» Perception «

Gmail Chat: Now With Video and Voice

2008-11-12T14:12:00.002+05:30

After having signed a deal with MGM Studios that would allow Google to stream full length movies and TV episodes on YouTube, Google decided to sprinkle some video on Gmail too. They spiced up Gmail with something that was long missing.

Gmail chat now does video and voice too. After having chat and rich mail rolled in a single package, video and voice chat comes as a welcome add-on. According to the GMail blog, they have tried to make it "an easy to use, seamless experience with high quality audio and video all for free." My first hand experience says they have faired very well in delivering what they tried for. It uses Vidyo technology which they say is covered under pending patents.

Both participants of the chat need to install a small package of video plugin from here to enable this feature in Gmail. The Mac installer comes as 2.4 MB download and the Windows XP version is a 476 KB initial downloader which then downloads and installs the remaining content. On the Mac, the installation DMG contains a .PKG file and an uninstaller. You need to quit all your browsers before installing it. The Mac version needs Mac OS X 10.4 or later and 5.6 MB of space. Once the installation is complete, it opens the Chat settings page in your Gmail account. The defaults worked fine for me. You can verify if your settings are correct by opening that little section that shows the audio input/ output levels and starts your web cam. The audio output levels here may sound a little low but this is just the level at which you hear the ring that is played for an incoming chat request. The troubleshooting link doesn't really offer any good help yet other than a three step installation guide.

Once everything is in place, you should see a green camera icon besides your name in the chat panel in Gmail. You could start a video and voice chat from the little popup menu on the chat window. A small panel slides up and starts your web cam. The other participant hears a ring and must accept the invitation to video chat before they can view your web cam. The visual and voice clarity is amazing here (unlike that in the settings verification page). It uses XMPP, RTP and H.264 standards, so that level of performance is expected. You can pop that window out, just as you would during a regular chat to resize the video frame. To have a more immersive experience, you could turn to the full screen mode, which didn't fail to impress me.

What I didn't like was a little echo that I could hear at times. The echo cancellation option in the settings page didn't seem to have any effect in removing it. It didn't work for me if I set my status to invisible.

Overall it is an impressive move by Gmail. There's a good news for developers, for they can leverage this technology in their own applications too.

So, Gmail is indeed getting close to doing our laundry. You can read more about this feature in the Official GMail Blog here.

Wallpaper: Fireworks

2008-10-30T22:17:00.001+05:30

Fireworks by ~MysticDews on deviant ART

From a Combination of Words to an Identity

2008-10-19T17:34:00.004+05:30

How do you come up with such fancy names?

Hello MysticDews, or whatever that handle of yours means.

Didn't quite get the tale behind your MysticDews identity.

This was a fraction of number of questions of that nature. A lot of people have been asking me about the MysticDews identity that I maintain throughout my social cloud. I wanted to do a post on this when I started writing here, but somehow it didn't seem appealing to me at that time.

So where did this MysticDews actually come from?

It happened one chilly morning, when I had to attend a lecture at my physics classes. As usual, I reached a little early and was wondering what to do. I walked on the grassy ground nearby and dew drops on the foliage caught my attention. I wanted to photograph it and asked one of my teachers if he could allow me to use his camera phone for a while. I clicked a few pictures and was so lost that I didn't notice that all my classmates had arrived and were watching me click those pictures. I heard someone whisper "He's a mysterious guy..."

The day continued, and ended with not even a distant particle of hint that it would be the making of something that I'll be identified as. Next day I couldn't attend the lecture and when I later met my friends, they asked me where did I disappear and that the teacher was asking about why the dew drop boy didn't attend. I replied, without much thought,

"The mysterious guy disappeared like the dews - Mystic Dews."

That's when I first used that name. Later in the night, while on the bed, looking at the stars from my window the sound of Mystic Dews kept ringing through my ears. I liked the fanciness of that name and the way it came into being - so much that I decided to use it as an identity for myself.

That is the story of MysticDews - from a combination of words, to an identity.

With a special thanks to all those who appreciated me for that handle, I end this post.. :)

Wallpaper: Flashy Lines

2008-10-13T21:43:00.007+05:30

Starting today, I'll occasionally post links to wallpapers that I create. Don't expect posts titled Wallpaper to appear at regular intervals. At times there can be more than one in a week, and some times, there can be none for a few weeks at a stretch. Currently I'm designing them only for a resolution of 1280x860, but you could drop in a comment if you want it customized for a particular resolution.

So here's my first wallpaper for you all. It is hosted on my page at DeviantArt, click through the thumbnail to open the DeviantArt page for the actual file.

Flash Lines by ~MysticDews on deviant ART

A Laptop for Children: How HIGs Change

2008-10-11T13:45:00.009+05:30

The field of Human Computer Interaction has always interested me ever since I understood what it is. As an HCI enthusiast, I often find myself reading Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) of various user interfaces. Recently, I was reading the HIGs for the Sugar UI. For those unaware, Sugar is the UI used in the XO laptops of the OLPC project fame.

This UI has more than just fascinated me. It is a completely re-invented concept and it has been done very creatively. These laptops are primarily intended for use by children, aged 5 to those in their mid teens. So, how differently do you create an UI targeted for that age group?

Well, to answer that question, just imagine that you literally had to re-invent the wheel, that lets say, will be used on a vehicle for a specific user group. Akin to that, the task of designing an UI for children requires additional imaginative thinking and an ability to present things in the most simplified form. Besides, simplifying necessarily doesn't mean that the UI be stripped of attractiveness. In fact the UI has to be attractive as well so that children are driven to use it. The Sugar UI HIGs take care of the possibility that the the XO might be the first laptop that their users will own, meaning they might have no prior experience of computing. Further, they would like to explore things without having the fear of ending up in a blue screen equivalent.

