Hi all,
So, I was talking to one of my friends about things in general and music came up in our little smalltalk over AIM. One thing that disturbed me was that he was not familiar with Pandora. I thought Pandora had existed long enough that writing a post on it would be worthless, but I have changed my mind.
Pandora is much like a radio, where you have some influence on the kind of songs you get to listen to, but not absolute power to pick any one song that you want to hear at the moment. Now, I know that sounds lame. But the beauty of Pandora is that it forces you to listen to new and upcoming artists that you may have never heard about or listened to before.
For example, you can create a station called "Linkin Park". Now when you select that station to play, it will pick among its database songs that are by Linking Park and songs that other artists whose musical characteristics match closely to that of Linkin Park's music. That is why Pandora refers to itself as the Music Genome Project. I personally have found some great artists this way. The streaming and interface is extremely well done. It does allow you to pay money to buy the song, but never in way forces you to do so.
If you create an account, it keeps track of songs you like and plays them more often. I have had an account for a quite a while now, and I have experienced no spam or ads from them whatsoever.
So, guys its 10/10 from me to them. Hit them up: www.pandora.com
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Reference to another good post
Hi All,
I am just providing a link to a good post by one of my friends.
Its about the Google Reader. It is a must read if you use Google Reader:
http://samarkamat.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/speed-up-long-post-load-times-in-google-reader/
--Shaurav
I am just providing a link to a good post by one of my friends.
Its about the Google Reader. It is a must read if you use Google Reader:
http://samarkamat.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/speed-up-long-post-load-times-in-google-reader/
--Shaurav
Google Docs move closer to perfection
Hi all,
I know some of you will be quick in labeling me as a Google fan, Googlite, Google-whore, whatever other terms there are right now. But, this is more of a genuine appreciation of a company which has consistently tried to make things easier for its users rather than harder like some companies (*cough* M----soft *cough*). Just recently, Google Docs had a complete overhaul of its User Interface. The new look is much like MS Word with a toolbar on the top, but less bugs..
All the menus at the top are much clearer than before. None of the features are hidden or hard to use as there were before. For example, spell check was quite elusive, but now is much more apparent. Combine that with amazing features such as real time group editing, version control, revision saving, and you got yourself a very powerful and lightweight Office Suite.
P.S. For those of you who did not know, each of your documents is constantly saved at regular intervals. Now unlike Word, these saves are not overwritten, but rather are saved separately. So you can always go back and find a earlier version of your document. Quite a useful feature if you ask me.
Also, a link to Google's annoucement: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-toolbar-and-menus.html
Thats all for now,
Shaurav
I know some of you will be quick in labeling me as a Google fan, Googlite, Google-whore, whatever other terms there are right now. But, this is more of a genuine appreciation of a company which has consistently tried to make things easier for its users rather than harder like some companies (*cough* M----soft *cough*). Just recently, Google Docs had a complete overhaul of its User Interface. The new look is much like MS Word with a toolbar on the top, but less bugs..
All the menus at the top are much clearer than before. None of the features are hidden or hard to use as there were before. For example, spell check was quite elusive, but now is much more apparent. Combine that with amazing features such as real time group editing, version control, revision saving, and you got yourself a very powerful and lightweight Office Suite.
P.S. For those of you who did not know, each of your documents is constantly saved at regular intervals. Now unlike Word, these saves are not overwritten, but rather are saved separately. So you can always go back and find a earlier version of your document. Quite a useful feature if you ask me.
Also, a link to Google's annoucement: http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/03/new-toolbar-and-menus.html
Thats all for now,
Shaurav
Flickrvision
Hi all,
Sorry for the really long gap between posts. Things got a bit hectic. I want to write about this amazing website www.flickrvision.com/maps/show_3d
Some of you might know about this already, but the flickrvision site has released a new 3d version which has an interface which is much like Google Earth and it shows you fairly real time photo posts on the Globe by location, photo and user. An amazing little website for those of you who frequently go through Digg or Reddit trying to find funny or good pictures. I would highly recommed it.
Expect many many articles this week.
peace,
Shaurav
Sorry for the really long gap between posts. Things got a bit hectic. I want to write about this amazing website www.flickrvision.com/maps/show_3d
Some of you might know about this already, but the flickrvision site has released a new 3d version which has an interface which is much like Google Earth and it shows you fairly real time photo posts on the Globe by location, photo and user. An amazing little website for those of you who frequently go through Digg or Reddit trying to find funny or good pictures. I would highly recommed it.
