Dhiraj Gupta (SlashTag: /HOME)

Duplicate contact folders?

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:14:40 +0000

If you’ve been using computers and Outlook for as long as I’ve have, you probably have had occasion to need to migrate from one computer to another and take your entire Outlook with you. You’ve spent a lifetime configuring and getting Outlook to respect your tastes.

One of the things that happens when you migrate to a new computer and setup Microsoft Office on it and start up your Outlook for the first time, it goes and creates an empty “Outlook profile” for you. There is no simple way (at least from a UI perspective, IMHO) to go and stop this. Outlook will always go and create an empty profile for you, the first time you start it. This is basically the reason that you actually get the duplicate contact folders problem in Outlook.

The typical prosumer / geek way of backing up Outlook for moving it to a new machine involves finding the profile’ PST file (typically in C:\Documents and Settings\YourWindowsUserName\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook) and copying it over to the new machine. Suppose you do manage to attach the old data file to your new Outlook and get your basic email/tasks/calendar working again, the one thing that typically screws up is the Contacts. Outlook retains the old data file that was created (at least the Contacts part) and shows it to you in various parts of the UI. This can become most irritating especially when Outlook still retains the Contacts from the data file that it default-created as your default Contacts repository even though you have no contacts in it. All “To:“ button clicks, address book lookups, etc. will default to this Contacts repository with a UI option to switch repositories via a drop down list box which displays a stupendously amazing list of two items, both showing the single, innocuous word, “Contacts”, leaving you to figure out which-is-which.

Now for the good news: It’s a pretty simple matter to eliminate this problem. Just use the “Tools – Email accounts” option and instead of selecting the normal Add / Change email account option, notice the bottom portion that you have become trained to turn a blind eye to, “Directory”. Use the “View or change existing directory or address books” option to receive a heretofore undiscovered dialog that lets you figure out a way to set Outlook’s address book selection preference and optionally even delete an address book. Yup that’s what you want to do. Only, you’ve got to figure out which particular “Contacts” book you’ve to delete, they are both named the exact same thing.

So, if you’ve been following me so far, I think it should be a simple matter for you to figure out the correct address book and delete it. The other address book quickly becomes the default and Outlook starts looking up contacts correctly again.

Or you could take the 0.5 probability chance to just delete the repository that shows by default. Is it the first item, could it be any one of the two, if you’re willing to take the gamble, you have a good 50% chance of success. I took it and was rewarded suitably enough to write this. However, I *do* recommend a full backup of your PST file if you’re actually going to go ahead and try this. DO NOT come back to me and tell me, “What you asked me to do ended up with me losing ALL my contacts.” You were warned.

Do tell me if you’ve ever experienced this problem, and your experiences with above solution. I’ve not taken the time/effort to create screenshots and upload them yet, but I will, if anyone finds it necessary. Do post a comment if you want this.

While listening to: Juno Reactor - Contact

Data. In Files. In transit.

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:12:52 +0000

A laptop / notebook computer really has the potential to change your life. At least your digital life, for sure. If you’ve been a long time desktop-only computer user like me (I keep saying that, don’t I? ), with 1 or more computers at work and 1 or more computers at home, then, like me, a pretty substantial portion of your life has been spent shuttling data between these computers; an account of my travails follows:A laptop / notebook computer really has the potential to change your life. At least your digital life, for sure. If you’ve been a long time desktop-only computer user like me (I keep saying that, don’t I? ), with 1 or more computers at work and 1 or more computers at home, then, like me, a pretty substantial portion of your life has been spent shuttling data between these computers; an account of my travails follows:

I have had a primary computer at home and a primary computer at work for a long, long time. The home computer is just about continuously downloading all sorts of goodies (we’ll go into what-I-do-with-my-bandwidth later. Maybe.). The office computer is my primary “work” machine, where most of my corporate communication, project related files and research lies. I often carry a lot of work home and this must include all the files that are being worked on. Similarly, a lot of my colleagues at work want the goodies I download at home and these must be carried to work ever so often as well.

