Five best Android News Readers

Content discovery on the go makes a smartphone worth its bargain. There are many ways you can discover and consume content on your Android phone. News Aggregation or Reader Apps are one of those ways!

There are many News Reader Applications available in the Android Market. Google Reader is just one of them.  Google Reader is a simple and very useful Reader Application. That is, if you have the habit of neatly managing your Google Reader Account. Many of us may not like the simplicity and straightforwardness that Google Reader offers on Android. Many of us may like a little more colour, a little more social integration into reading and a little more automatic content aggregation when it comes to a News reader App. There are many applications in the Android Market that just promise to do that. However, not all of them are true to their promises.

What I am trying to do here is to give you 5 Android News Reader Applications that I think are good. I use all of them one way or the other. Here we go:

Feedly 

Rating: ★★★★☆

Feedly is the smart and stylish way to read news on your Android Phone or Tablet. Its minimalistic design and elegant animations make reading a pleasure. Feedly automatically curates news based on certain key topics that are built into the Application. You can integrate your Google Reader account with Feedly and keep track of your rss feeds. You can also add websites of your choice to Feedly and categorize them. You have in-app sharing for Twitter and Facebook. Feedly also uses in-phone sharing so that you can share content using any Social Network App you have on your phone. Feedly depends on website feeds to curate news. Now, this means Feedly may not be able to give you the whole content in one tap as most websites have their rss feeds closed to give you only snippets of a write-up. Feedly has a built in browser which enables you to open the feed on Feedly itself. Don't worry if you can not read a website you have opened because the text size is too small for your eye. Feedly offers an option for you to reformat the content to make it readable on your mobile screen. 

Pulse

Rating: ★★★☆☆

Pulse is the most popular News Reader on Android. It is very simple. You can put five pages of rss feed on your screen and read on the go. Perhaps what makes pulse popular is the fact that it automatically strips the website html and present the content in a readable format. If you are someone who have a few website you check out regularly and you want them all in one place, pulse is just for you. You can swipe horizontally or vertically to read your feeds. And you can bookmark any of your content on Pulse Me to read it later. If you are using Google Chrome as your browser you can go straight to the Chrome Market and download the Pulse Me extension. Now, you can bookmark what you read on Chrome using Pulse Me to read it later on your phone. The only issue with Pulse is that it drains a lot of battery in the background.

Taptu
Rating: ★★★★☆

If you talk about design, Taptu is a single page replica of Pulse. I should say it is an improvement on Pulse. Taptu mixes what Feedly and Pulse does. Unlike Pulse with streams for individual websites, in Taptu you have streams for topic. You can either make your own stream or use any of those streams curated specially by Taptu. Taptu gives you a lot of freedom when it comes to curating content. You can colour code streams, make stream-width big or small and move streams around based on what you want to see first when you fire up the application. Like Pulse, Taptu strips html from the content automatically and present to you in a readable format.

ChannelCaster
Rating: ★★★★★

ChannelCaster is social news, they say. Ya, it curates links from your social networks and brings them all in one place. Then you have pre-curated channels you can use as you please. ChannelCaster stands out for its sleek design and user interface. If you are someone who likes a little splash on your App, ChannelCaster is good for you. Its design gives these so called well-designed iPhone Applications a run for their money. Oh yes, on ChannelCaster you can curate your content based on what you like too. You have the option to build your own Channels using key words and rss feeds. Tweets, Facebook Links, Webcontent, Video, Photographs - you name it and ChannelCaster allows you to type ina topic you like and bring all the content on the web about that topic in one place. The only issue is, once you find the content you may have to use another browser  because Channelcaster opens the content in its native web browser and it may not be as readable as you find them on Feedly or Pulse.

News360
Rating: ★★★☆☆

You have News360 for both phone and tablet in the Android Market. News360, like ChannelCaster, is sleek and yummy to look at. It is blue! Now, News360 works on topics. You need no rss feed. You need no website name. All you need are key words. And you can keep on building your news feed using any number of key words as you like. The best thing about News360 is that you can localize content using your gps on the phone. I would say, News360 is Google News in the form of an App. If Google were to come up with an App for their news site, it would be something like News360. the only issue with News360 is that it is uses a lot of data in the process of looking good.

