Facebook Networking

For quite sometime now, I have been successfully avoiding getting signed up for another one of several networking sites around. And I seldom use the sites i have registered to, exception being orkut (to keep touch with some indian friends, apparently its quite huge there) and linkedIn (for its professional touch).

But yesterday, I signed up for facebook, and to be true, its been good fun. Their methodology seems different and i am sure, i won't be cluttered with random people (like in myspace) who i have noting to do with. But at same time, it gives options to do networking with groups from colleges, work places, regional etc etc and also same time, its like a personalized homepage with personalized contents. And yesterday, they even released some sort of facebook platform which will allow anyone (individual, companies) to make content for personalization.

In short - its different. Give it a try and if you know me personally, see you there :))

Shrek 3 Preview

Thanks to some Russians :), just watched the very awaited Shrek 3. Hmm, its kinda hard to put it into category, its not the best of the Shrek's but its def. an above average movie with stunning animations. The movie is a bit loose on story line-up, at least i thought so. Bit it has it good moments and a must see at least for once :). My fav. part was the "offspring's of Donkey and the Fire Dragon" .. perfect combination of flying-fire-donkey-dragon. You will also get to see some old fairy-tale characters. Overall, its an entertaining movie.

It was not as disappointing as the Spiderman 3, which was completly off-track, with tons of characters, plots, detours and too long with all the drama. Hopefully some good fast fight scenes kept me away from sleeping.

And looking forward to the final sequel of Pirates of the Caribbean. It has to be good ;)

Flickr Fav of the Week

2573, originally uploaded by magnus*.

Conference Invitation

now, this is what i call a perfect conference invitation, who wouldn't like to attend this one. Picnic (in their words: is a seductive, exciting, intangible, unpredictable, cosmopolitan and cheerful annual event for and by the creative industry) shot this video to promote the event.



AMsterdam is coool..

Cool Demo by Microsoft

This is a cool demo of how future desktops might look like. Still far away from getting myself one but the idea of visualization and interaction is def. more interesting. Check it out

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Not entirely related but somewhat on the lines of Jeff Han Mutl-Touch talk at TED last year, which is very interesting, if you haven't seen it yet. Would be an awesome combination!!

Stage6

I am sure everyone had seen and tried lot of different video sharing sites, and youTube def. has its big following but most of the times, the quality on youTube su*** bigtime too.

But remember our favourite compression technique DivX; DivX has a new video sharing site called stage6 and it rocks and the quality is awesome, like HD. Check it out.

And ya, they have another cool feature, which "dims" the desktop screen excluding the video viewing window, while watching the video. And the full screen online playback is wow :))
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Some videos to watch:

Spiderman-3

Pussycat Dolls remix

Bob Sinclair - Rock This Party

Blessed - Brett Dennen

Following up on last post about Brett Dennen, here is another good song.
Enjoy!!
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I welcome the sun,
the clouds and rain,
the wind that sweeps the sky clean
and lets the sun shine again.
this is the most magnificent life has ever been.
here is heaven and earth
and the brilliant sky in between.

blessed is this life
and I'm gonna celebrate being alive.
blessed is this life
and I'm gonna celebrate being alive

I dwell in the darkness
I live in the light
I sleep in the afternoon
and become the noise in the night
I trespass in temptation
suffered in sacrifice
but I awake each day with a new sunrise

blessed is this life, oh
and I'm gonna celebrate being alive
blessed is this life, oh
and I'm gonna celebrate being alive

Flickr fav of the week: London Eye

London Eye, originally uploaded by ChrisAston.

Completely Unedited

Music Industry Sucks

I just received an email (and probably if you are living outside US and an avid pandora listener, you must have too) from Pandora Support giving the very unfortunate news that from tomorrow, they would be blocking access to Pandora from Ireland and all countries outside of the US. Some excerpts from the email:
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We show your IP address is 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx', which indicates you are listening from Ireland.

Consequently, on May 3rd, we will begin blocking access to Pandora to listeners from your country. We are very sad to have to do this, but there is no other alternative.

We will keep a record of your existing stations and bookmarked artists and songs, so that when we are able to launch in your country, they will be waiting for you. We deeply share your sense of disappointment and greatly appreciate your understanding.
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I appreciate Pandora's effort to send the email and for their disappointment. It is/was one of best services avaliable to listen to music of varied taste and got to hear several good singers from their recomendations.

Gonna miss it, until I find a proxy server ;) to listen to it.

But in short - music industry and their DRM & copyrights laws sucks big time. Also they want to increase their licensing fees for online radios, so its not only pandora, mebbe in future, they might just kill all.

Demonstrating - First Timer

For last few weeks, I have been demonstrating (TA for US system) for a software engineering project coursework to 3rd year students. Its been kinda strange to be on the other side. I took the position to gain some insight into tutoring, but only 6 weeks before the end of semester (sem ends this week) as they urgently needed someone to help out with project teams.

Telling students what they should do, seems a daunting task for myself. And then I keep imagining myself in their situation (until last year, i was in their position) and how to deal with students who don't work-at-all, work-a-bit and then there is always the one who does all the work. Its hard to make a choice between the one who does all the work and the one who doesn't do anything at all; but its still a team. And then if they don't complete assignments, then what, did they had valid reasons; late joiners to team, what about their reasoning. I am trying to be casual and do my task of motivating them to do their assignments, task completion and complete the project on time. Next week is final submission, will update about progress :)