What excited me the most was the change in metaphors used to describe the environment. Speaking of the Desktop metaphor, the HIG mentions:

While this metaphor makes sense at the office—and perhaps even at home—it does not translate well into a collaborative environment such as the one that the OLPC laptops will embody.

Hence, these comparisons were redefined to create a simple, realistic user interface for children.

Applications are referred to as activities. Children can better relate with an activity instead of an application. So they could have writing activities, drawing activities or may be singing activities that are analogous to a text editing application, drawing, and AV recording applications. Besides, every activity can be a shared activity. An activity can be shared in a mesh which is a reference to the local network. The document gives an example of the web browsing activity. It says that unlike the normal isolated browsing, here you could browse as a collaboration with your group. Privacy in this case is implemented at a different level. Because children will be the primary users, sharing becomes the essence of all activities. Although users can alter the privacy settings if required.

The desktop is replaced by Neighborhood. A user can see other users and groups in their neighborhood. This view shows the group size and the activity around which the group is centered. Users are represented by the XO icons, and you can get more information about the user by clicking on the icon.

The menu bars are replaced by the Frame. But the Frame does more than just provide access to menus. In my opinion, this approach is much more efficient than the currently prevalent desktop layouts. It leaves more room for activities. The frame gives you access to places, people, objects and actions. The frame occupies the boundaries of the screen and remains hidden unless needed. One edge of the frame also doubles up as what we know as a clipboard. Users can place objects, like images, audio clips, links on the frame and then use them later to paste them on bulletin boards, in other activities or on other friends. So it behaves similar to clipboards on other operating systems and at the same time, provides drag and drop support, allowing selection from existing clipboard items, clipboard history and previews.

The hierarchical filesystem as we know on our computers, is replaced by the Journal. the journal maintains a log of whatever the user does. It saves things automatically letting users focus on the activity completely. The journal uses an intelligent algorithm that guesses forgotten entries and offers to delete them to maintain storage space on the laptop.

Files are not treated as they are in normal computing. Each file is an object which in turn is an independent instance of the activity which was used to create it. This way the children can access their creations directly, without having to associate them with an activity. So, a story will remain a story, and not a collection of words that needs to be opened using a text editor.

Besides these, there are a lot more analogies and innovative concepts brought up in the Sugar UI. Just reading those guidelines has changed the way I look at user interfaces and the way interfaces can be designed. (Ok, that happens to me after reading any HIGs...)

Those interested, can read the Sugar UI Human Interface Guidelines here. I also found this interesting picture on Flickr that would help Apple users to correlate the concepts used in Sugar with those used in our Leopard.

BarCampMumbai4

2008-10-08T11:24:00.006+05:30

The two day BarCampMumbai4 concluded last Sunday. I had the pleasure to be present for the unconference on both days. Besides the knowledge that I gained, it was great meeting my twolks (twitter folks, for those who can't figure that out) and new people.

It started on twitter, with people discussing about the BCM4 days ahead of the actual event. I wanted to attend BCM3, which took place last year, but unfortunately I couldn't. So this year, in spite of unending college assignments, I firmly decided that I will be attending BCM4. Unlike earlier BarCamps, BCM4 required participation from all those who attended it - you either present a session, or volunteer for other activities. After remaining awake for two nights and filling up pages with stuff that teachers never really check, I reached the venue - SJM SOM, at IIT Bombay on Saturday morning, for day 1.

The day began with registrations and we received a geeky t-shirt from the platinum sponsor for the event - Directi. (I always wanted a t-shirt like that, as much as I want a tattoo like this one.) We later proceeded to the SOM Well and had our breakfast (credits to Vipul Mathur for the attractive picture). Then after a short introduction session by Abhishek Thakkar, began the sessions. Most of the sessions were focussed on startups. Established people talked about their success stories and gave some valuable tips. There were a few product demoes which invited lively discussions and feedbacks. I won't get into details of the sessions as a list of those can be found here, on the BarCampMumbai's website.

More interesting than the sessions was meeting my twolks (ok, I wasn't following all of them earlier, but now I am). I met Preshit, Shadez, Aalaap, Unitechy, DanishKhan1, Asfaq, aDeSe, dhempe, PunkPolkaDots, Netra, UrmiRaj14, Maharana, VipulMathur, santoshp, and Shwetank at the tweetup that we had near the coffee shack at IITB. (If I'm missing out someone, please let me know).

Day 2 was more interesting, we had a small introduction session, wherein everyone present at BCM4 had to introduce themselves in a 20 second time span. Later we had an interesting session by Appu and Vipul Mathur, both photography enthusiasts and excellent photographers on Photography Communities and why should we be sharing our photos.

While listening to the sessions, a bunch of us, including me started a community effort that we code named Houston Wayfinder Mission ;) As DanishKhan1 described it, it is a top secret, and any disclosures might lead to serious complications. Preshit proved that one can be famous on twitter without even having an account there. The Houston Wayfinder Mission is still continuing on twitter, with Wayfinder updating Houstons on the current status regarding the subject. Well, this might not have made sense to you if you are not one of the 5 Houstons or Wayfinder himself (oOps, itself, I mean ;) )

With all that fun, and after-BCM4 Minute Maid sponsored by Preshit, BCM4 had a happy ending. I'll be a regular at BCM from now onwards and hope to present a session sometime.

Photographs from BCM4 have been uploaded on Flickr and can be found here.

BarCampMumbai4

2008-10-03T23:06:00.004+05:30

BarCampMumbai4

So, this is going to be the first time that I'll be attending a BarCamp. Though I was late in registering myself, and that was because of a busy college schedule and a long stream of assignments and submissions. In fact even now, after being awake for two continuous days, it is now getting beyond my limits. I really need to catch some sleep now to be fresh and alive for tomorrow's hopefully eventful day.

