How to install Android Applications on your Windows/Mac Computer?

I know! How we wish we could use our favourite Android Apps on Windows or Mac, right? We, people who love Android, love world without borders and technology without operating system boundaries. For us, an ideal world will be a world where we can use any application on any operating system. Like I said in my last post, we love Android because of its openness. But Android is as open as only Android can get.

What if we could use some of the Android Applications on our PC or Mac? That World would be an ideal world. Hopefully that world is yet to come. Until then, we need to rely on emulators. They did it on Blackberry Playbook once. If you are an Android geek, i am sure you remember how someone created an Emulator for Android on playbook. There was also news of someone installing Gingerbread or Honeycomb on a Linux system.

But that is Linux System. Most of us use Windows. And we do not have the tech background to install Android OS on a Windows PC without killing it. The only hope we have is an Android Emulator for Windows or Mac. And the hope is finally here!

Bluestacks! Blustacks allows you to emulate Android Apps as they are seen on an Android phone. Is that not cool? Yes, it is! I tried the emulator and the first thing i tried to emulate was the app that is so popular - Pulse. Though I do not like Pulse much for eating all the battery on my Android phone, I love its design. And I was absolutely stunned to see that Pulse looks and feels the same way on your PC when you emulate it using Bluestacks as you use it on your Android phone.


Now remember, you can emulate your Android using Bulestacks only if you are using Windows 7. You Mac Application is on the way. And Bluestacks is in Alpha, so do not expect bug free performance.  Now if you have an Android Phone, you can use Bluestacks Cloud Connect to transfer some of you favorite Applications to your PC. Bluestack Cloud Connect can be downloaded from here.

If you are someone who is thinking of moving away from iOS or Blackberry and want to see how Android Apps work, Bluestack is certainly  something you might want to try.

Troubleshooting: Remember that Bluestacks is in Alpha. In other words, Bluestacks is out in its most rudimentary form. Some of you may find that Bulestacks does not install on your Windows 7 PC. Do not panic! There must be some issues with the file you have downloaded. Reboot your computer and try installing Bluestacks again. If that does not work, download the installation file once again later and try to install Bluestacks on your PC

How to revert to Old Twitter?

#NewTwitter is the talk of the town! And I just got the opportunity to try it out today. It looks cool and intelligent. However, as usual some of us may find it difficult to use the new twitter user interface initially. Some of us may not like it.

The other day, a twitter friend of mine was trying hard to figure out how to revert to the old twitter interface as he did not like the #newTwitter interface much. He tweeted me asking how he can possibly revert to old twitter! I could not help him as I was not yet allowed into #newTwitter back then. Result? Poor guy had to delete his Twitter Handle and go for a new one!

The first thing I did as soon as I was allowed to try the #newTwitter was to see if there is a way I can go back and use the old Twitter UI! Bingo, there is an option!

Twitter has included a very simple link to enable you to revert to old Twitter. All you got to do is to  click on your name on the navigation bar that appears top right and choose "Leave Preview". Presto! You will be taken back to the old Twitter.

Update: You cannot revert to Old Twitter anymore!

Why do I still go back to Google News?

In spite of Twitter and TweetDeck, I still find myself going back to Google News. Why?

Let me explain. Now, there is no question Twitter is a powerful social media. Often, more powerful than the powerful Facebook itself. And I am sure every tech geek in the world today wish they invented Twitter. Twitter popularized the concept of realtime web. And TweetDeck put the concept into action. As I shared with you in my last post, I look at Twitter as a powerful content delivery device. Having said that, there is one limitation that Twitter has which makes me not to quit my favourite Web 2.0 Services. What is that limitation?

Let me explain. People say Twitter is a river of information. Yes it is indeed. This is more than a metaphor when we talk about Twitter. You never get back the water that flows through River Twitter. Yes, the realtime nature of Twitter makes me miss the news. Twitter is with me when I am online, or when I my phone is with me. But then, I always do not have the time to keep checking my phone or keep going back to Twitter to see what is happening around the world.

On Twitter, it trends only if people are talking about it. But there is news out there that do not trend. News that I may miss out on. This is where feed readers and news aggregators like Google News come into picture. I still prefer the time I set apart to read news. I am not sure if I am really prepared for the information and junk with which Twitter overloads my timeline, my real life timeline. Not that it is bad. Just that I am not really ready for it yet.

So, I still go back and check Google News to see if I have missed out on anything!

Open Dictionary from Macmillan

fauxtography |NOUN|the practice of creating false photographs by using software. It is a blend of 'faux' (meaning 'false') and 'photography'.The Jerusalem Post caught another fauxtography scam out of the mideast this week.

apatheist |NOUN| someone who is not interested in religion ... most apatheists are not agnostics. Because - and this is an essential point - many apatheists are believers.

technobimbo |NOUN| a girl who uses computer technology a lot but who doesn't really know much about it As a true technobimbo, I really hate the way computers can get stuck, go wrong and generally fail to explain themselves in plain English.

