Ways to improve bit-torrent protocol

Ways to improve bit-torrent!

Wired quotes

The Pirate Bay (TPB) isn't happy with the fact that BitTorrent Inc. is no longer making additions to the BitTorrent source code entirely open and so TPB is hard at work on a new file sharing protocol that will address many of the shortcomings of BitTorrent.

The new protocol, which will create files with the extension .p2p, will be backward-compatible with .torrent, and yet, somehow, reportedly will be designed to limit the effectiveness of both spammers and anti-piracy organizations.

So far no real details are available and frankly those goals sound mutually exclusive — how do you simultaneously make something more transparent and harder to track?

Current limitations ?

1) Current P2P nets don't use upload bandwidth optimally
2) Old nodes have no incentive to communicate with new nodes (without data)
3) Rare data is as valuable as old data


Quotes:



We are building a protocol and format from scratch, but a lot of the suggested torrent improvements can be used and implemented in the new protocol.

File-based instead of bundle based (like .torrent files) tracking would really increase the availability of content and really make it harder to have large spreads when uploading fakes.

In comparison with a torrent file, which has a complex encoding, the ".p2p" format is simply a file in XML format containing the list of files in the bundle. This enables each file to have file-hashes making life more difficult for fakers and spammers. Or you could use/extend .metalink XML files, which already contain this information and are supported by many download programs.

Running TPB, I've been thinking a lot of how to make the content cleaner for the end user. Spam-blocking, fake-blocking, and being able to clean file-names in bundles is a big thing that I would like to see more of in the new protocol.

Also having the same content from several uploaders is something we see a lot of, as well as on most of the other major trackers, so being able to share peers between trackers and between users with the same files in different bundles on the same trackers (through hash search services) would really increase download speed and availability.

Counter measures to defeat traffic analysis would be interesting. This would also lead to a semi-anonymous system that would allow for plausible deniability. i2p already meets the need for provable anonymous p2p, although at a higher overhead than might be considered acceptable by this protocol, but without much wasted bandwidth this protocol could provide for sufficient obfuscation.

BarCode4J -- Generating Barcodes made easier

What is barcode4j ?
Barcode4J is a flexible generator for barcodes written in Java. It is published under the Apache License v2.0, which makes it easily usable in a commercial environment. It lets you generate all sorts of popular 1-D and 2-D barcodes, including DataMatrix and PDF417, in various output formats, including SVG, EPS, bitmaps, and Java2D — and you can easily add your own output format. There are plugins for various applications, including most importantly Apache FOP (Formatting Objects Processor). Some users deploy Barcode4J as a servlet.

Currently in use ?

Companies using Barcode4J to generate barcode stickers for all sorts of items, metal carpentry company produces for example. They use them to keep track of all their orders. RealObjects has integrated Barcode4J into its product PDFreactor, an HTML/XML+CSS to PDF converter.

Barcode4j was recently named "Project of the month" on sourceforge. Here's the link to download and try http://sourceforge.net/projects/barcode4j

iPhone passes first test,experts give thumbs-up

Apple’s iPhone is a “beautiful and breakthrough” mobile device that lives up to the hype. That’s the word from reviewers for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today, who praised the software and design of Apple’s melded mobile phone and iPod media player.

The iPhone’s strengths outweigh its spotty network service and price of as much as $600, they said. “Despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer,” Walt Mossberg, technology columnist for the Wall Street Journal, said in a review on Tuesday. “Its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions.”

The accolades will help chief executive officer Steve Jobs meet his goal of selling 10 million iPhones in 2008, giving the company 1% of the mobile-phone market. He expects the iPhone to become Apple’s third major business, along with the Macintosh computer and iPod, whose combined sales more than tripled in five years to almost $20 billion in 2006. “If the device lives up to the hype, then that will be a pretty big positive, because the hype has been quite large,” said Andy Hargreaves, an analyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Oregon. Apple may sell as many as 200,000 iPhones in the first two days after its release on June 29, he said.
Mossberg, USA Today’s Edward Baig and David Pogue, a columnist for the New York Times, all said one of the iPhone’s main drawbacks is its exclusive tie to AT&T, which delivers inconsistent coverage. AT&T’s network ranked either last or second-to-last in 19 out of 20 major cities in providing a signal, Pogue said, citing a Consumer Reports survey. The iPhone relies on AT&T’s Edge service, which lags behind AT&T’s fastest so-called third-generation, or 3G, data networks. While the Edge network failed to match the broadband data speeds home users may be accustomed to, Baig said the iPhone is still a “glitzy wunderkind worth lusting for.”

“Apple has delivered a prodigy — a slender fashion phone, a slick iPod and an Internet experience unlike any before it on a mobile handset,” Baig wrote on Tuesday. Pogue concurred, though he took Apple to task for failing to include chat software. He also said many users would prefer tapping out messages on Research In Motion’s BlackBerry, rather than on the iPhone’s touch-screen keyboard. “Even in version 1.0, the iPhone is still the most sophisticated, outlook-changing piece of electronics to come along in years,” Pogue wrote. “It does so many things so well, and so pleasurably, that you tend to forgive its foibles.”

Meanwhile, Vodafone is in talks with Apple to launch iPhone in Europe, and talks partly hinge on volume guarantees and subsidies, a Dutch magazine reported. Apple demanded a guaranteed sales volume for the iPhone, which the British mobile operator did not want to give, Dutch magazine Bright said on its website late on Tuesday. The magazine said Vodafone was pushing for more scope to subsidise the phone and did not want Apple to have control of the sale price.

Digg on iPhone

Nicely done IPHONE interface in javascript.. displays digg.com on it. What are the other applications we can test out with this interface ??

Comment below

BitTorrent - Peer to Peer file sharing system? How about the Peer to Peer Video sharing network?

To start with what is Bittorrent ?

BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file sharing (P2P) communications protocol. BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the entire costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources. Instead, when data is distributed using the BitTorrent protocol, recipients each supply data to newer recipients, reducing the cost and burden on any given individual source, providing redundancy against system problems, and reducing dependence upon the original distributor.
Bittorents are faster to download , recipient can receive scrambled chunk of data from multiple hosts at the same time, also improving the speed of download. Unlike Napster, Copyright enforcement of Bittorents is a little tricky.

BitTorrent trackers have been subjected to raids and shutdowns due to claims of copyright infringement. BitTorrent metafiles do not store copyrighted data, so it is claimed[10] that BitTorrent trackers, which only store and track the metafiles and usually do not share any potentially copyrighted data, must therefore be legal. Despite this claim, there has been tremendous legal pressure, usually on behalf of the MPAA and RIAA, to shut down numerous BitTorrent trackers.