Anyway, I'll better end this post before the sleep monster completely pulls me down. I'm hoping to learn something new at BCM4, and expecting it to be as exciting as it sounds. Also expecting to meet my fellow twitterers.

See you there...

The Limited Edition 4GB iPod Nano

2008-09-17T23:53:00.007+05:30

The 9th September's Lets Rock event by Apple, that brought in the refreshed iPod lineup was an eagerly awaited one. Despite rumors and concerns, Steve Jobs, proving them false and highly exaggerated, took the stage and delivered the keynote. Now since I (and all other MacBoys) always keep scouring the web for rumors (and of course, facts) related to Apple, I pretty much know what will be happening at such events. But there's always a hope for something - that li-tt-le something, that the God would pop out with his magic wand, something that had been completely covered, away from the eyes of the world and rumormongers. In terms of an Apple event, I always wait for the ever-famous "One More Thing".

But this time, Apple chose to disappoint its followers on that. There was no One More Thing that in this event. Well, not exactly. Though there wasn't any mention about it, there are reports that talk about a 4GB version of the iPod Nano. Though this is not as big as One More Thing, but let me be happy, for this was something that surprised me. Officially announced, were the 8GB and 16GB versions.

The lickable (check this ad out, those things 'are' lickable) iPod's 4GB versions are appearing as Limited Editions in a few stores like this one in Netherands. Available in all 9 colors and at a price of €119 (roughly translates to INRs. 7740) according to a comment by an Apple's spokesperson appearing in this website, the 4GB model is a limited edition model and has been made for some international markets.

Now that gets a little exciting. I hope Apple includes the India in that list of international markets and we have the 4GB model here.

Hoping to buy this Nano sometime soon.

(I know, I had promised myself not to ask mom and dad for anything else after the MacBook, but come on, I'm their only son ;) )

4 Quick Short Posts: Part 3 & 4: 1008 Laddus and Self Discoveries

2008-09-14T18:27:00.005+05:30

1008 Laddus and 8 pundits:

I never thought I'd blog about a puja (a religious worship ritual), but this one had some thing interesting. At first, the idea of 1008 Laddus (for those who do not know, a Laddu is a spherical Indian sweet) didn't seem to be a big one to me, but when I had to carry the boxes containing them, 4 floors to my home, I realized how much it was.

In the image are: 1) Boxes, all filled. 2) and 3) are Laddus

There was a puja at home, which mom and dad said was for Lord Ganpati. All this puja and God stuff never sounded logical enough to get my interest, but I wanted to see what 1008 laddus looked like when together. And the sight didn't disappoint me. 1008 is a large number. We had to fill large vessels, two large dishes, a canister and a plastic container to accommodate them.

After the puja, we distributed boxes of those laddus to the 8 pundits that had come, to our neighbors and friends, but there's still a reasonable amount of it left for us. Good luck to my sister, she'll enjoy it perhaps.

[This post is part 3 of a multipart post, read part one, two and four by clicking on the links]

A Few Self Discoveries:

No, they aren't about the inner-self or the philosophical types but three things that I discovered about myself lately. It might as well sound insignificant.

One, is that I've developed a liking for liquid hand-washes. I like its versatility and how quickly and conveniently I can use it. Two, Nivea's Musk Talc makes me feel unwell. I keep sneezing and coughing if I smell it even once. I think it is because of the super fine particles it is broken into that irritate my nose and throat. (No, I do not eat it, but it still makes my throat go all kaboomzaboomkizoom) Three, I often feel like dropping out of my current college. I'm still not able to adjust myself there. I don't quite like it. :(

[This post is part 4 of a multipart post, read part one, two and three by clicking on the links]

4 Quick Short Posts: Part 2: Lets Rock

2008-09-14T18:06:00.004+05:30

Apple held its media event, "Let's Rock" on 9th September in San Francisco. I was very much excited about it and had reminders set up to remind me (just in a rare event if forgot) about it. Now since I can't actually go and see the proceedings, I experienced it vicariously via live blogs. It was nice to see the God take up the stage for the ever famous Keynote. (I know Apple events have Steve Jobs addressing the keynote, but the stories of his ill health made us - the Macboys, worried if there'll be a Stevenote this time or not).

It started with a screen saying "Talks of my death have been greatly exaggerated" and Steve Jobs informing the world that he's fine now. He later revealed some facts and figures about the iTunes Music Store and then came what was most awaited. The refreshed iPod lineup and iTunes 8. The rumormongers had been very much correct about new iPod Nano design and the new features bundled in iTunes 8.

The iPod Nano received a feature additions and cosmetic changes. Shedding the "chubby" form factor, the new version is longish, some what like the 2G iPod Nano's. It has an accelerometer that brings in a slew of new features. For one, it allows you to shake-to-shuffle - you can shuffle your songs if you give the Nano a slight shake. It also brings in automatic screen rotation - the screen's orientation changes depending on how you hold the Nano. The screen is bigger than the previous generation iPod Nano's. There are also changes to the UI in the underlying software. The most notable change is the range of new colors in which the Nano will be available. Apple is marketing it very appropriately as Nano-Chromatic.

In short - sweet. I wish to buy one of those soon. I like the silver, gray and red colors (I shortened the list, I wrote all the available colors earlier :) ).

The iPod Shuffle, without an explicit mention, also got updated to new brighter colors. Though the rumored 4GB bump is still a rumor and didn't make it to the final product.

With the redesigned iPod Touch, Apple made an entry into the gaming market. The new iPod Touch, with firmware 2.1 was launched as a gaming device. It sports very crisp and delicious graphics. A Nike+ receiver has been built in to this device. I hope to see a good wide range of games for this platform.

Also launched were new accessories for the iPods. Of them, the most notable was the new dual-driver in-ear headphones.