Get the new Facebook Profile!

Facebook is rolling out the new Profile Page. Timeline, they call it. If you want to watch Mark Zuckerberg announcing the new Facebook Profile, go here! After a few weeks from now, you will have a brand new Facebook Profile.

Now, are you some one who is always eager to try new things first? And you badly want to  get your hands dirty with the New Facebook Profile, before any of your friends do? Sure, there is a way to do just that. Here are the steps:

1. If you are signed into Facebook already, click here. The link will take you to Facebook Developers Page.   Alternatively, you can head straight to Facebook and type "Developer" in the search box to get to the Facebook Developers Page. 
2. Once you are on the Facebook Developers Page, click on the "Create New App" button. This will open a Facebook Dialogue Box. (Do not worry about creating an application, because it is not going to show up anywhere)
3. Type a name (For example "abcdefgh") in the App Display Name Box. 
4. Type a name (For example "abcdfgh") in the App Namespace. Make sure that you type a name without capital letter and it has more than seven characters.
5. Click the dialogue box: "I agree to the Platform Privacy Policy"
6. Click the continue button on the dialogue box. This will open a captcha. Fill in the captcha and click on the submit button. The submission will take a while, depending on the speed of your data connection
7.  Once the Application Page is created, find out the link "Open Graph" on the page. 
8. Once you are on the Open Graph Page, you will find two text boxes to type a verb and a noun. So, go ahead and type a  verb and a noun and click on the "Get Started" button. For example, you can type 'read' as your verb and 'book' as your verb.
9. This will open the "Action Type" page. Scroll down the page and click on the "Save Changes and Next" Button
10. This will take you to the "Object Type" Page. Again, scroll down and click the ""Save Changes and Next" Button
11. This will take you to "Timeline Aggregation" Page.  Again, scroll down and click the "Save and Finish"Button and you are ready to go. 
12. Now that you are done with the Open Graph, head back to www.facebook.com. Facebook will open a dialogue box that asks you if you want to try out the new Facebook Profile Page. Go ahead and tell them you want to and you shall get it! 

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!

Snaptu for your mobile phone!

We are increasingly finding ourselves overwhelmed by the flow of information online. And not many of us are fortunate enough to own a smart phone and that keeps us away from the world when we are away from our computer monitor. What if someone can provide us access to all that information even when we are away from our computer monitor and even if we do not own a smart phone? Snaptu does just that!

Snaptu is an Israel based Mobile Platform that brings many popular web applications to one place. Twitter, Facebook, News, Search - you name it, they got it. The key thing about this Mobile Phone Application is that it can run on any Java Enabled Mobile Phone.

How do you know if your mobile phone can run a Java Application? Click here to find a list of Java enabled phones and see if your phone model is in the list. If your phone is Java Enabled, then go to your mobile  browser and type m.snaptu.com  and download the application to your computer. Sign in to your favorite social networks and you are ready to go.

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!

What do I do with Twitter now?

So far I was trying to figure out how best to use Twitter. I tried using it as a platform to share when ever I posted something on techedin or pagedin. There was nothing much I needed to do to post links to my blog updates to Twitter. All that I had to do was to link up my blogs to TwitterFeed and the rest was taken care of by TwitterFeed’s automatic feed pullers. TwitterFeed pulled my posts and tweeted. I thought that was all I could do with Twitter because none of my friends are on Twitter. Even if some of them are there, none of them are regular tweeters.

Yesterday, I figured out what Twitter actually can be. First and foremost, it is not a social network the way we think of social networks. It is actually a content delivery device, integrated into the idea of social networking. Let me explain:

On Orkut and Facebook, I follow friends, colleagues and acquaintances. Once in a while we exchange an online ‘hi’, say that we like what they said or comment on something they said. If you are a blogger like me, you will also post links to your blogs on Facebook. Some may read what you write, some may not. May be, sometimes we follow Pages on Facebook, try and get information about things we are interested in. Sometimes, we join groups and share our ideas. It is all fun and very engaging.

On Twitter, on the other hand, most of us follow news channels. We follow celebrities first before we follow anyone else. We follow profiles who send valuable information on our way. So far, as I was trying to use Twitter as a Social Network, I was only following people. From yesterday, I started following celebrities and news channels and life on Twitter has magically changed since then. I am more closer to what is happening out there than ever before.

