Monday, November 28, 2005

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Publishers sue Google - good better and ugly?

Publishers sue Google over book search project | Tech News on ZDNet

Enough has been/is being/will be said about this. The publishers and their minions would be thankfully forgotten just like the person who handed Plato the hemlock, or burnt Galelios book etc..

Good: Good of zdnet to carry this story.
Better: Providing Talkback feature on the story page, so that people can add to the cacophony.
Ugly??: Talkback
Do they(zdnet) really want your opinion (talkback?). What has my job category or subscribing to the spam mailing-list got to do with my opinions on Leeches vs Google??
Practice what you preach, mofos.

Thursday, October 06, 2005

The Right to Read

I just stumbled across this, which starts as a sience fiction -
only that its happening right now and hell, its not even fiction anymore.

The Right to Read - GNU Project - Free Software Foundation (FSF)

Also now its:
The Right to Hear and See: see DRM, IPOD-ITunes, P2P, RIAA etc..

Why write this:
Other than to scream when pressed, I see it as replication and propogation of good, and maybe someone will be inspired to see the difference between buying music and buying cd/media
or the difference between buying words and thoughts and buying books and paper.

Tuesday, October 04, 2005

Google browser.

Sun and Google:

Google browser is a device to use connect to and browse the internet.
It has a light weight screen and midrange cpu running linux and other free opensource software. Actually its just a large touch screen.
Sun provides the hardware and Google the software, what would turn out to be the first web operating system.

Update: well its finally out and its all in there. Looks like its all coming true.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=1969

Thursday, September 29, 2005

MIT Media Lab: $100 Laptop - go further.

MIT Media Lab: $100 Laptop
MIT has come up with this concept and I think this is great. However what they( read someone, I??) need to do is to create an under $100 web browser, or just rename this.
The concept of a notebook, laptop etc.. stinks of technological old age and by definition has all kind of BS already associated with it.
However there seems to be a good thing in all this: Google is part of the deal. I guess its slowly dawning on google ( not quite there yet ) that all computing resources are going server side and all you need is a web browser. I don't understand why google has not yet come up with its own <$100 browser device, but this is not too far. In fact this is going to be the reality.
There's another great thing that is going to come out of this, -- we will not need Microsoft and windows OS anymore. Finally the OS tyranny will come to an end because everyone is going to realize that they do not and never needed a $1000 computer and $300 OS to get internet ( I believe 99% of home computers are solely used to access the internet ).
So why these guys dont still get it?? -- because they are still using labels and names from 90s. Just having the name wrong means the difference between a garbage pile of 'research' and high minded altruism and, a real thing available to everyone and making money.
There are few people who are close to getting it like Nokia ( internet tablet ), Opera - they already have a browser, and the ability to put it on all kind of devices, except that they never thought to have the browser itself as a device.
I guess I'll have to do it myself.
Here's the plan:
low end cpu+small data cache+cheap display+Linux+Firefox

Thursday, July 07, 2005

Weather map - Google Weather Map

I was looking forward to this one too..
Weather map - Google Weather Map

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Google Maps API

Its finally here. Markup your earth now!!
Google Maps API

Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Google Earth - Sightseeing

Google Earth - Sightseeing
I just downloaded this and its too much of a mind explosion.
Closer to being all seeing.

Wednesday, June 15, 2005

Opera - aint over till the fat lady sings, etc.

No too long after my last post about Opera web browser, I found an interesting problem with guess what, blogging about Opera. It looks like my blogging softwares ( blogspot.com) editing page goes for a toss with Opera.
Here are comparative screenshots from Firefox and Opera.

(FireFox)
(Opera)

Most of the entries from the editor toolbar are missing.
Hopefully someone from the Opera team with stumble along and fix this, but till then, all post edits have to be done by Firefox.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Listening to Opera.

Uncle Sam (a giant), introduced me to opera thru "Highlights of Tosca" by Leontyne Price and Giuseppe di Stefano.
I recently started using Opera browser and realized that it could turn out be a great work of art if it stays on course.
Just when micro$oft and anyone who cared thought the 'browser wars' were over, i belive a new one is here. This time its going to put micro$oft out of business - just like this:

I'm waiting for the next < 100$ portable browser. Yes, just the browser-no trillion GHz MB yakyak computer. I guess this is what i'm talking about:
http://operawatch.blogspot.com/2005/05/nokia-chooses-opera.html

ps: they give you FIVE WEEKS paid vacation.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Google Homepage.

I recently tried google homepage. Although I prefer the original uncluttered interface, it could be a good idea if you want to aggregate frequently used google tools.
However, if google would open up the customization, this is what I'd like my page to look like:



google world homepage