A major complication in all of this is email. I’ve got several email accounts, some related to work, some private / personal that got made over the years. All of these email accounts get downloaded into Outlook email at both locations. A lot of my work is corporate communication, I send out and receive *important* email. If I send a mail out from home, I must have a copy of it at work as well. This usually means emailing a bcc copy of the email to myself while sending it out from home and then picking it up manually from the inbox and moving it to Sent Items at office, later. So I’ve got slightly different email stores at both my locations.

Over the years I’ve regularly tried several different routines to get some semblance of sanity into this whole soup. For files I’ve tried out:

Emailing / online storage:

Pros: “Ubiquitousness” of files

Cons: Internet is required at each location

Large files take looooooooooong to transfer, at both ends.

“Thumb” usb flash memory drives:

Pros: Miniscule physical footprint,

Plug-play-copy functionality.

Cons: Large files are generally not possible.

Rewritable CDs:

Pros: A more “hard copy” of your files that you can carry around with you

Decent file size possibility.

Cons: Need to have a writer to write files

CDRWs go bad often – reliability is low.

Rewritable DVDs

Pros: A bigger file size possibility

Cons: Same as Rewritable CDs with one added complication, not everyone has a DVD ROM drive yet, so you might be stuck with a “How do I….?” issue.

USB IDE hard disks:

Pros: A much bigger file size possibility

Standard IDE hard disks can be used – a typical “cheaper-than-ever” starter hard disk is easily purchased

File transfer is f-a-s-t!

Cons: A lot bulkier (and heavier) than a CD or a thumb drive

Power is external to the device – not only do you have to hunt for a power point everywhere, you’re forced to carry a stiff power cord with a bulky, heavy power adaptor brick in it.

USB 2.0 “Laptop” hard disks

Pros: Quick plug-copy/play alternative.

Single, thin USB 2.0 cord required, powered by USB

Transfers are fast enough that you can access content direct from the drive.

This is currently my transfer device of choice.

Cons: None that I can think of!

So what does all this have to do with the usage of a laptop computer being a life altering experience? Read on. I’ve recently had the opportunity to finally “move into” a brand spanking new laptop over the past 2 – 3 weeks. This, if nothing else, has been a consolidation drive for me as I’ve now only have ONE primary computer now!! I’ve managed to consolidate all my email accounts onto the new laptop, all the important files are always present, and I can completely avoid the embarassing / publicly humiliating spectacle of me emailing myself that business proposal document that is yet half done and must be continued to be worked on from my “other” computer, because the file is *already there*. On my laptop.

Of course, having a laptop with you has many other different life alternating consequences. Your primary computer is *always* with you. Wherever you go, it never leaves your side. Once you get settled into using a laptop all the time you start consolidating the rest of your digital experience *around* this laptop! You start accumulating gadgets that you carry around with you and can plug into your laptop at will. This includes that must-have portable wireless mouse, extra disk storage, perhaps an extended battery, a headphone / headset and a webcam for all those voice / video calls that you can now easily make over the Internet, anywhere! Everywhere you go, you frantically hunt for wireless Internet connectivity and are disappointed if you can’t find it.

All-in-all it’s been a pleasant experience shifting my digital life over to the new laptop and I’ve seen quite a productivity increase just because of this not so humble machine. If you’ve been thinking of going in for that laptop that you’ve been eyeing for quite some time and didn’t know whether it would actually work out or not or whether the “extra” laptop would ever end up being useful or not, trust me and go in for it, once you do get it, there will be no turning back. And laptops are continuously delivering more bang for a much lower-price so look around for the best deal possible.

If you’ve gotten so far, then you must definitely have identified with at least some of the problems / solutions that I mention. Do tell me about your own experiences. Just pop in a comment if you’ve got something to say, I assure you I read *all* comments.

All along the watchtower

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:37:9 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 5 Nov 2007 21:39:33 +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.

Lyrics
Breath it in and breath it out
and pass it on it's almost out
We're so creative and so much more
We're high above, but on the floor

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

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 1 Nov 2007 0:7:27 +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!

Dhiraj Gupta — Sun, 14 Oct 2007 3:36:44 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Sun, 2 Sep 2007 7:41:16 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 2 Jul 2007 7:19:12 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 19:52:42 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 31 May 2007 20:25:6 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:8:46 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Sun, 13 May 2007 21:25:58 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Fri, 13 Apr 2007 21:25:42 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 20:20:20 +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!

Dhiraj Gupta — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 14:43:12 +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?