However, there was one problem. I was in touch with the world outside only after I logged on to Twitter. I wanted information to come to me. You are right, technology makes us so lazy that we always want the easier way out. I wished there was some device like Yahoo Messenger or GTalk on my Desktop that brought what is happening on Twitter in realtime. Looks like technology has an answer to most of the questions you have. I found out TweetDeck.

TweetDeck is a browser like application that fetches Tweets from Twitter in realtime and brings it to your Desktop. You can also Tweet, Retweet, Follow or do pretty much anything that you do on Twitter with TweetDeck. TweetDeck also gives you an option to link to Facebook and access your wall. Ask me what is the best thing I liked about TweetDeck! Let me tell you, there are four things.

1. TweetDeck stays out of my way. I hate it when necessarily unnecessary applications need to remain on the taskbar. That is the reason why I hate playing music using Media Player. I love it when I can leave applications that I am not currently using in the tray and get on with my life. TweetDeck can be reduced to the tray.  It stays in the tray and comes back only when you call it.
2. TweetDeck updates me in realtime. I tried to figure out how realtime TweetDeck could bring information to me. It takes not even five seconds to bring you a tweet, after it is posted to Twitter, if you have not exceeded the API limit. Now, that is real good realtime. Every time something is tweeted by someone I follow, the TweetDeck brid chirps and notifies me.
3. I love the TweetDeck Notification thing. I love the chirping bird, whenever I have a Tweet. More than the bird, I love the fact that I can reply or retweet from the notification box itself. I love it because I don’t have to waste time waiting for the application to open so that I can do what I want.
4. I like the idea of onetime log in. It saves a lot of time as I need to log in using TweetDeck only once. Once I log in, TweetDeck brings me everything that happens on Twitter and my Facebook Wall.

Now that I have TweetDeck, Twitter is a more powerful delivery device than it used to be. Every time someone I follow Tweets, I am more informed and more equipped. I now like Twitter simply because it makes information more accessible. I remember someone comparing Twitter to an ever flowing river of information and people stop by once in a while to dip a mug full of information. Now that I have TweetDeck, it is like I am someone who sits on the bank of that river from morning till evening [because I have my laptop or PC switched on from morning till late night] and constantly gain something from the information that flows by.

[If you want to install TweetDeck, click here. Please remember that you have to install Adobe Air before you install TweetDeck. To install Adobe Air, click here]

Twitter Trends 2009 Vs Facebook Trends 2009

When Twitter came up with Trends of 2009, Facebook came up with Memology of 2009. I thought it will be an interesting thing to take a comparative look at both.

Before Facebook and Twitter, we had Google and Google Trend was the only way to understand what the world was thinking about. Google Trends were based on what people searched for. Of course that had its limitation, especially because you searched for what was on your mind only when you wanted to find out more about what was on your mind. Facebook and Twitter trends allow you to take a closer look at what the world is thinking because we usually talk about and share and RT what is on our mind. Search comes after we talk about it. This way I find Facebook and Twitter Trends more appealing than Google Trends, if you are going to base some of your advertising decisions based on what trends on the internet.

Again, a closer look at Twitter Trends and Facebook Memology reveals one key thing for advertisers. We are looking at two different types of markets when we are looking at Facebook and Twitter. Facebook Memology makes it sound like we are looking at a hoard of teenagers who will have to cajole their parents to buy the things they want to buy. How else can you explain FML trending only during exams and Mondays and still making it to the second rank on Memology? I think the Facebook Memology perfectly explains TechCrunch’s  stand on how Game Developers on Facebook dupe kids into using their parents’ cell phone to buy what they call Game Currency. Only games survive on Facebook because only kids use Facebook. Twitter, on the other hand, I think is about a mixed market. Every thing from Iran Election to Michael Jackson to American Idol to Harry Potter trended there. And this means you are talking about an audience that has the power to purchase and an audience that has the power to make their parents purchase at one single place, tweeting and retweeting! What more would an advertiser need?