Coming to iTunes 8, the latest major update to Apple's flagship jukebox software. iTunes 8 has a new offering called the Genius. This is one pretty feature that was missing from iTunes. It recommends you music that goes along well with other songs in your library. It requires an iTunes Store account to work. It stores your listening data on Apple's servers and as other users add their listening profiles, the Genius gets smarter giving you better recommendations. You select a song, click the Genius button and in the sidebar you get your recommendations based on that song. The Genius sidebar is a drawer that you can open and close to save screen real estate. The Genius "is" smart and does offer you proper recommendations most of the times.

Besides, there is one new way in which you can browse your library. I personally do not find it preferable over the Cover Flow view, but it can be useful at times. It shows your media in a Grid view. They items are grouped in this view, the default grouping criteria being the album. Songs from one album are placed in one group with the album art of that album showing up. Hovering the mouse over that tile shows up the option to play that album. The grouping criterion can be changed to Album, Artist, Genre and Composers. This view makes the listening experience similar to listening to an audio CD on a player.

There were new additions to the iTunes Music Store. The store now has HD TV shows. It would be interesting to see Heroes, Lost and such in HD.

With that, allow me to move on to the next part of this series of "short" posts. :)

[This post is part 2 of a multipart post, read part one, three and four by clicking on the links]

4 Quick Short Posts: Part 1: What, Why? And Google Chrome

2008-09-14T17:52:00.007+05:30

A lot happened since I last blogged. I have a reason for being away. I've been very busy with my college assignments. Not that I say I've been very regular in the past, but it so happens that when I think of being more loyal to the interwebs, something or the other crops up and all that loyalty gets trapped within the confines of my head.

Thought of writing an abridged post, but there is a lot to write and having them separated in to shorter posts sounds like a better idea to me. Plus, some topics deserve to stand out from the rest. They won't be detailed posts, so spare me if I'm not able to serve you well this time.

All done creating a base for the rest, here's part one for you...

Google Chrome:

Google recently (ok, it was recent when I thought of writing about it) launched their new web browser - Chrome. It is based on code from the open source browser Chromium. Chrome became an instant hit without much publicity. That is one thing I highly admire about Google - there's never much flashy advertising about their products, but still they get famous pretty quickly. Chrome, for a relevant example, obtained a little more than 1% of the browser market share within two days of its launch.

As of now, it has been launched for the Windows platform only, but a Linux and Mac port is being worked upon. For the same reason, I've not been able to personally review it, because I never really returned to my PC after 29th July. But from what I hear on the web and from people who tried it out, it has been one great browser. Google, as they put it on their blog says, Chrome is a browser for the current face of the web.

Google Suggest which graduated out of Labs few days back, is built into the OmniBox (the address bar, because it does more than just getting URLs, has been christened that) in Chrome and is a great feature. I see Google Chrome as a step closer to the hypothetical Google OS for computers. Who knows may be we'll have it some day sitting pretty on our computers (Naah, I still don't see the thought of me leaving the Mac!)

To know more about it, I'd suggest all of you on the Windows platform to take it for a spin once, you'll sure like it.

[This post is part 1 of a multipart post, read part two, three and four by clicking on the links]

Safari 4 to Allow Saving Web Pages as Applications

2008-08-27T14:03:00.003+05:30

Apple, last Friday released the latest version of its Safari web browser - Safari 4.0, to the developer community. Amongst the new feature additions, there is one feature that will appeal to the general users.

On the Mac, Safari 4.0 takes the well known Web Clip feature one step ahead by allowing web pages to be saved as independent Mac apps. These pages, or site specific browsers, can be run independent of Safari. This functionality could be earlier achieved by a few third party apps like Prism and Fluid, but having it built in to the browser will be an added plus.

With the current scenario in bandwidth availability, saving web pages had become a thing of past or an uncommon affair. This feature however might bring Mac users back to saving pages. It would be interesting to have an independent app for commonly visited websites like Twitter, Google, Facebook and such. It will free the users from the hassles of having unmanageable number of tabs open in a browser. Though it is unclear as to when Safari 4.0 will be available to the general users, this feature will be liked by all.

Apart from this, the new build will have a new "Develop" menu, a redesigned Web Inspector, and JavaScript debugging and profiling options. It also carries over features from the new build of WebKit which include support for HTML 5. It will also support CSS gradients, reflections, masks and named canvases.

Never Saw This On apple.com

2008-08-20T13:33:00.009+05:30

Did Apple leave it that way by mistake? Or did I catch them updating the contents on this support page.

The links on the page point to https://ossuat.corp.apple.com/EXPERT/getProductList.do which currently return a "Can't find the server" error on Safari.

Whatever be it, I never saw something like this on Apple's website before.

A College Assignment was Never so Much Fun

2008-08-16T12:12:00.004+05:30

Having a Mac has its own frills and tons of advantages. What you can do is limited only by your creativity. I sure knew that, but recently when I had to submit an assignment at college, I found a cool new way to complete it using my Mac.

Now since our college does not accept typewritten assignments, I had to write it manually. After some research on the internet, I collected information and organized it in Mac's built in text editor TextEdit. After adding in my knowledge too, it started getting quite lengthy. I usually avoid printing unless it is absolutely necessary and to write looking at the Mac seemed time consuming. While trying to figure out a better way to do it, I found the Speech option in the TextEdit's Edit menu. I quickly configured System Preferences to start and stop speaking selected text by a key combination and reduced the speed at which Victoria (Victoria is a voice in Leopard, which I felt was the clearest) would speak. And there you have it - Mac dictates and I write.

But keeping up with that speed while writing was not my cup of tea. Besides, it would either repeat the entire selected text when I asked it to speak again, or I would have to reselect the text omitting the part that I've already written. I knew I had seen a solution to this while playing around with Automator.

