But this study is sure to create an impact in the minds of more and more people, and ultimately drive Microsoft to their worst nightmare of Open Source taking over the corporate word (at least). But let’s talk about Government Initiative in the Open Source… Now there’s a catch!

WARNING: In the following section, I might sound Frankenstein running after NIC’s to rip it’s neck of it’s body.

IBPS Site may damage your PC

Does government actually support FOSS Initiatives ? I don’t know if you are looking at th small line at the bottom of most of the Government websites, where it says – “Please use Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or “Best viewed on Internet Explorer 5.5 or above” or something analogous. Does it

SBI site is on ASP (Microsoft Active Server Pages) meaning NOT FOSS, they are using Microsoft Technologies and are actually not leveraging the benefits of FOSS where they can be best achieved – WEB and SERVER Technologies. If you anytime in your life have applied for any of the Country’s bank exams be it PO, Managerial or Clerk, you have to visit the site of Institute of Banking Peronnel Selection (IBPS). You would notice that it won’t open on Mozilla’s Firefox, Apple’s Safari or Google Chrome – it’s is simply loyal to Microsoft Technology – Internet Explorer.

Let’s visualize a simple example, where a person who loves linux or cannot afford Microsoft Window Operating System and want’s to make every move chaste, without the pains of proprietary software involved – Is demoralize, demotivated, his faith shattered to dust with a website popping up saying I need INTERNET EXPLORER! That wasn’t the idea of Tim Berner’s lee when he proposed Internet.

Does Government really support FOSS?

If the government really want’s to take initiatives, it should have made all the websites on NON-Microsoft Technologies, it would have saved them Millions actually Billions. Today NIC has 90% of their websites being maintained on proprietary – age old technologies, that are in no way match for today’s glossy looking, superbly interactive, and Intelligent websites. Are they ? They don’t even look like Corporate/Identity websites for Company information. Even if NOW!, after going through the Prof. Rahul De reports they think of moving from proprietary to FOSS Tech’s – who the hell be accountable for the earlier un-informed baseless decisions ?

The only one of the few website I’ve seen is the NIC’s Indigov. Its’ one of the best website, and based around php. Now what new I see is a Quality certificate being attached to the website by SQTC. Does that make a difference? What is then W3C for? CDAC, NOIDA has been one of the biggest contributor and promoter of W3C in Indian Government sector. However, now NIC & SQTC comes out with their Certificate attached to the website, ignoring all the work done so far in the field by W3C and unnecessarily putting  their precious efforts into standards that have been pre-established. No doubt the website is accessible, but that accounts to just 0.1% of the websites NIC is hosting/developing/maintaining (I would rather say lingering on with). Most of the disabled people are ignored in the country (I know low floor buses just landed in Delhi, but that’s just Delhi -not India right!) and Information Technology is the last seen area where you could consider disabled people to be preferred – in INDIA.

The author is not Anti-Microsoft, he just want the web to be independent, free from the boundaries just like a free bird.  As Internet / Web was essentially created to be platform-independent so that we could; and today as we are able to browse websites over Mobile Phone, Browser’s across operating systems like – Windows, Mac and Linux. And they look same everywhere.

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Wave is a very bold way to re-write the manner in which people communicate and interact online. It is nothing conventional you can think of. Google merges your e-mails, IMs, Twits, Facebook and a lot of other such services and offers them under one roof called Wave.

You can understand Wave as a content that you have created. Let’s assume this news item. Now, you can share this news with people, and your friends may keep adding content to it. They may write some more, add some pics, comment through twits and much more. According to Google Blog, “A ‘wave’ is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps and more.”

Here’s how it works:

In Google Wave, you create a Wave and add people to it. Everyone on your Wave can use formatted text, photos, gadgets and even feeds from other sources on the Web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your Wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use ‘playback’ to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

The Google Wave protocol is the underlying format for storing and the means of sharing waves, and includes the ‘live’ concurrency control, which allows edits to be reflected instantly across users and services. The protocol is designed for open federation, such that anyone’s Wave services can interoperate with each other and with the Google Wave service. To encourage adoption of the protocol, Google says it intends to open source the code behind Google Wave.

Google has not yet decided the specific time frame for public release, but plans to continue working on Google Wave for a number of months more as a developer preview.