Dhiraj Gupta — Wed, 21 Feb 2007 5:3:20 +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.

Dhiraj Gupta — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 16:3:13 +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?

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 1 Feb 2007 20:45:49 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 0:17:31 +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!

Dhiraj Gupta — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:46:59 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:55:10 +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?

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:35:17 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 17:33:58 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Sat, 11 Nov 2006 5:59:4 +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! :D

DhirajGupta.com now runs on cyn.in!

Dhiraj Gupta — Sun, 5 Nov 2006 21:44:37 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Sat, 4 Nov 2006 15:9:2 +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

Dhiraj Gupta — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 22:30:21 +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!

Dhiraj Gupta — Fri, 6 Oct 2006 1:10:53 +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.

Calling all bloggers!

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 25 Sep 2006 8:15:51 +0000

Calling all bloggers, tech evangelists, web 2.0 experts, any person who considers herself/himself to be a person of note, on the web.

I invite you to participate in our exclusive blogger preview for the cyn.in service.

We're giving away free cyn.in sites for an extremely limited period before our commercial launch. Drop us a line by filling in the blogger preview form and we'll email you site creation details.

And to end with my usual cliched line:

Offer open only until stocks last. :)

Apply now.

Geekism Is #2

Dhiraj Gupta — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 10:26:11 +0000

Geekism is:

When you read XML faster than you read English.
When you haven't seen bright sunshine for about a year, or two.
When you have downloaded more movies to your computer than you can ever watch in your lifetime.
When you setup your computer to run winamp with loud music every morning instead of buying an alarm clock.
When you always have a backup plan for your backup plan.
When you have every email that you ever sent or received.
When your Internet "handle" becomes the name that everyone refers to you with.
When your daily vocabulary includes words like GUID, CLSID, XAML and XMLNS and when you pronounce them as "Gooid", "Silsid" and "Zamel".
When you dial your own phone number with the same phone to "see what happens".
When, no matter how much you end up using technology (gadgets, gizmos, software, so on), you're never really sure how/why/when "things" work. More importantly, you can never really say for sure, that pressing button "A" will always cause reaction "B". You have to test it. Often. This is also the same reason that you must always press: Ctrl+A, Ctrl+C before submitting an HTML form, for example.
When you head straight for the Ready-To-Eat / Microwaveables section the moment you enter a supermarket.
When you have a pre-planned, well thought out list of things to do in the case of a life-threatening emergency in your house, like a fire or something. This includes, in order of priority:

a. Safely shut down computer. Depending upon level of emergency, check email / downloads, first.

b. Depending upon level of emergency, rescue entire computer, or just the hard disks at bare minimum.

c. Rescue people,items of lesser importance, like spouse, children, dog, plasma / lcd screen, etc.

d. Look for means to avert said emergency.
When you are completely comfortable pressing any kind of button, anywhere, without consulting any kind of manual. This goes well with the earlier, "to-see-what-happens" idealogy.
When you're completely comfortable giving the computer screen the finger, or cajoling your computer verbally to try and make it work even faster.
When you now laugh all the way through Hackers even though you sat engrossed all the way through it when you saw it first in 1995.

cyn.in pre-launch tour

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 7 Sep 2006 15:23:22 +0000

Announcing the release of our flash tour movie for cyn.in, our upcoming SaaS powered, Enterprise 2.0 service.

Check it out at cyn.in. For those of you who didn't get the fact that you could click one of the 4 boxes in the flash movie to see greater detail, here are the final slides. :)

Wanna buy Kiko? Fork up $50K!

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 4:15:8 +0000

Just reading up on my blogroll over the weekend I came up on this surprise one.

Kiko.com's web2.0 calendar website, software and domain are up for grabs on eBay.

If you've got $49,000 and are willing to spend it on another web2.0 startup that got trampled under the now almighty (or so it seems) Google's two left feet, that is.

Originally from Dharmesh Shah's OnStartups as well as a rediscovery by Manoj Ranaweera’s Blog .

The auction ends on 26th August , and there's only one bidder until now.

Rush now.

While the website still stands. :)

Or better, yet, make sure that you start off with a revenue model (OMG! What's that?) and a method of self-sustenance until your revenue model actually gets off the ground.