Command+Space > Typed "au", hit the Return key, and Automator was up and running. I created a workflow that had actions arranged this way:

Get contents of TextEdit document
Text to Audio file

Opened my document in TextEdit and executed the workflow and I had an AIFF file on my desktop. I opened it in iTunes and now everything seemed in place. I could see the text in TextEdit if required and had iTunes dictate to me the contents. With the media keys, it was not necessary for me to keep iTunes as the frontmost application. I could pause the playback whenever I felt Victoria was speaking too fast and could resume it with the press of a key. I could complete my assignment very quickly that way.

Completing an assignment was never so much fun :)

The Day the Mac Finally Arrived

2008-07-29T21:57:00.007+05:30

29th July, 2008. The date will be recorded as an eventful day in my history - as the day the Mac finally arrived. It was definitely one of my happiest day. One of those when I literally shouted out "YaY!"

Not that it came to me as a complete surprise but after almost an year of rejected and postponed demands, when you finally get something you always yearned for, you do feel extraordinarily happy. I've been smiling with a smile so big, that at times I myself feel that my smile would extend out my face.

So finally, let me introduce to the world my cute little MacBook, which I got as a birthday gift on my 21st birthday.

It is a 13.3 inch white MacBook, with 2GB of RAM and 160GB of hard disk space and Intel's X1300 graphics chipset and a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor powers this beautiful machine.

As a true Apple fan, the MacBook was welcomed home with an un-boxing ceremony, pictures of which have been uploaded to Flickr.

Because I understand the value of this gift, I've decided I wont ask my parents to buy me anything, well not at least anytime soon. I'm just trying to be a good son you know ;)

All this family stuff reminds me of another promise that I made to myself -

"I'll never buy my children a Windows based PC. They will be iChildren. Smart Mac Kids ;)"

I even got a WiFi router so that I can use my internet connection on my Mac anywhere in the home. Ever since I laid hands on this beauty, I've been very happy. Mom says I'll put on weight because of that happiness. :) Well, perhaps they will never understand how it feels to free yourself from Gates and Windows. I've fallen in love with every single thing on my Mac, right from the way the icons on the dock bounce to notify you of certain events, to the screws on the sides. One of those things that I love a lot is the Apple logo on the lid that glows when I'm using my Mac.

With that and another sweet Welcome to Mr. Mac, I would end this post which also happens to be the first to be composed on the Mac.

Recent Account Activity in Gmail

2008-07-11T13:35:00.006+05:30

Recently, while checking my mails in Gmail, an extra piece of information regarding "Recent Activity" towards the end of the page caught my attention. If you haven't noticed, check near the bottom of your Gmail page. Gmail now displays your last account activity stats.

It displays the time elapsed since the last activity that took place on your account along with the IP address that was used to log in. Initially when I saw it, it was showing me the time since I logged in. Besides the time is a link to give you more details, clicking on which lists out the last few session details in a new popout window. The page displays information about the last activity on your mail account and any concurrent activity in detail.

The 'Details' page shows the access type (Browser, Mobile or POP3, etc.), the IP address and the date & time of the current and the last 4 sessions. Apart from this, if the account is opened in an another location, you are informed about it in the Concurrent Session Information section. This section lists out the number of places where the account has been simultaneously logged into, along with the access type(s) and the IP address(es).

To take it for a spin, I decided to log in to my account from my mobile browser too. The same section on the mobile browser showed me that the account is open in one other location along with the IP address (of my computer) and an option to check the details. Soon, the content on desktop browser too changed and showed that the account is open in one other location along with the IP address of my mobile phone.

Apart from this, the 'Details' pop-out page gives you an option to sign out all other sessions. The Gmail Help Center, in this answer, says that this data can be used to find out if and when someone gained access to your account. It says, you can know that your account was compromised if there is a great variation in the IP addresses in spite of you accessing it from the same computer every time, or if there is an access type that you never used, or that there is a concurrent session that you do not know of. Here is an entry in the Official Gmail Blog regarding the same.

In my opinion, this is a nice move by Google to keep its users informed about the security of their accounts. With this information at hand, one might be able to minimize damages in an unfortunate event of his/her account security getting compromised.

Another Example of the Mac-PC Clash

2008-07-08T18:33:00.010+05:30

A few days ago, I came across this very funny video somewhere on the internet. I won't say much about it, let it speak for itself.

MacBook Air Ad - Parodyfunny videosFunnyOrDie.com

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

___________________________________________________________

Apple fans would understand it better, and if you laughed only because of things coming out of the envelope, go, get to know the good things first.

The Happening

2008-06-13T18:33:00.005+05:30

There is something about M. Night Shyamalan that draws me to his movies. So when I saw the adverts and trailers of his latest movie - The Happening, I knew I had to watch it.

On Friday, 13th when it was released, I planned to watch the first show at the nearest theater that was screening it. The show was to begin at 2pm and it was already 1 when I finally decided that I am going to watch it. Messages to friends requesting company were understandably replied in negative on grounds of extreme spontaneity of the plan. At just a few minutes to 2 I reached the theater. This would be my first First-Day-First-Show movie and sixth that I would be watching alone in a theater.

I will purposely skip details so that this doesn't become a spoiler for those who are willing to watch it.

The movie opens with a scene at a park in New York where people are busy with their early morning walks. Soon a gust of wind blows and the series of activities that actually define the movie begins. Basically, the movie is about this set of events that starts spreading in all of the north-east America and the way people get killed due to it. People try to escape from the places affected by The Happening but eventually get killed because it is too late and it spreads everywhere.

What appears to be a terrorist attack in the beginning is later on ruled out by scientists and is given an ecological reason. It is a typical Night Shyamalan movie, with no conclusive end. The reason for The Happening, till the very end remains a mystery.

