Shifted

Hi.
If you liked my blog, please go to my new blog Zehreelay at http://zehreelay.blogspot.com
Thanks.

Blogging. Not racing

Everybody makes mistakes. I do too. And here is one that I feel many people do. So did I.

Blogging. A wonderful thing. Something that gives you freedom to say what you want to say. And so people blog. And then they blog, and blog to get readers. That's where the mistake happens.

I was a guy who started a blog as an experiment last September. I kept blogging on and off with business, telecom, and Hindi blogs, hoping they would 'run well'. But in that I lost some of my real blogging pleasure. Still my big world (that's my BLOG) kept going.

And then, there was a block. When I didn't write, due to exams and then unavailability of net and then for no reason. In the meantime I started a blog on music, because I liked that. I thought I'd blog out my views on music because I always liked to make the first opinion.

This was something I was wrong with. I blogged. I gave out my views. But I joined the race I didn't have to. I started thinking more about viewers of blog rather than my views.

And that was One Of The Reasons that I wrote lyrics of three songs from Rock on!! As usual, some time after writing them I searched the song title on Google, and what happened opened my eyes. The top result belonged to a person who had copied the lyrics from my blog. (Don't ask how I know, I can understand if it's copied from mine) On the other hand, my blog wasn't in results. (I m talking top 50, that's what I keep on first page.) This little bad luck was an eye opener for me. This guy who copied my material told me that blogging wasn't a race and there was no point in reaching people with something before others, it's about reaching people with something different, something that is your own, your views you want others to know.

It wasn't that bad because I had written those lyrics because I liked them too, but I was wrong in searching for results and all, of my writings, especially those lyrics.

So if u r a blogger, or ever become one, be yourself and not what people want you to be.

Happy blogging.

Proxy!!

Well. This is a view of The Economic Times homepage as it shows at my college computer lab. Though, we can see Orkut and Google Talk are working perfectly. And so is Facebook. (not in the picture)

The more interesting thing is that I can write a blog as blogger.com is open. But blogspot pages are prohibited by proxy so I cannot see my page. And a number of scientific and general knowledge blogs cannot be accessed just because they are being hosted on blogger.

Alas!

Interestingly, many of the sites that provide materials like papers and other things that students use for their projects and assignments are also not working. And as a result almost 80 percent of the lab is empty, making me realize that students do not sit in the lab for Orkutting or chatting, even though they open these sites while they work in the lab. An altogether knew piece of knowledge. Think I should thank the lab management for that.

Anyways I just hope these people understand it soon that in order to stop a little misuse of resources, putting too many restrictions is not the solution.

And please pray that I can see my blog next time I come.

Thanks.

In a flat world 1.1

Dudes, this is a running post. For those who are interested in Google. (or rather obsessed with it)

If u want to know more about more of Google things, and how Google things work, just type 'Google blogs' in your search box and start reading the results one by one. They may be all new to you, or some of them known. But I can assure you may not know all of these things so well. Actually much of this can be geek stuff and may be it's out of range/above head, I think its worth a watch, especially if you think you know a lot about Google.

So, Happy Reading!

In a flat world - I

I do not know how many parts I will be writing in this post. But since I have been reading the book 'The World is Flat' by Thomas L Friedman for a long time now, that is almost since the first week of January, completed more than half of the book, and liking it continuously, I think I can write a lot on this Flat world.

The author has given a list of things, ten in number, that are making the world flat today. But there is, to be very specific, one, that I have been using for a long time now. And that flattener is Google.

Friends, maybe I am obsessed with Google. But I think if it is so, it's worth it.

Well, I do not know how many of you use Google how efficiently but I would like to tell you here how much and in what manners I use Google. As long as I am online.

Google starts with web search. Web search for general knowledge, studies, projects, movies' details, songs, or simply time pass. May be I have left a number of categories I search for. Then, the very next, image search (going by the order on the Google home page). Image search of Google is used for various reasons, to find various things. From pictures required in assignments to movie posters. From beautiful girls (under censored language) to my changing profile pics on Orkut. Google image search only gives meaning to all JPEG, PNG, BMP and other such words. The next one, news, is though a thing I do not search through 'Google News'. But still, almost all the news are found through the standard Google homepage.

Then comes my dear old Orkut. Whatever I say about Orkut is less. I have used Orkut for a lot, lot many things. I have found lost friends on Orkut, have talked to them sending 200 scraps in a day (to one person only) when the reply option didn't exist, have talked to anonymous people on scraps, spent whole nights visiting profiles of girls with different algorithms, collected people of my own town from around the world under the community called Najibabad, gathered information regarding admissions, colleges etc, even provided information to many, shown my power (when there was a race among us friends to have the maximum number of friends, though trying to lessen the number now), and what not.

Then comes the Gmail. A forever favorite. Currently I have at least 5 Gmail accounts running out of which i use 3 regularly. Also, my college has assigned a new mail account in the name of college provided actually by Gmail, making harshitgupta2004@vit.ac.in my new Gmail id. Basically after using Gmail I do not want to use any other mail. Recently I tried AOL mail after using which I could say it was 'Not Made for India'. I was really pissed off as I could not send even one mail properly from the American giant's mail.

Then come the two things, Google Books and Google Scholar, which I rarely use. Actually I have hardly ever used Scholar except for the main Google search engine but after seeing the papers available there, I must say it is going to help people, including myself, in their assignments and projects.