Heard these words? They are the new additions to Macmillan’s Open Dictionary. Well, what is the Open Dictionary? The idea is to allow users to add words that they know, with a meaning and a sentence in which the word in question is used. Anyone can add any word. Macmillan will publish the word if they can find reference to the word elsewhere. It cannot be a word used exclusively by you and your inner circle.

I don’t know how, even the word “adipoli” is there on the Open Dictionary list, as submitted by certain Dinesh Balakrishnan. As far as my knowledge goes, Adipoli is a word teenagers use in Malayalam to suggest that something is good as in “adipoli film”, “adipoli song” etc. Open Dictionary defines adipoli as follows

adipoli

adjective

excellent; used in Indian English

The concert was an adipoli performance which went deep into the hearts of everybody.

May be, soon we are going to see “adipoli” in the main Macmillan Dictionary?

Google Indic is difficult to handle!

If I have to type something in Malayalam, usually to post something on Koottam, a Social Community Network for Keralites that runs on Ning, I go straight off to Google Indic Transliteration Feature. Google Indic was a great feature from Google, as it was easy to use unlike many Transliteration Applications available online. What I loved the most about Google Indic was its ability to let me edit the text, helping me with suggestions, in case my transliteration went wrong. Where Google Indic suggested the possible words for a combination of English alphabets, it used to have an “Edit” option in the earlier version of Indic. I would enable the “Edit’ Option, start typing the word and Google Indic would then come up with possible Malayalam alphabets that could be created using a combination of English alphabets. My spelling never went wrong, as I had great control over what i wrote.

Yesterday, Google India’s Bangalore Team announced the launch of a new and improved version of Google Indic. It looks like Google Indic is going global. They have added all sorts of features to the improved version of Google Indic from Text Formatting to Unicode Character Picker. It supports seventeen languages: Arabic,Bengali, Greek, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Nepali, Persian, Punjabi,Russian, Sanskrit, Serbian, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu. It is a great tool still. However, one key feature is missing.

Google India took away the one feature that made me stick to Google Indic, making it similar to the rest of the Transliteration Applications available online. It just took away the “Edit” feature. Now, it is like I am struggling like a five year old to figure out the right English Alphabet combination to produce the desired Malayalam Equivalents. True, Google Indic gives me a Unicode Character Picker to figure out the alphabets. But it takes a pretty long time for me to figure out what goes where. The Edit Feature used to make it very easy. I just had to click on it and start typing and Google Indic used to tell me different combinations I could use. I wish Google India brought the Edit feature back to Google Indic!

Google going live

Here is a screenshot of when Google went real-time when I searched. Well, that was just the Twitter updates, running live on the Google Search Page. And according to Google, there is more to real-time search than just Twitter. With real-time search Google is promising to give us the most relevant fresh information about what we search online, from news to tweets

You also have an option to control what result appear on your search page. You can go to the Option Tab on your Google Search Page and set your search from “Anytime” to “Latest” Following screenshot shows you how the search page appears when you set your options to latest.

You can also set your options to “Updates” mode. When you set your Search Options to “Updates” mode Google will give you only the most current real-time updates like Twitter. Right now I see only Twitter running on the search page. I am not sure if that is because Twitter is popular or right now Google can get updates only from Twitter. I would love if Google could give me the live feed of the most recent happening online from any site or web service, in connection with what I am searching.

My Favourite Chrome Extensions

I always used to wish Chrome had extensions like Firefox. But then I was thankful Chrome did not have extensions because whenever I think of Browser Extensions I remember the time it used to take Firefox to load with all those Extensions. In fact the endless loading time is one reason why I left Firefox and started using Chrome. I always had to wait for at least for 15 minutes before Firefox initialized the Extensions or Add-ons or what ever they call it and then checked for updates and was ready for me to use. That was when the lightening speed Chrome came along and I instantly fell in love with this sleek browser that saved a lot of screen real estate and loaded faster than any browser that existed on my system. However, I always secretly wished for some of the cool extensions I had on Firefox.

And then Chrome Extensions came along! Yes, you require a developer version of Chrome if you want to use Chrome Extensions. But then, Chrome Beta is one good way to keep in touch with the new things the browser offers and there is no harm in using it. I went around trying most of what was available on the Chrome Extension Site and finally realized a few key things about what makes a Good Browser Extension.

1. A good browser extension is not just another bookmark! Most of the Extensions we have on Chrome are simple bookmarks which, if you click on them, take you to some websites. If an extension works like a bookmark, then why do I need it?
2. A good browser extension must do what the browser can not! For example, Google has an Omnibox that lets me do both search and browsing from one place. Google also allows me to decide which search engine provides me the results I seek using Omnibox. Then, why would I need another extension that offers to help me do search with different search engines?
3. A good browser extension must enable me to do certain things without leaving the browser window! This is the major factor that decides if I like an extension or not. I like an extension that allows me to do things without disturbing my browser experience. 

Now, these are the factors based on which I have selected my current favourite Chrome Extensions.