On a scale of 5, I would rate it at 3.5. It is a one time watch for people who like movies of such suspense and thriller genre.

Signing out...

A bad day at Cafe Coffee Day

2008-05-10T22:50:00.005+05:30

Before they began, I was pretty much looking forward to my vacations. But later, when exams got over, that excitement started to fade away. And the reason was very much obvious - no more meeting friends as regularly as before, that feeling of remaining in the confines of my home and more prominently those black benches in the college which would be missed a lot (I must clarify, the benches in our classrooms were brown, black ones were near the campus lawns ;) ). So today, about a week into the vacations, I decided to meet up few of my friends. I stay a little away from where most of my folks stay, so its me who goes out to meet them. And even otherwise, this place seriously lacks good relaxing, enjoyable venues.

So, I headed to Aaditya's home, and called Robert over to his place. For me, being an ardent coffee lover, in Aadi's company, selecting Cafe Coffee Day as our next venue didn't take much time and came rather naturally. So we three landed up in CCD and seated ourselves on the chairs as against the couch, were we usually sit. That upset us a bit but then its no Central Perk, and we are no F.R.I.E.N.D.S. that we get to sit at the same place everytime.

Knowing less, about the more unpleasant things that were to happen, we took a look at the menu. It was certainly different from what it usually is. The brown, multi-page menu was replaced by a single, slightly long placard-ish purple one. Ever before today, I used to somewhat admire CCD for the sophisticated and appealing names they gave to various coffees. The feeling changed, on finding that their attempt to be creative was miserably overdone. They had to take help of certain Hindi words to name the Coffee-combos. First, I have no objection to using Hindi names, unless it is done pathetically. Second, notice the word 'combo'.

After discussing that in a confused state, we were not-so-soon helped by a CCD-guy. We were told that the changed menu was only for today and that we won't be getting our regular coffees. They would be accompanied with either ice-creams or cookies - Compulsorily. Further more, an irony was awaiting us. We were told that the add-ons will be Complimentary, but they will be charged for.

"My dear CCD too started resorting to such marketing strategies", I said to myself.

A little disheartened, we ordered a Sizzling Brownie - which would be served with three extra scoops of ice-cream - "Complimentary". Meanwhile, the couch was vacated and we promptly moved over to it. After the usual chat and an unusually long wait, the sizzling brownie finally arrived, not sizzling. At least one thing didn't change. The way we friends gorged on it (and no, it is not uncivilised).

Suddenly, when everything started to seem normal, the music suddenly started hurting. The shrill voice from some old Akshay Kumar - Shilpa Shetty movie hurt our ears and our tolerance. Ignoring it under the pretext of a It-Might-Be-Another-Mistake we waited for it to change. It changed, for the worse. Now it was Govinda, definitely not at his best. All this at a place which Aaditya introduced to us as one with "good ambience and good music" and to which we sure agreed, sounded disheartening.

We soon asked for the bill, "Cheque" as what Aaditya would prefer to call. As with everything else, that too arrived, late. After making the payments, we asked if they allowed us to write in our comments and suggestions somewhere. We were "promptly" (no sarcasm intended here) provided with a small coffee cup shaped questionnaire and a pen. Annoyed with the day's service, we commented with sarcasm. We wrote all over the questionnaire, ignoring the questions, as if it were a plain piece of paper. We would have written more than 2 sentences, if the pen didn't stop working!

We stepped out of the place, not missing the smell of coffee - it was anyways not there today.

Here's signing out with a small wish for my dear CCD..

Get Well Soon...

Not my innocent keyboard, please!

2008-05-02T14:27:00.006+05:30

Usually The Times of India happens to be my secondary (primary being feeds, obviously!) source for news but today an article in The Hindustan Times (HT) caught my attention. As usual, my eyes were unconsciously scanning for words like Computers, Apple and the likes and finally met "Keyboards". HT today carried an article about keyboards and personal hygiene.

Your computer keyboard could be filthier than a toilet seat.

Thats what the title of the article cautioned.

Computer keyboards are filthier and infested with more bacteria than toilet seats, according to a study by British microbiologist James Francis. He compared samples from 33 keyboards to swabs from a loo seat and a door handle of public toilet.

It further says that keyboards contain dangerous levels of killer bacteria such as the dreaded E coli, S Aureus and Coliform. The latter one is what lead to that article perhaps. These bacterias are known to cause diarrhoea, stomach cramps, fever, loss of apatite, and skin diseases.

Those names were scary enough to make me clean my keyboard before writing this. Its not that I didn't know about it, I have read quite sometimes about this, but today something appealed to me more than others. There was once a story about Keyboard Dandruff in the CHIP magazine. That was long long back, when I didn't have a computer of my own. But once I got it, I've been showing that Keyboard Dandruff to my sister whenever I remove it. That used to be an object of humor for us, but now I realize there were bacteria in those white flakes that came out from between the keys.

After knowing all this, I've decided to blot off my laziness towards cleaning things and from now on I expect myself to regularly clean my keyboard and its surroundings.

Take care of your health people. You never know hazards can crop up from anywhere.

No, not my innocent keyboard please! :(

How Geek Are You?

2008-04-27T01:34:00.005+05:30

Last month was quite a busy one. With university exams going on, it was tough to find time to do anything else but study. Now that my exams are over, its holiday time for me. And holiday for me, means finding new things on the web, coding, designing and other geeky stuff.

Incidently, I happened to find this website from somewhere (must be be from one of my various jumps - from one blog to the other or from one website to the other or some random takes at Google) and took the Geek Quiz to get a proof of my geekiness and to have a numerical score associated with its degree. Usually I never have to prove it to people, they somehow make it out from my appearance perhaps.