So how about Bittorent for videos ? For now we can download various video files using a bittorrent client, which essentially is a file download. There are websites trying to host video's like youtube difference being they dont have to spend 1 million dollar on bandwidth per month(Youtube does). Idea is simple, these sites would try to broadcast videos based on P2P. So when you are watching the video, player would assemble video content from different sources using P2P. Would this affect your video quality ? actually not, its as good or better than serving content out of one box. What this would buy you as video seeker ? More variety of content! cause now you are not restricted to viewing video's hosted by a site, instead you can watch any video which you and me can share out of our file system without the pain of uploading.

There are already few players in this field, one of these being Slapvid

Slapvid runs as a Java applet coupled with a Flash video player. Unfortunately this means users have to authorize the 300Kb applet to run the first time, but that still requires less initiative on the users behalf than a full blown browser plugin. The applet runs in the background, managing the delivery of video chunks to be displayed in the player.

When you first start a video, the player connects directly to their central video server to download enough of the beginning of the video as a buffer while the peer to peer kicks in. During this request, their server also sends you back a list of 3 to 5 peers playing the same video. The applet then seeks out peers further along in the video, getting sent bits of the video in 64KB chunks. If you don’t hear back from the peers, the video just streams from the central server.

To demonstrate the peering technology, they’ve developed their own flash player that shows the top Youtube videos in 5 minutes. The player mashes together short clips of each video. You can see the whole video by clicking the hand. However, because of bandwidth concerns on their central server, the peering technology is only turned on for a small sample of users. All other users will just see videos streamed from Youtube.

Nintendo Wii is a medical miracle, PS3 XBOX just makes you fat

The Nintendo Wii is in the hands of millions across the globe and is one of the best selling consoles of all time, making it hard to get, even now. The Wii is popular with just about everyone but is cropping up in places you might not have expected, hospitals, rehab centers and retirement homes.

The Wii’s unique controls make it the perfect companion for rehab centers, teaching patients how to regain control of their arms and letting them have fun at the same time. Walter Rowy suffered a stroke and after only a week at the Riley Rehab Center, is mastering Wii sports thanks to the motion controls.

The Meridian Star spoke with Ben Rucks, director of rehab services at Riley, who said that Dr. Janet Coyle was responsible for adding the Wii to the rehab program for stroke patients.

"Dr. Coyle got one (Wii) for Christmas and after playing on it for awhile, she realized that it would be wonderful for our stroke patients," stated Rucks.

He also said, "Unlike other video games — which only use the thumbs — the Wii requires use of the whole body, balance and hand-eye coordination.” “This is especially ideal for stroke patients in their recovery."

So far the Wii has been credited for helping patients lose wait and is being used to treat children who suffer from hemiplegic cerebral palsy, a condition that paralyzes one side of the body.

Stroke support groups are also purchasing Wiis to allow people that can’t acquire or afford the console to continue therapy after leaving the rehab centers.

There is one problem; it seems women aren’t taking to the games as well as men have so additional games are in the pipeline that will hopefully make the Wii (more) enjoyable for all the patients.

In addition to rehab centers and hospitals, retirement communities are also snatching up Wiis where elderly residents use it to play virtual golf and bowl. Another title that should be considered by these centers is Big Brain Academy which will help keeps minds focused and sharp.

While some hospitals do have the Xbox 360 and PS2 on offer for most children’s wards, neither have been shown to offer the medical benefits of the Wii since those don’t require you to get up and move around which is required for most types of therapy involving everything from broken limbs to strokes or more serious conditions.

This gives Nintendo another claim to fame with the Wii, it is doctor approved, Sony can’t claim that and neither can Microsoft.

More on Wii,PS3,XBOX

Smarter search tools

Xerox researchers say they've developed a text-mining tool that's tuned to the way humans think, speak and ask questions.

Type "what Steve Jobs said yesterday" into the FactSpotter tool and the search software will hunt through documents and return a handful of relevant answers, instead of churning out countless articles containing the Apple CEO's name.

But the FactSpotter software, unveiled last week, will not be available to the public over the Internet or otherwise--only to customers of document management company Xerox, which developed the tool.

Jean-René Gain, director and general manager of marketing, strategy and alliances at Xerox, told Silicon.com that Xerox will not sell FactSpotter as a standalone application--only as an embedded application to its customers.

"We are not taking on Google with this," Gain said. "It is an aside option to consider, but we need this technology to differentiate ourselves" from competitors.

Mario Jarmasz, technology showroom engineer at Xerox, said: "This is completely different from searching on Google because we can drill down to certain levels of detail."

Xerox predicts the text-miner software will be useful in other situations where information must be retrieved from a massive database, including corporate and government searches, drug discovery, fraud detection and risk management.

Christopher Dance, laboratory manager at Xerox, told Silicon.com that FactSpotter could also be used to manage the vast number of documents produced during large mergers and acquisitions.

FactSpotter can hunt for relevant documents at a rate of 2,000 documents per second. Dance said the next stage of the development process will be to speed up the software.

The tool uses a linguistic engine that analyzes the meaning of words and the construction of phrases and sentences to work out exactly what a user is hunting for.

FactSpotter also recognizes concepts in a search term. To use the previous example, when a person types in "what Steve Jobs said yesterday," the tool will break down the sentence and recognize "Steve Jobs" as a person and "yesterday" as a time.

Xerox is "trying to make a computer understand text like a human being," said Frédérique Segond, parsing and semantics area manager at the company.

Segond added the FactSpotter tool is the next step for searching documents and uses "Web 3.0" technology that connects data, whereas Web 2.0 applications only collect data.



Artificial Intelligence is the direction many next generation search engines are taking and very rightly so.

While most would agree that Google has set the current standard for Web search, some technologists say even better tools are on the horizon thanks to advances in artificial intelligence.

Search is like oxygen for many people now, and considering Google's breakthroughs in Web document analysis, supercomputing and Internet advertising, it can be easy to think this is as good as it gets. But some entrepreneurs in artificial intelligence (AI) say that Google is not the end of history. Rather, its techniques are a baseline of where we're headed next.

Proponents of AI techniques say that one day people will be able to search for the plot of a novel, or list all the politicians who said something negative about the environment in the last five years, or find out where to buy an umbrella just spotted on the street. Techniques in AI such as natural language, object recognition and statistical machine learning will begin to stoke the imagination of Web searchers once again.


"This is the beginning for the Web being at work for you in a smart way, and taking on the tedious tasks for you," said Alain Rappaport, CEO and founder of Medstory, a search engine for medical information that went into public beta in July.