Facebook for Google Chrome

This extension allows you to see your Facebook News  Feed, Wall and Notifications without leaving the Current Tab. One click and the extension opens a pop up that lets you read the feeds on Facebook. It also allows you to update your status or let your friend know that you liked what he or she said. My only issue with this Extension is that it does not allow me to comment on what my friends say, though the comment link is available along with the feed.

Chromed Bird

Chromed Bird allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account without leaving the Current Tab. One click and you can update your status, see your feed or @ Mentions or Direct Messages and retweet what your friends are up to. An option to create short url adds value to the extension. Initially I used to get an error message when the extension loaded. But now it works perfectly fine.

Chromepad
Chromepad is a note taking extension which I love using. I do not have to leave the browser and open a notepad if I want to take something quickly down as I am browsing. For example, I am browsing and a phone call came and I have to take down a phone number. I just have to click Chromepad open and type the number in. I don't have to even save what I type and recall it any time I want to. It is one of the cleanest and well designed Chrome Extension I have ever come across.

Google Tasks
Google Tasks allows you to recall your Google Task list without leaving your current tab. You can do everything that you do with Google Task when you open it in your Gmail or use it as a widget on iGoogle. The best thing about this extension is the fact that you can use the Google Task as liked to your account or you can use it as an extension specifically for your browser. You can also open Google Task as a seperate window.

Google Quick Scroll
Quick Scroll is Google's contribution to Chrome Extension. It works in the background, unlike most of the Extensions that appear next to the Omnibox. It helps you find what you are searching for faster and has the ability to decide if it must intervene with your search. When Quick Scroll decides to help you with your search it will appear at the bottom of the page leading you to the exact place on a web page where your key word can be found.

What do I like about Chrome Extensions?
Following are the things I like about Chrome Extensions:

1. I like Chrome Extensions because it loads as soon as it is installed. I don't have to restart the browser to see how the new Extension is working
2. I like Chrome Extensions also because they do not affect the Browser loading time.

The only thing I may not like is when third party extensions have the power to keep track of my browsing history and data.

Career Consultant Spammers!

I am sure you are a member of one of these Indian Job Sites and you get hundreds of mails intimating you about openings at various Organizations and Companies. And I am sure you have applied many a times if you are interested in the position on offer, sending your updated detailed resume. But my question is, how many of you have really got a call back for an interview applying for these jobs that are intimated from Job Sites by consulting agencies?

My experience is I have got a call back for interview only if the mail came directly from the Organization. I have never got a call back from the Recruiting Agencies that are abundant online, even if my profile suited the position they have advertised right to the last word. How do I know my resume suited the position right to the last word? I know because I know my job, I know what you require to do my job.

So I was telling you about the mails that come from Organizations and Agencies, intimating you about a vacant job. And I think we are so caught up talking about spams and scams in other areas like Social Networks that Career Spammers go unnoticed. Even I never noticed untill I received a call to my Unofficial Phone Number, which I leave only for recruiters and some very close friends, from some Agency from Mumbai that was trying to sell me a CD that had something to do with my profession. How did they know my number? How did they know what I was doing? I am pretty sure on of the Consulting Agency or an Organization to which I had sent my resume sold it to them. I went back and looked at the mails, in a hope to find a common pattern to figure out fake Consulting Agencies who are out there to sell my details to some thugs.

What did I figure out? Let me tell you:

• Check if the mail is sent from a Yahoo or Gmail ID than a Company ID. Any decent Company these days will have an email address of their own. 
• If they have an email address of their own, see if they have a website in the same address. If they have a website address in the same name, visit the website. See if the profile of the Company as mentioned in the mail and what you see on the website has reasonable connections. For example your mail may claim that the Company deals with Software Testing. If you visit the Website of the Company, you will find that the it is not about a Company at all. The website will be about some IT related conference that happened in 2006.  So check if the Company Profile on the mail matches with the Company Profile on the Website.
• Check for phone numbers. A serious recruiter will leave a phone number for you to contact. Any Tom Dick and Harry can create an email address. They can not have a valid phone number if they are fake. And a phone number is more traceable than an email address. Go ahead and see if there is a phone number. Also make sure that the phone number in the mail matches with the phone number on the website. A decent company will mention all the public contact numbers mentioned on the website in their mail. Think twice before sending your CV,  if only a cell phone number is mentioned. A valid landline number is your key to make sure that the company exists and has an address. 
• It is not enough you check for phone numbers. Call the number given and find out if you are calling to the same person as mentioned in the mail. Sometimes they can give you all the right numbers and still dupe you. So call and find out. Especially because your resume contains all valid data about you and it is a good tool for social engineering. 
• See if the mail is rational. Sometimes spammers can cut and paste from different mails to avoid hardwork. If it is an authentic company about an authentic job, the mail will have logical connection from beginning till end. Some of these offers may talk about totally unrealistic and unrelated skills in an attempt to sound professional. For example, the other day I got a mail from a Company looking for a Soft Skill Trainer who had knowledge of Hardware and Networking. I know Soft Skill Trainers, who train call centre people. I have never come across a Soft Skill Trainer who has knowledge of Hardware and Networking. And that is the job of a Tech Trainer and not a Soft Skill Trainer. You know your job. So check the mail and see if the skills mentioned in the mail sounds familiar and have some sort of connection. 
• See if the mail is clear about Soft Skills and Hard Skills and Qualifications and mentions them separately. Good recruiters know the hard skills required for the job and mentions them clearly and separately. Check and make sure that what you see is not a list of randomly picked skill sets to make it sound professional. 

