Archive for December, 2010

Howdy folks,

Yes I am back after taking too much rest. I slept for like almost whole of the past 2-3 days. Now when my next exam is on January 7^th, (last was on December 28^th) it feels like my exams are over. I was and am busy doing nothing. So you can understand why I didn’t  give my time to this thing. Apart from sleeping I played badminton and visited Ramu’s and Tamya’s frequently.

Ever since I have deleted my account from facebook I think I have become much more interested in history and blah blah of social networking sites. So whenever I browse through internet if I see anything related to any SNS I undoubtedly read it. I have written about facebook, CUcommunity and something more about facebook (Don’t think that I am going to join facebook). This time while I was killing my precious time on internet I came to know about another SNS and its history. It’s called BEBO. I don’t know how many of you know about it. I have an application in my phone for this site. But I have never used it. So let me tell you how to make money if you have something in your mind. At the end, all of you will come to know the most precious thing on this earth is time (oops I gave you the conclusion before the end, anyways continue reading).

It’s a story of a boy meets a girl (courtesy: 500 days of summer, my favourite(st) movie) and they made money from SNS and now they live happily. I am talking about Michael (British) and Xochi Birch (American). They met in London while working for an insurance company and and something clicked. Having decided that was not a lot of fun, they took out loans against their flat and moved to San Francisco to live with Xochi’s parents while they worked on some ideas for some web companies. Later they discovered a birthday alarm, in form of an online greeting cards site. Quite suddenly the earning increased from $10,000 a month to $10,000 a day. Unbelievable but true. They named it Ringo but soon sold it to start a more serious effort. The idea came from a link which Michael’s friend had sent him. Friendster was already launched. This was the time for Bebo.

The Birches

It rapidly became a huge hit – not in the United States where they were based but in Britain and Ireland, and in particular among schoolchildren. In fact, the first story I ever did about social networking was about teachers wanting to ban Bebo from schools over concerns about the way it was being used, Michael says. In 2005 facebook and MySpace were still inside campuses. Bebo’s fortunes peaked in 2007 when it overtook Google in terms of time spent online in the UK. Now it was time for money. It was nothing but perfect timing. In 2008, after a deal worth $850m in cash, Bebo was handed over to AOL. Under AOL Bebo went to a rapid decline. It was becoming pretty hard to compete with facebook now. Then, earlier this year, AOL sold it on to another company for what Michael describes as “1% of what they paid us for it.”

The Birches are now rich enough to live happily with their children. But they are still working, setting up a number of web vehicles and a charity venture.

Will be here soon

You are registering for a website and then you see a message “Sign up with you google account”.. How many times you have encountered it. Do you know how actually it works?? Actually the idea behind this is, Google maintains a dashboard for users to review the messages and information attached to their accounts. Well, the Google privacy center provides all the information on how other company collects your data and let you choose whether you would like to allow to do it or not. But have you ever, in your busy schedule (neither have I) checked this page. Now are you feeling unsafe? If yes, don’t worry there is always a solution. And if you want to believe, you can. A software called Disconnect, has been developed by Brian Kennish, a former Google employee, will let you choose what data do you want to send to a particular site.

Kennish worked at Google for seven years, managing team of engineers on a variety of products like chrome browser. At the end of his workdays a Google he developed the earlier version of Disconnect as Facebook Disconnect (After all everything is related to facebook). Once you have installed this software (browser dependent), it will block all websites that have facebook widgets installed from sending information about user back to the social networking site. Facebook Disconnect has currently about 75,000 users. While facebook and other applications are sending user data without permission of users, Kennish realized that his then-employer is doing the same thing.

For example, Google can track search queries over time, targets ads to its gmail user depending upon the content of email and uses a user’s location data to determine which shops’ add it will show. And how do they do that? I think you all know that. It’s cookies.

Google provides a program called “20% Time”, that lets its employee to work on the prject of their own. Kennish developed the facebook disconnect during this period. Google hasn’t some high profile employee from leaving the company but they do. And many of them join its rival Facebook. But abandoning Google hasn’t always proved to be a wise or permanent move. Anna Patterson left the company in 2007 to start a rival search engine called Cuil. When that tanked, she returned to Google in September.

