Stop It

Stop it Pakistan..
Stop the terrorism..
Stop disturbing our peace..
When will you stop this blood bath?

A series of explosions rocked Delhi yesterday evening, killing at least 55 people and leaving many injured, some of them critically. Terrorist planted these bombs at very strategic locations targeting innocent people doing their last minute Diwali/Eid shopping. Blasts took place at busy South Delhi Markets of Sarojini Nagar and Govindpuri and in Central Delhi at Paharganj market. Fortunately, bomb in Chandni Chowk area was diffused. Market areas of Paharganj and Sarojini Nagar were reported to be choc-a-bloc with shoppers doing their last minute purchases for Diwali, just a few days away. The blasts are suspected to be the handiwork of banned Pakistan-based Lashker-e-Toiba outfit.

Without any reports or evidence, I have blatantly blamed Pakistan for the serial bomb blast that has rocked the capital city of India. I don't know why, but immediately after hearing this news, I couldn't control my anger against them and their act of sponsoring terrorism. They have continously stabbed our genuine efforts of peace building measures. Their terrorist stormed into our parliament, they unnecessarily bought up Kargil and are wholly responsible for turning beautiful valley of Jammu & Kashmir into terrorist haven. A stupid advise to top honchos of our country, stand up, get the forces in order and demolish this sick country, so that we can live in peace..

I apologize for my outburst, but terrorism is turning to be a huge menace to the society. They have turned the festive season of Diwali into days of grief and sorrow.

Readers, I didn't mean to hurt any sentiments. Well to digress from this topic, FYI, I am taking a sabbatical from blogging for few days as Iam heading to my home town, Delhi for Diwali, to be with my parents, brother and friends. But yesterday's event will have a bearing on how this festival will be celebrated this year. Wishing all a very happy diwali and at the same expressing grief over the incident and praying that affected people get well soon and the city comes out of chaos soon.

Arpit.

Human Clock

I always thought machines were replacing humans. But alas, I have been proven wrong. A very unique clock has emerged on webscape recently; our good ol' mechanical clock is being replaced by the human clock! Oh, you credulous soul, have a look below:

The Human Clock is a collection of photographs and images made by people from all over the world to signify each minute in the 24-hour clock. The pictures vary between people holding up signs with the time on them, to photographs of every day objects made to look like the time. Charm of this clock is unthinkable and it is really fascinating to see all the different types of entry. Yesterday, I spend more than 1 hour checking all the entries and now this site is my official time-piece!

So what say, wanna check time on human clock?

Cheers.

What exactly is this RSS?

RSS is a new web technology that helps online users manage the flood of information in cyberspace. RSS, these days is one of the latest buzzword on internet. Many tech savvy users or "geeks" might be aware of it, but for rest of the dolts, here is a quick FAQ on RSS, courtesy ABC News:

1. What is RSS?

RSS is a new way to publish information online. Depending on who you ask, RSS stands for either "Rich Site Summary" or "Really Simple Syndication." At the heart of the technology is special Web coding, called XML, that has been widely developed by the global online community over the past few years.The XML code for RSS describes a new type of Web information called a "news feed." Essentially, the feeds can contain a summary and links of the new content on a Web site or anything else a creator desires to share. Anyone — an online surfer or another Web site — can pick up the RSS codes and with the appropriate Web software display the information automatically. The concept is similar to how a newswire service operates: Information published by one news organization can be "syndicated" — picked up and displayed — by any other news organization.

2. What Does RSS Mean for Web Site Publishers?

Through syndication, online content creators have a much easier way to get their information published and seen. By supplying the RSS code on the Web site, visitors can "subscribe" to the feed and automatically receive updates on their personal computers of new content on the site. Such an RSS feed will free content creators from creating and sending e-mail reminders — many of which may be stopped by anti-spam filters.