Expect many many articles this week.
peace,
Shaurav
Monday, March 10, 2008
hobos
Hi everybody,
Today I am going to write a more personal post. I had long not cared about the various homeless people that I saw on the streets (I live in nyc, so there are lots of them). Like many people, I believed that those people are there because they are bums and they are lazy. But today I realized something important by putting myself in the shoes of a homeless guy.
I came up with a situation where I could also easily fall into this trap.
Here it is: I am a college student that has a lot of loans (which is actually true =/ ). I get lazy or there is a huge recession, and I am unable to find a job or a place to live (Average rent in manhattan is close to 1000$/month for single room while having roommates). So I am homeless now.
After a a couple months, I finally realize I am ruining my life and want to change things. So, out of desperation, I try to get a job at some local business(grocery store, something related to my engineering degree) . I fill out their application, but leave the address and phone field blank because I have none. So either I have to keep checking in to every place I apply to or get a phone. Both of these things I cannot do because of the obvious lack of money.
So, I go try somewhere easier, lets say McDonalds. I get turned down because of the couple months of not being able to maintain a clean hygiene. Obviously nobody will eat a BigMac that was made or even touched with gloves by a unshaven, long hair, smelley guy. But, I get lucky, some KFC out there dont give a damn on who they hire as long as they are okay with min. wage.
So now I am excited. I will finally come out of this crappy hobo life. I go to my first day of work in completely shoddy clothing and hungry. I am allowed one meal per shift. So i greedily eat that meal and work all day and make (8 hrs * 6.50 = 52 bucks) . I kept this up for two weeks and make 208 dollars minus taxes. Hmmm, that is about 1/5 of average rent in Manhattan or about 1/3 in some shadier parts of nyc. My monthly payment for my loans is around 200 dollars. So not only do I get nowhere, I worked two weeks on a single meal a day (ouch!!).
... I wont finish the story. But damn, its hard to be a hobo.
I realize I got to my theoretical position by my own laziness, but do I really deserve to be stuck homeless just for one bad decision in my whole life.
Think about this the next time you see a hobo. Remember they are people like us. I still do not support charity and welfare (especially random quarters that are thrown at them) but I would like to see something big done for them by whole communities. Dont catch a fish for them, but enable them to be able to catch a fish again by themselves.
Peace,
Shaurav
Today I am going to write a more personal post. I had long not cared about the various homeless people that I saw on the streets (I live in nyc, so there are lots of them). Like many people, I believed that those people are there because they are bums and they are lazy. But today I realized something important by putting myself in the shoes of a homeless guy.
I came up with a situation where I could also easily fall into this trap.
Here it is: I am a college student that has a lot of loans (which is actually true =/ ). I get lazy or there is a huge recession, and I am unable to find a job or a place to live (Average rent in manhattan is close to 1000$/month for single room while having roommates). So I am homeless now.
After a a couple months, I finally realize I am ruining my life and want to change things. So, out of desperation, I try to get a job at some local business(grocery store, something related to my engineering degree) . I fill out their application, but leave the address and phone field blank because I have none. So either I have to keep checking in to every place I apply to or get a phone. Both of these things I cannot do because of the obvious lack of money.
So, I go try somewhere easier, lets say McDonalds. I get turned down because of the couple months of not being able to maintain a clean hygiene. Obviously nobody will eat a BigMac that was made or even touched with gloves by a unshaven, long hair, smelley guy. But, I get lucky, some KFC out there dont give a damn on who they hire as long as they are okay with min. wage.
So now I am excited. I will finally come out of this crappy hobo life. I go to my first day of work in completely shoddy clothing and hungry. I am allowed one meal per shift. So i greedily eat that meal and work all day and make (8 hrs * 6.50 = 52 bucks) . I kept this up for two weeks and make 208 dollars minus taxes. Hmmm, that is about 1/5 of average rent in Manhattan or about 1/3 in some shadier parts of nyc. My monthly payment for my loans is around 200 dollars. So not only do I get nowhere, I worked two weeks on a single meal a day (ouch!!).
... I wont finish the story. But damn, its hard to be a hobo.
I realize I got to my theoretical position by my own laziness, but do I really deserve to be stuck homeless just for one bad decision in my whole life.
Think about this the next time you see a hobo. Remember they are people like us. I still do not support charity and welfare (especially random quarters that are thrown at them) but I would like to see something big done for them by whole communities. Dont catch a fish for them, but enable them to be able to catch a fish again by themselves.
Peace,
Shaurav
The Obama Wave
Hi all,
I am not able to fall asleep so I am writing the first thing that came to my mind: OBAMA!! or for some of you haters: OSAMA!!!
So what is it that makes me write about him?
