Blogger - currently unavailable ??

This should be a rare situation and not everybody would have noticed. An interruption to a google service, blogger, in the state " We're out of beta!", has been captured.

Today I got this maintenance page when tried to access my blog. But, when I refreshed the page, it had gone and correct site was loaded (just a few seconds of downtime).

Google personalized search - permanently disable

Do you enjoy using the Google personilized search? Or you are worried whenever it starts with your first sign-in to one of the google services such as gmail, blogger, calendar, etc..?

If you are one of the disappointed, don't worry. There is a way to permanently disable it. And you can enable it back whenever you want.

1. Permanently disable it
2. Enable it back

Wikiseek - the wikipedia search engine

A search engine called Wikiseek has been launched yesterday. This search engine has indexed the wiki pages in Wikipedia along with the sites which are linked from those pages.

Search interface
The simple, googlish interface looks very nice and the results are presented in a professional manner too.















Results
The search is very responsive; results are fetched faster and presented in a user friendly format. All the wiki links are marked with a 'W' sign in the results to differentiate them from the others. A tag list (wiki categories) is shown on top of the results page and one of them can be clicked to refine the results by that category (powered by searchme). Right side of the results page is used for the text advertisements, simlar to the Google Adsense.

People can promote the Wikiseek by adding the 'SearchMe' (search box + button) in their sites. Also the site says that the major part of the ad revenue is donated to the wikipedia foundation.

Happy Pongal

For all my hindu readers out there,

இனிய பொங்கல் வாழ்த்துக்கள்!!!
HAPPY PONGAL!!!

15-01-2007

Backtrack the history of websites

How long have you been on the internet? How long you have been accessing a famous web site like Yahoo or Google? Can you tell how those popular web sites have developed over the time (last 10 years or so)?

I'm using the internet since late 99, but now I couldn't backtrack my memory to get a clear picture of their look and feel at that time. I think this would be case for everybody out there. It is difficult because the internet is intangible and people rarely save even the screen shots of these sites.

Don't you feel excited to see how the famous Yahoo! web site looked like in 1996, 2000, 2004 and today (2007).






How about the Google home page in 98? Thats when Google first appeared as a search engine on internet.









A wonderful web site Wayback Machine, powered by Internet Archive, is the magic behind all these screen captures. It provides browsable archive of the web sites since 1996. The archive consists of multiple versions of the web site arranged in yearly basis and whenever the web site is updated a new version is created.

If a web site is missing there, its possible to submit manually too. They claim that it will be available within next 6 months.

It is unbelievable

I usually read Jonathan Schwartz's blog and I have already listed it as one of my favourites. Its always interesting.

Recently he has blogged about 5 things about himself that other people don't know. Among them the first and most amazing fact is that he had worked as a security guard of a museum in the past.

I have noticed, almost every famous personality has got this kind of bad experiences in life. It has become a quality of famous people? May be these are the indications of their hardwork, dedication and what they had paid in the past for their present success in their lives.

Original Post: Five things

Just for joke;
Moral of the story: If you have some bad experience from the past, Don't worry! You would be one of the greatest people in the world.

Firefox Tip: Drag n Drop URL text

What do you do when you find a URL in text format, in a web page. You can't just click because its not an anchor;the cursor won't change to a hand. Only possible way is the famous "copy n paste".

But, If you are a Firefox user, you are lucky;there is a shortcut. You just highlight the URL text, drag it to the addressbar and drop there. The browser will load the URL immediately.

Trackbacks in Blogger

A big disappointment I have with the Blogger is that, it doesn't facilitate trackbacks in its blogs. Today, I googled the net to find out alternative ways to do that (I was sure that I would find at least one solution, since millions of users host their blogs here).

Haloscan, 'weblog commenting and trackbacks', had been recommended by many, so I chose that and registered myself. I followed the instructions they had provided, to install the trackback into my blog. After that, I could see a new hyperlink 'trackback' appearing below the 'comments' link. Assuming everything goes fine, I tried to make a trackback ping from haloscan, and it resulted in a 'System error'. Tried many times and it didn't work :-(

Then I checked my blog to check whether it looks ok; I found a big problem; the right side bar was missing. I spent some time on editing the template HTML, but I couldn't get it working properly, so finally I rolled back my blog to the state it was before trackbacks.

It has been everybody's wish to have trackbacks in blogger and I hope the google won't delay to provide such a feature soon.

UPDATE: The problem was due to the template I used for my blog earlier. Now it works fine! My blog site looks better now! huh!

LinkedIn - are you using it?

I was invited by one of my colleagues to the LinkedIn network, months back. Since then, I have been using it to keep my professional network alive and I'm proud to have 15 connections already. You can access my profile here; I welcome invitations from the people I know.

If you are not using it, just read what this blogger has said about it. You may change your mind and sign up for the service soon.
10 ways to effectively use LinkedIn

Online ASCII art generator

I came accross this nice online tool which converts the real picture into ASCII characters, symbols and spaces. Original image can be recognized when you watch the output from one step back. I converted my picture and it worked fine.

Just give a try, you will like it.
ASCII Art

Preparing for presentations

I have been busy this week, organising the knowledge transfer sessions, on the recently completed project. I was asked by our Development Manager to share the knowledge which I gained, with the development team.

I have already conducted 2 sessions, a 1 hour and a 2 hour sessions with demonstrations, and another one, scheduled tomorow.

When I was an undergraduate student at the university, I didn't like the subjects which consists of students presentations. I think most of the students were like that. It was not because I didn't like preparing the slides but due to the scaredness about presenting in front of others. Those kind of thinking was very common within the student society and not within the working people.

But now, I would say that, preparing for a presentation is more difficult than actually presenting it. Presentation is just about make others listen to you. And its easier to present your own stuff than others' preparations. I could also remeber the guidelines given on the topic developing good presentation skills, by our university lecturers, and I still follow that.

So, my conclusion is, one person's skills depend not only on his/her talents but also on the society he/she lives in. Its true that people tend to follow others in their society.

Happy New Year

Its time to celebrate; ears are used to the noise of crackers; eyes like to watch the fireworks; mind relax in exchanging wishes with friends and relations; and the toungue needs those tasty sweets again and again. I think everybody feel or want to feel happy today.

I'm one of those who like this happiness to last long in a peaceful world. I hope the new year would bring hapiness to everybody through peace.

Happy New Year!