And like every VC/CEO/Marketer/Business blogger will tell you: Don't quit your day job, until you have a sure source of revenue from your startup.

Good, Hard lessons to be learnt in all this. And it's a pity that Kiko has to resort to this self-humiliating way of going bust.

P.S.: Funny how the Kiko site doesn't really say anything about selling out either.

Blogger Lessons

Dhiraj Gupta — Wed, 16 Aug 2006 5:58:13 +0000

I read Brian Clark's Copy Blogger blog quite often and when he wrote up this gem , I just had to talk about his blog.

For all of you who yearned to learn all the techniques that separate a good, successful blogger from the regular Joe-Shmoe, this is one Blog that you can't afford to miss reading regularly.

Brian regularly writes excellent pieces of advice, tips and the exact things that no one would ever tell you about capturing an audience and captivating their attention, specifically on the Attention Deficient Internet.

Excellent stuff; I only wish that CopyBlogger had been around all those years ago when I started of putting down my own scattered thoughts.

Recommended reading for all bloggers, copywriters and yes, marketing people, everywhere.

A shameless self-plug

Dhiraj Gupta — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 23:22:16 +0000

Neobinaries.com just published my (admittedly longish) article on 5 Firefox extensions that I really think are required.

New Blog Bling :)

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 7 Aug 2006 0:8:41 +0000

I was exploring the public Tag Cloud services courtesy of 3spots's post on the Artvibe Cloud generator (which I found too tacky looking to put up on my site).

I like ZoomClouds more. Specifically, I like the fact that it let's me customize all the colors, sizes and volume of the generated output. And that it's fast.

On the right you'll see my newly added Bling. The ZoomClouds tag map of all the posts I've made so far on this site. Pretty good, huh? You can now use the tag cloud or my category list (on top) to browse the site. I still think that the structured category list approach is a better idea than the cloud from a navigational perspective, but the Tag Cloud does look better. :)

P.S. If you're reading this by subscribing to the RSS feed or have a subscription by email, then you're gonna have to come to my site to find out where the Tag Cloud is.

Second Life?

Dhiraj Gupta — Sat, 5 Aug 2006 5:9:16 +0000

BLaugh.com puts up this hilarious comic nearly every day. Ridiculing the ways of the technology industry is now no longer restricted to Dilbert (which I love reading). I think blaugh regularly comes out with strips which poke fun at all the right things in all the right places. :)

Subscription recommended.

Update: Mysteriously, the comic that I had originally posted here, has disappeared. Looks like Linden Labs must have lobbied for removal or something. Weird.

Update #2: The URL remains the same, so does the title of the comic (just hover over it), everything else remains the same. In the immortal voice of Elmer Fudd, "There's something scweewy goin' aroun' here."

Update #3: Chris visited. He says that the URL must be dorked in some way. Whatever. For those of you who want to see the original comic it's available at this direct URL .

The Day the Music Died

Dhiraj Gupta — Wed, 2 Aug 2006 20:20:40 +0000

I had the misfortune today of trying out Microsoft Live Mail Desktop Beta (what a mouthfull). And I think this is one of the most disappointing things to roll out of Microsoft. Barring ActiveSync, of course, but that's another story.

Windows Live Mail Desktop is just the next version of good ol' Outlook Express. Anyone remember Outlook Express? The one that "used to" come with your Windows. The software that automagically disappeared from the face of the Earth when Microsoft decided to eliminate the it from the equation when the EU (and a lot of other people) said that bundling an email client along with Windows was not a good idea. For some weird reason which is beyond my comprehension, of course.

Well guess what people, good ole plain-and-ugly is back, now in a not so ugly avatar. And with a new name.

The new client (I refuse to use the name more than twice) supports RSS, and the Hotmail (and now Live mail) access functionality that was so brutally removed from all Microsoft email clients (Outlook, and Express). And most of the old features (Everyone who knows what NNTP is, raise their hand!) are back too.

What's disturbing is the way that the new client has been done. It behaves like the old Outlook Express and looks like the new Windows Live things do, with some noteable exceptions, of course.