But you don't have to bother replying to these mails from Career Sites at all. If you are really hunting for a job,  I have a few advices for you to avoid getting fooled:

1. Go to the company website directly and apply directly to the company instead of trusting Career Sites. Most of the Organizations advertise their job openings in their websites. 
2. Buy a news paper one of these days when they have a Job Advertisement Suppliment. Most of the good companies advertise directly through the news papers. 

If you do this, you can be at least happy that people are not duping you, manipulating your need to get a job.

Safe Social Networking: Orkut is safer than Facebook

I am amazed at the speed at which Facebook is catching up in India, pushing Orkut to the background. Well, I am generalizing based on my personal experience and not based on any research. I see many of my friends becoming more active on Facebook and less active on Orkut. I see bloggers in an eternal struggle to add more friends so that they can share their links with as many people as possible. I see Indian Companies coming up with Fan Pages on a daily basis. You are right, we do that because Facebook has a lot many more Social Networking options than Orkut.

I am on Facebook for the last five month or so. I kind of liked Facebook for their cute colour and fonts, layout and interactive networking options. I felt Facebook looks classy and more social networking than Orkut. I wondered why, Google, with all their mastery of building a brand was neglecting Orkut. If Google made up its mind, it could have taken Orkut way beyond what is is now. But I have never seen Orkut move beyond what it was a year or two ago, except for the new interface they recently launched. I was all the time wondering why!

Untill I read Dennis Yu and his how to spam Facebook like a pro.According to him, many of  the games, the quizes and the other applications that keep popping up while you are on Facebook are aimed at doing three things:

• Installing a spyware or a tracking cookie on your computer which will later open a back door from your computer to smuggle out information
• Trick you into giving up your email address and phone number
• Trick you into giving up your or your friend's profile information

Now I think I know why Google is keeping Orkut simple. It is just about social networking and nothing else.

Adsense on You Tube: How is it going to help?

Google is finally opening up Adsense for You Tube Users. So far, monetizing content was the privilege of a few. From now on, Google will let the owners of popular videos join the Adsense Programme and make some money out of it. What are the implications of such a move?

People say Google is struggling to make good money out of You Tube, though it is a very popular web service. People watch You Tube Videos a lot more times than any other video site in the world, to the extend of forcing Microsoft host their Jingle Video Contest on it. Yet, it seems, You Tube fails to deliver in terms of dollars.

I can understand why people want to watch videos on You Tube - it is entertaining. But it is not enough that the videos are entertaining to make some good bucks out of it. Let me tell you why I think so! There are only two reasons as I can see why people would want to upload content on You Tube. Let me explain - there are only two kinds of videos on You Tube. One, personal videos that you want your friends and family to watch. Two, promotional videos or videos that are advertisements themselves. So people upload videos only for personal reasons or because they want to promote their brand. What does this lead to? This is a serious limitation.

Pay-per-click Advertising survives only if people have reasons to click on the links. The most legitimate reason to click an advertisement is the interest of the person who clicks, in the product. Now, imagine that you are watching a home video that I produced because you are my friend. Let us say, the video is on how my dog eats food. And Contextual Advertising would probably put an advertisement on Dog Food along with the video. I am damn sure no one would click that advertisement. Because people who watch that video are going to watch it not because they want to know more about Dog Food, but because they know me and they are curious to know what I'm up to. If I am lucky, the video will become viral and a few more people would watch it. They too would watch it not because they are interested in Dog Food, but because they are curious to know what is happening. No wonder Google makes no money out of You Tube.

Talk about promotional video content. Watching such stuff usually takes us to other sites, if I am interested in what I am watching. And there again Google loses out in the game as in the You Tube Model, Video is much more important than anything else on the site.

And here comes Google with this cool idea - let users monetize their videos. Probably the JK Wedding Dance inspired the idea. Which ever way, all of us are going to gain from this decision. How? Look at the key to this idea - Google is going to let only the publishers of popular content monetize their videos. Some people say Google is doing this because they are worried they can not monetize all the content on You Tube. Some are so worried about how advertisers will have to put up with sponsoring things they do not want to sponsor. But I am not worried about anything. I look at this decision as an opportunity for publishers to make good money out of what they post. I am sure in the days to come You Tube is going to be more than just personal videos and promotional videos. I'm sure You Tube is going to see more quality content as publishers compete to make videos that make people watch. I am sure people are going to come back and watch videos and click on the advertisements because they are interested in what they are watching and advertisements will hopefully cater to their interests. And I'm sure slowly You Tube will become another research tool as more quality content is going to show up.

After Thought: Now we know one reason why Google bought ON2. I'm waiting for the rest of the reasons to surface.

Synonym finding made easy!

