non-geek people out there, the title of this post is an oblique reference (my usual) to the “All your base are belong to us” Internet meme.

DhirajGupta.com

Adobe InContext Editing: A whole new editable web?

InContext Editing: A whole new editable web. All over again.

Links:

The Dark Knight

HowTo: RSS Owl 2.0 rendering problem

After the recent move to Ubuntu

My Point?

A new beginning?

All this has happened before, and will happen again.

All along the watchtower

Not an addict

QR Codes

Presenting….. DJ Munks!

Unbelievable yoyo tricks

Nothing to Fear

Tread Softly

Alive

Google Analytics gets an update

Spiderman and Mary Jane Watson

A puzzle of logic

Fight Club Quotes

That’s you in the spot-light!

Happiness has a formula?

No cellphone. No email even.

Software Editioning: A new beginning?

Streamburst: No DRM

Orkut Spammers!

All around me are familiar faces

Why do we blog?

Digital Media and online shopping

Signs, signs, everywhere the signs

DhirajGupta.com now runs on cyn.in!

Bio Life

Little light of Love

Podcasts are belong to us!