Key Points:

The "Active Search" thing is just a politically correct way of saying, "Advertisements" or "My-search-engine-is-really-cool".
The Thing will not come on unless you sign up with The Thing's webpage on ideas.live.com
The Thing will also not come on unless you're live on the Internet and can sign in to your Windows Live ID account. (Yes that's just another name for ye good Ole' Passport, but Live is the new way to go).
No Toolbars. None. C'mon, it's a rich client application made by Microsoft. No Toolbars makes me feel like I'm using something neanderthal.
Oh, and the much touted RSS feature requires you to have IE7 installed to even access it.

Shabbiness
The client prominently shows and tells you that MS have just rebranded Outlook Express. And done it pretty shabbily too. Most Window icons show the Outlook Express icon, and seeing that icon really brings up some not-so-pleasant memories. The welcome mail that appears in my mailbox comes from an email address that should have been changed or at least aliased a long time ago. Yes, the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta team is proud to receive its mail at msoe@microsoft.com. Anyone figured out what the msoe in that email address stands for, yet? Yes, it stands for MicroSoft Outlook Express.

Conclusion
I'd suggest giving the Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta a pass, this beta at least. Maybe they'll learn and put up a better beta soon. If you still want it, go to ideas.live.com and sign up for the beta.

Music? Died?
Constant Readers by now know my propensity to make oblique references. The title for this post is my reference to the tragedy where 3 of the time's greatest American Rock and Roll music idols (Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and JP Richardson) died together in a single plane crash.

The reference stems from my thinking that software creators should take the most pride in their creations. And the MSOE team should be pretty much dying of shame right now.

I think I'll go and listen to Don McLean's American Pie, for some time.

Enter: Venom!

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 11:54:19 +0000

The Spider-Man movie merchandise has really matured. Finally, after all this waiting, one of the most central villains is coming to the movie version.

Yes, Spider-Man 3 will most likely be centered around Venom , the arch-nemesis of Spider-man. Venom is the name given to Eddie Brock's villanous merging with an alien symbiont which gives him extraordinary powers.

Can't wait. Venom is my favorite Spidey super-villain character . :)

A customer's success is imperative!

Dhiraj Gupta — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 4:35:34 +0000

ZDNet's Phil Wainewright talks about how the success of a customer's adoption is imperative to the success of an online service that operates in the SaaS business model.

Compared to standard permanent-license, on-premise implementations of enterprise software, SaaS definitely seems to be the correct solution to common woes.

Apart from all the inherent benefits of online delivery, one of the key differentiators is that in an on-premise software license model, the customer has typically paid for the software (The License) before it enters his premises. The software must then be customized to his business application, maintained, his users must be trained on it, and finally his entire Enterprise supposedly "shifts" to using it live.

In all my years in the software technology industry (I've been around) I've never really seen an implementation really "succeed" this way. At least from the point of view of the end customer, they never really got what they expected - a solution to their problems. What they got were endless delays and, if they were lucky enough to have paid for it, they got technical support.

The SaaS model is pretty much diametrically opposite to all this. In the online delivery model, the customer "checks out" the application (typically himself/herself), decides to try it out, brings in a few key users, and tests the system, directly.

SaaS providers should realize this (just as the Service-now team has) and welcome these early customers. It is in the interest of the provider to ease the entry of the customer into the platform and facilitate the adoption of their service.

As customers begin to use the service, the more benefit they realize from it, the more they will encourage adoption from their organization.

It really is this simple - a SaaS service can only succeed if it's customers do. And as the service-now VP of sales says, each and every customer of theirs is referenceable.

What your customers (existing and otherwise) say about your service is always going to influence your presence in a market much, much, more than what any PR, advertising or promotional activity can get you.

A customer's success is vital.

Rob Luddy should be proud. And justly so.

Digg Labs launches

Dhiraj Gupta — Wed, 26 Jul 2006 3:43:54 +0000

Digg Labs launched today with two new visualizations of Digg activity.

The Stack and The Swarm

(Click to see full size screenshots)

These delightful (and overloaded, at the moment) apps showcase the dynamicness of the Digg website.

You can click on a URL (yes, each of those circles in the swarm and bars in the stack are URLs!!) and they'll expand up to show the story and the digg pattern like this:

All put together, very interesting viewer apps. Beats the Digg spy any day. :)

Oh, and Kevin says he's putting up some more servers to handle the load on the apps.