3. Why Would Ordinary Web Users Like RSS?

For Web surfers, the advantages of RSS are quite simple: They save time and bandwidth. Instead of remembering to visit a favorite Web site, the news comes directly into your computer daily or at whatever interval you want. What's more, most RSS feeds contain just links, headlines or brief synopsis of new information only. That means the small amount of Web data can be sent to any XML-compatible device — a cell phone, pager or handheld computer — without a lengthy download process. More importantly, RSS gives you control over receiving information you want without revealing information about yourself. Unlike subscribing to an e-mail newsletter, you never have to give out your e-mail address with an RSS feed. That avoids the possibility of receiving spam or unwanted junk e-mail from the Web site.

4. What Do I Need to Receive RSS Feeds?

First, you need a so-called feed reader. Performing a search for "RSS Feed Readers" in any major online search engine such as Google.com or Yahoo! will produce a slew of software options — many of which are free or at little cost. Once you've obtained a feed reader, subscribing to an RSS feed is as simple as looking for the appropriate XML code. Most Web sites that publish an RSS feed will display a tiny orange box or button labeled "RSS" or "XML." Click the button and your Web browser typically goes to a page of cryptic code. Just copy the Web "address" or URL of that page and plug it into your feed reader. The software will then automatically retrieve and display that site's latest information.

Thatz all to know about RSS, guess now you are ready to conquer the information world!!

Cheers.

Apple gets sued over iPod nano scratches

Unhappy iPod Nano customers are taking Apple to court over scratching issues they have experienced with their players. The suit, filed in a U.S. District Court in San Jose, alleges the screens scratch even during normal usage, "causing Plaintiff class members to incur loss of use and monetary damages." The suit is the latest in a string of headaches for Apple over the device. Scratching problems have been the most common complaint from users, although several had screen breakage issues that Apple dismissed as a "quality control issue."

The lawsuit asks for damages including the retail price of the iPod Nano, statutory and punitive damages, and attorney's fees. Furthermore, the class action members want a portion of the Nano's profits.

Apple has repeatedly dismissed the scratching issue. "A few vocal customers are saying that their iPod nano is more susceptible to scratching than prior iPods," the company said previously. "The iPod nano is made with the same high-quality polycarbonate plastic as the fourth-generation iPod."The suit disagrees with this assessment, and suggests that Apple was attempting to profit off of the issue. "Rather than admit the design flaw when consumers began to express widespread complaints about the screen's propensity to scratch easily and excessively, Apple concealed the defect and advised class members that they would need to purchase additional equipment to prevent the screen from scratching excessively," the complaint alleges.

Click here for related article.

Few Internet Deception Methods

It is a well known fact that consumers' ability to spot fraud in the Internet is still not very good. Even savvy users sometimes falter against the newest scam. What are the possible Internet Decpetion Methods? Here is a list of few:

• Phishing: (also carding and spoofing) is a form of social engineering, characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message. The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to "fish" for users' financial information and passwords.
  

• Pharming: is the exploitation of a vulnerability in the DNS server software that allows a hacker to acquire the Domain Name for a site, and to redirect that Web site's traffic to another Web site.

• Page-jacking and mouse-trapping: are techniques used by scammers to divert Internet users from their intended Web destination (page-jacking) to the scammers site from which the user is unable to leave using their browsers back, forward or even close buttons (mouse-trapping).

Click here to read the article, Fine-tuning your Internet deception detectors.

Arpit.

Letz track her

Worried, your wife is cheating on you?

Want to know where your daughter is late at night?

Forget-me-not panties answers all these questions. These panties have built-in GPS and unique sensor technology which can help give you her location, and even her temperature and heart rate, and she will never even know it's there! Unlike the cumbersome and uncomfortable chastity belts of the past, these panties are 100% cotton, and use cutting-edge technology to help you protect what matters most.

Want to order one? Or have a look at people's view of this amazing device.

Cheers.

| WetNoodle

Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes

Jakob Nielsen, often referred as the usability guru, has addressed usability issues concerning weblogs. According to him,

Weblogs are often too internally focused and ignore key usability issues, making it hard for new readers to understand the site and trust the author.

Click here to read the top ten design mistakes concerning weblogs, which will enable you to put your blog for a usabiltiy test.