"The Web and the amount of information is growing at such a pace that it's an imperative to build an intelligent system that leverages knowledge and exploits it efficiently for people," he added.

Medstory is not alone. Other young companies such as stealth start-up Powerset and image specialist Riya are also looking to turn arcane computing techniques into business success stories.




Getting machines to think like us

Women taking to cyber crime in large nos

Believe it or not, women appear to be taking more naturally to cyber crime these days, especially, women disgruntled with their jobs and in the mood to take personal revenge. That’s what some crackshot cyber-sleuths have to say. Latest statistics suggest that almost 20% of such cyber crimes in India are committed by women, and the trend is on the rise.

Experts confirm that cyber crime tops the list of white-collar crimes committed by Indian women. “The internet somewhat gives a sense of anonymity to the person. Hence, the tendency is more among women to commit cyber crime. The number is nearly 30% in Kolkata,” says deputy commissioner (detective department) of Kolkata Police Gyanwant Singh.

The non-violent nature of such crimes tend to trigger the ‘criminal’ instinct. “Women feel it is much more sanitised to commit such offences. Competition in workplace, desire to earn fast money and lack of proper parental guidance at an early age are also reasons,” says Jairanjan Ram, consultant psychiatrist at Apollo Gleneagles Hospital, Kolkata.

The crimes, typically, committed by women in the Indian cyberdom include copyright and logo theft, phishing, malicious emails, malicious use of social networking sites and ecommerce . Most accused women are found to be highly educated, financially independent and in their early 20’s and 30’s .

It has also been estimated that 80% of cyber crimes are committed by ‘insiders’ and the balance 20% by hackers. For instance, the Mumbai Police recently unearthed a case where an ex-employee was sending obscene and threatening email to a superior colleague for nearly three months. On interrogation, it was revealed that the crime was committed by a women who was working under the complainant for a year. She posed as a male and had sent the emails to take revenge for alleged ill-treatment doled out to her.

Mumbai Police’s cyber crime cell officer Mukund Pawar said investigations has revealed that most cases lodged against women are mainly related to malicious emails. “Otherwise, the tendency to commit other cyber crimes is much less.”

The police has even registered few cases in Bangalore where IT firms threaten their women employees with charges of cyber crime if they quit their job. Karnataka’s directorgeneral of police Ajai Kumar Singh told ET: “While there have been some instances where women employees are charged with copyright violation, but some IT companies have even resorted to such tactics to retain employee.”

However, the women cyber criminals are yet to become a reality in the semi-urban region. “Women cyber criminals are yet to become a rage in the towns. It is equally alarming that women are the biggest victim of such attack accounting for nearly 40% of cases registered,” says deputy superintendent of police (cyber crime) of Tamil Nadu, S Balu.

Source:economictimes

First IPhone Third Party App

Its a shopping list application , built on an assumption that IPhone would support Javascript

What does this application do ?

You pick from basic categories such as "Fruit," "Veggies," "Meat and Seafood," and "Drinks," which then brings up a list of more specific items. Click an item, and it's added to your shopping list. Not mind-boggling, for sure, but it is extremely useful.
This application is freely available for download here


Will IPhone run javascripts ?

What good is a Web browser that doesn't support Flash and if not Java, at least Javascript? It reminded me of the hobbled browser that shipped with the T-Mobile Sidekick I & II which didn't support Javascript (For the record, the SKIII supports Javascript).

Just about any Web site with a drop-down menu navigation system wouldn't work without Javascript. And without it, you can pretty much forget about doing any kind of ecommerce. A huge percentage of sites these days rely on Flash and Javascript and leaving these off the iPhone could kill the product.

So it is safe to assume we do have our first iphone application developed, which is gonna run on iphone


Download Safari here

World in Conflict to Bring World War III to Xbox 360 This Fall

Sierra Entertainment, a division of Vivendi Games, today announced that World in Conflict, the upcoming action-strategy game that blurs the line between traditional strategy gameplay and fast-paced shooters, will be available for the Xbox 360(TM) video game and entertainment system from Microsoft this fall. The game is being developed for Xbox 360 by Sierra's own Swordfish Studios, in conjunction with Massive Entertainment, also a Sierra-owned studio, to optimize gameplay for the Xbox 360 controller and implement a new heads-up-display (HUD) that is more functional and appealing for console gamers.

World in Conflict represents the next-generation of strategy games, pitting Cold War-era superpowers against one another with completely destructible 3D battlefields, blistering visuals, and a narrowed gameplay focus that removes traditional resource-gathering and base-building in favor of non-stop combat, tactical decisions and an FPS-like addiction to intense action.

"World in Conflict is the natural fit for Xbox 360, as it effectively blurs the lines between strategy, action and first-person-shooter, making controlling units and issuing orders quick and easy on the console controller," said Al Simone, Senior Vice President of Global Marketing, Sierra Entertainment. "With the game coming to Xbox 360, next-generation console gamers will be able to enjoy the next-generation of strategy games. Fans of action games and strategy fanatics alike will find that World in Conflict's unique gameplay and advanced multiplayer combat will provide a fresh game experience not yet available on consoles."

World in Conflict presents a chillingly authentic Cold War scenario where the Berlin Wall never fell. Created by Cold War authority and best-selling author Larry Bond, the story begins in 1989 as the Soviets, fearing certain collapse, boldly advance into Europe. NATO responds in force only to be met on a second front -- a full-fledged invasion of the American homeland. Players take on the role of field commander, leading the era's most powerful military machines in the campaign to retake America's cities and suburbs.

Features in World in Conflict include:
-- Super-Powered Warfare: Unleash the arsenals of the great military
superpowers in the gripping single-player story created by Larry Bond
-- Bleeding-Edge Graphics - The latest version of Massive's proprietary
Masstech engine allows for a full 360 degree range of camera control
and features advanced lighting and physics effects
-- Complete Destructibility - As the battle rages, the world environment
pays the price -- every object in the game will crumble under the force
of war, including cars, buildings and forests
-- Deep Multiplayer Modes: World in Conflict will support up to 16
players for head-to-head and team-based battles in Domination, Assault
and Tug-of-War gameplay styles
-- Real World Units: Players will take control of the most devastating
arsenal of military weaponry ever created, including Soviet, American
and NATO tanks, planes, trucks, troops and helicopters as well as
nuclear weapons
-- Player Roles - Players will choose to play as Infantry, Armor, Support
Forces, or Aerial specialists; multiplayer teams will need to master
each role for maximum effectiveness


World in Conflict is expected to be available at retail stores worldwide this fall for the Xbox 360. The game will also be available on personal computer in September. For more information on World in Conflict, please visit http://www.worldinconflict.com/.