Kennish is pretty close to releasing a Safari web browser version and will be working for Firefox version soon. He says, if he’s forced to abandon the project, the source code is freely available to any developers. So if not Brian Kennish your Privacy will be in your hand .

Will be here soon

Hello people,

I was again when surfing internet, came to know about this and I am going to tell you people in this post what was it. It’s a story about a person who was about to be a billionaire. You all know about Mark Zuckerberg but do you know who is Wayne Ting?? He was the creator of campus network. In 2004 when thefacebook.com (it was first known by this name) was released, Wayne Ting and another student Adam Goldberg released a website called Cucommunity at Columbia University. They had seen the social networking site Friendster but none of their friends was on it. So they thought people needed a community where they would feel safe and where they had enough social nodes and the answer was College. So they started it in their college.

Soon three quarters of Columbia students were using it. Cucommunity provided all the facilities like photo sharing, blogging as well as poking and friend lists. They thought of taking it to Ivy league , the two students were leaving Columbia and heading to Montreal to work on their full-time project called Campus Network. So they hired three software programmers and got themselves an office which was also their home. But to their surprise Facebook which was released in the beginning of 2004 was cleaning up the campus across USA. It was then when they saw not many people were interested in their network. Facebook, launched later, less sophisticated, but it was becoming famous.Facebook had 90% of Harvard students using it within days of its launch and then very quickly started moving to other campuses. So when Campus Network turned up at those same colleges it was too late.

The reason behind this, what they think was, people weren’t just ready for that level of sophistication. Only 10% students used to share photos or blogged at that time. At that time Facebook had only poking and photo upload. People didn’t want to involve that much on those days. But gradually facebook has added all those facilities now.

What Facebook did that was incredibly smart was to hook them with the friending and the poking and then they learned with their users, and added functionality slowly over time as users became more comfortable.

-Wayne Ting says.

Thanks for reading.

Will be here soon

Hello folks,
How are you doing…. The temperature is going down here day by day but not as low as northern India. The average temperature always remains average here. Nowadays I am spending lot of time on internet because there is nothing to do, though my exams are going on but our university has scheduled our exams very oddly. Thanks to BPUT for this kind of schedule which permits me to write here. I think it’s a good habit. So once again this post is influenced by a web page which I saw today.

In Britain there was race between P-mail and E-mail. You all know what is E-mail but can you guess what is P-mail (make a wild guess)?? Its Pigeon mail. Believe it or not the winner was P-mail. The idea and goal behind this experiment was to show the less effective and slower broadband service in the rural region of UK. Ten USB key-laden pigeons were released from a Yorkshire farm at the same time a five-minute video upload was begun. 120 KM away in a village, after an hour and quarter later the data was delivered by the P-mail but only 24% of the file had been downloaded by the user. According to a survey done by BBC three million homes in UK have an internet connection below 2Mbps. And now the government has promised to provide internet connection of minimum 2Mbps to every home by 2015. This was not the first time. Same kind of race had taken place in South Africa last year. The reason behind, was same.

Now for people like us, what should we do?? For sending large files using E-mail is not at all a solution here. Do we have at least an internet connection in not every but even in 50% homes of India?? I don’t know the stats but I think the answer of this question is NO. Then what’s the solution? Is it P-mail?? No its not. I think at present time even if Indian government promises to provide such service by say 2020. How many of you think the work will be done?? There are many other issues. Again there will be some minister who will do something amazing and we will be hearing and watching same stories like before. This is one of the reason I am not attaching photos to this post (which I have started), though picture of some pigeon is easily available on internet (just kidding ).