There are hundreds of on-line dictionaries and most of them are worth the bargain. Asking Google to define a word for you is the easiest thing to do when you are hunting for meanings. Otherwise you have a choice of dictionaries from where you can glean the meanings. But when you want to find synonyms and antonyms of a particular word, things can be hard on you if you are using any of them. I find most of the online dictionaries sufficiently incapable in that area. And I found Synonym.com can do that job easily for us.

Synonym.com comes with three features as you can see. It has a synonym finder that helps you find similar words. It has an antonym finder that helps you find the opposite words. It also has a definition tool so that you can also go find the meaning if you want.

One thing I liked about Synonym.com: They categorize the synonyms that they find for you and give you a list of words in different sense of the search word. This is one feature I haven't found in any of the Online Dictionaries. Most of them may give you a list of similar words. But they never tell you in what sense the given words are the synonyms of the search word.

FatSecret: For people who love food and diet!

Do you know what India searched most in 2008? Well, Google Zeitgeist 2008 tells us that people from India who searched how to do something, mostly searched for 'How to reduce weight?" That is not very  surprising when we consider that the 'Image of a Beautiful Woman' is portrayed as an 'Image of a Skinny Woman' by Indian Mainstream Mass Media. Why do I think our women must have searched for this? Simply because I have never come across a woman in India who is not bothered about her weight, even among the skinniest! Well, we can go on discussing about who did that search most, but that is not the purpose of my post! I just wanted to bring to your notice a curious Social Community Site I came across the other day, as I was surfing.

Fat Secret - the name tells you everything! It is a social community network dedicated to people who think about 'all things food and diet" Good idea, isn't it? People who hunt for information on Food and Diet get peer validated information here, that is what the site owners claim. And I think it is true. The site does not control any information that is there on the site and they claim that they have no affiliation to any company that offer medicines that help you reduce the 'mass' of your body. The information on the site are given by the members of the site and the site has tools to gather and compare information, enabling the best peer validated tips to reach users.

The site owners say:

FatSecret takes the feedback and collective experience of members to discover what really works.We are totally independent and try not to give recommendations but rather provide the tools and framework for everyone to achieve their goals as the community generates answers to all food, diet and exercise questions - united we fall(the weight that is).

Look at the graph provided. The graph gives you an idea about how a particular diet is successful based on the diet data collected from the users. It simply rates a diet beased on how much weight people who followed the diet could lose.

I think that is a cute idea you should try out if you are someone who is constantly worried about your weight, instead of spending your money on tablets and potions that ultimately make you end up in hormon imbalances and make you victims of cancer and sorts.

Images: Screen Shots taken from FatSecret

Browser War: Is Netscape Founder coming back with a vengence?

15 December 1994, Netscape Communications Corporation launched Netscape Navigator, the Web Browser that changed the way people approached Internet. Microsoft bought the licence of the source code of Mosaic, and with that they created Internet Explorer, which eventually killed Netscape. That browser war was somewhere in 1995. And Andreessen and his Netscape was history!

In July 2009, techedIN was launched, amidst another browser war booming! [Yes, the very same techedIN you are reading now!] Because of the success of Firefox, Google entered the browser market and now the war is between Google, Mozilla, Apple and Microsoft. And today New York Times reported the entry of another player  into the browser market! A man the Internet World always remembers with a lot of respect -Marc Andreessen!

New York Times reported that Marc is funding a Software Development firm called RockMelt, which is secretly into the business of developing a new generation browser. NYT reports:

But Mr. Andreessen suggested the new browser would be different, saying that most other browsers had not kept pace with the evolution of the Web, which had grown from an array of static Web pages into a network of complex Web sites and applications. “There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if you are building a browser from scratch,” Mr. Andreessen said.

So Marc is building a web browser from scratches, the one that will slowly kill the current ones? Like Microsoft took over his browser kingdom way back in 1995? And what is Marc and his team building? RockMelt does not give you much idea about what is happening with them, on their site. They just have a page that shows off their mysterious logo. [Believe me, the logo sticks! Great sense of logo selection!]

There are people who claim that they got a chance to take a look at the 'thing' RockMelt is attempting to make. And as I understand, it is mostly designed as a browser that integrates Facebook into its build. In other words Marc seems to be targeting the millions who use Facebook like Google once targeted Firefox users, buying the rights to be the home page of every Firefox Browser.And Marc is on the Director Board of Facebook, which would probably make it easy for him to strike a deal with Facebook.

Does it have any other feature built into it other than Facebook integration? No one knows. If it is just about Face Book integration, then what is Flock for? Flock is a web browser launched by Mozilla, the makers of Firefox. Flock integrates Face Book and Twitter very well into its build. It also lets you keep in touch with your feeds real time. It permits you to access your mail, post your blog and all these features are built into the browser. This means once you have your account open you don't have to go directly to the website to access information. The browser brings you all that information by itself. Flock is much more powerful than any browser I have seen so far. Not even Chrome or Firefox can match it! [I'm not so sure about security though!]

