Yahoo! oneConnect – The next BIG thing

Posted on February 13, 2008 by Praveen

Its not the usual stuff which comes out from the Yahoo! camp, this ones a killer. It is a mobile product with an open architecture with support for communication tools like email, instant messaging, text messaging & more.
In simple words, Y! oneConnect is a mobile application which will enable users to access their mail (Y! Mail, Hotmail, Gmail, AOL & others), IM (Y! messenger, Google talk, AIM, MSN). The open API’s will make way for integrating these services into Y! oneConnect.
Few of the features announced are:

  • Socially connected address book – Will enable integration of the popular social networking services like Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, hi5, Bebo & more.
  • Mobile messaging – IM & SMS integration of popular services like Y! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, etc.
  • Status – Get updates from your friends in real time from all the social networking sites.
  • Contact card – Create customized cards and select the information like who & what will be shown in the card.
  • Location sensing – Exchange information with nearby Y! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify when a contact enters their vicinity.

Status update is my favorite as it allows to select the list of services & update the status on all of them at one go. See screen shot below.

oneconnect_status

oneConnect is expected to hit the market in Q2 ’08. That’s all what I can recall from what I read.

Check for latest updates at the Y! oneConnect site.

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Which Browser?

Posted on January 18, 2008 by Praveen

This is one question I keep asking other people and vice-versa. The most common answers I get (as you might have guessed already) are IE 6, IE 7. There’s a very small group of people who say Firefox. They either know why they are using it or just because somebody has told them ‘Firefox is a real good browser’.
The first thing I do when I find anybody (whom I know) with a laptop is ask him ‘which browser?’. If his reply starts with IE, the next I do is request him to install Firefox.

So what is that I use when it comes to browsing. I personally prefer using Flock. Cant recall when I really started using it, but I remember my friend blogged about it.
So its like, I use Flock for my browsing activities and Firefox for development. The only reason behind not using a common browser for development & browsing is Addons, Plugins (whatever you’d like to call it). Adding plugins slows down the browser, and its not just one plugin .. I have a bunch of them installed on my firefox browser.
Some of the must have ones are:

  • Firebug (+ySlow?) – for everything to do with JavaScript
  • Web Developer – A very useful one (lot of features)
  • Cache Status – a much simpler way of clearing browser cache
  • JS View – Lists the JS & CSS files from a page (a real neat one)
  • Live HTTP headers – for some useful information
  • Chatzilla – IRC ??
  • FireFTP – For some FTP stuff

Note: In case you want to check them out, A simple web search should get you there.

Flock

The very reason I use flock other than any other browser is, Flock has got it all which a person would require. Its got a Photo uploader(my personal favorite), blog editor, web clips, rss reader and the latest is the Media bar and peoples bar.
Media bar and People bar have a bunch of services which work very neatly. Services supported are facebook, flickr, twitter, delicious, photobucket, youtube, and many more.
The Orange dot near the web search bar (see pic. above) tells me that I have some new activity which has happened in my active services. In this case it should be a notification for new photos added by friends in Flickr or a poke/message in facebook.
If you are a heavy user of facebook and don’t like refreshing the browser to check for recent-activity, go for flock. Did I mention that flock is very fast compared to Firefox (with addons). Its free, with active development happening.

I like just about everything about Flock (except a few things), which I will mention some other time. Keep flocking.

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Life & travel in Bangalore

Posted on January 5, 2008 by Praveen

Happy new year. Its been quite some time since I’ve updated my blog. My focus for this year would be to update my blog more often than what I did last year.

I’ve got some things to share about my traveling & house hunting experience in Bangalore. The first thing anyone does after coming to Bangalore (for that matter any place) is search for accommodation.

Firstly go get yourself a newspaper like AD Mag (which is available in any local book store) which will cost you Rs. 10, that should solve half the problem. What next? Go to Yahoo! Maps India and get familiar with the places around your office (or wherever you want to find a place). Once you get a hint of places surrounding the locality you are looking for, just go though the ad’s in the newspaper. Check the distance from your office to the one mentioned in the ad using the direction service of Y! maps. By the time you go through all the ad’s from the paper you will get a rough idea of real estate prices in Bangalore.
You have the distance, route, contact number. What are you waiting for? Just call up and inquire. Chances are very high that by the time you call up, the Flat/Apartment would be already occupied by a person like you (who was early to get there). Go ahead keeping in mind how you will pay the owner just in case you like the place. A friend of mine missed a couple of opportunities as he had not carried his cheque book along.

bangalore_city

Traveling in Bangalore can be tuff at times (specially after evening) with rickshaw drivers demanding more money. Its all fine during the day. Try and get into rickshaws with a digital meter. That will surely save you some money & let you track the distance traveled. I haven’t had any bad experiences with the rickshaw drivers yet.

I know that I didn’t mention any of those sites on the web which have information about houses/apartments.
I tried a couple of sites like www.sulekha.com and www.adsbangalore.com. The former wont give the contact information of the person who posted the ad & the latter has very less options for sorting the search results as per the my convenience. In most cases people are are in shock when they receive an inquiry call about the flat/apartment. Either the ad posted is very old or the place is already sold out. A lot of stale content lays in these sites with no one really bothered to update them. Lastly, if nothing works for you, get in touch with a real estate broker. If the broker cant find a place as per your requirements ask for some contact details of other brokers & he will refer you to other brokers. They have a very good network & yes, be prepared to shell out a months’s rent or a healthy amount to pay the broker in case you find a house with their help.

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Facebook gets rid of ‘is’ from status updates

Posted on December 13, 2007 by Praveen

Finally, Facebook has removed the ‘is’ from status updates. Not really sure if the same is under testing. No updates yet on the Facebook Blog.

Flock was experimenting on removing the ‘is’ from status updates using their People Sidebar.

Want to turn off Facebook beaconing? Click here.

fb_status

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Flickr adds Picnik for photo editing

Posted on December 11, 2007 by Praveen

Flickr has integrated a kick ass online photo editing tool called Picnik. I’d love to edit my photos online without having the need to carry Photoshop/Gimp/<other photo editing s/w> along. Flickr has integrated picnik with two options, namely a free edition (which covers almost all the basic photo editing tools) and the premium edition. I’m a big fan of the ‘Auto-Fix’ button, I’m not an expert at photo editing but I feel that the auto-fix button does it (almost) all.
See the difference below.

pickik_flickr1

Feature list for photo editing includes basic actions like rotate, crop, red-eye removal, sharpen, colors & many more.
Apart from the basic features there is an option to create effects, enter text, add shapes, touch-up images & Frames.
Photo editing can be done in full screen mode as well.

Done with photo editing, what next? We get two options. Either replace the old image with the new one (this option is available only for Flickr pro users) or add the new image to the existing ones.
Make sure you have Flash installed (picnik is a flash application)

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