President Kalam warns against Google Earth

Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop and ever since its launch, has become one of the most popular services on the internet.

But many top government officials are wary of this service. Recently, Indian President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam has joined the list of government officials charging that the geographic details provided by Google Earth's satellite imaging program pose a security risk. "Developing countries, which are already in danger of terrorist attacks, have been singularly chosen." Kalam said.

While addressing the nation's top police officers at the Vallabhabhai Patel National Police Academy at Hyderabad, he cautioned them to be aware of emerging "open-source intelligence." He also showed the audience aerial pictures of some of the sensitive locations in India.

"When you look deeper into it, you would realize that the specific laws in some countries, regarding spatial observations over their territory and UN recommendations about the display of spatial observations, are inadequate" he noted.

For entire story, click here.

Shitty Blogs

While browsing random blogs, I stumbled upon a post which talked about Shitty Blogs. Shitty Blogs is a new and supposedly clever (or so the makers think) website, which aims to review all the really bad blogs out there in Blogland (good luck with that, dudes!). It's title is, very originally, Shitty Blogs, and this is how they describe themselves:

Shitty Blogs features reviews of blogs that are really boring, stupid, or ugly.

I liked their reviews and mailed their mastermind, Horatio to review my love blog - moronsgospel. But what followed, wasn't pretty. He tore my blog apart and described me horny! So all of you, looking for a good laugh, click here to read the review.

Cheers!

We have new 007

The name's Bond. James Bond
.

This line has almost become a trite, but has always been associated with class and elegance! After Pierce Brosnan announced that Die Another Day would be his last outing in the famous tuxedo, the search was on to find his successor. Couple of days back, producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. and Sony Pictures Entertainment, announced the arrival of new Bond Man. It is Daniel Craig, who takes over 007 mantle.

Craig will follow in the footsteps of previous Bond stars Pierce Brosnan, Sir Sean Connery, Sir Roger Moore, George Lazenby and Timothy Dalton. Daniel Craig has been cast in the role of the legendary British secret agent, James Bond, in the highly anticipated 007 adventure thriller Casino Royale.

Casino Royale will be the 21st James Bond film produced by the franchise holders, EON Productions. The MGM/Columbia Pictures production begins shooting in January and is due for release worldwide on November 17, 2006. It will be filmed in the Czech Republic, the Bahamas, Italy and the UK.

Bad Designs

We have bag full of products, which we use almost daily, but are badly designed. Here are few examples:

1. Mixer Lid

While operating the mixture the snaps as locking device are not sufficient enough to hold the lid of mixer jar. It needs an external force for keeping it on the jar. This keeps the operator engaged unnecessarily. Even though its not required to hold it in position and a separate jar is provided for this purpose, due to the requirement the user uses in his own way.


2. Console Indicator in Pulsar

The dashboard consol show a blinking light as an indication when left or right indicator is on. But it doesn’t provide which indicator is on as the arrow provided without any separation. The two arrows have a common light. So when the indicator is turned on this light is lit. What it conveys could be more suggestive by lighting only one-half. The user can get the feedback by seeing the actual knob or by seeing the actual light. But when the console is provided which is located in such a way he get to see all the information, this could be enhanced more.


3. ATM - Swallowing of cards

One feels insecure if the card is swallowed by the machine. On contrary user feels in control with swapping action since he still holds it than loosing it altogether. Swallowing is rather a systems requirement than a users’ preferred option. Moreover, if case of system failure, the card gets stuck inside and the user is frustrated in such scenarios. Users especially in rush hours forget to get card back, which puts them in difficult positions. The next person may take advantage of his position which could have been avoided.


4. Door Handle of Hyderabad Buses

The handle at the door of entrance of Hyderabad city buses are hidden inside making it difficult for the users to find the location. It should be more promptly seen and accessible. Most of the passengers especially in rush hours and in Indian scenario run and catch the bus.


And there are plenty of more such products, coming out of our daily lives and we being ignorant fools, continue using them. Need of the hour is, good design to facilitate usable products for the users.

Arpit.