Microsoft, Xbox, Xbox 360, and the Xbox logos are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies.

Yahoo to buy sports site Rivals.com

Acquisition of Tennessee-based firm aimed at boosting the Internet media company's position as the nation's No. 1 sports site.

Yahoo Inc. said Wednesday it would acquire Rivals.com, a site for fans of college and high school teams, bolstering the Internet media company's position as the top U.S. sports site in audience terms.

Besides bringing Yahoo (Charts, Fortune 500) a base of 2 million to 2.5 million fans of high school and college football and basketball, the deal also is a measure of Yahoo's commitment to its media business following top-level management changes this week.
Video More video
CNN's Maggie Lake reports that Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel, has resigned.
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Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Wii, Xbox 360 sales decrease, PS3 gains

Sales for Nintendo Co.'s Wii and Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 decreased, while movement for Sony Corp.'s Playstation 3 increased in the latest sales data from Ebay.

In the latest sales data at the auction website, Wii held a sharp 16 percent decrease in sales, down from zero percent increase the week prior. While sales fell, the console remained the No. 1 Most Popular home console status on Ebay. It carries an average sale price of $418.22.

The Xbox 360 experienced a two percent decrease in sales, down from a 20 percent increase one week ago. The console is the No. 2 Most Popular video game hardware on Ebay and carries an average sale price of $346.84.

The PS3 experienced the largest sales gain in the period at 13 percent, up from an increase of four percent one week prior. The hardware ranks as the third most popular console and held an average sale price of $587.07.

Wii is the No. 1-selling home console in the U.S., moving 338,000 units in the month of May.

The Xbox 360 moved 155,000 units, followed by the PS3 at 82,000 units in the same period.

Oracle's to offer new suites to Financial firms

Enterprise software services provider Oracle today said it would provide a new integrated industry specific applications suite for banks, insurance companies and capital markets firms.
The new suite would be provided by the company's Financial Services Global Business Unit, Oracle said in a statement.
"Oracle continues to build on its financial services leadership by delivering new solutions that help empower financial institutions to enhance customer intimacy, build competitive advantage, reduce costs and mitigate risk," Oracle Financial Services Global Business Unit Senior Vice President and General Manager Rajesh Hukku said in the statement.
Oracle also introduced its process integration pack to synchronize front and back end operations in banks, allowing them to speed deployment of complete solutions and accelerate their return on investment, it said.

Blog, cookie, wiki top list of hated Internet words

"Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki" have been voted among the most irritating words spawned by the Internet, according to the results of a poll published Thursday.

Topping the list of words most likely to make web users "wince, shudder or want to bang your head on the keyboard" was folksonomy, a term for a web classification system.

"Blogosphere", the collective name for blogs or online journals, was second; "blog" itself was third; "netiquette", or Internet etiquette, came fourth and "blook", a book based on a blog, was fifth.

"Cookie", a file sent to a user's computer after they visit a website, came in ninth, while "wiki", a collaborative website edited by its readers, was tenth.

British pollsters YouGov questioned 2,091 adults earlier this month for the poll commissioned by the Lulu Blooker Prize, a literary award for books, which released the results in a statement.

The dictionary's compilers monitor the use of English through a 2.5 billion word database of websites, magazines, books, journals, newspapers and broadcast transcripts to help them decide if new words should be included.

I want to see the most loved words! Are there any :)

Let me know your most hated/loved Internet words

GreaseMonkey scritps I love

New to greasemonkey take a quick look

Are you IE ??

Download Video

Save video clips from YouTube, Google Video, Myspace, Metacafe, Break.com, Putfile, Dailymotion and Sevenload.

The script shows a small notice-bar at the top of supported video-pages. Upon clicking the notice-bar download links are shown on a small results page. Right-click to save the files.

Install this script here

Orkut scrap all addon

Orkut Script: It Adds an extra functionality to your Orkut account by which you can send scrap to all your friends with an ease!

download here

NewTube - Youtube Cleanup
Removes a lot of useless elements from youtube making it cleaner.
Keep watching this space for update!

Download here

Folders4Gmail
You love Gmail, but you miss folders to sort your emails? Organize your labels in a folder-like hierarchy with the Folders4Gmail Userscript.

Suppose you have two labels:
Mum
Dad

And you want Mum and Dad to be sub-folders of Family.

All you have to do is:

1. Create a parent label
Create a label named Family
(use Edit labels and Create new label).
2. Rename your labels
Dad to Family\Dad
Mum to Family\Mum
(use Edit labels and rename).
3. Now you have three labels:
Family
Family\Dad
Family\Mum

Download here

Make on the fly changes to web pages yourself!

1) Greasemonkey(http://www.greasespot.net/) is a Mozilla Firefox extension that allows users to install scripts(Javascripts) that make on-the-fly changes to specific web pages. As the Greasemonkey scripts are persistent, the changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is opened, making them effectively permanent for the user running the script.

Greasemonkey can be used for adding new functionality to web pages (for example, embedding price comparison in Amazon.com web pages), fixing rendering bugs, combining data from multiple webpages, and numerous other purposes. Well written Greasemonkey scripts can integrate changes so well that their additions appear to be natural parts of the web page.

Similar ones include Bookmarklets.

Here's saying hello world

// Hello World! example user script
// version 0.1 BETA!
// 2005-04-25
// Copyright (c) 2005, Mark Pilgrim
// Released under the GPL license
// http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// This is a Greasemonkey user script. To install it, you need
// Greasemonkey 0.3 or later: http://greasemonkey.mozdev.org/
// Then restart Firefox and revisit this script.
// Under Tools, there will be a new menu item to "Install User Script".
// Accept the default configuration and install.
//
// To uninstall, go to Tools/Manage User Scripts,
// select "Hello World", and click Uninstall.
//
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
//
// ==UserScript==
// @name Hello World
// @namespace http://diveintomark.org/projects/greasemonkey/
// @description example script to alert "Hello world!" on every page
// @include *
// @exclude http://diveintogreasemonkey.org/*
// @exclude http://www.diveintogreasemonkey.org/*
// ==/UserScript==

alert('Hello world!');


Top Greasemonkey scripts


IE Lover??
Here's something for you

2) IE7pro(http://www.ie7pro.com/) is an add-on to Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 that aims to enhance the feature set provided by the browser. IE7pro enhances the tabbed browsing capabilities, adds Ad blocker, Mouse gestures and Greasemonkey-alike user script support. IE7pro can be used on Internet Explorer 6 as well.

