Finding a Blog in a Haystack

Traffic at blog search engines is soaring. When will Google and Yahoo! join the fray?

Lunchtime on Street. Let's say a trader hears a rumor of an impending buyout over his pastrami on rye. Back at his desk, he wants to see if anyone has talked about it -- especially in the past few hours. Where to look? Google ? There, the top-rated link might date all the way back to 1999.

No, if you're looking for today's buzz, the first place to click is a Web log search engine such as Technorati, Feedster, or Blogdigger. By picking up the latest posts, minute by minute, from some 12 million blogs, these sites showcase an ever-changing mosaic of what is on the world's mind.

Source

Microsoft sues over Google hire

Opening a new chapter in its rivalry with Google, Microsoft on Tuesday sued the search giant and the former Microsoft executive who has been tapped by Google to run its China operations.

The suit was filed in a Washington state court against Google and Kai-Fu Lee, who until Monday was the corporate vice president of Microsoft's Interactive Services Division.

Read the full story

Concepts through examples

We had a course called IEM in our 3rd and final years of Undergrad studies. The subject had contents from Industrial Management, Accounting, Management of Technology and Law. There were 4 people teaching those different sections.

The lecturer who taught management was an interesting person, who provided humourous but senseful examples to explain the concepts. This was one of his examples, he used to explain marketting in general. ( Even though I couldn't remember what he told those days, When I received this from my friend, I remembered his actions to explain the concepts).


You see a beautiful girl at a party.
You go up to her and say, "I'm very rich. Marry me!"
That's Direct Marketing.


You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a beautiful girl.
One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, "He's very rich. Marry him."
That's Advertising.


You see a beautiful girl at a party.
You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say, "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me."
That's Telemarketing.


You're at a party and see a beautiful girl.
You get up and straighten your tie; you walk up to her and pour her a drink. You open the door for her, pick up her bag after she drops it,offer her a ride, and then say, "By the way, I'm very rich. Will you marry me?"
That's Public Relations.


You're at a party and see a beautiful girl.
She walks up to you and says, "You are very rich.."
That's Brand Recognition.


You see a gorgeous girl at a party.
You go up to her and say, "I'm very rich. Marry me"
She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.
That's Customer Feedback !!!!!


You see a beautiful girl at a party.
You go up to her and say, "I'm very rich. Marry me!"
And she introduces you to her husband.
That's Demand and Supply gap.


You see a beautiful girl at a party.
You go up to her and before you say, "I'm very rich. Marry me!"
She turns her face towards you ------------ she is your wife!
That's competition eating into your market share.

Error messages ?!#$%

I got an email from my co-worker with pictures of funny error messages with windows computer. I share some of them here. You will have a big laugh :-D

Browser Plug-in to speedup web searching

Browster is a plugin for both the leading browsers Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The software tries to speed up the web searches by displaying a preview of the web sites pointed by result links when you mouse over them. It uses patented "pre-fetching" instant page rendering that serves the copy of the web page in milliseconds in a new window. Users are allowed to browse through the poped up window. They can exit by moving the mouse back to the main search site or click on an icon in the new window for viewing the previous or next search item in the list of results.

Browster 1.0 works for Google and Yahoo.

I would say, this is a nice tool if you have enough bandwidth and you are not charged based on the usage of bandwidth by your ISP, because it starts pre-fetching all the pages of the result list in the background as soon as the results are displayed.

Better give a try and decide.

Related links:
Browster web
Download Browster 1.0

Google's toolbar for firebox

Google releases the toolbar for firefox browser today. The functionality will match the existing IE version.

You can download it for free from here once its released.

Read more on this at PC World.com.

What poverty can create!

Punishment - Joke

The Teacher asked the student to write "I Will Not Throw Paper Airplanes in the Class" 500 times.

LPG cylinder - Expiry date

Some piece of important information to share.

There is an expiry date for LPG cylinders. Expired Cylinders are not safe for use and may cause accidents. In this regard please be cautious at the time of accepting any LPG cylinder from the vendor.

Here is how we can check the expiry of LPG cylinders - On the stem of the cylinder the expiry date is coded alpha numerically as A or B or C or D and some two digit number following this. e.g. D06. The alphabets stand for quarters - A for march Qtr, B - June Qtr, C -Sept Qtr and D- December Qtr. The digits stand for the year till it is valid. HenceD06 would mean December qtr of 2006.

PS. Share - it may save somebody.

CSE Conference & Get Together

Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University of Moratuwa celebrates its 20th anniversary by organizing a Conference followed by 'Get Together' on the 21st of July.

The schedule for the day is here.
Date: 21-07-2005
Time: Conference (1.45pm to 6.00pm), AGM (6.00pm onwards)
Venue: Empire Ball Room, Hotel Mount Lavinia.
Tickets: Conference Only (Rs.1500), AGM only (Rs.1500), Both (Rs.2500)


The Chief Guest is Hon. Prof. Tissa Vitharana, Minister of Science & Technology.
There are 4 speakers from abroad and from Sri Lanka as well.

Details of the speakers :

Mr. Dhanajaya Rajapakshe
Chief Executive Officer, Stretchline Indonesia

Dr. Sardha Wijesoma
Associate Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Mr. Ramesh Shanmugathan
Director/CEO, Keells Business Systems Limited

Mr. Mano Sekaram
Chief Executive Officer, EuroCenter DDC


Get more information about the event from the official website.
http://www.cse.mrt.ac.lk/20thAnniversary/

The incredibles at Pixar

A line about PIXAR;
Pixar Animation Studios is an Academy Award®-winning computer animation studio with the technical, creative and production capabilities to create a new generation of animated feature films, merchandise and other related products.

This is an interesting article from a journalist who visited the headquaters of the Pixar Animation Studios. Its really amazing!

Best picture of Tajmahal

Best picture of Tajmahal

IE Bug

An Internet Explorer bug has been discovered by security researchers. This vulnerability may allow an attacker to run unauthrized code on compromised machines.

THe CTO of a security consulting firm says that HTML pages with particular ActiveX componenets are able to overwrite the CPU registers.

The effect is a 'heap-based buffer overflow', results in a software crash.

Microsoft has accepted the bug and the investigation is being carried out for a security patch.

Although there was nobody exploited the vulnerability yet, but it can happen in 2 or 3 weeks time.