Will be here soon

Howdy folks,
How is life on facebook. Yes, I am asking you about facebook. Since I have stopped using facebook, I have become more interested in it. No, I am not talking about joining it again because as you know (and if you don’t) I hate those application which are now included in facebook. Today my friend Abhijeet told me that there is a game, added recently on facebook, its very interesting, he was playing it and he was very excited. I don’t like to do that, I had played only one game on facebook (not from my account, it was Piyush’s), clicks per second (I think you all know the details). The best thing I have done till now on internet after that, is blogging (according to me) and now I spend more time on internet collecting information (mainly about blogging). One day as I was viewing a forum regarding blog, there was a link to a website called stumbleupon (http://stumbleupon.com). Its very useful website for collecting information when you have nothing to do on internet. Once you have signed up, after logging in, it will redirect you to different pages randomly depending upon you choices. As I was stumbling, I got a link to this page and eagerly read that page and found some uncommon things there, which I am going to share now. Have you guessed, what was it about?? Answer is simple, the title was “Facts about facebook you probably didn’t know”. I appreciate the owner of this page for using “probably” word and it follows here too. So I am letting you know same thing.

1. Facebook was initially bank rolled by Peter Theil, the co-founder of Paypal. He helped by giving $500,000 to launch facebook.
2. In the beginning facebook was almost shut down by a lawsuit (I think you all know this). ConnectU a competitor, clamed that Mark Zuckerberg stole their idea, as well as the technology. The issue was settled out of court for a undisclosed amount.
3. Today about 400 million people log on to their profile at least a month and more interestingly 50% stays online.
4. 70% users of facebook lives outside US, and the site is available in more than 70 different languages. More interestingly, half of Denmark has an active facebook user profile (nearly 2,421, 380 people out of about 5,484,723 total).
5. Facebook comes to second position after Google in the context of traffic (no of users viewing this website).
6. In 2006, Yahoo offered Zuckerberg $1 billion, which he refused. In 2009, facebook was valued $4 billion. Today it is valued between $8 – $11 billion.
7. Five most popular fan pages on facebook are Michael Jackson, Homer Simplon, Barack Obama, Starbukcs Coffee, Twilight.
8. Monthly amount of time spent on facebook : 8.3 billion hours
9. Average number of facebook friend per user : 130.
10. Total number of active applications : 550,000+ (and this is increasing rapidly and daily).
11. Number of servers running facebook’s infrastructure : 10,000 (estimated).
12. Amount raised to fund these and future server : $100 million.
13. Women aged 55+ are fastest growing facebook user in America.
14. Biggest Myth: Facebook accesses user profile information and stores it, even after the account is deactivated (however its partly true, deactivated user’s information can be seen on other user’s profile sometime).
15. Facebook has become so popular that psychologists have identified a new health disorder named Facebook Addiction Disorder.
16. In Australia court notices can be served through facebook. A facebook summon is considered legally binding (amazing, isn’t it).
17. Facebook makes money through advertising and virtual products. Advertisers use profile information to market specifically to certain users. ( $600-$700 million in 2009 and $1 billion in 2010, projected).

That’s all for now. I’ll let you know surely if I’ll find some more interesting stuffs.

Will be here soon

Howdy folks,
Day two of exam: December 14, 2010. The day was not at all good. Question paper was… no idea why some one made such kind of questions. Almost everybody, I guess, were unhappy with the questions. So there is nothing to write about today. That’s why this time I am telling you what happened a day before. First I woke up at late 9 and could not manage to keep my eyes open even after a cup of tea. So I took a nap of about 3 hours and again woke up at 12:15. This time after having tea I decided to study for the exam. But guess what I could not find my textbook. So I called my friend who was at the library and asked him to search for the book at Ramu’s. But unfortunately he could not. So I went to library and got issued the text book and there I studied till 6:30. After visiting Ramu’s I came back to hostel, where I felt appetite for food was rising because I had skipped both breakfast and lunch. So I and Shashank decided to take some light food. But all we could find that was edible was poori at this shop, which has no name but we call the owner of the shop by name “Poori Bhaina”. There we had a long conversation as the food was not ready. I don’t actually remember the complete conversation but I think you will like this short snapshot.

The first thing that there was no poori left in the shop but he (poori bhaina) decided to make some for us. He asked us how much do we want and we said 3-3 will be enough. He started his work and we were sitting in front of his shop. The first thing you will notice that there is no light in the shop instead it uses the street light which is being given by the college. But there is a stand by in case power goes off, recently he has bought a good quality lamp (I can not express exactly what it is, but it gives more than sufficient light) which he told cost Rs 1000 and he showed us the receipt too, so no doubt.