IE7pro modifies IE's default tab management features to add several options like double clicking to close the tab, undo closing tabs, enable Super Drag n Drop where dragging a link and dropping it anywhere else on the page opens it in a new tab or dragging and dropping any selected chunk of text opens the results of searching it via the default search engine. IE7pro also adds an Ad blocker that uses a blacklist of sites to block ads in web pages. It can also block ads delivered as rich media like Flash movies. It also allows crash recovery, which lets a browsing session be restored in case the browser crashed. The contents of a tab can be saved as an image as well.

Mouse gesture support is also added by IE7pro. It ships with a set of predefined gestures which can be customized later. IE7pro adds support for Greasemonkey like user scripts, these are site-specific Javascript code that adds certain functionality to websites, or modifies the behavior of certain aspects of sites to make it compatible with the browser. It also includes a proxy switcher, and a word-wheeled in-page search bar, which overrides Internet Explorer's search bar, like the search functionality in Firefox and the InlineSearch add-in for IE. Version 0.9.18 also adds a spell checker.


3) Turnabout(http://www.reifysoft.com/turnabout.php) is an Internet Explorer plugin that changes the websites to make them easier to use and to add features.

Turnabout can also…

Customize any page on the web
Compare book prices while surfing sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Buy.com, or Half.com, using Book Burro
Change text URLs into clickable links
Advanced users can add more features downloaded from around the web.

For all websites
Cookie Monster · Shows the contents of the current page cookie. Just mouse over the "Cookie" text on the bottom left.
RSSpanel · When you visit a site with an RSS feed, this script displays that site's RSS feed in a floating panel. RSSpanel website.
For specific websites
Bloglines Article Prev/Next Navigator · Adds previous/next links for Bloglines articles.
Google Image Relinker · Rewrites Google Image Search links to point straight to the pictures.
Hotmail Enhanced · Preview and filter messages by read/unread status.
MSN Spaces Edit It · Adds the HTML edit option to the MSN Spaces blog entry form.
MSN Spaces Statistics · Displays MSN Spaces space statistics as an overlay when you're logged in.
Netflix Queue Manager · Sort, shuffle, and delete items in your Netflix queue. Netflix Queue Manager website / new features.
Search Engine Helper · From most search engine sites, search using other search engines. So for example, you can visit Google and choose to search Ebay or Amazon. See a screenshot at the Search Engine Helper website.
Yahoo Finance Quotes · Adds a Yahoo Finance stock symbol lookup link next to stock symbol links on several sites, including Reuters, MSN, Forbes, Business Week, Ameritrade, and Scottrade. See the full list in this Yahoo Finance Quotes blog post.


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Killer Startups

Top Startups to watch

Stumble Upon :

Launched in 2002 by three 20-somethings in a Calgary, Alberta, apartment, StumbleUpon now has 2 million registered users drawn by its knack for finding websites that match their interests and those of others with similar tastes as they "stumble" around the Net.

Can you believe it ?? 2 million registered users ?

Funding: $1.5 million (Ron Conway, Mitch Kapor, Josh Kopelman, Brad O'Neill, Ram Shriram)

Headquarters: San Francisco

Employees: 12

Founded: 2001

Business model: Advertising, subscriptions

Bragging rights: Cash flow positive

Next up: New features like content controls and mobile video recommendations



www.slide.com
Slide has developed customizable and easily assembled slide shows of photos that can be embedded in a blog or a MySpace page, sent out in an RSS feed, and streamed to a desktop as a screensaver.

Funding: Not disclosed (Peter Thiel, Vinod Khosla, others)

Founder & CEO: Max Levchin (shown right)

Headquarters: San Francisco

Employees: 45

Founded: 2004

Business model: Advertising, subscription


www.bebo.com
Bebo has built a social network, more than 30 million members strong, that keeps users' pages private but still allows them to share things like video and drawings made on an online whiteboard.

Founders: Michael Birch (also CEO), Xochi Birch (shown right)

Headquarters: San Francisco

Employees: 28

Founded: 2005

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights: Profitable; advertisers include Disney, Alltel, Dawn and AOL)

Next up: Promoting new Bebo Authors channel (launched Feb. 22); hiring in-house sales team


www.meebo.com
Meebo lets users manage multiple instant-messaging services from one site. Meebo's killer app is a widget that places an IM window on your blog or webpage.

Funding: $12.5 million (Draper Fisher, Jurvetson, Sequoia Capital)

Founders: Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg (also CEO), Elaine Wherry (shown right)

Employees: 12

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights:: 5.3 million unique instant messenger IDs per month

Next up: Doubling staff in 2007



www.wikia.com
Wikia operates a hosting service for ad-supported community sites that use the same software and collaborative content model that made Wikipedia a Web phenomenon.

Launched in 2004, Wikia communities range from fans of 24 to politics junkies. Wikia is also working on an open-source, user-generated search engine.

Funding: $4 million (Amazon.com, Marc Andreessen, Bessemer Venture Partners, others)

Founders: Angela Beesley, Jimmy Wales (shown right)

Headquarters: San Mateo, Calif.

Employees: 33

Founded: 2004

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights: 500,000 articles in 45 languages

Next up: Hiring; expanding into Japan; adding more languages; developing open-source search engine



www.joost.com
Forget the three-minute video blog. The 30-minute, broadcast-quality Web 2.0 TV show is coming in all its full-screen glory. And if serial disrupters Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have their way, neither television nor the Internet will be the same.

The duo behind peer-to-peer services Kazaa and Skype will officially launch Joost this spring, aiming to merge the best of TV with the best of the Net.


Funding: Not disclosed

Founders: Janus Friis, Niklas Zennstrom (shown above)

Headquarters: Luxembourg

Employees: 100

Founded: 2006

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights: 40,000 beta testers; just beat rival YouTube by signing major content deal with Viacom; other content providers include National Geographic, Warner Music Group, and Dutch TV production company Endemol

Next up: Striking more content deals



www.dabble.com
Dabble has designed a tool for organizing videos into playlists of favorites. Users share them across the network, so, say, food lovers can dabble in one another's video collections.

Funding: $750,000 (Hank Barry, Evan Williams, others)

Founder & CEO: Mary Hodder (shown right)

Headquarters: Berkeley, Calif.

Employees: 11

Founded: 2005

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights: 12,000 registered users to date; partnerships with MySpace, YouTube, Grouper, Brightcove

Next up: Hiring; a groups feature for users with similar interests to share video


www.metacafe.com
Metacafe's service ranks uploaded videos by popularity and feedback from a community of 17 million monthly visitors - and pays the creators for the success of their work. The auteurs get $100 after 20,000 viewings and $5 for every 1,000 subsequent views. Since September, Metacafe has paid a total of $250,000 to 200 contributors.