Big Black Pencil

Wooden Wisdom has many takers and while surfing along Pencil Revolution, I came across very interesting website of Big Black Pencil, which say, Big Ideas come out of Big Pencils.

Visit the home of Big Black Pencil for one of the most coolest designed websites around. They say,

"Big black pencils are as much a part of Leo Burnett as
that ever-present bowl of crisp apples. Why? Because
Leo believed big ideas come out of big pencils."

Who is Leo Burnett? Well, Leo Burnett (October 21, 1891 - June 7, 1971) was an advertising executive famous for creating such icons as the Jolly Green Giant, the Marlboro Man, the Pillsbury Doughboy and Tony the Tiger.

Arpit.

Season to remember for Renault

2005 Formula 1 season comprising of 19 races, most ever, came to an end yesterday. This season will go down in history books as the season which broke the back of Ferrari's and Micheal Schumacher's stranglehold on this sport. Fernando Alonso of Renault outfit, won 7 races on his way to becoming the youngest F1 champion at the age of 24. Throughout the season, he has been a model of consistency amalgamating it with cautious aggression and audacity. Meanwhile, in the last race at Shanghai, Renault also won the Overall Constructors Championship pipping McLaren by just 9 points. For, Renault a team which was never a big shot in this sport, all these achievements maybe looking like a dream come true and you can just imagine the wild celebrations that will be going on this time..

Congratulations to Renault and Fernando Alonso, but I cannot hide my disappointment that Kimi Raikkonen, the Iceman could not pull it off. He had argubaly the quickest car and the best package, but guess lady luck was never with him and he had to settle for 2nd position in the championship. Cheer up, Kimi, its just matter of time before you and McLaren totally dominate F1 and destroy your opponents!

A quick word on Micheal Schumacher:
This seven time world champion is undoubtedly the god of Formula 1. But for his sheer arrogance and supremacy, I hate him and his all red Ferrari Outfit. With great pleasure, I tell you that there is now a refreshing change in the sport. Ferrari have lost and Schumi's arrongant, all victorious arse has been kicked! And, it seems all is not well in Ferrari Camp, to my belief, Micheal has taken this season defeat very badly and after crashing out of the Shanghai race, he was so embarassed, that he could not show his face to anyone and was seen running away from the action to possible exile! Have a look below:

Cheers!

Google Fight

Sachin Tendulkar v/s Sania Mirza

Cricket v/s Formula1

Love v/s Lust

Ever wondered who or what will win these fights? Worry not, we now have Googlefight at our disposable to put an end to all the nagging fights. Googlefight is a simple web service that allows users to compare the number of search results returned by the Google search engine for two given queries. The results are displayed graphically in a Flash animation.

Two animated stick figures fight on screen after the queries are entered, and then an animated bar graph appears showing the results.

So you ready to fight.. err, Googlefight.

Cheers.

Desi Cyberwar

The hottest topic on blogosphere for quite sometime has undoubtedly been IIPM.

Brief History:
The furor started with the article by JAM, a youth magazine exposing IIPM. JAM and its editor Rashmi Bansal enjoy a strong following which troubled IIPM as their credibility was getting seriously tarnished with such an explosive article being read my thousands of people. They quickly got into action and gave Rashmi Bansal a legal notice and accused of her taking bribe, and claimed it was caught by a sting operation by AajTak. This accusation broke out a desi cyberwar, first of its kind with all the bloggers backing the JAM editor. Most desi bloggers supported her and wrote post in their blogs condeming IIPM and supporting Rashmi Bansal. One such blogger is Gaurav Sabnis, who was an IBM employee. IIPM decided to act against Sabnis and fired a legal notice to him. But this thing did not seem to bother Sabnis. But IIPM had another trick up its sleeve, they put pressure on Sabnis employers IBM - saying they would burn the IBM laptops they use on their campus in front of IBM Delhi Office. IBM last year sold 1,500 laptops to IIPM . Seeing that, IBM was unnecessarily being dragged into the controversy, Sabnis being a man of principles, decided to stand by his opinion about IIPM and thus quit his job at IBM.

