Blog not reachable...

I don't know what caused this. My blog is not accessible over the web and I'm getting a page not found error. I hope Google fixes it at the earliest.

Lycos upgrades its Email...At last

Lycos upgraded its email offering today to all its free users. Till now, it was offering just 5 MB of free space with very limited features. Now it has upgraded the space to 3 GB which is more than what Yahoo is offering. But, it has done this too late. I'm not sure how many are still with Lycos. I for one, have moved away from it for a long long time and check it very rarely.

My blog on FIFA Worldcup

I follow football only during the FIFA worldcup as it bring the best teams to play the game at the highest level. I thought I will have a separate blog for the same which you can read at:
Yahoo! 360� - Shah's Blog

Two kinds of Speeches and Silences

There are two kinds of speeches and two kinds of silences. Speech is either truth or a falsification, and silence is either fruition or heedlessness. If one speaks the truth, his words are better than his silence, but he who invents falsifications, his silence is better than his speech.

-Al-Hujwiri, "The Kashf al-Mahjub"

Sony PlayStation 3.0 - Still a dream

Ever since PlayStation was launched I've been reading about it and wanted to have one for myself. But, being in India it's not all that easy to procure one and it's expensive as well. When I got an opportunity to visit the US on a short trip, PlayStation 2.0 was in vogue and Sony was giving away PlayStation 1.0 for about $49. I thought at last I could buy it. I went to the shop, got it and was just about to take the final decision and then all of a sudden I realized that I need to buy games that will play on it. Then I checked some of the games prizes and realized that it's not all that affordable for someone who will be back in India.

Now that Sony is launching its PlayStation 3.0 I hope that the prizes of the earlier versions will fall fast - but the PlayStation 3.0 may cost around $500 and so I don't expect the earlier versions to cost less.

Click here for the news.

Just checked the average per capita income of an Indian family and found it to be around $700. It will be a dream for a majority to own a PlayStation.

Sony PlayStation 3.0 - Still a dream

Ever since PlayStation was launched I've been reading about it and wanted to have one for myself. But, being in India it's not all that easy to procure one and it's expensive as well. When I got an opportunity to visit the US on a short trip, PlayStation 2.0 was in vogue and Sony was giving away PlayStation 1.0 for about $49. I thought at last I could buy it. I went to the shop, got it and was just about to take the final decision and then all of a sudden I realized that I need to buy games that will play on it. Then I checked some of the games prizes and realized that it's not all that affordable for someone who will be back in India.

Now that Sony is launching its PlayStation 3.0 I hope that the prizes of the earlier versions will fall fast - but the PlayStation 3.0 may cost around $500 and so I don't expect the earlier versions to cost less.

Click here for the news.

Just checked the average per capita income of an Indian family and found it to be around $700. It will be a dream for a majority to own a PlayStation.

Tamil Newspapers - Great Disservice to Tamil Readers

Tamil readers are one of the most educated and knowledgeable people in India but unfortunately of late all the tamil papers have shed their neutrality and have aligned with one or the other political parties. While some of them are very well known to the public as biased some or not known - but they are.

Ever since the Sun TV group relaunched Dinakaran for Rs. 1 per copy and stormed the market, one of the widely read and circulated news daily in India, Dinathanthi has aligned itself with the ADMK fearing that if DMK comes to power, Dinakaran will rule the roost. While Dinakaran and Tamilmurasu (both published by the Sun TV group) are biased towards the DMK, Daily Thanthi, Maalai Murasu, Makkal Kural and other lesser known dailies are biased towards the ADMK. Dinamalar has a tilt towards the BJP. Dinamani is one newspaper I think is neutral but it's circulation is dwindling.

I hope the press ethics come back to the fore and all these biased newspapers give the true story to the public soon.