Poori Bhain

As we were sitting there we started to talk, his mother tongue is Telugu so we enjoy his mixture of Telugu, Oriya and Hindi and our mixture of Oriya and Hindi (for us Telugu is miles away) always. He works alone at his shop so we asked him to get some help from some people or at least bring some boy who do nothing at their village. So he told us (I don’t know exactly what he wanted to tell but we could interpret this much), there is only one boy he know at the village, his son. But he goes to school so he can not bring him up. We asked him about his family, his reply gave us almost a shock. He said he has three children among which two are going to die very soon. He said this with such an ease that we could not believe at first, but then he said they are suffering from some disease. And then further he said it will be good for them, because there will not be pain anymore. Then we talked about some other thing. The most attractive thing in him is his self-satisfaction. He said he earn a profit of around Rs 300 a day and he does not want more. He is happy with it. His shop is in very unsafe condition (from the construction point of view) but he says if he will make it better then student will ask him for credit and he’ll not be able to earn this much. But then he said he will do it after about a year. He knows he has a fixed number of customers and he does not want more.He really is an interesting personality.

This post was dedicated to poori bhaina, so no thoughts from me.

Good Bye,
Will be here Soon

Day one of the exam: Dec 11, 2010, started with one of worst news that we could ever hear. My friend Kunal was having trouble since 4 in the morning due to some stomach pain. He took an injection and after that there was no ease in pain he decided to go to hospital, from where news came, about an hour ago of exam that, he has got some stones in his kidney. Fortunately its in the starting phase; so hopefully medicine is enough for cure. . He returned from hospital at about 1 o’clock. In the meantime I studied some selected portion and went through the previous years question (to increase efficiency; works every time). Finally the exam started and few new things happened. BPUT has changed some formats like no extra sheet will be given for answering; although 48 pages are more than enough but I as well as some other students liked the extra sheet. Second thing is the question paper. Now they are giving questions in an A4 size paper (only one sheet, like internals). First we are studying (very less) like we do in internals and then the question paper. It feels like we are giving fourth internal and the environment is also same except we sit here according to registration number and most of us sit in exam not less than two and half hour. I came out after same. The question paper was good and easy for all of us thanks to related faculty ( will be writing about him soon waiting for his permission). Overall reaction from students was also good, every one was happy. Kunal also did well (and drank a liter of water during exam ). The day ended with tea at Ramu’s. I with some friends left Ramu’s before time (near 6). At night some of us took dinner at Dhaba and we came back to hostel at around 9. After that I did some meaningless things to kill the time. I played some TT, pool and some other things. Night was not coming very fast and I wanted to sleep. But once again it could not happen. I watched a movie called AMAL ( nice one).

Sometimes the poorest of men are the richest...

It’s a story about an honest tempo driver who gets a fortune of Rs 300 million from a millionaire after his death. But unfortunately he could not receive this money. I suggest you people to watch this movie. Its not meaningless. At least I did some meaningful thing before I managed to sleep (at 4). I was woken up by Shashank at 10 in the morning for having tea at Tamya’s. It’s a Sunday today and next exam is on 14th so there is nothing to do except time pass.

Well then its time for goodbye.

Will be here soon

Howdy,

Finally the time has come and we are ready to do our whatever (say best ). All the best for exams for all out there having a paper tomorrow; and all the best to rest, study well, you have time, we don’t have, we have experienced. The thing is, what I have and you people also would have observed that as we are going higher on semester count the hour of study is going lower rapidly. Now even after exams we don’t think that we’ll read more for next, like we did in past. However after all its exam and we have to go through it. Since exam fever is on I think the virus has also affected my writing. This time I present to you what happens a night or two before exams.

The first thing anybody asks “will the exams be postponed??”. Even a night before exam. The reason, we have experienced it before. Now people don’t even read a day before exams, because one night is fair enough. But this time we have our first exam is in second half. That’s one of the consequences of this text work.

Second thing, you will hear frequently is that I haven’t started yet; but trust me on this, very few are honest in this context. Some don’t say that they have completed and very very rare accept that they have finished.

Third on the list is degree of completeness. Call your friend, meet some one suddenly or else. What’s the first thing you or friend asks “how many modules you have completed? I have just started second or third or blah blah”.