Current Status:
Blogosphere is united, and totally against IIPM. This controversy has now become a national news. To put smile on bloggers who condemn IIPM, Outlook Magazine has issued a caution notice:

But sad news is that after Gaurav Sabnis, another blogger has become a victim of IIPM rage. Varna has recieved a legal notice and that too, a 175 crore lawsuit. This war is turning real ugly, innocent bloggers are getting targeted, which has angered the online community a lot. In response to this an Online Petition has been created to protest against IIPM.


This is turning out to be a fascinating story because this war is looked at as a fundamental breach of the right to free speech. But as they say every war is ugly and same is the true with this one. Bloggers are getting threatning legal notices, people are losing their jobs but the sad part is that future of IIPM students is getting damaged because of all the bad publicity their institute has gained in these last few weeks. Just for the record, Iam sympathizing with IIPM students, but not with IIPM. For years it's outrageous ads have been a menace and it was about time, things were put in right perspective.

To end this post, I have this great feeling to witness and be part of the first cyberwar of the country but at the same time, my sympathy to Rashmi, Gaurav and Varna. I hope they come victorious out of this mess!

Arpit.

Other Side of the Coin

When you come across such things, frustation level just soars up because other side of the coin is rusting and we seem to be doing nothing about it.

Can't we do something to stop this rusting.. don't we have any moral responsibility?

Arpit.

Aargh..

whywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy
whythewhywhywhymoronwhywhyinsidewhywhy
whywhymewhywhywhyrefuseswhywhywhytowhy
whywhywhywhydiewhywhywhywhywhywhywhywhy

.
Don't even try to make sense out of this gibberish!!
Alas, I thought, I had regained senses :(

Toxic Blogs

Blogging has oflate stormed into the Internet Community and its presence can be seen anywhere and everywhere. With such phenomenal success, it was just matter of time before cybercriminals took a note of it. This is exactly what has happened, below is a shocking piece of news:

Cybercriminals are increasingly hosting malicious files on blogs, ready for a Trojan to download them to a victim's PC.

Blogs started turning toxic in the first half of 2005 as malware authors started using free Web hosting and blogging services to store their malicious files, according to Internet security firm Websense.

According to the Websense Security Trends Report 2005, the first half of this year saw the Web become "by far the fastest growing attack vector", as malware authors started distributing links to malicious files in socially engineered e-mails instead of sending the actual files, which would most likely be blocked by corporate antivirus and spam filters. "These aren't the kind of Web sites that someone would stumble upon and infect their machine accidentally. The success of these attacks relies upon a certain level of social engineering to persuade the individual to click on the link. In addition, the blogs are being utilised as the first step of a multi-layered attack that could also involve a spoofed e-mail, Trojan horse or keylogger," the report said.

The increasing popularity of sites offering free blogs and Web space means malware authors now have access to an almost unlimited amount of hosting space in which to store their code. Websense claims that the general lack of security provided by these services means they are now regularly used to launch attacks.

"The blog can be used as a storage mechanism, which keeps malicious code that can be accessed by a Trojan horse that has already been hidden on the user's computer [blogs] do not require any identity authentication to post information, and most blog hosting facilities do not provide antivirus protection for posted files," the report said.

In July, Websense told ZDNet Australia that it had seen an alarming increase in Web sites offering free hosting services being used to store and distribute malware, which indicates that this trend is set to continue being a problem for the foreseeable future. At the time, Dan Hubbard, senior director of security and technology research at Websense, said more malware was found on free hosting services during the first two weeks of July than in May and June combined.

Sorry state of affairs..

No. 1: The Knife

Forbes ranked the "2o Most Important Tools" recently, and the knife topped the charts.

Forbes.com readers, editors and a panel of experts rank the knife as the most important tool of all time, in terms of its impact on human civilization.

The knife is one of the most ancient tools in our arsenal, in use for more than 2 million years, longer than modern humans have walked the Earth. It's evolved alongside us, changing form to meet our needs and demands. Knives help feed us, shelter us, defend us and assure our survival. It's the most reliable, useful and important tool in human history.