Funding: $20 million (Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital)

CEO: Erick Hachenburg (shown right)

Headquarters: Palo Alto, Calif.

Employees: 65

Founded: 2003

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights: 17 million monthly users; revenues doubling each quarter

Next up: Hiring 100 employees in 2007; partnering with movie studios, record labels and producers



www.revision3.com
Revision 3 is a production studio for geek-oriented online shows. Started by Digg founder Kevin Rose and its CEO, Jay Adelson, Revision3 sells sponsorships to companies like Go Daddy, Microsoft, and Sony for as much as $10,000 per episode.

Funding: $1 Million (Adelson, Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, others)

Cofounder & CEO: Jay Adelson (shown right)

Headquarters: San Francisco

Employees: 7

Founded: 2005

Business model: Advertising

Bragging rights: 1.5 million monthly viewers; advertisers include Sony, IBM and Go Daddy

Next up: Launching up to 4 new shows



www.blip.tv
Blip.tv has built a platform for syndicating serialized online shows such as Starring Amanda Congdon and TreeHugger TV. Blip provides producers with software, ads, and distribution to websites and blogs. A deal is already signed with Web TV service Akimbo, which lets producers send their videos to TV sets.

Funding: Not disclosed (Ron Conway, Mark Gerson, Ken Lerer, Peter Thiel)

Cofounders: Dina Kaplan, Mike Hudack (also CEO; shown right with Kaplan)

Headquarters: New York City

Employees: 12

Founded: 2005

Business model: Licensing, advertising

Bragging rights: 45,000 content creators; key advertisers include Dove, Paltalk; licensors include CNN, Oxygen TV

Next up: Doubling staff in 2007

Disk encryption software that encrypts data “on-the-fly”

If you are worried about losing your valuable data TrueCrypt could help. TrueCrypt is an open-source disk encryption software that encrypts data “on-the-fly”. You can create an encrypted hard drive, a separate partition or a directory. Among the features are : creates encrypted hard drive and mounts it; encrypts an entire drive; selected partition/directory and even USB flash drive; encryption is automatic, on-the-fly and transparent for user; there is no way to check the size of the encrypted partition/directory; uses such encryption algorithms as : AES-256, Serpent, Twofish; enables the creation of a hidden volume; while in use you can’t distinguish between the created volume and common data; the virtual drives created with TrueCrypt are completely independent of the operating system, and authorization keys can be held on a USB stick. There are three ways to secure the encrypted data: with a password, with a special key, with both a password and a key. TrueCrypt 4.3a (released May 3, 2007), a free open-source disk encryption software for Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Linux, can be downloaded at http://www.truecrypt.org. TrueCrypt needs a tool called dmsetup to work correctly. Dmsetup is a tool enabling you to work with logical drives mapped with the device-mapper driver. The newest version of dmsetup is available on http://sources.redhat.com/dm/

Minisode Network on MySpace would host various Sony television shows

MySpace Video and Sony Pictures Television have collaborated on the "Minisode Network," a broadband video page featuring shortened versions of various Sony television shows available in a free, ad-supported form (the current sponsor is Honda) and which launched on Tuesday. MySpace members also have the option to embed 'minisodes' in their profiles.
You can think of it as TV on Cliff's Notes. Each 'minisode' is three to five minutes long, but Sony and MySpace have assured skeptical viewers that the story arc of the original TV episode remains intact.

On the Minisode Network, you can now watch three shaved-down episodes from a total of 15 TV shows. Many of them, like Starsky & Hutch and Charlie's Angels, predate the average young MySpace user, but a few, like Dilbert, are a bit newer. According to a release from MySpace, new ones will be added each week and more than 500 total will be online by the end of 2007. It's not clear whether this means that new shows will be added as well or if the 'minisodes' will remain restricted to the current 15.


EARLIER:

Sony Pictures Television is planning to launch a kind of Cliff Notes version of its hit television programs on MySpace. Broadcasting & Cable reported that the network plans to begin offering today (Tuesday) some 45 episodes from classic hits like Charlie's Angels, Facts of Life and Starsky & Hutch that will be three-to-five minutes long "while still retaining the full story arc." Sony said that it will initially offer them on what it will call the Minisode Network on MySpace and perhaps broaden its distribution to mobile phones after August.
New minisodes will be added each week, with the goal of offering more than 500 by the time 2008 rolls around.

Indian IT cos take Americans on board

Indian companies, which are becoming major players in the International arena, are hiring aggressively in the United States, reversing the earlier trend when they always transferred Indians to work in America on temporary visas.

Terming it reverse "offshoring", a new report names India's largest offshoring firm Tata Consultancy Service Ltd (TCS) and software giants Infosys and Wipro among them and saying some American workers laid off are now re-employed in Indian outfits after training in India.

Wipro Ltd, for instance, is scouting US locations for two big software writing centers that eventually could employ hundreds of programmers each. Cities on its short list include Austin, Tex, and Atlanta, because of their deep tech- talent pools and reasonable salary costs, according to media reports.

"The work we're doing requires more and more knowledge of the customers' businesses, and you want local people to do that," said, Wipro Chairman Azim H Premji.

Today only 2.5 per cent of Wipro's global workforce is non-Indian, but the company wants to boost that to more than 10 per cent in a few years. The Indian outsourcers are quoted as saying that their US expansion plans predate the latest concerns over immigration and jobs. But they acknowledge the trend might ease tensions as the Senate mulls regulations that would require companies applying for H-1B visas--temporary working papers for foreigners--to try hiring Americans first.

"If we can hire close to our clients, we don't have to bring in somebody from India on an H-1B," S Padmanabhan, human resources chief for Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS), India's largest outsourcing firm, said. About 1,000 of TCS's 10,000 US-based workers are Americans (out of 90,000 total employees worldwide).

A Brazilian Indian tribe is linking up with Google Earth to try to stop loggers

A Brazilian Indian tribe is linking up with Google Earth to try to capture vivid images that could help stop loggers and miners from deforesting the jungle and digging for gold on its vast Amazon reservation.
In another initiative unveiled this year, Google and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum are calling attention to atrocities in the Darfur region of Sudan. And last year, Google Earth joined forces with the United Nations Environmental Program to show users areas of environmental destruction, and with the Jane Goodall Institute to highlight its research on chimpanzees and African deforestation.

"At Google, we feel an obligation to help groups like this when it is so clear that our tools can make an important positive impact," spokeswoman Megan Quinn said.