Another interesting thing I noticed is that Twitter Trended on Facebook while Facebook Didn’t on Twitter. I am not sure if this was a purposeful omission by Twitter. If it was not a purposeful omission or filtering, guys at Facebook must be really concerned.

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.

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.

Huffington going Facebook: Another lesson for News Sites!

The other day I wrote about how News Sites should think of innovative ideas to reach more people in stead of cribbing about Aggregators stealing their traffic and here is Huffington Post with one bright idea!

Huffington is going Facebook with Huffpost Social News! What are they upto? As we hear from Arianna Huffington:

When you sign up for it -- and I hope you will right now -- HuffPost Social News finds your Facebook friends who are also reading HuffPost and links you together on our site so you can dive deeper into the stories you like best. (But don't worry, you'll still have complete control over what stories and comments are shared with your friends, as well as what goes on your Facebook wall, and into your friends' news feeds. See details at end of post.)

The explosive growth of online social networking has fundamentally changed our relationship with news. It's no longer something we passively take in. We now engage with news, react to news, and share news. News has become an important element of community -- something around which we gather, connect, and converse. And we can all become part of the evolution of a story now -- expanding it with comments and links to relevant information, adding facts and differing points of view.

 Now, whoever said Links kill traffic should think again! Think of the amount space Huffington will get on Facebook if this idea clicks and people start clicking. There will be links to Huffington all over Facebook. Aren't News Aggregators doing a similar help to News Sites that give original content? Or are the News Sites one day going to stand up and say Search Engines should also pay for searching them out and showing them on the search page because Search Engines kill traffic? Bing already has a User Interface that permits users to bring up more content from the original site to help them decide if they want to go to the site or not. Google has already integrated Google News into its search results so that relevant news links come up when people search. If people only read headlines and are done with it why would experts say Google does that to subsidize people who create content? What do these tell us? Simple, where ever they are links matter and they don't kill traffic!

Image from Huffington Post

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

webfinger: Soon you could be using Gmail ID for more than emailing!

What do we use our Gmail Ids for? To send and receive emails, to log in to Google related services and sometimes, use other web services that require email IDs and not usernames. We use any email Id by any service provider, for that matter, to do similar things.

Try searching an email id to find out more about the owner of the ID! You will get absolutely no information about the person as there is no way a person can attach information to his or her email id. Email IDs are not linked to personal information the way social networking IDs are linked to personal information. For example, if you search for a long lost friend, it is quite likely that his or her social network profile pages like Twitter, Face Book or Linkedin would show up in the search. But not if you use an email ID instead of the name. Because as mentioned in the Google Code Summary Page on webfinger: "If I give you my email address today, you can't do anything with it except email me. I can't attach public metadata to my email address to give you more information." Now, through the "webfinger Project" launched on April 28, 2009, Google is trying to make it possible for people to attach personal information to their Email Ids. In other words, Google is on a project to make email Ids searchable!

What are the implications of this innovation? I don't know if you know, this is not a new idea. This was something tried during the initial Internet years. A finger programme was written by Les Earnest to help those users who wanted to find out information about other users using their emails. However, by 1990, websites and companies stopped using this service as it was a threat to security and privacy of individuals. Hackers used this service to carry out social engineering attacks on companies and individuals.

Why is Google bringing back a service that was tested and dropped, years ago? Why do they, all of a sudden, want to make an email id both 'writable' and 'readable' like a URL? Experts say that Google is trying to come up with an alternative to open ids! I understand the concern about the failure of Open ID System, as people don't use Open IDs often. It is perfectly fine if Google is only trying to make people use their email ids instead of Open ID URLs, to access all the web services. But I don't understand that part where Google says it is also thinking of making emails 'readable'.

I'm already thinking of taking off my profiles from the popular social networking sites. After Twitter and Face Book allowed me to customize my URL the way I want to, I am increasingly worried about the idea that I'm now more prone to social engineering attacks. [Thank God, I have an option to keep all my information closed to me and the people I know on Face Book and Twitter. But not on Linkedin!] Because every time you search my name, I show up in the search and it is not always good to leave trails online.

Google already collects information about what I search. They use my Gmail ID to keep track of what I search! Now, they are trying to get me attach personal information to the very same Gmail ID I use. If that is done, Google knows who I am and what I do online. That is a lot of information, I can give away, don't you think?