For full story on this, click here.

Cheers.

Notice

October 7, 2005
1902 Hours

Moron Regains Senses,

ANNOUNCES

Termination Of
MORONSGOSPEL

Arpit.

Possible Avatar?

Gone are the days when mobile phones were used only for talking. Now we are in age where mobile phones means ringtones, SMS, caller tunes, bluetooth, games, photos and the list simply goes on. I was contemplating what else could be in store for us in coming years and then I got my hands at an interesting pic:

Doesn't Mobile Phone + Swiss Knife makes for a good combo?

Cheers.

England stamps Ashes triumph

Its no secret that I hate Australia's cricketing supremacy and I was totally ecstatic when England won the Ashes. For me, arrogance of Australian players and media, a byproduct of their supremacy is perhaps most irritating. But England have come up with a great idea to kick their arrogance by stamping Ashes triumph, their style of celebrating their nerve-wracking series victory this summer. Imagine Ricky Ponting receiveing mails from his friends from England with this stamp on it.. is he going to cry or tear that mail apart?

Images of Michael Vaughan, Andrew Flintoff, Kevin Pietersen and England colleagues will appear on four stamps to mark the "momentous occasion" of regaining the Ashes from Australia. The English cricketers will be the first living people outside the Royal Family to have their likenesses clearly identifiable on British stamps.

The stamps go on sale this Thursday.

| Rediff

Yahoo! trying to catch up

Google has been working on the idea of Online library for over a year now and now Yahoo! is trying to catch up. Guess, they have realized that this idea is a hot cake, so today Yahoo! came up with plans to build a vast online library of books and multimedia files.

Check out this piece of news:

INTERNET group Yahoo! today outlined plans to build a vast online library of books and multimedia files that will address publishers' copyright concerns.

The Open Content Alliance, a project that the search engine is backing with several other partners, plans to provide digital versions of books, academic papers, video and audio. Much of the material will consist of copyrighted material voluntarily submitted by publishers and authors.

Other participants in the alliance include software firm Adobe Systems, PC maker Hewlett-Packard, the Internet Archive, O'Reilly Media, the University of California and the University of Toronto. The potentially vast library would be searchable and freely available to anyone, whether individual web surfers or commercial sites.

Although Yahoo! will power the search engine located at www.opencontentalliance.org, all the content will be made available so it can be indexed by all the other major search engines, including that of rival Google. By joining the project, Yahoo! is hoping to upstage Google, which has a one-year head start on scanning and indexing books so more literature and academic research can be accessed from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.

David Mandelbrot, Yahoo!'s vice president of search content, said: "We are building a collaborative effort that will make a great deal of copyrighted material available in a way that's acceptable to the creators. That is novel."

Guess in this fight of supremacy between Yahoo and Google, we users will probably emerge as winners because of free access to loads of materials.

Banned Books Week

Banned Books Week, celebrated this year from September 24 - October 1, came to an end yesterday. Herez a short note on Banned Books Week:

Banned Books Week: Celebrating the Freedom to Read is observed during the last week of September each year. Observed since 1982, the annual event reminds Americans not to take this precious democratic freedom for granted.

Banned Books Week (BBW) celebrates the freedom to choose or the freedom to express one’s opinion even if that opinion might be considered unorthodox or unpopular and stresses the importance of ensuring the availability of those unorthodox or unpopular viewpoints to all who wish to read them. After all, intellectual freedom can exist only where these two essential conditions are met.

Each year, the American Library Association (ALA) is asked why the week is called “Banned Books Week” instead of “Challenged Books Week,” since the majority of the books featured during the week are not banned, but “merely” challenged. There are two reasons. One, ALA does not “own” the name Banned Books Week, but is just one of several cosponsors of BBW; therefore, ALA cannot change the name without all the cosponsors agreeing to a change. Two, none want to do so, primarily because a challenge is an attempt to ban or restrict materials, based upon the objections of a person or group. A successful challenge would result in materials being banned or restricted.

To check the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books from 1990-2000, click here.