Category: Technology

With the advent of various programming technologies and their broad support toward a lot of stuffs, our needs have escalated over the years, making computers and similar automatic devices our friend, relative, and teacher and guides many times. The need for integrating our daily use devices to these machines has become more and more important. Finding the various fields
of application for the use of these revolutionary machines is not a new era of research, but even now it has much potential to attract the programmers for making it more functional for simplifying their daily life tasks.

Google Wave – need invites?

Look like I am again late about Google Wave. May be the reason is there are lesser known people inside and not many online on wave to talk to for the same reason. People like me might not be logging into their Google wave account just because they feel that they might get disappointed again by not getting more names in their friend list. After logging into it today, I found the situation been changed a little. Google wave has been opened up more.

wave_thumb

“ Since Dec 07, 2009, Google has not only given one more million Google Wave account to people requesting for them, but also has increased the number of invitations, one could send out for others. Although the exact count is not specified, but I think it must be 17 more invites added in your box, where it was 8 initially. ”

wave

Anyone, who is yet out of luck with Google Wave Account could get it from me by making a nice critic comment here on this post. Obviously, not everyone will get invites, but I have 24 invites in my bag to give out. May be your words get lucky.

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar

Get organized with Google Sync

Here comes, I am to discuss about its another feature, Google Sync; which has been launch since long back in Feb 09, but as I myself was not using the same, so wasn’t that aware of.

 google-logo  sync

“ How many times, you take backup of your phone contacts in fear of loosing your phone some day? How many times, you think that you should start taking backup of your calendar entries as well? How many times you been in a situation that you were not sure about that in which cell-phone you saved new friend’s number? How many times, you missed someone’s anniversary or some urgent appointment, just because your cell was switched off and you were much busy on internet and forgot? ”

The situations might be plenty, but the solution is the plain and basic one (probably everyone of us might have imagined): A single place to sync your contacts and calendar entries from your each cell-phone. Moreover, as per ideal Backup conception, that ‘single place’ should be far enough from your actual data like Internet itself means a place, where you could upload your contacts safely and which may be in two way sync with your phone all the time, so that any changes made at any side could be preserved and replicated to all in sync. Sure, there is such a place and such a service now: Google Sync.

Google Sync allows you to get your Gmail contacts and Google Calendar events on your phone. The sync works in two-way means any changes you make to your calendar or contacts from browser or phone will be reflected on all other devices sync with same Google account. For all these devices, synchronization happens automatically over the air without having to manually sync your phone. With the setting, Connection is always ON, your information is always up-to-date, no matter where you are and what you’re doing.

“ Sync of calendar also adds one more angle in remembering important events as from your phone, you could set it to give you alarm in every 10 mins and from your Google Calendar, you could set it to send you email in every 10 mins. Means you important event details (anniversaries, birthdays, meetings etc.) is always online with you, whether your phone is with you or not. Not to mention, the two way sync will allows any changes you make either side, get replicated on all the devices. ”

Getting started is easy. You can configure Google Sync directly from your device. The instructions and capabilities vary for different phones, so better check out for Help Center for device-specific information. Also, please keep in mind that Google Sync will replace all existing contacts and calendar information on your phone, so make sure to back up any important data before you get stated. To try Sync, visit m.google.com/sync.

“ If you have an always on GPRS connection with unlimited usages or working somewhere having wi-fi internet enabled freely for your phone, then don’t miss this feature. Its really kind of much have addition to someone’s tech life. You will never loose your contacts, your management of events will improve, you would be able to use all your phones without worrying that someone’s contact is saved in it or not, moreover, Google contacts will be available with you with their Gtalk snaps.”

Note: For Nokia S60 mobiles, you are needed to download and install an application named Mail for Exchange, which is of 1Mb around. For other devices, visit m.google.com/sync and find the instructions.

“ My blog is being updated with Google things only in now days. May be the reason, I am part of that poor community that don’t own an iPhone yet, not even a Black Berry, neither much involved with Twitter buzz. So, Layman’s Technical buzz is being centered around only Google now days and it really seems true that Google is kind of taking over the internet. At least at this point, Google really deserves. ”

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Merge Duplicate contacts in Gmail

“ Dec 15, 2009, Gmail added a new feature to its contacts module, which lets one to remove every single duplicate contact entry at once from his Gmail contacts. I means to say that if you have many email ids saved against same person name and same email IDs saved more than once, then it consolidates them at once and so saves a lot of your tedious and time consuming manual work. ”

gmail logo

Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it’s no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. So, here comes Gmail again with its unique innovations with your emailing experiences. Did you remember that when you started with Gmail, then what was special about contacts? They were being added automatically once you reply to any of their mail. Its been a nice feature. There were more related to contacts, like importing addresses from contacts of other email addresses, importing contacts from csv and many other means to make your contact list grew bigger and bigger.