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This appears to be the same venture that Google discussed in August of 2008, now located at http://www.google.cn/music. The service is actually run through the partially-Google-owned Top100.cn, which is responsible for selling advertising space and divvying up revenues between the music labels. The site will be limited by IP address to those in mainland China, however, so if you’re in Taiwan or any other surrounding area and want to get a taste, you’ll be out of luck.

“This is the first really serious attempt to start monetizing online music in China,” Warner Music Asia president Lachie Rutherford told the Associated Press. Google China president Kai-Fu Lee agreed, adding that today’s launch “complete[s] the puzzle” by offering a fully-integrated set of music and advertising services.

Google’s music search is, of course, a direct response to the popular Chinese search engine Baidu, which has made a name for itself by providing deep links to seemingly unlimited quantities of illegal music. In fact, Baidu has recently come under fire for its MP3 deep-linking policies, as the Music Copyright Society of China and the IFPI have both filed lawsuits against the search engine for the practice.

The ad-supported music venture is the latest in a long string of efforts by Big Content to compete with piracy in China. In November of 2008, Warner Bros. announced that it planned to offer certain films as downloadable rentals in China for a fraction of the cost in other parts of the world (4 to 7 yuan, or roughly 58¢ to $1.02). Before that, Warner China (a joint effort between Warner Bros., China Film Group, and Hengdian Group) announced that it would start selling certain movies just days after their theatrical releases for as low as 10 yuan. Warner Bros. also joined up with Paramount to start selling legit DVDs in China for about 20 to 25 yuan, or just under $3.

One catch to Google’s music service is that it will cooperate with Chinese law and block songs that have been banned by the government. This isn’t exactly a surprising move, however—companies must agree to China’s rules in order to do business there, or they can go home. “When you’re in the music business in China you know you have to follow the regulations,” Rutherford said.

The Big four comprises (along with market share (2005) ) of :

• Universal Music Group (France based) — 31.71%
• Sony BMG Music Entertainment (Japan/Germany based) — 25.61% (13.83% Sony, 11.78% BMG)
• Warner Music Group (USA based) — 15%
• EMI Group (UK based) — 9.55%

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Two prominent technology news blogs clashed on Friday morning over a report one of them issued that said Google Inc may try to buy Internet start-up Twitter.

according to  three unnamed sources, Google would pay for Twitter in cash, stock or a combination of the two.

The companies are also considering working together on a Google real-time search engine.

Another blog said the story was inaccurate, citing “a number of sources.”

“In fact, Twitter and Google have simply been engaged in ‘some product-related discussions,’ according to one source,” the blog said.

Twitter is a service that allows people to send short text messages to a network of friends. Its popularity is growing, particularly among journalists looking for new ways to get people to read their news and commentary.

The San Francisco, California-based company has yet to make any money. That has not stopped the technology world from speculating on who will scoop up the company, though co-founder Biz Stone told Reuters in March that it is not considering a merger or a buyout.

Lets see what happens

Source :Reuters

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Pixaaza Technology

Here’s another quickie, Google now backs Pixazza a new advertisement technology, its quite similar to what Google has been doing with the text – showing advertisements based on the text on the webpages. Pixazza is very similar to that except that it applies to the pictures. People tag the pictures (or part of the picture) with the links of the online merchants, they are given commissions based on the number of hits, their links recieve.

Pixazza’s “experts” are paid a commission based on sales from their links. The start-up also employs reviewers that track the links. “There’s a work queue of all the images that come in and you can see which are high-traffic images and which are interesting to users,” said Bob Lisbonne, chief executive of Pixazza.

Pixazza has signed up with Amazon.com, Bluefly and Zappos. Pixazza is currently targeting Fashion industry as per the teh CEO Bob Lisbonne. However there are other websites which are following similar for years, one of them being – Coolspotters. Somewhere in the world of web even Microsoft has filed a patient for the technology even before Pixazza, but I guess they got late!

But still I believe, Pixazza has an edge over everything -

• It has “the publisher” involved, that means people can use a single line of javascript to use technology for images on their site.
• People will do anything to make money (even if it takes hours to tag pictures), so tagging isn’t a problem, its good.
• They have Google to support them!
  • Google can utilize Pixazza’s technology with their image labeler, and ultimately with Adsense
  • Google can ultimately acquire Pixazza

Well that was it, It wasn’t quick.. right? Anyways I hope you have learnt a new technology coming your way.