If there is already a browser [Flock!] that fits the description of what Marc probably has in his mind, then why re-invent the wheel? Is he just trying to take his vengence on Microsoft for having him out of the game? Or is it about controling the web, because today owning a browser that people use is how on-line might of Software Companies is defined? Is the new browser to be created by the RockMelt Team going to be a powerful new generation one? Or is it going to be a Facebook Homepage thing that is going to die once another social networking site better than Face Book will take over the market? Only time will tell! [I have given my email address to the RockMelt team and am waiting for their updates. Till then, I'll try and use Flock for some time and see if it can get me out of my Chrome Addiction!]

Images from Wikipedia and RockMelt Official Site

wibiya: make your blog a bit more interactive!

It's toolbar time for blogs. I don't know if you have noticed the blue toolbar on techedIN. It is there because I wanted to make techedIN a bit more interactive than it was. This feature on techedIN is brought to you by Wibiya, an Israeli start-up that is specialized in creating 'customized web-based toolbars.'

What value does it add to your blog? Well, see for yourself how it adds value to techedIN.

1. One click and you can translate the page into 11 languages, one at a time. Wibiya uses the Translation Feature offered by Google to do this. When you click on the 'Translate' button, you are redirected to the tool that Google uses to translate a page. The user interface of techedIN remains as it is. Only the content gets translated. 
2. Another feature I liked is the option to view random posts. Click on the Random Post button and it will take you to one of the posts on techedIN which you would have otherwise missed out, as it is archived.
3. The toolbar can also give you a list of recent posts. One click and you get a list of recent posts. Click on the one you want to read and it will take you there.
4. The toolbar also has options to let readers subscribe to the RSS Feed or share a post with a community. 
5. Wibiya also gives you an option to share notifications with your readers. It is a flash pop-up that shows up as you load the blog. I toyed with the idea of using it as a pop-up always annoys readers. I thought I wouldn't use it. I changed my mind when I saw how effectively it can be used to interact with the readers. I have adapted the notification pop-up [I don't know if I should call it a pop up. It is a flash-object that shows up as the blog loads and goes off on its own in a few seconds.] I christened the pop-up as 'News @ techedIN' I thought it can be used to share IT related news that I find interesting with the readers. No harm in it, what do you think?

 Wibiya also gives you features like creating a Blog Community on Facebook and promoting it on your blog. I decided against using that feature for now, as I do not have enough time in my hand to promote a community.

You can also let readers tweet your posts. I decided against using it as I already have retweet option enabled for the posts on my blog.

What more? Wibiya has a community to help users tackle the toolbar management issues.

And I really liked the way it looks on my blog. I received my first compliment from a reader for making the blog look good, after I installed the toolbar.

I think you should go ahead and give it a shot. And don't forget to tell me what you felt about it!

Image from Wibiya's Site

Crisis Phobia and "The Top 100 Search Terms Queried by Kids"

I remember a Professor of mine who used to always call our attention to the 'crisis phobea' some writers try to spread. I don't know if you have ever noticed some writers going about their job as though the world is going to end if you don't listen to them. I remembered my Professor and his long lectures on the perpetrators of crisis phobia when I read OnlineFamily.Norton's list of  top 100 terms kids search on-line.

Top 100 Search Terms Queried by Kids? Do you know what they are? There is everything from YouTube to Google to Face Book to Michael Jackson to Pokemon to you name what you consider popular with kids on net and they are there! Take a look at it and at first it appears to be a very innocent list. But wait a second! Is it as innocent as Norton is trying to sound?

There are some search terms in the list  that can be very disturbing where parents are concerned. Sex is fourth in the list. Porn is sixth in the list. And at least four more 'taboo' words occur on the list. And the write up does not mention the age levels of the children who would have searched these words while they were surfing. It simply gives you a general list of 100 search terms and of course a note to many of them in case parents sat wondering what they were.

Norton claims that they tracked down 3.5 million searches and a search term had to be submitted at least 50 times to qualify as a 'kids' top search term.' See how they are trying to validate their findings in the best way possible. And Norton says [See the crisis words stressed using inverted comas]:

According to OnlineFamily.Norton, kids’ top 100 search terms include sites like YouTube, eBay and Craigslist, as well as social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace. The words “sex” and “porn” also made it to the top, ranking number four and six respectively.

And one clearly understands that the post target parents as there are explanations to most of the search terms used. Why did they do it? Of course we know - they have this OneFamily Child Protection, Net Filtering Software to sell. Yah, the one like China's Green Dam. And this report shows us even they can keep track of what you are doing with your PC, like Green Dam.

Please don't get me wrong! I do not endorse children visiting pornographic sites. I do not endorse adults visiting pornographic sites even. Because most of these sites spread malware, viruses and spyware. It is not healthy for your computer if you visit them. And to make sure that your personal information like passwords and credit card number are safe, you need to make sure that spyware and malware do not infest your PC or MAC. And I know kids sometimes tend to visit such sites out of curiosity and in turn gets the computer affected. And perhaps, it is good to have a Site Filtering System on your computer.