YouTube is beta testing their new online video editing application. You can do basic video manipulations and create remixes by combining video clips, photos, music and graphic effects and transitions. backend uses Adobe Premier Express.
try it You tube mixer

Fathers and Kids Bond Over Video Games

When Will Nickelson and his daughter want to spend some quality time together, they fire up Nintendo Co.'s Wii and play a few rounds of ''Wii Sports'' or ''Mario Party 8.'' ''It's kind of difficult picking a game for a 7-year-old girl, but she really likes to beat her dad at bowling,'' says Nickelson, 30, a stay-at-home dad from Huntsville, Ala.

He's certainly not alone. The generation that grew up with ''Pac-Man'' and ''Pong'' are now having children of their own. And across the nation, fathers and their kids are finding the virtual worlds of video games a popular place to bond. Many fathers say the games bring them closer to their kids by providing a safe, convenient way to stay in touch and talk to their children on their own terms.

A national survey released last year by the Entertainment Software Association, a video game industry group, found that 35 percent of parents play video games, of which 80 percent play with their children. Mothers, too, were part of the study.

Though he considers himself a lifelong gamer, Nickelson said the time spent with his daughter, Sara, matters much more than the games themselves. ''It's more of a chance to have time with her,'' he said. ''Being a divorced dad, I don't get the time that I would like with her. It's just fun to sit down together and try to have fun together.''

Sara says the friendly competition doesn't hurt, either. ''I like the Wii baseball because it's just so fun because I always beat him,'' she said. ''Sometimes I beat him at Wii bowling. He gets kind of mad.''

One expert said video games equalize the physical size differences between fathers and their kids. That means children often have the edge in a video game, and they may feel more willing to communicate.

''You're on the kid's turf,'' said Dr. Arminta Jacobson, director of the Center for Parent Education at the University of North Texas. ''Anything that's fun between fathers and their kids I think is a really good thing.''

''How many parents complain they don't have anything to talk about with their kids? It may be geek talk, but we're still communicating,'' he said. ''How many parents sit down and do things on a consistent basis with their kids? I think it's a great way to share some time.''

One of his sons, 19-year-old Matthew Idler, plans on keeping video games a family tradition for years to come. ''It will be something I do with my kids when I have them,'' he said, ''and my dad will be invited to play with us, of course.''






source: Tech2

Rediff BlogShowCase ?? something like Technorati?

Rediff.com launched its latest offering, 'Rediff Blogshowcase 'in beta, at the Pune blog camp this weekend. 'Rediff Blogshowcase' aims to provide the fast growing blogging community in India, a platform to showcase their blogs by simply sharing their RSS feeds while they continue blog on their own chosen blogging sites.

Manish Agarwal Vice President Marketing said, "Blogging has emerged as a very powerful medium worldwide and bloggers are now acknowledged as the voice of the people. Even in India most of the readers are always looking for avenues to participate and access the good quality blogs. Rediff Blogshowcase is our endeavor to offer a unique platform to both bloggers and readers to enjoy the best of blogging action across the country and form a well informed and vibrant community."

He added, "We are confident that enabling bloggers to share their content easily on a common platform whilst they continue to blog anywhere in the world will bring knowledge of blogo sphere closer to the online user."

Rediff Blogshowcase is an extension of Rediff iland, the blogging and social networking platform, which, according to Rediff has seen robust growth since its launch and has been growing at 150%. Rediff stated that with the current base of over 5.6 million bloggers, the blogging community is expected to grow at the 83%(source COM Score).

Initially the access to bloggers for Rediff Blogshowcase will be through invitation only and would be made open to all shortly.


For me technorati is a better portal to be listed on cause they have a matured and a huge user base. For those bloggers who wish to attract additional traffic to their website "BlogShowCase" looks like a good add on. If you have tried both , please add your comments below.

Search Google and yahoo at the same time

YellowPages Corporation, owned by AT&T has introduced a tool, SearchBoth.com.au, that allows users to use Google and Yahoo! search engines at the same time.

SearchBoth.com.au is a cooperative partnership between Google, Yahoo and AT&T.

When users type in their related search words, SearchBoth.com.au will give them the results from Google and Yahoo in a split screened frame, side by side allowing them to look at both search engine results at the same time to figure out the best and most relevant search find.

SearchBoth has also launched in Canada, US, and UK with SearchBoth.ca, SearchBoth.com, and SearchBoth.co.uk, respectively. The company is currently working on adding other search engines like Ask and MSN along with others as an option. The user can select any two search engines and view them side by side. Google and Yahoo would be default.




Dont forget to digg , If you liked this post

IT Services space - is it too stretched ?

New IT Services startup's seem to be chanting new mantras. Focusing more on creating IP(In law, intellectual property (IP) is an umbrella term for various legal entitlements which attach to certain names, written and recorded media, and inventions. The holders of these legal entitlements may exercise various exclusive rights in relation to the subject matter of the IP. The term intellectual property reflects the idea that this subject matter is the product of the mind or the intellect. The term implies that intellectual works are analogous to physical property and is consequently a matter of some controversy.

Intellectual property laws and enforcement vary widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. There are inter-governmental efforts to harmonise them through international treaties such as the 1994 World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs), while other treaties may facilitate registration in more than one jurisdiction at a time. Disagreements over medical and software patents and the severity of copyright enforcement have so far prevented consensus on a cohesive international system) has been the way to go. With improving cyber laws and regulations,IP should be a good selling point.

Helping customers build/maintain IP(not just a product), is the right way to go!



Plain vanilla IT services companies are out. Start-ups in the Indian IT sector are witnessing a sea change with the new entities becoming more focused and attempting to create intellectual property (IPs).

The scale game in IT services segment which requires hiring of people in thousands becomes a very high barrier for any new entrant into this segment. Start-ups are becoming more specialized with focus on select segments, where they have deep expertise.Sudin Apte, senior analyst at Forrester, says, “Our experience in the past 12-18 months shows that start-up activity have grown and we believe the trend is more on IP... very seldom we have seen any one planning for plain offshore services

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Can a founders son be interviewed legitimately ?? Interesting read! check it out

I am not sure if we can believe the fact that a founders son can be interviewed legitimately for a position in the founded company ? Well! ya, might be. What i fail to understand is what are they trying to prove to the world? That they are honest businessmen, by setting up an interview panel and getting their son interviewed by them ! give me a break...


It was in early 2006 that Rishad Premji first got an inkling that his life was about to change. Rishad, who was fresh out of Harvard Business School, received an interview call asking him to appear before the governance committee of Wipro. For the 31-year-old, the timing was a bit sudden, he was barely a few months into his job at strategy consultants Bain & Company’s London office.

