Beta or Alpha?

To start with, if you do not know the basic difference of Beta and Alpha versions of software, here it goes. The alpha build of the software is the build delivered to the software testers, usually internal to the organization or community that develops the software.

Whereas a beta version is the first version released outside the organization or community that develops the software, for the purpose of evaluation or real-world black/grey-box testing. The process of delivering a beta version to the users is called beta release. Beta level software generally includes all features, but may also include known issues and bugs of a less serious variety.

Now, let's come to current trends. First of all, nowadays companies like Google run their products in the markets for years and claim them to be beta versions. For example, Orkut, used by more than 12 crore people, is still in beta stage.

Now let's talk about Google's new service, Knol. Knol is a service started by Google where users can write their own pages about anything and put it online, something similar to Wikipedia, except that there can be a number of pages on a single topic in Knol, and they will belong to the owner of the page.

Now, Knol is in its Beta stage, but the service doesn't even have a working search system. The question is, how can a service that is so much dependent on search, reach its beta stage without a proper search sysytem.

Interestingly, Knol belongs to Google, which is considered the second name for search on Internet. Hope Google does something about it soon.

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 - II

Today I was on my mission Malleswaram. By that I mean my schedule of roaming through the markets of Malleswaram, which is a pretty good market in itself now, with a number of grand showrooms, many of them opened in the previous 4 years, the time since I have come to college.

So when I was on my favorite shop, Temptation M, which is something just like Planet M, I saw a couple inquiring about the Ramayana of Ramanand Sagar (the old one) which was available there for Rs 3500.

The in charge of the shop told them and when they showed some reluctance, he started trying his luck and showed them the Mahabharata, Shri Krishna, and Vikram aur Betaal. But the couple had lost interest for some reason and confused, they left the place.

And I started thinking how would it be a waste of their money had they bought it.

Nowadays my mind is really giving me lots of troubles as it is making me think about lots of things I need not think. (so I think when I do not use my mind)

I started thinking how could they use those Rs 3500. First thing that can be done is, buy a Tata Sky connection with the amount of money. Or Dish TV, whichever you like more. In fact you can even have Reliance BlueMagic, but we don't really know in how much time is Mr Anil Ambani going to launch it, but anyways it is going to be cheaper than the two. At least that is what we expect from Reliance.

I think I went off the topic. Back.

So, we can buy a DTH connection and watch new Ramayana on the NDTV Imagine. And after a few days the new Mahabharata too, on Star. (according to reports) This way, we'll be getting a number of channels in addition to the Ramayana and Mahabharata we actually want which will be easier to watch as all the fights in the serials will be using higher quality animations compared to those of 80's.

Second option, we can have a broadband connection of any company. From a wired home broadband connection of BSNL or Sify or Airtel to USB/PCMCIA cards of Reliance/Tata Indicom. And then download and /or watch a hundred more national and international serials, series and shows from Youtube.

Actually I have learnt a lot from that shop itself. About the flattening of world. About technology getting cheaper and becoming more affordable. I have bought a number of CDs from this particular shop (in case u don't know, I am a big movie buff, and a bigger music buff, still buying movie CDs many times) and seen that CDs I buy at Rs 100 (in my case, that's the limit), are being sold for Rs 50 or 38 or 30 by Moserbaer or some company which has reduced its prices due to competition with Moserbaer.

So, in short, as the world is getting flatter, I think it is important for every human to get acquainted to its environment, so that we can get the maximum benefit of the things happening around us.

Hope u are keeping yourself updated.

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!

Frustration gets a name

1. I think this blog is primarily for those who are ignorant of the world's happenings.
2. In this fast moving world, it seems everybody is ignorant. Of something or the other.

Well, don't ask me what it was. Just a bit of my mind. Nothing to mind. Let me start on what I have to.

Today, there is no doubt that Orkut has become the 'janta ki networking site' in India. If you want to know about the youth of the country, it's a simpler option to scrap a few and check their communities' forums rather than wasting time in meeting them. You can get information about almost anything on Orkut today. Be it a question from History or a song from the latest movie. Whether it's about the last Cricket World Cup finals or your admission to a college. Every information can be accessed on Orkut.

But today I tried something different. In a guy's profile, who had sent me a friends' request, I saw a community on FOSLA. I was interested and the very next thing I did was typing FOSLA in the search column on the top of the Orkut window.

And here it was. Almost 500 communities on FOSLA!

Don't tell me you do not know what is FOSLA now. Well, still if u think u don't know, I feel its my duty to tell u. FOSLA stands for Frustrated One Sided Lovers Association. The name provided by the movie 'Dil Dosti Etc', especially featured in the song 'Dum Laga'. Well, the song had to be a hit among students (don't tell me again u didn't listen to the song) and the result... 500 communities on FOSLA, ranging from 630 members to 0 members (now its possible to start communities with zero members too, do not know how).

The interesting thing here is that though there have always been a number of frustrated people on the net here and there, there has never been a single name under which so many people have put themselves. There has never been such a brand for frustrated people. It is interesting. In fact there are hardly 200 plus communities when u search for the word 'Frustrated' and 30 something for 'Frustration'. And brand FOSLA has got more results than any of these standard English language words. Phew!