I wonder when (if?) these will get to the main Digg site.

Google Reader doesn't search!

Dhiraj Gupta — Tue, 25 Jul 2006 3:53:0 +0000

I keep ranting and raving that Google is primarily a search company. But nobody listens, Google least of all, it would seem.

I've been looking for an online aggregrator and comfort of reading and simplicity led me to use Google Reader. For quite some time, now. It's quite a breeze to:

Add new feeds
Read them in one of the most Ajaxely done interfaces out there
And it's fast. Really, really, fast.

But when I wanted to refer a friend to an article I read recently, and I went to Google Reader to search it, I find this stupidly ironic interface staring back at me and I mumbled to myself,

"Google is a search company. I use Google's Reader to subscribe to RSS feeds. Google lets me search for new feeds, search the entire web, even.

But it will not let me search the feeds I subscribed to for content that I know is there. I don't remember what blog it was on, I don't remember what date it came out (sometime last week) and I really want to tell this friend of mine about it, because it should prove to be quite useful to him."

It looks like I now have several things I can do:

Give up stressing on the fact that Google is a search company.

In any case, they only like to search for new content because content that is "read" and discarded in my Google Reader is of no consequence to Google, anyway.
Go manual

Manually go through my read entries, one-by-one till I find it. And then "label" it something (Eureka! would be good) so that I can retrieve it later.
Give up using Google Reader.

I'd lose the read status on my subscribed blogs, but hey, at least I'd be able to search, in some other online aggregator like Rojo. (I hope - they aren't really a search engine company). I'll take my .opml export, and I'll move on.
Give up abusing Google Labs' betas.

Their betas suck. I shudder to think of my experience with Google Notebook . Google Labs keeps their betas in beta until forever anyway.
Give up on Google, altogether.

Their search engine is the most gamed thing on the net, anyway, isn't it? I think I'll shift to Live search for a while.

Gmail is pretty much of a POP3 thing for me. I hardly ever use/see the online interface.

Google Talk: I gave up a long time ago, on that one. Slick and cool, it got close, but it didn't work out. Don't ask.

Google Checkout: I wanted to have a look, but they wouldn't let this Indian sign up, even. And it's one of their few products which isn't in beta. Maybe it has something to do with my being too much of a curmudgeon, or something like that, I guess.

I think I'm going to try to be Google-free for some time now.

STARTREK XI announced

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 4:59:35 +0000

StarTrek.com just announced the eleventh movie in the franchise. The movie is slated for a 2008 release.

The StarTrek store also has a free set of 3 wallpapers and 3 IM avatars.

What I like about the wallpapers is that they emphasize on the nature of the colors of the StarTrek Federation uniform. One wallpaper's blue for science and another's got the color for StarTrek command posts.

The first wallpaper has shades of both colors and IMHO is the best.

And if I've not convinced you that I'm a self-confessed StarTrek fan, I don't know what will. :)

Geekism Is

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 3:50:19 +0000

Geekism is:

When you regularly get approached (by friends, relatives and strangers) with questions like, "Which one of these thingamajigs is better?"
When you know what the difference between a SAN and a NAS is.
When you land on a web site and have to first try and login to see if you already made an account there.
When your backpack contains enough cables and electronics to make every metal detector and X-Ray scanner go berserk every time it passes through.
When it takes you anything from an hour to a couple of days to explain what you do to another Geek.
When it takes you 5 seconds to eplain what you do to a mere mortal.
When you ask people to email you what they just told you.
When people point to your web browser and say "What is that?"
When you walk in to office around 3 PM and leave around 3 AM. And vice-versa of course.
When you can type better with your eyes shut than when you're looking at the characters pop up on the screen one-by-one.
When you can figure out the logical, technical and business flaws in an application faster than most people can say "Hello, World!" in it.
When you run out of space to plug in hard disks in your home computer.
When people begin to ask you if you want to store the data that they just downloaded so that they can delete it when they want to.
When you click on "Settings" before you click on "File->New".
When you have people on your MSN Contact list who begin a conversation with a URL instead of a "Hi!".

Want more?

2 Clerks

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 5:37:38 +0000


Dante	Randal	Kevin

I found Dante and Randal on MySpace. I found Kevin too. 2 Clerks and a Director/Actor who doesn't seem to speak much.