And if Google makes my email searchable or 'readable' as they calim they are going to do, it means people can dig out my Google Profile [Or my Face Book Profile or my Orkut Profile or my Linkedin Profile or my Twitter Profile] using my email as the key word. Now, they can do that only using my the Name. Where your online life is concerend, your email id is more credible than you name, as your email id is directly linked to you unlike your name. A name or username is not considred to be credible or authentic online. Emails Ids are legal today and emails are accepted as evidence for this reason. Doesn't Google understand the political implications of this move?

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

The Cyxymu Lesson: Forwarding Emails is E-Sin!

I have many friends who keep in touch only by forwarding emails. There are people from whom I receive forwarded emails on a day to day basis. Many of them do it very innocently, I know, knowing little that they are possibly making themselves and the receiver vulnerable to potential internet misuse by hackers and spammers.

We have a live example in front of us: Twitter. It is quiet possible that when you click on this link you get an error message and the site does not load as Twitter is under a Denial of Service Attack. I am told that the Denial of Service attack on Twitter has increased ten times on the second day of the attack. I am not going into the 'geopolitical nature' of the attack. I am not going to make assumptions about who did this. I am not so much worried about if the Russian Government did it or some Criminal Outfit is behind this attack. That is Twitter's job to find out and tell the world. I am more bothered about how this could happen!

How could this happen? Wikipedia tells me that a Denial of Service Attack happens when the number of requests for a particular site increases beyond the capacity of the servers on which a site is hosted. They also call it Distributed Denial of Service Attack. Hackers target popular sites and prevent them from functioning through a Denial of Service Attack. And this is what happened to Twitter.

DoS on Twitter seems to have happened as an individual or an organization was targeting a blogger named Cyxymu. When repeated requests for his page on Twitter, LiveJournal et al happened on August 6, 2009, the servers where the sites are hosted could not handle it and as a result the whole Twitter Site stopped functioning.

People have different opinion about how it happened. Some say that Russian Hackers hacked Cyxymu's Gmail Account and started sending links to his accounts to people. And when people started clicking on these links to know what exactly it was, DoS began! I don't think so because an attack of this sort cannot survive on email links alone, though it is true that a Joe Job Email Campaign happened from Cyxymu's Gmail Account.

There is another theory, which is more plausible. Experts say that the attack was managed using botnets. Botnets are, in simple words a network of computers which runs software robots. The hackes who drowned Twitter seem to have a huge network of computers they could use to send repeated requests for the site. Where did they get all these computers from, because you need millions of computers to organize an attack at this level of ferocity?

Probably they got all these computers linked up through emails. People send you hundreds of forwarded emails. Have you ever wondered where they come from? Who would take such struggles to create information and send it to you for free? Who made the original message?

I have no idea who sends them. But I know one thing. The original messages are sent using automated services available online. There are sites that let you send bulk emails for free and keep a track of them. [I am not giving you a link to an example site for an obvious reason - I don't want to be a party to the prorogation of such sites] Usually these emails, though they may sound very innocent, contain malware that plant robots in your system. They link up with each other and create a network after they are in your system. This way hackers get to use your system even without your knowledge.

I think we should stop forwarding emails and opening emails that are forwarded. Forwarded emails compromise the security of personal information as well as personal computers. Forwarding E-mails should be considered as E-sin. Why?

1. Forwarded emails are an easy way for hackers to spread their bots on systems across the world. 
2. Forwarded emails may contain viruses that are harmful to your system.
3. Because there are systems that can easily track forwarded mails, you should know that your are compromising the email addresses of the friends to whom you send the email. Hackers who keep track of the mails add the new addresses to their mailing list and harvest.
4. Forwarding E-mails is a waste of other people's time. They may not be interested in the mail you have forwarded. 

After Thought: I also have another doubt. There are many companies today that allow you to use Remote PC Support for free. They permit you to use software that allows you to access and use computers from anywhere. Have you ever thought why they do it for free? If I can use that software to control computers in my network remotely, they companies who give them to me can do it too. And what if these companies used the computers that use their Remote PC Support Software and turn them into a botnet? I am told that there are companies who sell such networks to third parties for campaigns and other internet related activities. There are people who sell botnets and make good money out of it. What if the attackers bought one such botnet to attack Twitter?