Google blog search is another interesting thing. It has found me things I could never reach through the normal web search. One day I simply searched the name of a friend and I came to know he's running a blog about which hardly anyone knows. I also search blogs when I simply want to know people's view about something, be it Raj Thackeray or my college VIT Vellore.

Photos is one thing I could not use yet as I do not have proper internet connection to upload my pics. Still, I find Picasa really useful and better my photos using Picasa as Adobe Photoshop is too heavy a tool for me.

Then there is 'Blogger' through which I broadcast all the crap that comes to my mind. And those Google alerts in which I used to write any person's name I wanted to know about and get all the info on my mail (I had hundreds of mail alerts in the name of Sania Mirza once, to keep me updated) And the desktop search that searches every item on my hard disks with the speed of Google. Wow!

And even though I don't use Google's docs and spreadsheets as I have Microsoft office on my computer, I cannot afford to forget Gtalk that I use to talk to a number of people simultaneously. In fact I have talked to 4 people at a time in the Gtalk embedded in Gmail too.

Well, being a computer engineer, I do not want to tell you how much I search on google code. It'll tel you too much then. :)

Well, that is how Google makes my world flat. that is how I access information from all the corners of the world today. And that is how my life goes on Google.

abcdxyz.blogspot.com

I think I have told a lot in the title itself. It is one of my favorite pastimes while i am online. Write any words or combination of words you can think can (or cannot) make the name of a blog, in any language you like, in your address bar, followed by dot-blogspot-dot-com, and enjoy. There are very good chances of finding blogs almost more than 90% of times. And interestngly, most of the bloggers are dormant, and there is either very old material or sometimes no material at all. But many a time there are intersting things found.

For example, one day i wrote the word chitra (picture) and found something unbelievable. I had seen and read English reviews of Hindi movies many times, but this blog was writing reviews of English movies in Hindi! I could really not believe it. Though the page was dormant, it had more than 125 posts, not all Hindi. In fact most of them were English but the pages on top were all in Hindi. The reviews consisted of both Hindi and English movies.

Anyways it's interesting to see different type of blogs by these different people, the blogs being in almost every name from bluewaters to soundofsilence to throughtheyears to simply blue-dot-blogpot-dot-com.

If you too are free like me, you can try this, even use the words of your interest.

My New Blogs

I have started liking it. Blogging. That's what I think of now, day and night. Though, not having net all the times creates probelms sometimes and some of my ideas do not get converted into blogs, but I try.

I got three blogs going at present. The one you are reading is the one I started as a general blog. My first working blog, which has completed months and has posts in two digits.

The second one I launched was a completely business blog that could be understood by any person who might not even have any knowledge of business. It was called Common man's Economics.

The link to the blog is:

http://cozmoneymatters.blogspot.com/

The blog contains informations on current progress of market that is supposed to affect the common man, as well as possibilities regarding taxes and all.

My next blog is an altogether new step for me. Its an all Hindi blog in which I try to find out good pages in Hindi available on net. In this blog I have put many popular Hindi stories and Poems.

The blog is called Hindi Panne and the link is:

http://hindipanne.blogspot.com/

Please see my new blogs and sned your comments to: hg6789@gmail.com

or put them here:

http://www.orkut.com/Scrapbook.aspx?uid=720310748634689861

Thanks,

Harshit.

i-Google

Google has always been a fascination for me, ever since I saw it for the first time I saw the net in the year 2003 after passing my class XII exam. I started using Internet thoroughly from the next year starting properly from Jan '04 and becoming a regular from the July-August of the same year when I got an admission to the college. Thus, I was late to start with the google compared to other students of my age and for the reason I felt I was a late entrant for the other services of google, too, such as gmail and orkut. But later I realized it wasn't so as I had started using both gmail and orkut at the time they were barely an year old.

Today, when I think of the Internet, the first thing that comes to my mind is Google. I have not the seen the net of pre-Google age and therefore, I reasonably do not know about many search engines other than Google. But today, its not just the search engine that makes me think of the Google. Today its Orkut, Gmail, Blogger and Adsense. Today its the Google Desktop search I find my songs with. And Picasa with which I organise the bunch of pictures on my computer.

Of all the services of Google, I found Orkut the second best, after the Google search, of course. Orkut has been a contacts list, a friend finder, a great time pass and a lot more to me. I searched the names of the old contacts I had lost , and found them. I went to forums and discussed about colleges when I needed knowledge about colleges for my nephew's admission, and i have chatted scrapping endlessly to one friend or more at times when I didn't have messengers with myself. Though, I still think there are many poeple who do not know how they can use Orkut for various important purposes.

Then, there has been Gmail, providing services at a level where more secrecy is required. And an embedded messenger which must have made many people use a messenger for the first time, who have not been old users of the Yahoo messenger. In those times, the Yahoo messenger was almost the only platform for people who used to chat and as I wasn't a user of the YM, I thought I'd never been into chat, but Google guys did that, and seeing a small chat box in my mail window, I started chatting, which went on and on.

Later I started using Blogger and Adsense. Actually I had tried them both earlier too but I wasn't as regular on the net. Also, the limited availability of net has always been a constraint with me.

Anyways, however much or less of the net I use, whenever I open the browser, the first letter I type in the address bar happens to be 'O', for orkut, as long as I am not 100% conscious that I'm there on net to do something very specific and important, other than Orkut. And even in those cases, half the times, the site happens to be Gmail or Google home.

In short, I cannot think how will the Internet be and what shall I do on the net if only the services of Google are not there. And, being an addict i am, should I call myself a net addict or a Google addict?