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Firefox on Acid Test 3

Hi to all the web dev’s and designers out there. It must be so much interesting news for you guys for the launch of IE8. Well to look at it from another perspective it is quite disappointing for you too, as now you have another browser on your shoulders to see – the site maintains “that look!”. Well I would recommend all you guys to either stick to either Firefox or Safari (I don’t believe, I’m saying it! Safari.. huh). Well if you go a bit deep into assumptive analytics of browsers –

• I see Mozilla Firefox being used by more and more population across Operating System be it – Windows, Linux or Mac.
• IE is just limited to Windows and Mac
• Safari is all geared up for Windows apart from the native Mac.

Talking about ACID3 Test,  in short they are reference for testing the support for CSS, for those who have their hunger still unsatisfied can see more about acid tests here. So where were we ? Oh yes, ACID3 Test is for CSS v3. Browser Scores for ACID3:

• Safari 4 Beta: 100%
• Mozilla Firefox: 71%
• IE8: 20% [FAIL]

IE8 On Acid Test 3

So a final word of mouth for all those involved in development and/or designing. I would rather advice you to stick to Mozilla Firefox, as it will be the safest bet until Microsoft comes with a set of SP1,2..n updates to correct problems with the CSS3 Engine in the now, not so anticipated IE8!

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So You have only 5 seconds to realize your mistakes !! BE QUICK!!

The Undo link(To save your day!!)

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• BollywoodHungama.com (Formely IndiaFM.com)
• IN.COM (A Network18 Venture)

Talking about IndiaFM, its a very popular website for Bollywood News, it has several brand associated with it one being Mr. Taran Adarsh who’s very popular as an Industry analyst. Quite a large user traffic and a Google Page Rank of 6. I think that is pretty definitive.

IndiaFM includes an unsubscribe link (an email address: unsubscribe@bollywoodhungama.com) at the very bottom, and that is how every one works, however the font size for the unsubscribe links are always compromised. But, and yes here comes the ugly part the link doesn’t works! I search the site, and NO you don’t have it. You don’t have any setting or link that says opt-out, unsubscribe, leave us, R.I.P.

Now lets come to IN.COM and believe me its a very-very big website. If you want to have a look at statistics – follow here.

So, now how about IN.COM, I really don’t like their mails. All they do is meshing up things spread across the web. So I really thought of unsubscribing from the emails, and Voila’ you don’t even have a link down below the email, just a quote -

Please go to http://www.in.com to unsubscribe

And would you believe it, you have everything on their web site (you can find almost the whole web out there), except the unsubscribe link. Some times its even harder to find where to log in!

That’s just 2 of the shoal of big sharks out there. But I believe I’ve done my job of putting them naked in front of you. I’ve mailed them long time back too, but haven’t got the response for the emails, probably they ended up in their junk box.

I’m quite sure they don’t have an real auditing department doing the real checking, and I’m damn sure since they have started making money out of absolutely nothing of their own, they would not be worried about the email ordeals people are going though.

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But Yotify offers much more than the search giants’ current alert tools, argues Ron Bouganim, CEO and cofounder of Branchnext, the San Francisco startup behind Yotify. Those alert tools, Bouganim says, are merely an afterthought for these huge companies, and they do not take into account important Web 2.0 developments, such as social networking.

“We want to create a richer experience,” Bouganim says.

When users sign up for an account, they are given a personal profile page that lists, stores, and displays what they’ve searched for and where. That information can be made public as well, so that friends can share the results and help refine the search. This could be particularly useful for group projects such as apartment hunting with roommates, for example.

Meanwhile, Yotify is making it a point to closely integrate with the major social-networking sites, most notably Facebook and LinkedIn. “If people want to search through Facebook using our technology, we want to let them do it,” claims Bouganim.

Another distinguishing characteristic of Yotify versus Google Alerts or Yahoo Alerts is its focus on shopping. Whereas Google Alerts is primarily concerned with retrieving news and other hard information, Yotify is setting up as more of a sales tool for its partner sites, which include general retailers such as Shopping.com as well as a host of niche players.

In this respect, Yotify does go above and beyond what Google Alerts currently provides. Say a user wants to buy a black futon, for example. The important aspect of the search is not that the user obtain the futon immediately, but that it’s a certain price. Yotify will continually monitor its partner sites, then notify the user when a black futon is available at that particular price.