Blog Usage Statistics And Trends: State Of The Blogosphere

Everybody seems to be blogging now and it's growing faster than anything else. Robin Good's Latest News is one of the sites I have in my Yahoo RSS feeds and this one below is quite interesting. Better start blogging now. The world seems to be moving towards a Blogger - not a blogger divide. Welcome to the Blogger divide!!
Blog Usage Statistics And Trends: State Of The Blogosphere - Robin Good's Latest News

Firefox breaks 10% barrier in market share

According to a ComputerWorld story, Firefox has crossed the 10% barrier in the web browser market. I'm happy for Firefox and the numerous developers who have put in their time and effort to make Firefox what it is today. I use Firefox and also IE in tandem. With the release of IE 7 Beta, I find myself using IE more than firefox. I don't find any major difference between the two and I end up using IE. I'm sure that once IE 7 is released, it's going to be tough for Firefox. But, I'm sure the hundreds/thousands of developers who are working on Firefox will not fold like Netscape folded under the IE onslought.

My Googlepages is live

My first page on Googlepages is live. You can check it at http://faizee.googlepages.com. It's really for very primitive webpages, I would say as you don't have much to code - you can't upload your already built pages. I expect Google to offer this soon.

Interestingly, I didn't receive any email from Google on the availability of the Googlepages even though I had registered for it. It just occured to me that I checked the Googlepages again and all happened in a jiffy! Let me see what more new features Google has got to offer.

Google Pages - Again Waitlisted

I've been long waiting for such a service from Google and it did come at last - but only to again be part of a waitlist.

I've been having my own personal website in Geocities (Now acquired by Yahoo) ever since 1998. But of late, Yahoo's ads are quite intrusive and I was looking for an alternate service and was expecting something from Google. Today morning when I got a trigger from one of my email lists that Google Pages has been launched and immediately went to the site only to be told that because of overwhelming response, the service is not being offered to new signups as of now - so sad! I've signed up the waiting list and God only knows when they will open it up.

Let's hope this happens faster than the Google Analytics.

IE Version 7 Beta - my first look

I've installed IE Version 7 Beta 2 from the public download available. Microsoft doesn't advise consumers to download and use it as it is still in beta. It wants developers and website creators to use it and check for compatibility of sites.

After the first two crashes, the browser is quite stable. My colleague who saw me browsing something asked me why my screen suddenly looks wide and big. That's the first thing you will like about the IE ver 7.0. They have very wisely crunched all the toolbars to under 10-12 cms and you get a wide canvas to view the pages. The forward and backward buttons, refresh and stop buttons are all in line with the address bar. All the other button are in line with the tab headers. Amazing!

I checked our company's website and intranet to make sure that they look fine in the new browser. They look good. I'm sure none of the existing sites need any modifications in their coding because of the new IE browser.

This version of IE ofcourse has, tabbed browsing and support to RSS feeds. I'm not going to write anything about it. I'm only looking at those that are very innovative and will make it better than Firefox. They also have the search box adjacent to the address bar and you can add any search engine of your choice - a la Firefox feature.

I liked the option to choose the place where the temperory files are stored. This is something I badly wanted because everytime my machine became slower I had to check the temperory files. Now that I have moved it to the other drive (not the default C drive), I have the control I wanted. Note: One of the main reason I uninstalled Google Desktop from my machine was it didn't offer me the option to choose where it saves the index files. It saves in the C drive and over a period of time as the index files grow, the PC performance nose dives. I hope Google sets it right soon.

There are too many options available in the advanced settings and it is not for any layman. I will have to study it to see how many of them will really help me.

Will add more as I continue to use this.

IE Version 7 Beta

I've installed the IE version 7 Beta 2 in my machine now. I will write my views it once I use it for a couple of days. But, it has already crashed twice in the past 30 minutes after I have installed. But, as a beta, you can't expect it to be very stable.

Let's Yahoooooooooo!

I love Yahoo. I use its mail, messenger, search and my.yahoo.com is my homepage. I'm happy that Yahoo is doing a lot of new stuff. All along Google has been getting all the media attention. At last, I found one good article on Yahoo. Please read it at http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,1914973,00.asp.

Firefox 2.0 is expected to be out in another 4-5 months

I use Firefox. I also use IE. Do I love firefox? Yes.

I'm not going to write about Firefox here. But, the next version of Firefox is expected to be out by June 2006 which should make it an exciting year. IE 7.0 is also expected more or less the same time. It will be interesting how Firefox will handle the IE onslought. Definitely they need to pull their socks up if they want to increase their share.

Read more about the Firefox version 2.0 at http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009607.html. This is a blog posting by Ben Goodger, Firefox's chief engineer.