However, that does not justify the the way Norton has tried to scare poor parents into buying their software. [Ya, it is free now! But what about later?] It does not justify their attempt to generalize search terms and make it look like 'kids are as pervert as adults' I would not have bothered if they gave a reference to the age level of children. But they have made the list look like every kid from a toddler to a teenager needs to be closely watched like police watches a suspect, every time they go on-line. I can not agree with the idea that they collect user data [which is personal] and publish it on-line and try to make that a selling point!

Print Screen Image from Norton's Site

Twibbon: Is it just about wearing a badge?

Now doubt Twitter is becoming a phenomenon on-line. And the number of sites that survive because of Twitter are increasing. Earlier I wrote about Twitterfeed, a service that allow you to post your feeds automatically to your Twitter Page. Another one I recently came across is Twibbon. Twibbon is about wearing a badge to show off your affiliation. But is Twibbon only about wearing a badge?

The habit of wearing an E-badge is becoming very popular these days. There are sites that force you to wear a badge to show your affiliation. There a badge is nothing more than a reciprocal link. You link me because I linked you is bad on-line attitude.



Twibbon takes E-badges to a new level. People wear a badge to support a cause. IE6 Must Die was a cause that many Twitter users supported and made popular that it trended on Twitter for a long time. When the King of Pop passed away, people who mourned the sad demise wore a black badge on their profile and Jackson trended on Twitter like never before. Along with the Badge, Twibbon sends out a tweet on the person wearing the badge. It is actually a link to the location of the badge so that other people can come and claim a badge for their profile if they care. It is viral, viral and viral all the way.

I am always of the opinion that Internet is more about marketing than 'information' Of course it is a good way to gather and process information. But it is more about companies gathering information about what people are looking for when. No wonder why most of the services online, like search and social networking, come free of cost to the users.

Twibbon is another way of finding out what people are interested in, when. Twibbon lets you take a closer look at 'what people want', a degree higher than search engines, because people wear a badge usually because they are emotionally attached to something. And I am happy that they don't keep that information to themselves like most of the search engine companies do.

In short, Twibbon, like What the Trend is a great market research tool. I think it can go a long way by helping marketing wiz kids to formulate their strategies. Internet is mostly about Attention Economy now. And Twibbon is only about that.

Photo from Twibbon

The USAA Example: Online Banking takes another step forward!

It has been a while now since banking moved on-line and went almost mobile. Most of the banks in India give us options to do on-line transactions and use our mobile phones to keep track of what is happening with the accounts. With a bank in USA moving ahead and permitting customers to deposit their checks on-line, using their iPhones, I think it is another step forward. I feel, since banks are trying everything they can to make banking a more comfortable experience for account holders, this is soon going to come to India too. So if it comes to Indian Banks, it means you don't have to apply for a casual leave to go to the bank and sit in the queue to deposit a check.

How is this on-line check depositing done? Here, I have got this video from the bank in question, as posted on YouTube and it explains how it is done:


I am happy that core banking services are moving more on-line. And economics experts are right, in a way the global economic melt down is for good reasons. We are going to see a lot of customer centric innovations happening at every level.

But I am not happy with the fact that it is first launched on iPhone. Why? Because, lately Apple is acting very strange and stifling innovations. It took Google Voice away from its store and thus denied American users an opportunity to save a few pennies on phone calls. I know that businesses are not run for charity. But my point is, denying an opportunity to save something during this huge economic meltdown is an economic crime and Apple has done that. Now,I feel, nothing innovative should be first launched on Apple  here after. Apple should be the last one to get a taste of the innovations by other people because of their stone age policies about promoting innovations on-line.

How does Rainlendar help me?

I some times think that my brain is like a laptop that runs Windows Vista on a 512 MB RAM. Simply because, I keep forgetting things! Important things!

I tried many things to keep my 'brain' in the loop of what is happening. Initially I tired writing things to remember in a diary, different colours for different things. I stopped doing that when I started forgetting where I left the diary. Then I tried post it notes. They really proved to be expensive.

Google Calendar came to my rescue for some time. They have this option to send you an e-mail or sms alarm, which worked really fine. The only problem with Google Calendar was that my scheduling got messed up if there was no internet around. And Google gives an Offline Option that doesn't work when there is no Internet.

Microsoft Outlook became my companion for sometime. The problem with Outlook is that I have to manually open it every time I switched my computer on and there are days when I forget to do that.

I tried the gadgets Google Desktop offered. There was a Gadget called 'To do List' The only problem with this Gadget was that it could never tell me when to do what. And as the list kept growing every day, it added to my frustrations.

I was always hunting for a Calendar that offered me the following:

• I needed a calendar that will open on it's own as soon as I switched my computer on.
• I needed a preview of the calendar on my desktop
• It must have an alarm going off every time I am supposed to do something
• It must not scare me with a long list of tasks to do. Yet. I need to look at the immediate tasks any time I want to with a quick glance at my desktop
• It must allow me to prioritize and categorize so that sometimes one look at the icon assigned to a task and I must be able to know what I am supposed to do.
• It must be intelligent enough to differentiate between events and tasks.
• When I bring my mouse over a date, it must tell me everything about the date. I need every little information about the date.