The description of the test goes this way

The Geek Quiz
Ever lose your car keys and wish life had ctrl+f? Have you trained your parakeet to whistle songs from the Ocarina of Time? You could be a geek: take our 2 minute quiz to determine how much geek is coursing through your veins!

Ctrl+F, thoughts of having RFID tags on everything, dreams of a completely automated world and such often cross my mind. So, without hesitating for a moment, I jumped into taking the test and here's the result.

73% Geek

My score was not bad though.

Try your hand at it and find out your Geek Quotient.

Of Twitter, Tumblr and 512 kbps

2008-04-04T10:28:00.010+05:30

Honestly speaking, I'm writing this entry so that my blog doesn't feel lonely. It has been more than a while that I last updated here. But I have an excuse for this hiatus - My exams are fast approaching, and nothing that could make my writing skills feel that desire to wake up, has happened.

The schedule these days has become void of any thing that would bring a bright smile to my face. Everything seems to be monotonous these days. Get up, study, eat, study again, eat again, sleep and then everything would repeat itself in cycles of infinity. The only interesting things that I do at times, to deviate from the humdrum life is a little Twitter-ing and Tumblr-ing.

These two Web 2.0 applications have been giving me a dose of the much needed F5 for my life. Twitter, as defined on its home page, is

a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?

On the other hand, Tumblr, is correctly described as a scrapbook. The entries on Tumblr are called tumblelogs. The help section has a better analogy to understand it.

To make a simple analogy: If blogs are journals, tumblelogs are scrapbooks.
You can also look at tumblelogs as slightly more structured blogs that make it easier, faster, and more fun to post and share stuff you find or create.

I have developed a liking for these two places. I twitter here and my tumblelog which i have named Dew Drops (all spelled in the lower case actually) is here. I like the simplicity of their concepts. Tumblr allows you to collect stuff from the web and tumblelog it in quick and easy steps, whereas Twitter lets your tweople [a tweatiful twerm supposedly coined by my fellow tweeter - Preshit] know what are you up to.

And what else could beautify the pleasure of doing all this and more, than 512 kbps. I recently got my speeds upgraded to 512 kbps. It seems to be working great - pages open faster, files download at twice of what they used to and the internet has even stopped playing its favorite, hide-n-seek with me.

And when all seems to be gleeful, its time to realize that exams begin from 9th this month and I still have a lot to study. The piled up books lying around me waiting to be opened and thoroughly scanned, leave me with no option but sign out and study..

Till then..

From Garbage Collection to Nike

2008-03-17T23:34:00.008+05:30

While deviating from my search on Garbage Collection and changing search terms to gauge how far from the subject can I go, I came across this interesting article that talks about Nike's plans regarding Manufacturing-Waste Management. This press release from Nikebiz.com indicates they have found an innovative way to create, what they describe as a performance product, with waste materials. The new Nike's Trash Talk seems to be the product of a partnership between Steve Nash and the shoe-maker. The website says that Trash Talk is the first performance basketball shoe made from manufacturing waste. The shoe is made of scrap pieces of leather and synthetic leather stitched using Zig-Zag stitching so as to put smallest possible scrap pieces to a good use. Read more here. The reason that this story made way into this blog was that I amused by the way a search for Garbage Collection eventually ended up with shoes and Nike. This also brought back memories of my childhood days when I often played with slippers made out of sticking together pieces of paper. Besides, amazing waste management strategy from Nike.

Finally...

2008-03-15T15:59:00.005+05:30

Finally, today after struggling with my ever DC/RC-ing connection and re-compiling code to have it work after uploading, I could get my project website up and running.

Though it is not very well designed and still has quite a few bugs, but it was more than enough considering the limited amount of time that I had. Still, what's important is that I'm content (or may be not yet, I can do much better) with the way it is now.

More later, signing out...

[Edit {20th May, '08}: The link doesn't work any more. The website was hosted on a limited-time free hosting.]

Some see Something Missing, I see a Revolution

2008-01-30T16:44:00.011+05:30

[Ahh... my first tech related post.]

Keeping it aside and coming back to the topic. The unclear title- "Something Missing"

Though i'm quite late in writing about it, but today i realized something, a revolution which many people are failing to see.

Well, a few days ago, Apple released its latest addition to the MacBook family - The MacBook Air.

Amazingly thin, actually the thinnest notebook ever, Aluminum body, 3 pounds weight - So beautiful!

13.3" Glossy LED display, Ambient Light Sensing illuminating keyboard,

2GB standard memory, Solid State Drive, Intel Core 2 Duo, Slimmer battery - So much, in So Less Space

Hidden ports, Mono speakers (thoughtful people use earphone, stereo enabled), 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR

See the complete tech specs here.

True, So Many Innovations, So Little Space.

So far so well, people were amazed at its introduction, but then soon it dwelled in that the beautiful MacBook Air lacks an Optical Drive. It was disheartening for some, but on the other hand there is a group of people, including me, who see an upcoming revolution in this.

In this age of connectivity, where we have WiFi, Bluetooth and most more importantly, the Internet, the removal of an optical drive can be viewed as a revolution instead of a shortcoming. With Online backups, online file sharing and storage services and a lot of bandwidth at our hands, we just do not need to search for optical disks anymore. As for applications, the increasing bandwidth makes downloading them convenient too. And anyways if you have a good computer, you do not need to re-install the OS every 3 months ;) and hence, no re-installing of applications too.

I personally have started to get into this phenomenon of not using the optical drive as much as i used it previously. Backups, application downloads, files, etc - the internet does that all for me. I wish to see my photos, there is Picasa and Flickr and lot many photo sharing sites, i need information - Wikipedia is ever ready to help you, for other files there is MegaUpload and 4Shared. For videos - YouTube.