US Gov asking Google for data

For those who don't know about this, the US government is asking Google for its search data and the links it indexes to support its claim in an ongoing court case on pornography. Google till date has resisted giving the data away citing the privacy concerns of its users and the risk of the competition knowing its trade secrets.

The US says that others have complied with the request and it's only Google which is resisting. I want the other big players Yahoo & MSN to come out in the open on what they have provided to the US government.

A lot of privacy groups have raised their concerns on this account and rightly so. The US govt has become notorious for spying each and everyone and I'm sure they are not going to stop with this request. I hope Google stands firm.

I'm sure that a vast majority of the users outside of the US use Google and if Google gives away the data, it's not just the US people's information that changes hands.

The Internet companies have long complied with the governments and this is the first time I'm learning about a feud in the open. This is going to set a new trend. Let's wait and watch!

Google, I'm with you.

Europe wants to have its own Google - or Google Killer

French president Jacques Chirac yesterday pledged to help fund a new European internet search engine to rival Google and Yahoo as he railed against what he sees as the threat of Anglo-Saxon cultural imperialism.

Very interesting... I'm not sure if this is going to materialize but everybody is welcome to try new things which will benefit the world. I will be more than happy to try out the new search engine. I learn that due to immediate popularity following President Chirac's message, the people at Quaero, the search engine that Chirac was refering to pulled the link offline as they wanted to avoid the publicity before it really becomes what it is set to be.

More information available at the following links:
http://www.computerworld.com/news/2006/story/0,11280,107729,00.html?source=NLT_PM&nid=107729

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/08/31/cnsearch31.xml

Google Analytics is working - at last

Google analytics is working for me at last. Even after 24 hours of the code addition, I was getting the "Waiting for data" status against each of the profiles I had added. I was upset and thought it's not going to work any time soon. Then I searched the web to look at others who may be having the same problem. Fortunately, one fellow netizen had indicated that even thought the status was saying "waiting for data", he was still able to see the reports by clicking the "Reports" tab, which I did!

I haven't yet studied the reports in detail. I want to give it a week or so so that I can analyze the reports well. For now, I'm happy that I have a powerful reporting tool for my blog. I wish that Google allows users to use this also on free websites like Geocities.

Google Analytics - seems to work for me!

I just logged back to Google Analytics and find the status change to "waiting for data". I'm waiting to see my reports soon.

Google Analytics - Slowly opening up

Google Analytics seems to be working on increasing its capacity and people who have registered with Google are slowly getting invitations to use Google Analytics free. I had registered my blog (this one) even at first but Google was not able to recognize the tracking code that I have copied on the template as suggested. So, I was trying to delete the profile and go through the process again from first. That's when they pulled the plug on new additions and I couldn't add a new profie. So, I had to wait with scores of others for Google to upgrade their capacity.

Now, I'm allowed to have as many as 5 websites tracked using Google Analytics. But unfortunately, still Google is not able to recognize the code in the blogger. Anybody out there who has done this, if you know how to sort this out, Please help me.

Circus artists rule

Jumbo circus is in chennai and I thought I will spend the weekend evening there and it was great entertainment for about 150 minutes. The artists were amazing in their precision and execution of the acrobatics. I was wondering why not the sports ministry of India spend some time identifying some good talent from these people, facilitate professional training for them and make them participate in world competition. I'm sure that there are a few good people there who can make the cut. But, unfortunately our sports ministry doesn't have people who go that extra mile to identify and nurture talent. And a billion people still dream for a single gold in Olympics!

I hope that these artists make enough money to keep themselves happy. With the advent of home entertainment I suspect that a lot of people even get to notice that a Circus is happening in their locality. A circus troup would have atleast 100 people and to feed them and the animals that accompany them is not going to be easy. I always wonder who people with little talent make it to the silver screen just because they are sons or daughters of a popular entity while people with talent languish. It's all part of life.

I hope that with better marketing and creating a better experience will make these circus a success. The seats were very uncomfortable and I was worried that I may not have a good sleep if the show went on further because of my uncomfortable back. I was also worried about the safety of the tent - with all the chairs tied together with a rope, with little space for people to move around any unfortunate event can cause chaos. I hope the authorities take care of this.

I would suggest that people in chennai do make it a point to visit the circus at least once not only to entertain themselves but also to encourage the artists.