And I spotted Rainlendar. Rainlendar is a desktop calendar. But I would say it is more than a desktop calnedar to me now. Because it somehow meets all my standards. And to my joy, it lets me link to my Google Calendar. I am talking about the Rainlendar Pro Version. Linking to Google Calendar helps me avoid duplication of entry. What ever I enter on my Google Calendar is good enough for Rainlendar, once I synchronize.

What more do I need. Yeh, I didn't like the way it looked. That is not a problem. Rainlendar got skins that I can use. If I am still not happy with the skins that I have by default, I can go to Custiomize.org and pick the skins I like. I tried a couple of them and found that the one that I have by default suited my taste better than any other skin.

The best thing I liked about Rainlendar is the Mouse Over Feature. If I bring my mouse pointer over a scheduled date it tells me everything I keyed in as I was blocking the date. Every bit of details. If I roll my mouse pointer over a date on Outlook or Google Calendar date, they'll just tell me the title of the event. I need to click to go see details about the event. I think some one as lazy as me about clicking the mouse created Rainlendar. Which ever way, I like my new Desktop Calendar.

PayScale: Get to know what you are worth!

Ever sat during a job interview wondering what exactly to say when the million dollar question about pay package came up? Ever wondered how much you are worth, with the skill sets you have? The other day I wandered Google to find out how a particular career I had in mind is placed in India, in terms of the pay scale. That was when Google gave me a link to PayScale.

PayScale is a web service that allows you to dig into the 'salary' side of different careers. It allows you to compare your salary with your peers. It allows you to see how a particular career pays. For example, see the following graph that allows you to see how much different jobs are worth in India right now:

Median Salary by Job - Country: India (India)

CAREER TOOLS: Salary Calculator, Career Path Tool, Cost of Living Calculator, Meeting Miser

Also see an example that shows you how a male or a female is paid in India:

Median Salary by Gender - Country: India (India)

CAREER TOOLS: Salary Calculator, Career Path Tool, Cost of Living Calculator, Meeting Miser

Now, that is interesting. Even after so much of women's lib, a female is still paid lesser in India when compared to her male counterpart. Don't you worry. So is the case in United States, Canada, France, UK, you name it. Women are paid lesser than men in most of the countries that I tried. Women, you need to wake up!

PayScale was launched in 2002 by PayScale, Inc, an American Company.  It works gathering data from users, employers and employees who take PageScale Surveys. It has an option which lets you compare your pay scale with your peers. It is a tedious job, as PayScale asks you many questions over and over again. It asks you to answer same questions again and again. When you are answering those questions, PayScale is actually gathering data to update its database. It uses the data to generate reports and graphs that tell us who is worth what. They say they report only actual data to avoid erroneous assumptions.

Here is one thing I really liked about PayScale. When they give you a graph or a report, they tell you how many people contributed information to make that graph or report. Now, this helps me decide whether to take the report seriously or not. Especially because they are doing actual reporting and they are not telling me their assumptions.

I hunted down many graphs and reports on PayScale that gave me an idea about the career trends. As I was doing that, I found that there is lesser participation from people in India. I think, at least for the sake of building a usable database that helps people keep track of pay scale trends, Indians should participate in PayScale. The more number of people participating in PayScale, the more authentic it is going to be. I hope that in a few months or years from now PayScale will have more authentic information about pay scales so that we know where we are going when the million dollar question about pay package comes up during an interview.

Google Launches Google Calendar Labs

Google Calendar is one good application so far from the Google Guys. It has always helped me organize my time and space, officially and unofficially. Features like email reminders and sms reminders, calendar sharing and the possibility of managing multiple calenders are all useful.

Nothing is ever enough for people at Google and they proved it yet again by introducing Google Calendar Labs. Gmail has Labs. So does Google Docs. And now they have Google Calendar Labs. Right now they have six new features running in the Google Calendar Labs and I hope many more are on the way.

Of the six features, I liked Attach Google Docs, Next Meeting and Free or Busy.

Attach Google Docs: This feature allows you to attach documents to an event. Guests can automatically view the presentation, spreadsheet or word processing document you attach to an event. I hope Google will soon come up with a way to attach documents saved on my system and will start supporting any format.

Next Meeting: I would say this is one cool feature that can come in handy, in case you are a person who has the habit of working it out backwards. The feature shows up on one side of your calendar. I hope Google will enable this feature in their Google Calendar Desktop Gadget too.

Free or Busy: This feature comes in handy if you have a calendar shared and needs to coordinate with people a lot. All that you got to do is enter the email address of the person concerned. If the person uses Google Calendar, you can keep track of their availability and plan your schedules accordingly. I think this is one feature that should stay.

Of course, these features are still in Lab and I know it will take a while for it to be a part of the actual Google Calendar. But I don't mind using them, even if they may act smarter than me sometimes and don't work at all. From my experience with Google for the last five or six years I have found, even their Lab Versions are reliable and work perfectly fine most of the time. And Google has certain features in Lab longer than any software company does so that by the time it comes out we have an almost perfect application. Please try these features and tell me what you think.

Images from Google Calendar