Fourth is, most of us look for ways to leave chair and table. If some one is going some where we follow them or we make other follow us. Anything to avoid books and notes. Somebody had sent me message on similar nights that “before exams every thing except study becomes interested. Even staring at wall”.

Fifth one is people look for waste part in the syllabus, like from which part questions are not coming, or which part is not compulsory or about which faculty has said not to read etc. Again anything to avoid studies.

I could not ignore this, here comes sixth. Every time there will be three-to-four persons, who complete almost all of their syllabus and teach them to their fellows. With this they revise their finished part very easily. Nice idea. We should have implemented this, isn’t it?

Seventh comes “Idhar udhar ki batein; wagairah wagairah” (inspired from I hate love storys). Others will visit you or on the othe hand you will visits others room very frequently. There you will talk and discuss some meaningless (at least not required at that time) things. And you will waste your time for no reasons.

I think seven is good for now. But you know, I know and everyone knows there happens a lot more thing. But now I have to study for Soft Computing. So bye bye folks. All the very best again.

Will be here soon

PS: After writing “seven is good” one more thing came to my mind. Nowadays people have started updating their facebook status mentioning different dates for exam, or exam will be postponed or I have not started yet or whatever. I think BPUT should join Facebook, this way they don’t have to struggle with their low quality website for updates. Just share what’s going on.

December 8th, I was back to my college. Yes, I need to mention it, I felt great when I came to know that my friends were waiting for me in Ramu Gumti till 7 in the evening when Berhampur is experiencing such cold. I came here at around 7 and did some chit chat and then I was back to my room. I informed my dear ones that I have reached here and then I looked for my friends here in hostel. After a little effort I managed to find Shashank and went to Tamya’s for last cup of tea for the day, meanwhile I called Kunal. He came to Tamya’s and then I found nothing has changed, in fact nothing can and will change. He did some shouting and we came back without having tea. When I reached my room again, then I came to know that my friends here have developed a new source of entertainment. So, in my absence they did some more innovation and I am really loving this. Let me tell you this, you will surely enjoy. The disclaimer part mentioned in older post follows here, if you don’t know have a look at older post.

Two boys named Ladi and Nihar, live here in hostel. They are my batch mate; again I haven’t taken their permission, but I think possibility of reading this with respect to them is very less, so I am taking this chance (but yet again, to them: if you read this and fell uncomfortable I’ll remove this comfortably). They live on the floor above mine and near to my room. Sometimes this Nihar comes out of his room and shouts his friend’s name “Ladi” (dunno actually what for). One day at dinner when my gems were also dining at the same time he (Nihar) did this mistake. He shouted his name (again dunno the reason). This time Kunal heard this and he replied back with same name and stronger voice. When hostel staffs became irritated they called Nihar and told him not to do this again and suddenly Kunal shouted again. I was not there so I could not enjoy that moment. After a while Anand came to know this and he could not stop himself. Now the scene is like this: According to locations of room of Anand, Kunal, and Nihar, it makes almost an isosceles triangle with Kunal at the farther point from Anand and Nihar. Now whenever Nihar comes out of his room and shouts his name, Kunal also does that and finally Anand joins them. I have not yet heard this practically but I think it sounds very funny theoretically, so I am waiting eagerly. But since I came here late and I live here in hostel I got a chance to see the demo of this game. Everybody else, as always do, are enjoying this too. And yes one more thing, yesterday I got this, some of the juniors are also speaking our language (still no name.. Have any idea????).

I enjoyed my home visit very much. Now I am enjoying here at hostel. Missed my friends and now missing my home ( ).

Will be here soon

howdy,

Please manage to read with following assumptions,
1. I have posted it at 2:57 AM, on Dec 05, 2010.
2. The first part (*.1) expresses my feeling at home.
3. The second part (*.2) expresses how could i have felt at the same moment in hostel.
4. All the spellings in this post; include grammatical mistakes, should be ignored and they can be viewed as result of bad light of night bulb and my sleepy eyes (as I am not a good typist).