The main problem with Yotify is that, as of now, it only scans a small portion of the Web: users can only search among Yotify’s partner sites. While the search engine has partnered with many key websites, such as Craigslist, the New York Times, and eBay, it certainly does not have the breadth of a search giant such as Google or Yahoo.

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But the point to be noted here your honor is

• People do the search,
• Google pays money for the ads clicked on the searched results

For all the .GOV.IN and .NIC.IN government websites, who takes the money ? I just want to know who’s the person? Is it the government using its own code to place search engines and getting all the money or is it some one else? We’ve got 2 options to find it out..

• Keep Thinking – You’ll never know!
• File an RTI – Let’s see If I’m able to do so!

Till then keep thinking!

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All Open Source people would be glad to know that India Today’s Online network of websites are powered by Joomla!  Its good to see so many corporates using Open Source technology, but simultaneously its very hard to see the choice of platform is not reciprocated, anyways what are we for? So, Go! Joomla! Open Source Go!

India Today’s websites including a Hindi version of aajtak is also being hosted on Joomla!, MoneyToday and Business Today are successfully integrated using the platform. We’d be updating you on the Open Source, anywhere we see it.

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“The Google Earth is providing high resolution data in the order of less than a metre. But the data is two to three years old. It cannot be of much use for any real-time exercise. But Bhuvan will provide the relevant data for any real-time exercise,” S K Pathan, Head, Geo Informatics Data Division, ISRO, said.

Bhuvan, to be launched by Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), will be a better alternative to Google Earth in terms of quality of data, he said.

“Bhuvan, which means earth, will get the images from the satellites and provide high resolution imagery data of the order of five metre. This can be of use for real-time exercises like disaster management and military operations,” he said.

For real-time exercises, the latest data is a guiding force, he said. It can show the topography, altitude, depth and other features of any specific location.

“This information will be required when you are undertaking a massive exercise like flood management or post-cyclone disaster mitigation,” he said.

The data could be of use to manage public services, internal security, town planning and infrastructure development activities.

Courtesy: The Hindu

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Taking the concern of the Global warming and the ecological problems, Google is coming with PowerMeter that can give real time data

One place the company is looking is into people’s homes.  Google is  working on Google PowerMeter, prototype software that will allow users to receive energy usage data from compatible “smart meters” and use that information to optimize their energy use.

The company made the announcement in a blog post that explains its broader effort to encourage the development of a “smart grid,” a next-generation electrical distribution system that supports bidirectional energy and revenue flow.

“Google’s mission is to ‘organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,’ and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their home electricity use,” said Google engineer Ed Lu. “We’re tackling the challenge on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid companies. We’ve been participating in the dialogue in Washington, D.C., and with public agencies in the U.S. and other parts of the world, to advocate for investment in the building of a ‘smart grid,’ to bring our 1950s-era electricity grid into the digital age.”

Smart meters, a key component in a smart grid, differ from standard power meters in that they can provide real-time energy-use data and price data to utility customers.

At present, there are about 40 million of the devices in use worldwide, with an additional 100 million planned over the next few years, according to Google. The Obama administration’s recovery plan calls for 40 million smart meters to be deployed in the United States over the next three years.

For More Click here

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• Google with its new service allows users to keep track of their friends using Google Maps.
• SMS, IM or give a phone call to them.
• Give you a complete privacy control.

Now that’s something really and closely integrated set of services. I mean they are utilizing every bit their services.

• Google Maps service – The Core for the platform,
• Google SMS Channels (launched specifically for India, I believe they are!) or GMail SMS launched for U.S.
• Google Talk for calling your friends
• iGoogle Gadget (which is used when you are on your laptop/desktop)
• Orkut – Now that’s my intuition! I believe Orkut is soon going to be part of this service set: Google Friends Map, may be who knows!

Mobile, with its wide user base is sure to be the next monetization platform. How about this, You are walking towards a mall, and you get a message – “Your friend Rohit is just 5 Kms away from you, moving towards Delhi Cantt” (Of course with an ad below it). Now that could really be interesting.

Hope to see something more innovative and monetizing coming out of the Google Labs! Let’s see what’s the next step the giant takes.

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