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 :)

ONE LOVE

whenever i listen this song, it gives me chills :)) .. do what you need to do!!

original:


also read grace article here (changing the world), only if everyone thinks like this, i am sure this world would be a much much better place and full of love

Peace and Love

Good Work Google (I mean it)

yesterday, i posted about the losing of my personalized homepage on Google and today morning, when i woke-up and checked .. everything seems to be back now, with a new format but all is back to normal. Looks like google playing a game :)) but happy to see its back. Didn't realize earlier that Google must be having several back-ups of the pages and they got the stuff back from it. But anyhoo, Good Work Google and next time, inform me before deleting ;))

George Bush Dance

wow, this is hilarious :)) ..

Google Personalized Homepage LOST

OK, whatever the problem is, this is not acceptable from a company like Google. Just returned from work and logged on to my google personalized page, all settings have been lost and its back to default settings. What the he**??
Discussion on google groups!! Check fast, mebbe it will be lost too ;))

Philipp Lenssen reports here. More here.

Personally, i don't remember what all stuff i had in there, but it was months of collections.. its like loosing a collection of important items, or something similar. It was one page, i was using all the time. Doesn't look like I'll get the settings back.

Good Work Google.

Asian-American Viewpoint

On my previous post about the VT massacre, Grace (my asian-american and now german friend :)) posted a comment which is worth mentioning in a separate post.

Here it goes in her words:

I think people are also shocked that the killer was an Asian-American kid. I know I was. I feel bad for his parents and sister, because I cannot imagine what they must be going through. I'm sure they are just as shocked as the rest of the country, as well as mortified, as well as grieving for the loss of their son and brother.

It is a strange situation because this kid was arguably insane, but at the same time, he knew what he was doing and he seemed to think he had been forced into the situation.

It is especially strange, because so far there have been no reports of bullying or torment from which the kid suffered, and it is just so odd for him to act out in this way without a clear trigger.

Acts like this scare me just as much as acts of terrorism. I also feel for all the victims and their families. It is a terrible way to die and just as with public acts of terror, the victims just seem so randomly chosen. I feel like it could be you or me or my friend in that situation.

Also, the US embassy in Berlin recently warned of terrorist acts that may target US citizens in Germany. That is also very scary. Remember the suitcases that were found on the train that luckily failed to detonate? It makes me slightly worried to be traveling on the trains as often as I do. There is no perceivable security that would deter such a situation from occurring, as far as I can see. It is truly a scary world that we are growing up in.

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Indeed a scary world we are living in. My Heartful Sympathies goes to all VT students and the families.

Peace & Love

Flickr Fav of the week

P e e l o f f, originally uploaded by ░▒▓ Enchantress ▓▒░.

Summer's Coming!! Enjoy the oranges :))

Somewhat Successful Malakar's Experiment

So the other day, after reading the article about the 300% increase in search activity for Sanjaya and Shyamali Malakar, I decided to post about it, here, to try to give some boost/exposure to my tiny blog in the huge internet world and to see if linking does help in getting some extra traffic. Here are the results, not great, but for my blog, worth mentioning :))

So, the graph of the no. of people (unique) visting the main blog page a week before I posted the post looked like this (FYI: the y-axis is 0 to 25):

And the graph after the post is like this (FYI: the y-axis is 0 to 125):


For that particular day (Sunday, April 15), there is indeed a steep increase in the no. of visitors and 99.9% came through searching for either Sanjaya Malakar or his sister.


Further,
52% came from searching on technorati.com/tag/Shyamali Malakar
54% visited only trivial-space.blogspot.com/2007/04/experiment-sanjaya-malakar.html page

Interesting!!

Latest News: Sanjaya Malakar has been finally voted off the show. Americans are RELIEVED now :)), I think there was just too much talk about it and over-exposure & I just used that to get some exposure to my blog also. Until next time.

Campus Massacre

Its unbelievable, was just reading the news about the killings at one of best US university, Virginia Tech, by a gunman, who went on rampage across the campus, killing students. Its reported that atleast 32 people have been killed.

Times report here.
Reuters report here.

Its just horrifying!!

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Peace All

Experiment Sanjaya Malakar

Hopefully, by now somehow you might have heard of American Idol and its contestants. This is an experiment for my blog, if the results are good, would post them. But now back to this post.