In case you're wondering what I'm talking about then you haven't watched one of the movies in my must watch list.

Clerks.

Go see it now. And then head straight to the chaotic, All-your-base-belong-to-us world of MySpace and check out their profiles, add them as "friends"

And if you still don't get what I'm talking about then you need to check these links .

And visit the official site . I just can't wait to watch the movie.

Adobe's JamJar

Dhiraj Gupta — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 12:39:35 +0000

I just discovered Adobe's new JamJar application, via Digg of course.

It's a very interesting demo of the kind of user interface one can build with Adobe's Flex2 development platform. It's also a shining example of how a new interface can totally confuse a user when it comes to figuring out how the thing works.

I have to still try out the rest of it but I did have a go at their "Photo sharing" workspace and the interface seemed clunky, at best, to me. And noisy. Every button you hover on makes a uniquely disturbing sound. The adjoining picture (click on it for a full size screenshot) is what around 5 minutes with Jamjar resulted in.

With the kind of possibilities that are available when you're making a user interface in Flex, it's kind of surprising that Adobe didn't do better. There's a vertical Google Adsense advertisement strip on the right, which takes up a lot of screen space in an application where it's at a premium. Using an ugly wide skyscraper strip in what is essentially a technology demo is quite disconcerting. I simply don't get why Adobe has to sabotage it's own early stage demo like this. If I were in their Jamjar team I'd make sure to kept it free of advertisements, I'm sure Adobe can afford to.

Yes, I know that this will probably cause a flame war or something. Bring it on.

I just think that Adobe should have called it a demonstration showcase or something for Flex2, instead of a "web2.0" application that was for general use. I don't think that the general Internet populace, even the web 2.0 audience, is completely ready for it yet.

Oh, and don't get me wrong. The underlying technology is nothing short of brilliant. Think about multi-file, single action uploading with detailed progress notification (via progress bars) and you know what the platform is like. For Flex2 application developers, that is.

I do hope they remove the advertising. At least until they are in "Beta" phase. Or is that too much to ask?

Digg releases integration kit

Dhiraj Gupta — Fri, 14 Jul 2006 3:55:54 +0000

Kevin Rose announced today, on the Digg blog, a new set of submission specs for websites wishing to integrate with Digg.

More interesting is a zip file containing graphical badges with the new Digg v3 look and a script block that'll let website owners display the number of "Diggs" a particular URL received.

The badges are nice and the pro-active website integration offer is a welcome sight. Most bookmark services don't realize why Digg is so popular. I believe that one of the key reasons is that a lot of popular websites (recent additions include all CNET blogs) allow their users to digg their posts! If only more social bookmarking sites offered integration kits like digg does, I'm sure they'd be more popular.

I am forced to recall the hours I spent creating a recent batch of icons for my Social Bookmarking template. I'm no graphics designer and resizing favicon.ico files to work properly in a web browser was quite menial, for me, at least. Of course it did lead me to a point where I can show off a nice bug in IE. Internet Explorer has problems rendering an 8 bit PNG (admittedly super-optimized, in Photoshop) that Firefox renders just fine. Three of the social bookmarking icons I spent so much effort on only show up in Firefox. And I noticed it only recently (I mainly use Firefox).

But I digress.

Kevin's post goes on to hint on a new Digg API that'll let you do even more with these 2 features.

Over the past year, Digg has become quite the source for "interesting" news, and I anticipate that things will only get more so at digg.com.

Digg on, indeed.

Another one rides the bus

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 21:36:50 +0000

One Cynapsian gives birth to another. Anil is the proud father of a baby girl on the 6^th of this July. Upon witnessing the proud father and mother with their newborn, yours truly was quite overwhelmed.

I cannot but express my joy upon seeing life reassert it's all important proclivity for renewing itself. It's a beautiful sight to behold and one of life's unique joys.

On this occassion I must tell you, ever Constant (and sometimes insistent) Reader a short fable about a wise man that might have been written by another wise one. (Or so I hope).

Read on...
The fable
A small child, who, as all children of that age are, was quite mystified by the machinations of life itself.

The child took his confusion to the wise man of his village, who, in his own wisdom, had decided to stay aloof from the rest of humanity and lived in quiet seclusion.