Happy News Bloggers: Mr. Murdoch will charge for online content from next year!

Rupert Murdoch is an old man now. 78 years old. As an old man, may be he has lost that spark which saw him rise to the position of the media emperor he is today. Perhaps, that is the reason why he has announced the most uncharming business decision of his career the day before yesterday- a decision to make all his news sites available only to users who pay, from next year.

He said, :"Quality journalism is not cheap,..The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

You should read people's reaction to that. Many reacted as though, it is not a big deal and they consider News Corps news sites as crap. Most of them said they don't care as they are not going to pay to read his sites anyway. News Analysers sounded very disappointed that a person like Murdoch took such a naive decision. Stories ran on blogs and technology review sites on how this decision is all about News Corps digging its own grave. Journalists are wondering how and why this is too risky for nothing. One reviewer even went to the extent of saying only Apple can save newspapers.

Is Murdoch serious about what he said or was he just testing the waters? True, his business ventures reported a net loss of $ 3.4 Billion this fiscal year. True, recession is at its best and on-line advertisement revenue is dipping. True, Wall Street Journal, a paid news site from Murdoch is doing relatively well and has users paying to read news. But, is he serious? Or was he, as I said, just testing the waters? Or, was it just a sudden outburst of frustration? May be, it was all the three put together.

Why do I say that? I think Murdoch is missing a key point here. On-line content is just a tool. I don't believe that Internet is all about Information. Internet is about advertisements. Certain products are just tools to sell certain other products. Why do Google let me search for free? Why does Google or Wordpress permit me to upload content on my blog for free? Why do social communities allow me in for free? Why are there many sites that give me many of their services for free? Why are open source applications free? Why is the news free, after all? I think these things are free because they want me to stick around as long as possible. You stick around so that you buy something, sooner or later.

 This is not a new business model. In India we have temples and churches organizing festivals around their theme of worship. They spend a lot of money, organizing a fare, staging plays or other performances by professional artists etc. These religious festivals last for five to ten days. The plays or other performances go well into midnights. You don't pay anything to watch a play during the festival. Why do they do it for free? Because, they know that people who come to the festival will visit the temple or church to pray. But the few coins they offer when they pray is not the target! People come to these festivals to set up stalls that sell from glass bangles to kitchenware. They pay lovely loads of cash to people who run the temple or church as rent for these five to ten days. In fact, there are groups of people in India, who travel from one festival spot to another and make a decent living!

To me, Internet sounds like a temple or church festival. And people who make content available or provide spaces for people to meet are like the Temple or Church Committee Members. They run the show. Sites like Murdoch's or Google's or Facebook's or Twitter's are these plays or performances staged during this Big Bang Festival called Internet. People come to the festival, because these performances are for free. And as they come, some of them, sooner or later most of them, will buy from the people who set up stalls in Google's or Murdoch's or Facebook's or Twitter's premises.

What happens if Murdoch makes his sites 'pay-per-click' as he says? May be there are going to be people who are willing to pay like there are people to read Wall Street Journal. But imagine the number of people who would have read Wall Street Journal, if it was available for free?

And if Murdoch is going to hide his content behind the 'paywalls', what about those people who hit the search engines for anything and everything? Google, Bing and Yahoo! If they won't have traces of Murdoch's Sites, won't he disappear from the minds of people gradually? This is why I said, Murdoch's announcement is happy news to Bloggers.

I am sure he will not hide all his content behind the paywalls. He will float enough summary of news stories around to make sure that he is on search engines. May be he will enter into deals with Search Engines to make sure that he is there, when people search. But even then,, it is happy news for bloggers!

Experts say that about 90% of his traffic will die because of this decision. Let Murdoch take his ten percent! Where will the rest go? The rest will trun to sites that make content available for free. I think, if Murdoch will implement his decision, there is going to be an increase in traffic to blogs we have around. Is this not happy news bloggers?

Image from Wikipedia

JK Wedding Entrance Dance: How a wedding video helped to sell a forgotten song!