If you are watching this season of AI, you are aware of Sanjaya Malakar, he has created ripples in american entertainment industry at age 17. He might not be the best contestant by voice, but def. hez a great entertainer esp. with his hair-do's every week.

And last week or so, his sister Shyamali Malakar, posted some pics of her with a guitar (involves explicit content) and that she is a hooter girl too. Not that, it should be related anyway to Sanjaya chances in AI, but I suppose given the coverage it has got, mebbe it is. I was reading some article that the search for both the names have jumped by like 350% in most image search engines.

Not even that, somehow, they are everywhere, on news, on blogs, on youtube, myspace, late-nights show, etc etc...

And the chances are expectionally high that he might win!!

Enjoy

Music Post No. 1

"Ain't No Reason" by Brett Dennen. Great song, good voice & strong lyrics

And "Hump de Bump" by Red Hot Chilli Peppers


Enjoy the songs :))

Brett Dennen

wow, new favourite. Not sure if you guys have heard Brett Dennen, I hadn't. Was watching Scrubs (season 6, ep. 14) and they played the track "Ain't No Reason", great style and strong lyrics. And def. a great singer choice to add to pandora's list of music channels. Totally hooked to it now. Listen to him, its pleasure to ears :)

Lyrics:
There aint no reason things are this way
Its how they always been and it tends to stay
I can't explain why we live this way, we do it everyday
Preachers on the podeum speaking of saints
Prophets on the sidewalk begging for change
old ladies laughing from the fire escape cursing my name
I got a basket full of lemons and they all taste the same
A window and a pigeon with a broken wing
You can spend you whole life working for something,
Just to have it taken away
People walk aroun pushing back their debts
Wearing pay checks like necklaces and braceltes
Talking bout nothing, not thinking bout' death
Every little hearbeat, every little breath
People walk a tight rope
On a razors edge
Carrying their hurt and hatrid and weapons
It could be a bomb or a bullet or a pen
Or a thought or a word or a sentence

There Ain't no reason
Things are this way
It's how they've always been
and its tends to stay
I dont know why I say
The things that I say
But I say them anyway
But love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set my free yes.

Prison walls still standing tall
Some things never change at all
Keep on building prisons, gonna fill them all
Keep building bombs, gonna drop them all
Working young fingers bear to the bone
Breaking your back make you sell your soul
Like a lung its filled with cold, sufficating slow
The wind blows wild and I may move
The politions lie and i am not fooled
you don't need no reason or a three piece suit
To argue the truth
The air on my skin and the world under my toes
Labor is stiched into the fabric of my clothes
Chaos and comotion wherever I go
Love I try to follow

Love will come set me free
Love will come set me free, I do believe
Love will come set me free, I know it will
Love will come set my free yes.

There ain't no reason things are this way
Its how its always been and it tends to stay
I can't explain why we live this way,
We do it everyday.

Sanjaya (of AI) <> Bush

Only if you are following American Idol this season, you must be aware of the underdog Sanjaya, american indian - last night conan made a sketch on american idol and he casts Prez Bush as Sanjaya. Enjoy the video, esp. the ending is best :)

Vista, Orb & Wireless

Have been using vista for few days now. Must say, its really sleek (even more than mac, n windows users don't have to hide from macs anymore) and fun to use. But some components like sidebar, explorer keep crashing all the time (even thou' without much problem). Further its a bit of a learning curve to use vista. Until now (ie. XP), you give me XP in any language and i can use it without even knowing the language, been using windows for years now (JFI: used Linux - still do n Macs both). But with vista, lot of changes and needs time getting accustomed to all the new functionalities. But i suppose its worth, feels less nerdy :)) to use it.

Orb? Great piece of software, to access and stream any of your data from base PC to any PC conntected to net, to PDA, to Xbox, etc. No need to carry or transfer data to any external google servers :).. just install on base PC, and access anywhere. Lot of technologies coming up in this direction, give it a shot, its def. useful if you wanna access n stream your digital files.

And with wireless, its just so much easier n fun to use. Now all my music, videos, web videos, photos, even directories n files are accesible anywhere with wireless and even better on my XDA.. just waiting to get the Xbox steup :))

Mebbe, it sounds kinda technical, believe me it won't take mintues.

n PS - Happy Easter

TED Talk: Ze Frank

Check out Ze Frank's talk at TED 2004. Very Funny, don't miss!! Its great technology stand-up comedy;

Here's the LINK.

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PS: its not an April Fools Joke