You are sure not that worried from the bigger size of your contacts due to innovative and efficient auto-complete feature of Gmail, but for most of us, to avoid confusion, while mailing or for people, who like to keep them organized, this is a very very welcome idea of having a one-click-merge-button, otherwise it was a just one-by-one process. The implications are more real for those, who might have started syncing their phone contacts with their Gmail account.

Gmail-merge

The basics of how it works is quite simple. This new system runs  a simple scan on your contacts and the one button solution merge the information for each duplicate contacts. It’s a non-destructive method, so you are not going to loose any contacts, but if you have organized your Contacts in some certain way, then only you have to check whether the new system suiting to your method or not.

“ This feature is sure targeting users thinking to make use of Google Sync and will be sure handy for most of tech-savy people.What’s interesting is that why such a delay in announcing such a feature, when Yahoo and Hotmail have given similar long back in 2007 only?”

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar
https://nitishkumar.wordpress.com
http://scifireviews.wordpress.com
http://nitishkumarsays.blogspot.com

LinkedIn now with Faceted Search

Look like Recession really has plugged in some great innovations back on track. Scared from apparent downfall of Facebook and MySpace, almost all the social media sites are on revamping of their interface and features. Here is the another update from LinkedIn: The Giant Business Networking Site.

linkedin

“ Dec 14, 2009, Esteban Kozak from LinkedIn announced the release of another huge improvement to LinkedIn’s people search experience, “Faceted Search”. “Faceted Search” offers dynamic filters that are automatically generated based on your actual query results. These filters let you quickly and easily hone your query over 50 million LinkedIn profiles based on 8 facets: current company, past company, location, relationship, location, industry, school, and profile languages. ”

The concept is based on the fact over what all the network sites were once based upon. “Finding the people, what you exactly wanted to find”, thus improving the technique of searching people faster and efficiently.

Now, how this “Faceted Search” works: As you search for something or someone, this technique automatically generates search filters, based on your query results, which lets you quickly refine your search. Check out the snapshot attached below, find the all new “Refine By” module there. This is what we are talking about.

linked

Currently these filters are based on 8 facets: Current Company, Past Company, Location, Relationship, Industry, School, Groups and profile languages.

“ In practice, it really makes your search queries more efficient like you need to search for an engineer in NCR (Location), has great interest in .Net technologies (Groups), who speaks english and hindi (Profile Language), have working/ worked for TCS (Current/ Past Company) and either in my friend list or in friend’s friend list (relationship). As the LinkedIn implementation is, the search results adapt the filter quickly and thus makes the entire process quick and effortless. ”

As their blog says:

Faceted Search offers the following benefits to your search experience on LinkedIn:

  • Enables True Guided Navigation: A list of filters are generated dynamically for every search in order to guide you through the optimal path to find the most relevant people
  • Provides Intuitive Interface: Refining your search is easier than ever with an intuitive user interface that allows you to slice and dice search results by 8 facets
  • Improves Precision: As LinkedIn continues to grow by the millions, increasing search space requires increased precision to help you find exactly the right people
  • Increases Efficiency: Find talent, business partners, customers or a former colleague faster than ever before.
  • Reduces Need for Complex Queries: It significantly reduces the need for complex Boolean queries. This was a particular need we heard from many of our power users.

Here is the official video of the same feature :—>

While this is going to make work smoother for people, who were taking help of LinkedIn Connections for their businesses, here I am just wondering on the basis of Google’s Launch of Goggles that when this limited feature to Android only, will be released to other platforms as well and we will have capability of searching someone by his/ her face only in Google Search or Orkut search (already picasa started name tags). Its pretty possible technology and its very about time, when Google must have launched the same. Waiting for that. 🙂

Till then you enjoy video about Google’s Goggles.

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar

 

Now its 4G – Not in India but in Sweden :(

Sometimes, we really think that if we could have born in some other developed country… just for joke.. don’t mind.

Here is the news from techcrunch that caught my attention by this morning:

“ Dec 14, 2009, Teliasonera became the first company in the world to launch its 4G services (Currently limited to Stockholms and Oslo). Afterwards, the company is planning to extend the services to other areas (currently the license covers Sweden, Norway and also recently Finland) ”

4 G

So, here poor we, still waiting for affordable and workable smooth enough 3G services (MTNL is sure not that cheap and competent enough) and some other part of world is going to get speed around 100 megabits per seconds.