So far, his father Azim Premji, one of India’s richest men, had resisted all attempts at bringing his family into the company. Wipro was a professionally managed company and Mr Premji did not want any talk of nepotism tarring that reputation.

Rishad had to face up to three industry stalwarts: Ashok Ganguly, a former chairman of HLL, N Vaghul, non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank and PM Sinha, a former CEO of Pepsico’s South Asia operations. As independent directors on the board of Wipro, one of the India’s best-known software firms, the three gentlemen had an onerous duty to perform. They had to see if Rishad, the son of the man who controlled more than 80% stake in the company, was fit enough to join his dad’s company.

Several months later, on June 5 this year, Wipro’s communications office put out a terse two-line press release that simply stated that Rishad “will be joining Wipro at a level commensurate with his background and experience”. Since then, the company has blocked all attempts to discuss the issue. Even a request for his photograph was found inappropriate by the company. That the Premji family zealously guards its privacy is evident from Rishad’s response to an email from ET: “Thank you for your email and interest. I am sorry, but I will not be able to talk to you. I am really excited about the prospects of joining Wipro....” All that a senior Wipro employee and Mr Premji’s direct reportee is willing to say is that “Rishad is a good addition to the company”.

Despite the obvious reluctance inside Wipro to share the specifics of Rishad’s unobtrusive entry into the company, there’s one simple reason why the story is significant: it signals a marked change in the way family-owned businesses in the country deal with generational transitions. By no means is it the only such example. Yet many promoters, even those with professional boards, still approach the task of inducting a sibling or a family member into a publicly listed company, with considerable diffidence.

In contrast, the transparent manner in which the Wipro board, consisting of six independent directors and chairman Mr Premji, has dealt with the issue does stand out. So far, the fact that the Wipro board had stepped in to put in place a process to manage Rishad’s entry into the company has remained under wraps. It has therefore given rise to constant rumours, which started ever since Vivek Paul, Wipro’s last CEO, quit in June 2005. It had been widely speculated then that Rishad would join Wipro soon.

The speculation refused to die down when Mr Premji did not look for another CEO. Instead he chose to run Wipro like a federation with presidents in charge of each business division. Wipro, which has all along refuted claims that Mr Premji’s successor will be one of his sons, kept the news of Rishad’s entry tightly under wraps.

Only Mr Premji’s direct reports who include people like CFO Suresh Senapathy and HR head Pratik Kumar knew about it. According to some Wipro insiders, the company was forced to release a statement earlier this month because the news had already leaked out. Later that day, in a telecon with journalists, Mr Kumar insisted that this wasn’t a succession plan and that Rishad was joining Wipro as an employee.

None of this would have happened if Mr Premji had his way. The patriarch apparently had agonised over the enormous conflict in his mind about inducting a family member into the company. Perhaps the fact that he had packed his board with some of the finest names in the business in the end helped.


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Indian Government is examining a proposal to slap restrictions on the social networking website Orkut following a complaint from Shiv Sena, which found some adverse comments against its chief Bal Thackeray on the portal.


Orkut has been on fire many times before, thanks to many such anti Indian communities/groups writing bizzare stuff on a public forum. Hope Google's doing something about these anti social elements..

"We are examining the request from Maharashtra police (with whom Shiv Sena has filed the complaint) from all angles. We may take a few days to reach a solution," Controller of Certifying Authority (CCA) N Vijayaditya, whose division is looking into the issue, told media.

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Sony Launches official playstation blog

Sony Launches official playstation blog

After months of using threespeech.com as their unofficial blog, Sony USA are all set to interact with the community with their very own official blog . 

 

Sony plans to use to share all sorts of things, ranging from product news and title announcements to developer updates and industry opinion posts all of which will come straight from the people here inside SCEA who are working, thinking and playing with this stuff every day.  Go on, head over there and voice your opinion now. Read On
  

MySpace plans to go big in China

MySpace plans to go big in China

News Corp.-invested MySpace China aims to launch an online messaging service "as soon as possible", its CEO said on Wednesday, as the venture fights for a bigger share of the world's second-largest Internet market.

Chinese web users - 140 million 

Distinctive feature, when compared to their competitors - instant video messaging,intgerated with the MySpace portal

Expected Roll Out time - depends on user feedback and whether the performance is able to satisfy users' demands

Trageted Audience - Has to be Teenagers (as Facebook/MySpace overall attract a lot of Teenagers)
read on  

Hewlett Packard to implement IT outsouring and transformation project for Britania Industries

Hewlett Packard to implement IT outsouring and transformation project for Britania Industries

     Britannia Industries announced that it has selected Hewlett-Packard India to implement a comprehensive IT outsourcing and transformation project that will include infrastructure solutions, SAP Application Services, consulting and outsourced services. 

 

This makes Britannia the first major FMCG company to comprehensively outsource its IT operations.

read on  

 

For those of you who are interested in the housing section of craigs list, there is an interesting website you should consider using. Housing Maps, which is written on the google maps api, plots all the rental houses/houses for sale/rooms/sublets on the Google map. Nicely done i must say. All the rental houses/houses for sale/rooms/sublets data is picked from CraigsList database.
   All the filtering options  which you find on cragislist is available here. Filter by city/price/number of rooms/ etc. Keyword seach is AJAX enabled and your search almost instantly pulls out all the results on the right hand side of the map and the map refreshes to show you the latest data.

CraigsList got popular cause of its simplicity, you bet HousingMaps would complement CraigsList on this. The only thing i didnt like about this site is they do not show the latest list of houses available on the craigsList. May be there could be a database synchronization issue between the craigslist and housingmaps, that they need to work on.

But overall its just perfect!

 

Amazing website for Google maps

I was browsing for information on Google maps on how to implement different bussiness around google maps. I happened to come accross this wesite www.googlemapsmania.blogspot.com
and googlemapsapi.blogspot.com. These are the best online resources to keep oneself updated on the developments in google maps world.

googlemapsmania tracks all the latest websites coming up on Google Maps, which is really amazing to see.These gives also track down all the developments around the google maps api.

 I would definitely recommend these sites to all my viewers.

Enjoy Mapping!

Which Firefox theme do you use ? With so many themes available to download i am in a soop on which one do we prefer the most, can our personalities be traced from it? Interesting.
I use myfirefox 1.0.09 feels elegant when compared to many of other themes i tried. i prefer the black background it has for the top most row(where in the url can be entered). Has good if not best mouse over effects. Also, i like the Tab font. Last but not the least i am very mild/do what you are asked to kind of a person(seriously!).

Dont forget to add your fav firefox theme and your personality below.