It is not his extremely well developed oratory skills or the fact that he is black or the fact that he is young or the fact that I hate Hillary.
There are two main reasons:
1) He is relying on mass donor money rather than lobbyist money. What it means for us: No more will our president be caged by the lobbyist hounds. That means no more corporate democracy. That means paving the way for a new and more real democratic process. That means we as Americans will (might) finally have a say in our political system. Who wouldn't like that??
2) A Obama vs. McCain presidential election is just what the country needs. Both men have been known to defy their political lines in some part of their career. What it means for us: no more 50% - 50% split on every single mass polling. A renewed interest and trust in American politics. A better economy (in my opinion) because a renewed interest in the nation will boost productivity and confidence level which will boost the economy. Yes, these are two great factors of the economy.
So, love my rant about Obama? Comment heavily please, I want to know what people think of him out there without filtering through mainstream media!!
I am not able to fall asleep so I am writing the first thing that came to my mind: OBAMA!! or for some of you haters: OSAMA!!!
So what is it that makes me write about him?
It is not his extremely well developed oratory skills or the fact that he is black or the fact that he is young or the fact that I hate Hillary.
There are two main reasons:
1) He is relying on mass donor money rather than lobbyist money. What it means for us: No more will our president be caged by the lobbyist hounds. That means no more corporate democracy. That means paving the way for a new and more real democratic process. That means we as Americans will (might) finally have a say in our political system. Who wouldn't like that??
2) A Obama vs. McCain presidential election is just what the country needs. Both men have been known to defy their political lines in some part of their career. What it means for us: no more 50% - 50% split on every single mass polling. A renewed interest and trust in American politics. A better economy (in my opinion) because a renewed interest in the nation will boost productivity and confidence level which will boost the economy. Yes, these are two great factors of the economy.
So, love my rant about Obama? Comment heavily please, I want to know what people think of him out there without filtering through mainstream media!!
Sunday, March 9, 2008
GooSync for you google lovers
Hi all,
I know I said next post would be open source alternatives, but I am gonna hold off on that and do some more research.
This article is going to be on goosync, a program which allows you to synchronize your google calendar to the calendar on your phone. I want to write about it becuz it feels like its not publicized enough and I know there is a lot of you google fans out there.
So heres what you do. Create a calendar(s) on Google, create an account on goosync.com, authenticate your account, pick your options, and bamn!!! The power of google in your hands.
Now heres more details for those interested.
1) creating a calendar on google is fairly easy, go to calendar.google.com, sign in, make your appointments
2) create an account on www.goosync.com. this is the fun part. They have different pricing levels. In my opinion, free has enough features to be useful. What it doesn't have is multiple calendar support, contact support, bidirectional sync, and autosync. So if you think those features are worth paying 20 pounds for 12 months, then go for it!
3) authenticate your goosync account. Two ways: give them your google username/password (highly NOT recommended). Other way is to just grant them access to the calendars you want to synchronize, easily done by hitting one button in the my google options in your goosync account.
(pretty safe to do)
4) Download the goosync program either over the air or manually onto your phone and you are set. Never miss an appointment again.
I personally did this with amazing results on my treo 650. they do support a lot of different phones, including non-PDA.
so enjoy and later,
shaurav
I know I said next post would be open source alternatives, but I am gonna hold off on that and do some more research.
This article is going to be on goosync, a program which allows you to synchronize your google calendar to the calendar on your phone. I want to write about it becuz it feels like its not publicized enough and I know there is a lot of you google fans out there.
So heres what you do. Create a calendar(s) on Google, create an account on goosync.com, authenticate your account, pick your options, and bamn!!! The power of google in your hands.
Now heres more details for those interested.
1) creating a calendar on google is fairly easy, go to calendar.google.com, sign in, make your appointments
2) create an account on www.goosync.com. this is the fun part. They have different pricing levels. In my opinion, free has enough features to be useful. What it doesn't have is multiple calendar support, contact support, bidirectional sync, and autosync. So if you think those features are worth paying 20 pounds for 12 months, then go for it!
3) authenticate your goosync account. Two ways: give them your google username/password (highly NOT recommended). Other way is to just grant them access to the calendars you want to synchronize, easily done by hitting one button in the my google options in your goosync account.
(pretty safe to do)
4) Download the goosync program either over the air or manually onto your phone and you are set. Never miss an appointment again.
I personally did this with amazing results on my treo 650. they do support a lot of different phones, including non-PDA.
so enjoy and later,
shaurav
Open source? is it here to stay?
Hi all,
Hope you read my intro and hope you will read this article.