"I now pronounce you monetized." The Official Google Blog ran a post on 30 July 2009 on the Wedding Video posted by TheKheinz  on 19 July 2009. Why did they do so? Apparantly, the video had more than a million views on YouTube. The right holder of the Video claimed it and started selling the track through ITunes and Amazon. They started running Click-to-Buy Advertisements on the Video which helped the viewers to opt to buy the track. And the track got listed on the top five downloads of both the sites overnight.

There are people who are bothered about the fact that the owner of the song is not paying anything to Jill and Kevin for making the song "Forever" by Chris Brown popular. I do agree with them. Jill and Kevin are the reasons why the song became popular and earned dollars for the 'monetizer'. A percentage of the profit should have gone to Jill and Kevin.

However, I don't see Jill and Kevin is bothered about that. They are smarter people. They launched a website  and are using that website to raise funds for a Charity. They write on their site:

We hope to direct this positivity to a good cause. Due to the circumstances surrounding the song in our wedding video, we have chosen the Sheila Wellstone Institute. 

I don't know how much they got selling Chris Brown's song. I don't know how much the JK Site could raise for Shelia Wellstone Institute. But I would like to say, this is phenomenal.

Blog-a-Ton: A Blogathon is on!

Here I am, writing a post for the second time in a day, because, again, I couldn't resist. I thought I must share this with you right now:

Search Engine Optimization and Backlinks are very common terms among Bloggers these days and almost every blogger worries about them. More backlinks mean higher Search Engine Optimization [SEO] or in other words chances are high that you are placed on the first page of a Google Search Result. And Vipul Grover is right - Blog-a-Ton is one way Bloggers can enhance their SEO, gaining enough backlinks by participating in it.

What is Blog-a-Ton? It is a very simple idea, adapted from Blogathon. Let's hear what Vipul himself says about Blog-a-Ton:

The idea was simple as I posted on the forum:
We'll choose a day and a topic to blog on. On that day we all will write a post on our blog on the given topic.
After the write-up, we will include the links to the write-ups of fellow blogathon participants.
This will not only help us in making new friends in blogging world but also give us a lot of backlinks.

More than Baclinks and SEO, what I liked about Blog-a-Ton is the people participation. Vipul Grover posted the idea of a Blogathon on IndiBlogger a  month ago. It slowly caught up with people and they launched a blog to take the idea forward in July 2009. The first leg of Blog-a-Ton was on August 1, 2009. The topic was announced on July 12, 2009. About 12 Bloggers participated and wrote on the topic "The Cream and Scum of Blogging"

I know 12 people are nothing compared to the number of Bloggers on the Blogosphere. But Blog-a-Ton has a long way to go and I think they will achieve their target of making it an event where 100 people participate regularly.

As I am writing this post, the 12 posts are placed for review and voting. I have read almost all the posts and all of them are really good, I would say. You gain an insight into how different people can interpret a given idea in different ways. I think the socio-cultural implications of the difference is worth a research.

The votes are kept confidential and the way it is, will be out only on August 4, 2009. I don't really care who wins. I am really happy about the fact that people are participating. And I hope more Bloggers are going to join the Blog-a-Ton Bandwagon soon.

When Yahoo gives in to Microsoft!

This was the talk of the town for the last six months - the Yahoo! Microsoft Deal! And finally it is done. Yahoo sells its user share in search to Microsoft for 88% of commission on advertisements sold on search results through Yahoo! Together they make 28% of market share in search, way lower than Google 65%.

In a few days from now, after the US Government approves the deal, you will see Bing on Yahoo! Both Steve Ballmer and Carol Bartz seem to be very happy about the deal and the notion of taking on the Search Giant, Google. I read the Bio of Carol and found that she was the lady who turned Autodesk around and made it into a profit making company. And I also understand that Steve lived Microsoft his entire career. Both are capable people. But I am wondering, what good can come out of Microsoft Yahoo Alliance!

28% in user share is not good enough to beat Google right now. But Yahoo and Microsoft can now focus more on their core competencies. Microsoft can focus on Improving Search. Yahoo can focus on their Social Networking Ideas. I think we are going to see a new era of Internet Search and Social Networking, as this alliance grows for the next ten years.

And I also think we are going to hear more from Google. In an attempt to strengthen their hold on the market, I hope they are going to come up with more search features.