I am home and I am enjoying my stay here. My sister took us to surprise today by coming 2 days ago as she’d promised and postponed her trip because of her bad health(it was an excuse). It’s only a day here and not to my may be for your surprise I am already missing my college, my hostel, Tamya’s, Ramu’s and non other than my friends. So here is a list, you can say, of things I did here on first day and things I missed or what could I have done there.

1.1 Before leaving the bed I got 3 cups of bed tea this morning and after getting up I got another cup of tea. Yes four cups before brushing my teeth (eeewww. But doesnt matter to me. I am habituated of it). May be you think its a bad habit but thats in my opinion, is the reason you can never become me ( ) .
1.2 I missed someone’s knock at the door to go to tamya’s for having the first two to three cups of tea but after getting my teeth cleaned up.

2.1 Now my mother with all her effort she could do to provide me everything I needed when I come home, brought my breakfast. Do I need to mention it was too good and as maximum as possible, far better than hostel’s breakfast.
2.2 On breakfast I missed people asking tamya for getting their maggi done in two denominations: single and double. And some (including me sometimes) asking some (dont know actually what’s his name) bhaina for poori and his awsome vegitable.

3.1 I watched some program on TV after that. There was nothing much to see. I am really eager to see a TV serial called Pratigya since i have reached home. But unfortunately it’s a saturday so hard luck for me. I watched some football and cricket, some history and some discovery and blah blah.
3.2 I missed my part who kills time for no reason because I could not get sleep in odd timing if I am already awake. So I was not able to go to tamya’s with friends for uncountable numbers of tea. I was missing the pool table and room of my friends.

4.1 Now I was ready for having lunch. The food is delicious here. That’s why everybody love home so much while they live in hostel. I ate more than needed and felt some cold breezes in the body and went over the roof to get some sunshine. But I could not get. So I came down and started surfing on my phone in the blanket when My mother said dont sleep I am going to make tea (Dont you dare to think that it’s gonna be my fifth. But I forget to metion some other tea moments. Sorry for tea lovers).
4.2 Sometimes we (very few of us) do not eat lunch but we go to the mess for having fun. When we do eat then we talk and do some unimaginable things. After that once again tamya gumti; sometimes all the way to ramu. I missed it.

5.1 Few moments later I heard some familiar but not expected voice in the hall. Yes this was the time when when my sister came.
5.2 Sorry guys. Nothing compares.

6.1 After having talks about this and that and few round of teas, i was now ready to eat chowmin. My evening breakfast(???). I watched TV again; again saturday was all over the tv.
6.2 I missed my unwanted and unwelcomed visits to my friend’s for asking them to go to Ramu.

7.1 Sorry again. But this time no comparison here.
7.2 I missed my 2-3 hours. There is nothing compared to sitting with friends in Ramu Gumti and having such a tasty tea.Can not explain. Dont have words to do.

8.1 There was nothing to do. My friends are all at their respective colleges and few are busy or they actually dont know that I have come because I have not informed them (my fault). And there was a rush of unwanted for me ladies in my home not gentlemen so I could do nothing else than watching TV with my father.
8.2 How could i not miss the pool and TT table. We play there continuously also after giving too bad performances sometimes; and due too lack of practice we play that bad that we have made a rule like “Losers to stay”.

9.1 I enjoyed the food with TV and talk, so much but before that we struggled to find my father’s newly baught and at that time lost receipe book.
9.2 I missed again the environment of mess and my final visit to tamya in search of last cup of tea which sometimes i get and sometimes endup with coffee.

10.1 After that I am talking and now I am writing this. The temperature here is at low so i am in blanket and fan is still and staring at me. Night bulb is also trying to be lonely so perhaps i should go and sleep. Babye from here.
10.2 I missed after dinner talk and room visit (this two thingS are my favorite). I missed many things but the *.1 points are only for for four days and sometimes I feel bad because *.2 points will only be for 5-6 more months. And I have no idea how much I am gonna miss this. I’ll never be trying to write this kind of stuff again, I think. If you are reading this, I am missing you all. I am writing this very late night but still its a night here, its not hostel; where day and night can be viewed as same if you want. Perhaps I should go to sleep now. I am not posting it right now due to bad newtwork reception of my phone here.

Good night.
You will find me here always; if you wish.

will be here always*

PS: At least till my fingers work.