I do not want to talk about why open source software is popular: its FREEE!! DUH!!. What I want to talk about is whether this open source movement will be able to sustain itself.
I personally think open source software is much like any other revolutionary movement like women's suffrage, civil rights movement, etc. Therefore, it is not here to stay forever, but only to develop a new mindset in the society. For example, the women's suffrage movement does not exist today; however, it helped us create the mindset that women as individuals have the right to hold equal power in making the decisions in our democratic process (Some of you will disagree, i know, but its just an example).
As we all have seen, there have been some great open source projects which have consistently beat their money bloated equivalents in productivity, efficiency and reliability. Most of us have been boggled by this concept. Smaller budgets, smaller teams have created marvels like Open Office which are a couple hundred dollars cheaper and perform much better. Linux is the most obvious one here.
So why did this movement occur in the first place? Because large software companies each picked a little section of the software development market (such as network services, operating system, database management system etc.) and started to hold a virtual monopoly on their little piece of the pie. As we all know, competitition boosts development and innovation. But these large companies stifled the competition and brought the software development industry to a screeching halt. Imagine, why would Microsoft ever try to improve Windows or Office if OpenOffice didn't exist, or now Google Documents didn't exist. And, if any of you have ever used Microsoft Office, you can only imagine what Office would be like without any constant improvements. I am not trying to bash Microsoft here, but rather providing the most insidious example.
What this movement is doing is creating competition that will again bring healthy competition to this industry and provide a wake up call to the large software companies to change the way they do business and produce better products. Some companies, such as Google, have taken the queue, others haven't. Eventually, however, all these companies will be forced to give up their old corporation style tactics and adopt better consumer friendly ideas.
Therefore, the open source movement will die, free software will again be elusive. However, it will leave us in a world where capitalism will not be able to rule our lives because they will remember the great open source movement which shook up their foundations without needing any money.
Next article will be on specific open source alternatives to boost productivity.
Peace,
Shaurav
Hope you read my intro and hope you will read this article.
I do not want to talk about why open source software is popular: its FREEE!! DUH!!. What I want to talk about is whether this open source movement will be able to sustain itself.
I personally think open source software is much like any other revolutionary movement like women's suffrage, civil rights movement, etc. Therefore, it is not here to stay forever, but only to develop a new mindset in the society. For example, the women's suffrage movement does not exist today; however, it helped us create the mindset that women as individuals have the right to hold equal power in making the decisions in our democratic process (Some of you will disagree, i know, but its just an example).
As we all have seen, there have been some great open source projects which have consistently beat their money bloated equivalents in productivity, efficiency and reliability. Most of us have been boggled by this concept. Smaller budgets, smaller teams have created marvels like Open Office which are a couple hundred dollars cheaper and perform much better. Linux is the most obvious one here.
So why did this movement occur in the first place? Because large software companies each picked a little section of the software development market (such as network services, operating system, database management system etc.) and started to hold a virtual monopoly on their little piece of the pie. As we all know, competitition boosts development and innovation. But these large companies stifled the competition and brought the software development industry to a screeching halt. Imagine, why would Microsoft ever try to improve Windows or Office if OpenOffice didn't exist, or now Google Documents didn't exist. And, if any of you have ever used Microsoft Office, you can only imagine what Office would be like without any constant improvements. I am not trying to bash Microsoft here, but rather providing the most insidious example.
What this movement is doing is creating competition that will again bring healthy competition to this industry and provide a wake up call to the large software companies to change the way they do business and produce better products. Some companies, such as Google, have taken the queue, others haven't. Eventually, however, all these companies will be forced to give up their old corporation style tactics and adopt better consumer friendly ideas.
Therefore, the open source movement will die, free software will again be elusive. However, it will leave us in a world where capitalism will not be able to rule our lives because they will remember the great open source movement which shook up their foundations without needing any money.
Next article will be on specific open source alternatives to boost productivity.
Peace,
Shaurav
Intro
Hi all,
I am taking the step into the blogging world. I have long been frustrated with keeping my thoughts inside because of all the ignorant people that I am constantly surrounded with. Now, I get to reach out. I will be talking about everything from politics, torture, personal development, technology and whatever the fuck i feel like.
Please read my stuff and feel free to gimme compliments/critiques etc.
bye for now,
shaurav
I am taking the step into the blogging world. I have long been frustrated with keeping my thoughts inside because of all the ignorant people that I am constantly surrounded with. Now, I get to reach out. I will be talking about everything from politics, torture, personal development, technology and whatever the fuck i feel like.
Please read my stuff and feel free to gimme compliments/critiques etc.
bye for now,
shaurav
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