Finally, frustration gets a name. It's branded now.

Jaago India

India has over 180 million cellphone users and 200 million people without drinking water. We are a young nation with over 55% of the population under the age of 30, yet 49% of our children under the age of 5 are underweight. We produce the largest number of engineering graduates every year through over 2500 colleges; but over 3000 schools do not have teachers. And the list goes on...

These are the starting lines of the official website of 'Jaago India' that is a trust promoted by the tata tea. 'Jaago India' "intends to create an an online community for the awakening and empowerment of the youth." The site has its discussion board of a different type in which topics are already present there and anyone can go and post one's own views there. Of course there is a column where we can add new topics.

The site bosts of big names in its advisory panel and is probably a brainchild of Sheetal talwar and Bhavna Talwar, the producer-director duo who made the much acclaimed, thought provoking movie Dharm that reached even Cannes.

The site talks on topics like corruption, illiteracy, poverty, child labour and female infanticide and has a collection of figures that can force you to think about these problems but still finds itself unable to find solutions to many of these problems.

Basically the site seems to be having a small number of members yet and there are many things that need to be put into order to make the effort a success.

For now, all I can say is that the step of starting JaagoIndia has been taken with a good intention and it would be good if you look at the site once, and also do something positive if possible.

The link is: http://www.jaagoindia.org/

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.

भाषाओं से परे, इंटरनेट

हो सकता है कि आप यहाँ हिन्दी देख कर आश्चर्यचकित हों, परन्तु ये एक नयी शुरुआत है। आज इंटरनेट भाषाओं कि सीमा से ऊपर उठ चुका है। अब से कुछ समय पहले तक जहाँ केवल हिन्दी लेखों को कुछ ही कंप्यूटर दिखा पाते थे, वहीं अब गूगल की सर्च भी इंटरनेट पर हिन्दी में ही की जा सकती है। इंटरनेट पर हिन्दी का स्तर यहाँ तक पहुंच चुका है कि अधिकांश शब्दों को टाइप करते समय यह भी ध्यान रखने की आवश्यकता नहीं होती कि कहीं गलत तो टाइप नहीं हो रहा है। आज इंटरनेट पर ऐसे अनेक पोर्टल उपलब्ध हैं जो हिन्दी में समाचार से लेकर साहित्य तक उपलब्ध कर रहे हैं। गूगल में भाषा को हिन्दी पर सेट करके सर्च करते समय हिन्दी शब्दों के विकल्प लिए जा सकते हैं। उदाहरण के लिए यह चित्र देखिए।

इस प्रकार गूगल सर्च अब आपको सचमुच हिन्दी में अपनी आवश्यकता के अनुसार परिणाम ढूँढने में मदद कर रहा है। इसके अतिरिक्त अब विकिपीडिया जैसे पोर्टल भी हिन्दी में अनेक परिणाम दे रहे हैं। उदाहरण के लिए सत्यजीत रे के लिए दिया गया यह परिणाम गूगल हिन्दी से प्राप्त हुआ है।

भविष्य में कुछ और हिन्दी पोर्टल्स के विषय में लिखने का मेरा विचार है। इसके लिए मेरे बिग बिग वर्ल्ड को देखते रहें...

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?

Cable and Wireless

Indian telecommunication industry is going at a pace today where we cannot afford to think what happened yesterday. All we can think about is what is happening today and what is going to happen tomorrow.

First telecommunication meant radio, television, then in its true sense, telephones, and then, mobile phones. Even today when we think of telecommunications, first thing that comes to our minds is a cellular phone. But the fact is that today telecommunication means so much that we cannot even visualize instantly. Telecommunicationhas gone back into wires, and more amount of data than ever before is in the air simultaneously, with the existing and coming wireless technologies.

With the BSNL IPTV already in the market, and Airtel and others all set to launch theirs (Don't know if any other operator has launched IPTV), the telecommunications field has already got a new face, one that combines the information-centric internet and environment-primary television.

Internet on the go is no more a dream either, for those who really want it. With the PCMCIA cards and beautiful 1-x CDMA modems coming to a price range affordable for the middle-class, you can now find students working on their net-connected-laptops, which was used to represent business class flyers by airlines not long ago.

And then comes the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, better known as Wi-Max. The current year has seen Wi-Max starts from BSNL, Aircel, VSNL, Bharti, Reliance, and Sify. Among these, Bharti has already deployed its services in eleven cities and is planning to expand, and a lesser known Aircel has invested $1 bn in the upcoming technology.

Now we shall talk about another facet of telecommunication. The direct-to-home (DTH) service, once under the monopoly of DishTV, and later extended to DDDirect+ and Tata Sky, is soon expected to see a number of new operators with Bharti, Reliance, Videocon, and Sun TV all set to jump into the market, starting a new competition altogether.

Interestingly, DTH is a segment where we find only one or two operators in a place almost anywhere in the world. But here, four new operators are planning to start their services in a short span of time, with 3 operators already existing. And actually, I still hope they'll all find their market in the world's second largest population.

That's when we say, It happens only in India.