The wise man, as all wise men seem to ultimately do, spent most of his time contemplating upon such matters, but was deeply disturbed that a child as small as this one had approached him with a problem that he'd been thinking on all his life.

"Child, life is something that must be experienced to learn more about.", he said to the child.

"I cannot even begin tell one as innocent as you about life. I learn new things about the meaning of it, every day. I cannot taint a beautiful mind with my own corrupted vision of it."

"Life is about living. You must live. And learn. If you learn the lessons that life teaches you well, you will grow wise. Do not ponder over never-ending questions. There are no answers to questions such as those in your mind, now."

"Learn to live the experiences you come upon, with zest, vigor and thoughtful courage and you may someday learn that happiness lies nowhere else but in your own self and your life's experiences."

The wise man then retreated into his own domicile and the child left.

The child felt disappointed, he did not feel that his questions were in any way answered in the wise man's round about speech. He did take the wise man's words to mind though, and tried to experience life rather than question it.

And many years later, the child did grow into a wise, happy person, indeed.

Or so they say, anyway.

A Moral
Every fable must have a moral and so does this one.

Do not seek purpose. Purpose will find you. Instead, concentrate on enjoying life's experiences with the zest, and vigor of the small child in this fable. And happiness will find you as well.

Bus?
The title of this post (Another one rides the bus) is an oblique reference to "Weird Al" Yankovic's parody on Queen's famous Another one bites the dust. I tend to think of Weird Al's parody more in the way of Another one climbs on to the bus, where the bus is more of a metaphor for life. But of course I'm thinking of the blue bus in The End by The Doors too, but then, that's another story for another day.

Selling online Services

Dhiraj Gupta — Sun, 9 Jul 2006 18:26:34 +0000

I've been following Ray Deck's 52 Bicycles blog and recently he posted on a topic too close to my heart for me to ignore - selling online services.

Selling a service online with repeat revenue, even if it is of much lower per-sale value than say a perpertual license single sale of an online or offline product, is much more appealing to any solution provider.

For one, you have a guaranteed revenue based cashflow (instead of a single-sale customer) assuming that your service is one that your customers would begin to depend upon and worthy enough to capture interest in the first place, of course.

Support, updates and value adds are much more justified and easier to deploy on an online service as well.

Customer interaction is again one-on-one and an excellent way to gather feedback and improve your offering.

Copy-protection / piracy issues are also eliminated from start - since your offering is online and so are your customers, pirates cannot rob you of the revenue that you work so hard for.

All-in-all, an online service model has more potential than other models. What remains to be seen is of course how today's startup Web 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, etc. ventures figure out a business model that goes beyond the boring "Get advertisement revenue while we wait for Google / Yahoo / Microsoft / eBay to acquire us"

The Slashdot effect?

Dhiraj Gupta — Mon, 3 Jul 2006 22:23:43 +0000

I got a google web alert set titled YouTube killer and it piqued my attention enough, at least to go and check it out.

Turns out it's a Slashdot post on the amazingly titled eefoof.com. This site is supposed to let people upload videos and has (currently) the unique distinction of being the only one to offer users advertisement revenue when (if?) their video gets popular.

Well, ideaworthy or not, I don't know, but they sure didn't anticipate the slashdot effect very well.

The site is, at the time of this post, throwing up a quite ugly error saying it could not connect to it's mysql database:

My point?
Anticipate the requirement to scale up. Especially when you're thinking of building a competitor to web applications like YouTube and Google Video.

Update: Looks like they've finally gone up again. Now with a notice saying "Notice: We're currently being dugg and slashdotted (at the same time) -- bear with us"

Update #2: Looks like I was wrong about eefoof.com being the only one to offer revenue. revver.com does this as well, that too by dynamically embedding an advertisement at the end of the video. And they say they're the only one as well! :)

Cynapse.com gets a makeover

Dhiraj Gupta — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 4:57:12 +0000

Last weekend we relaunched a brand new, squeaky clean, Cynapse.com.

At Cynapse, our constant endavour has been to help our audience do more with their lives. We concentrate on the domains of productivity, collaboration and information management with inventions that use the ubiquitious nature of the Internet to their advantage.

The new design embodies this philosophy and also throws some light on the fabulous team that makes it all possible.