Plus, I don't have to bother about managing them, no more creating local folders for images of different events, tagging them, no more creating text files for storing information, no more local folders for videos, no more grouping files together by their type locally, the above services do them more gracefully and conveniently. Or still if I can't find what I need, just a simple Google search proves helpful. Just as we have web based emails, we have web based storage for every other thing too.

We just need to see things differently, instead of getting disheartened for lack of something, try to see the newer avenues that have come up. The world is no more what it was when you started reading this post, it has changed a lot. See things in a different way, you'll never find anything missing.

Oh, by the way, just how the hard-bound diary, got transformed into this online blog!

Amazing, and so true.

By the way, for just those who can't afford to assimilate all this, the MacBook Air takes care of them by this wonderful feature called Remote Disk.

Broken

2008-01-21T17:35:00.001+05:30

The recent past was quite sad and shocking for me on the personal front.

The last two weeks have been the worst of my life. Major misunderstandings, irreconcilable differences and similar stuff that cropped up has sort of broken me down into a million pieces. I feel i have lost all my strength. People i trusted and called my own seem to have been lost somewhere, in a place where i don't seem to find them. The current situation due to some absurd and baseless misunderstood reasons has been such that i feel a lot lonely and as if i am an alien to this society. Just a couple of friends who have been really understanding and caring have helped me live through these testing times of mine. I still speak to those selected few about my emotional condition and the things that i am being made to go through, and they are the only ones who understand me, listen to me patiently, and are actively helping me to overcome this sad part of my life. I would like to thank them from the bottom of my heart for helping me to keep standing and face the situation. But i must say, all this taught me a lot. Most of all, I learnt to be a bit aggressive, else people just take you for granted and walk all over you. I have changed a lot after all this, though i don't know, whether for the good or for the bad. Although that rough patch seems to be passing away now, but it has left a wound deep in my heart, and i'm sure it wont go away.

It sits there, reminding me of how people changed. It sits there, reminding me of a goal, i have to achieve. It sits there, quiet, yet hurting. Covered, yet painful. Silent, yet speaking a thousand words...

A strange experience..

2007-12-05T16:28:00.002+05:30

It first happened to me when i was very young, but that time it was just for a very short while, perhaps for just a minute or two and it happened just once, but this time when it happened, and it was recurring, it left me shocked and a bit if not much, scared. Since the last three - four days, i have been getting a feeling that i am flying, and i have become weightless. Its not a constant feeling, but happens once in a while. It feels funny and strange too. And what was more scary for me, was the fact that during this part of time, i experienced light bleeding from my nose. Though the two luckily never coincided, but the very sight of blood makes me nauseatic. Its good that both these things never happened simultaneously. But my experience, friends and parents said this nose-bleeding is because of the current weather change. So, though i am not much scared because of this, it feels strange that both the things coincided. At first i felt it was because of hunger, but that flying feeling didn't go away with my hunger. Instead it kept coming back again. I don't know what's the reason for this.

Someone asked me about drugs - apart from the over-the-counter medicines, i have never even seen anything that falls into the category of drugs Someone asked me about energy drinks - again i am not interested in being artificially energetic.

Its the fourth day today, and it seems the feeling is now fading away, i have stopped flying as frequently i have in the last few days. Hope i come back to earth soon, feels really strange and scary like this. At a point i even felt that something is terminally wrong with me, and i should rather start counting days. Though it might be fun for others but it feels very weired and strange from the inside. Anyways, i am still happy, that i was at least able to make some people laugh this way. Hoping to return to earth soon ;)

You have it - you enjoy, You dont - sit back!

2007-11-09T20:40:00.003+05:30

It was not long back, when we were taught in schools about the 3 basic needs of mankind. Textbooks and teachers listed them as follows:

Food
Clothing and
Shelter

Do these so called facts still hold true in today's world? In my various encounters with life, I have realized that whats said above is probably not true anymore. I am not saying that things have completely changed, but at least the order in which these needs appear, has. With the passage of time, a relatively newer need has surfaced and has gained prominence over the others. In today's world our top most need is something which we can never get enough of...

Money..

Money, which Wikipedia defines as any token or other object that functions as a medium of exchange that is socially and legally accepted in payment for goods and services and in settlement of debts.

But is has surely become more than just a token or an object. Money is inevitable. We need it to live our lives. The system of the world says so. If you have it, you enjoy, if you don't, sit back. We need money for food, we have to buy it. We need it for drinking water, we have to pay our water bills or again, buy bottled water! People who stay far away from their dear ones, have to again spend money, to talk to them. So its money again to even talk to our dear ones. We need to pay our telephone bills, we pay for the internet connection, we pay for snail mails (people do use it). So its money again. Another strange thing here is that to do all this, the money we pay, goes to people we might never even talk to or even see. According to me, (though my view, in the big picture, doesn't count!) we need to change. The concept of money should be virtualised. We can have a world were money doesn't really exist. We can think of it as an improved version of the Barter system. We can have our knowledge and skills being exchanged for services and goods that we use or buy. Or we can even think of a world where money can be replaced by virtual money. As an example, consider a system where all payments are made using the prepaid balance in our mobile phone accounts. We go to buy something, and the retailer could deduct money from our prepaid account. Similarly, we offer our services to someone, and we get our prepaid accounts credited with the appropriate amount. Every payment could be made using the simple mobile phone. And now, because of the advent of technology, the same money could be used for variety of purposes like talking, surfing the net, etc. Though this is a far fetched dream and just a dream, it would really be a great idea to virtualize money. Then perhaps people will be more happy, because their needs will be intertwined with their services they offer. Till something like this happens, if you have it, enjoy, if not, just sit back!

My 2nd First Post...

2007-11-07T20:26:00.004+05:30

Yes, its my second first post... Second, because i deleted the actual First First post So, Happy Blogging to Me! And next time, i would be careful that i delete only unnecessary posts, so that i don't end up creating third, or fourth, and so on first posts... :-)