IndiBlogger: Save yourself from 'Blogger's Depression"

The question is: why does one blog? Don't get me wrong looking at the Adsense and AdBrite Advertisements you see on my blog! They are there because I am trying to see how true are the tall claims by Affiliate Sites about you making millions of dollars out of affiliations. They are there because I am trying to make sense of how much different Affiliate Sites pay for each link I permit them to put on techedIN. No Blogger has become a millionaire running advertisments on his/her blog. I am in total agreement with Nikhil Narayan when he says in an Interview given to Blogadda: "After accumulating a whopping 10 USD in over 3 years, I realised that no one clicks on those Google Ads even by mistake. Then I tried other ads like Komli andTyroo. The height of optimism was joining the Shaadi.com affiliate program through which I gained nothing but monthly emails that gave me hope that I will soon start earning. After enough failures, I took off all the ads."

Then, why does one blog? I think most of us blog with the hope that someone somewhere is going to read what we wrote and appreciate it. May be, I am not too sure about you. I blog with the hope that someone [as many 'someones' as possible] reads what I blog. At one point in life everyone wants to be a 'popular' writer and 'blogging' gives us that satisfying feeling that we have become one. I go and look at my Google Analytics Report at least once a day. I am on the top of the world when I see the 'visits' graph shooting up. I don't purposefully look at the bounce rate for the fear of 'blogger's depression'.

Talking about Blogger's Depression: I think I recently stumbled upon another way in which I can possibly overcome it. IndiBlogger - a blogger commuinty for Indian Bloggers that saves you from the fear of no one taking a serious look at your Blog. I joined the Community with the hope that more people are going to read what I blog. And I am not disappointed that I did. My Google Analytics Report shows me that IndiBlogger is now at the top of the list in my report on traffic through Referral Sites. I have also found that the bounce rate came pleasingly down a few days after I had created a profile on IndiBlogger.

There are a few things I liked about IndiBlogger, which I will share with you like I usually do:

1. They have this 'Blog Directory' where they list all the bloggers and their blogs once they join. It looks like they have this 'soft corner' for new bloggers or new members, which I think is a good thing. The most recent ones to join the community gets to be on the top of the 'Blog Directory' featured on the Home Page of IndiBlogger. 
2. In my attempt to take teachedIN to as many people as possible, I have tried many Blog Directories and Blogger Communities. Almost all of them are strict about you giving a reciprocal link to their site. I have instances where Directories have rejected my membership because I was not willing to give them a reciprocal link. Please do not misunderstand - it is not that I don't want to thank these Blog Directory Guys for giving me a space to showcase my Blog. It is more about my freedom to choose if I want to publicly display an affiliation or not. When you make reciprocal linking compulsory, you are forcing me to thank you.  I was happy to see that IndiBlogger does not insist on you giving them a reciprocal link. [Many a times a reciprocal link is like leaving a trail. Leaving a trail on-line is not always advisable.] I was happy to see that they permit you to choose if you want to display their badge or not. 
3. Another feature I liked about IndiBlogger is 'Blog Reviews' Of course, they do not entertain 'shameless self-promotion.' Asking for a 'Blog Review' is one way IndiBlogger satisfies those who are particular about promoting their Blog. Fact is, the more you participate in the forum on IndiBlogger, the more people will know you and come to read your blog. And if you don't have time to participate actively in the discussions happening on IndiBlogger, the next best thing is asking for a Blog Review. 
4. There is another way to increase your bandwidth and reach. IndiBlogger lets you build a network. You can add fellow bloggers to your reading list. It is a 'win-win' You can keep track of those people you like to read and you can also make people take note of you by following them. I think I got the first 'it-makes-me-happy-you-read--it-because-you-wanted-to-read-it' comment on techedIN, after I joined IndiBlogger.
5. They also have this IndiBlogger Ranking and IndiVine. Ya, IndiVine is an adaptation of Grape Vine. I think it gives you a categorized list of Blog Posts. I think they have an option to rank posts too. I did not have an opportunity to make sense of IndiVine so far as it is undergoing a major revamp as I am writing this. But, I think I'll like that feature too.

IndiBlogger also arranges Blogger Meets. This tells me, here are a group of people who take the idea of supporting bloggers seriously!