Although interesting to note that despite the launch of the network, no handsets can yet use 4G. Initially customers will connect via a dongle and a laptop.

“ Fourth-generation, 4G, networks are based around the Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology and downlink data speeds can hit 100 megabits per second – about ten times quicker than the fastest 3G networks. The technology has been designed to overlay existing 3G networks and most operators have committed to upgrading to the faster system. ”

As per BBC News, the company has released no information about the cost of connecting to the high-speed network. The dongles for connecting to the LTE network are made by Samsung, while Phone equipment maker Ericsson has put together the network in Stockholm, Sweden and Chinese firm Huawei is behind the one in Oslo, Norway. Both networks cover the central regions of both cities.

At the end, Handsets that can use LTE are expected in mid-late 2010. 🙂

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar

 

Faster and more effective photo updates in orkut

Last many news from Google side only and I was thinking to make the next post on something else, but here Google again got my attention, this time by Orkut.

After the complete makeover of Orkut and revamped interface from the scratch, a few of good things that came out was expected addition of slideshow etc into photo album of orkut and top of all, it was much faster than ever in facebook way. Although there were a few annoyance like recent photos going at the last of the photo album, but over all, it was faster than anything earlier.

“ Here comes the another addition in features, In-line Photo Browsing: means now if you click on photo update thumbnail from a friend then you will be treated with full photo at the same place with options of navigating to other updated snaps in the same sliding way as it is album (kind-of-brining his album to your profile without your opening a new page), not only that but you can comment or tag over the photos as well from the same place. Not only that but now you could see a slideshow of the same photos as well from the same place. ”

In-Line Photo Browsing

Name tagging from In-Line

The slideshow

The new interface is in-a-way keeping users on the same home page most of the time as they can perform many things from there only, either it be commenting, tagging or most of the daily stuffs, they were used to do by visiting others profiles.

I am also noticing one trend from Google side. They first launch the feature itself and then after hours or a day, the same come through some announcement or via blog. Interesting

Here is the official blog post about In-Line Photo Browsing.

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Google Namebench to hunt down fastest DNS

Few days back, I wrote over the promising Google product Google DNS and today I am choosing to write over another related utility from Google side.

Tell me!!! How you perform the task of choosing best DNS server? The famous one? The default ISP one? The knowingly reliable one? Don’t you think that its not a good practice to rely on things without self testing. Technically, DNS is one of most crucial point about your browsing experience, so how can you choose a DNS with not-so-well-defined process? Let’s see, what Namebench does here for your in place of just simplest tests, you might have done for testing the best DNS out there.

Google's Namebench

Namebench: One of 20% projects at Google, is basically an Open-Source DNS Benchmarking Utility. It hunts down the fastest DNS Servers available for your computer to use with a detailed method and report. Its written using open-source tools and libraries such as Python, Tkinter, PyObjC, dnspython, jinja2 and graphy.

Namebench runs a fair and through benchmark using your web browser history (after all, browser behaviour changes over what you visit), tcpdump output, or standardized datasets in order to provide an individualized recommendation. It also determine cache-sharing relationships between different IP’s and removes the slowest of these servers to avoid improperly benchmarking them solely on cached results. It also reports on DNS misbehaviour such as DNS hijiacking and censorship. Moreover, its completely free and doesn’t modify anything in your system. 

Screenshot

It runs on Mac OS X, Windows and Unix and is available with a graphical interface as well as a command-line interface.

Running the Windows/ Mac Version is kind of simple (and even Linux version, if you have right libraries python-tk in your system), you get greeted with a simplest interface as shown in pics, which is almost perfectly fine to run with default settings it appear with. Although, for more detailed description of the options, you may check the official wiki.

People, who like command-line tools more than GUIs, will get disappointed in case of its Windows version, but rest two versions has a pretty efficient command-line. You could find the info related using Namebench command-line here.

So, what you waiting for? Wanna be a geek? With Namebench, get a reality check yourself that are you in safe hands (right DNS server)? or which DNS is more better and how much better? Download it from here.

Here, I also want to comment over that “What a Google 20% project means?”

Google offers its engineers “20 percent time” so that they are free to work on what they’re really passionate about. Google Suggest, AdSense for content, Orkut and this Namebench are among the many products of this ‘perk’.

🙂

photo of Nitish KumarNitish Kumar
https://nitishkumar.wordpress.com
http://scifireviews.wordpress.com
http://nitishkumarsays.blogspot.com