Thursday, August 17

Feeling Blue

Here are some popular blues on the web right now..

Tuesday, December 13

Monday, December 12

Flickr Tags of places

This gives an idea of the most photogenic places of the world; or
This gives an idea of who all are flickring most in this world.

Friday, November 18

* blogger : journalist :: tick : sheep

Nov18 2005
Blogging is good. The personal publishing thing is a paradigm shift. etc. Pause. Here's the other side of blogging. A blog has the author's views one after the other (can I say linear ?). Most of them are disconnected while sometimes a categorization is used to group some posts together.
Our brain, on the other hand learns through association or rote methods. For the interest of learning we should follow up what we have written. Otherwise what one writes is lost in the stack of posts.

For example a techno blog gives an info about the new PS3 console gamer. I like it immediately and give a link to the site or put some image from that site on my own blog. Some other day, some other news with my overlapping interest, and it goes on and on. After some time I lose track of them and stack lots of trivia which could in turn be valuable knowledge if used correctly.
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May15 2005
Found an iteresting article on blogs. It compares blogs and journalism. An excerpt.

SEARCHING FOR A METAPHOR by John Hiler

Were Bloggers parasites feasting off their Journalist hosts? Or were Bloggers creating a new form of grassroots journalism, one that threatened the extinction of Journalism as we know it?

Then one day it hit me: parasites & hosts, grassroots & extinction... they were all biological metaphors.

All of a sudden, it all made sense! The truth is, Bloggers and Journalists are both parasitic organisms. In biology, we have a term for relationship that seems mutually parasitic: symbiosis, when both organisms benefit from working together. In many ways, bloggers and journalists are in a mutually symbiotic relationship, working together to report, filter and break the news.



The Blogosphere isn't perfect, but it's the most robust and diverse Media Ecosystem we have. As the mechanisms tying it together grow more and more automated, its collective power and influence will start to approach that of any single newspaper or magazine. In many ways, the Blogosphere has become the default forum for intellectual discourse, a sort of intercontinental coffeehouse buzzing with discussion and debate.

See the latest on this
http://www.invisibleweb.com/cgm.asp

On self-sorting

del.icio.us, flickr, gmail use the categories/tags to mark online content (and now google base categorizes offline content too). what that makes me wonder is - the content could also belong to some category which we dont know about. i might miss putting a certain tag to a file.

Using gmail and flickr, i have come across these potential problems - a. There could be more than one tag to a mail and this gets more complex. There could an option of automatic categorizing (If a mail comes from the domain "microsoft.com", give it a SwareUpdte tag)

there could be a system evolved of Most Common Attributes (MCAs?). flickr tags

* New Media Term

The examples off new media change with times. In the present (and future) scenario, I believe
new media is Mobile
new media is Online
new media is Wireless
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May 25 2005

Collaborative Media - Rusty Foster, founder of blogsite www.kuro5hin.org

Context: Group journalism.
The site is powered by a software system called Scoop which lets other people contribute to the story. Scoop has four powerful features which let people collaborate on a story on Kuro5hin:

1 Anyone can submit stories about interesting things that you hear about, things you think of, or other things which strike your fancy. This site has an open submission queue.

2 Any user can see and vote on all submitted stories. If you want to see something posted, you can make it happen by participating in the moderation of the stories in the submission queue.

3 Garbage will not be tolerated. Others can and will rate your posts into oblivion.

4 Anyone can post comments about the stories that you see here. ... Commenting is a very good thing, and really helps articles develop into the discussions we like to see here.

Other examples : http://www.metafilter.com/
http://blogdex.net/


Thursday, November 17

* Expelliarmus

Nov17 05
Harry Potter 4 is releasing tomorrow. The rushes looked quite impressive.
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Jul18 05
I have got the Harry Potter 7 Spoiler right here (my interpretation, of course)!

The last horcrux is in Harry's forehead scar.

Reasons:
a. Out of Harry and Voldermort, one HAS to die. I think if Harry lives then Vold guy cant have the last horcrux.
b. In previous books (at least the ones that I read), everytime Vold is nearby, Harry's scar begins to ache (the soul inside wants to "merge" with the MotherShip ?)

This is the ONLY logical conclusion possible of the whole HP series. What say ?

I think Potter mania will go down from this book. Its getting too complicated. Something like the Matrix Trilogy. First was a complete movie by itself so enjoyed by everyone. The second and third were ONLY for matrix cult-ures/hardcore fans and went over the head for most of the general crowd. So I think the people, tired of riding the Potter broom will want to get over the mania ASAP. So I can see the seventh book releasing pretty soon.

* UI to NewI

Since so much talk is happening about web2.0, the technology changes on the web, renewed interest in Javascript, its time for a paradigm shift in the interface for web apps. And also in desk apps. A recent flurry of articles on ET and other business dailies on some Indian companies making innovative products for a highly specialized marke section.
Keep imagining, people !
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SIGGRAPH is featuring more and more game-oriented interfaces since the last couple of years. This time too, the focus was on installations which makes the "intern" get multisensorial feedback. Lots of other papers were presented on video textures, complex hair renderings, and other jargonating topics which are used in spl fx and animations. The day is not far where all of these are used in games too..

ps: (hate the word 'user' so am making short form of 'interaction person' and giving the new name intern)
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Tuesday, October 18

Spread the word

I just realised: The word passion has the letter 't' silent ! The word actually is pass-it-on !
Passion = Pass it on

I dont know if its original or not.. I find it quite liberating though.
Big deal, you'll ask. Well, if you really love something, then you inspire others to believe in it. Its contagious and infectious. Spread your passion around. You might be doing something great to others..

Monday, October 17

Crores of millions

This is one thing that I leaves me confused.. how many zeroes in a crore ? How many millions in one crore ? Just for the record,

10 million = 1 crore

10 lakh = 1 million
3 crore would be written as 3,00,00,000
Number of zeros in a million - 6, a billion - 9, a trillion - 12


Also see this