Blogging India

Hi all,
    Its time for yet another Sardarji joke! Enjoy. But a short disclaimer first. This joke is not intended to mock sardars in real life. No offense meant to any person, community or religion! Sardars are one of the cleverest breeds of Indians!

A sardar is sitting in a bar sipping a Whiskey. He notices a gorgeous blonde sitting by herself in a corner.

As he was getting up to talk to her, the bar tender said: “Hey, don’t bother, she is a lesbian!”.

The sardar replied: “Lesbian or no lesbian, I can get them all.”

Then walking across to the blonde, the sardar said in a very sexy voice: “Hi there. Which part of Lesbia are you from?”

[tags]sardarji jokes[/tags]

Hey again all,
    Google Blogoscoped reports that Google Images has introduced 2 new search categories – facial search, and news search. Though still not available by API, these features can be accessed by appending a tiny query to the end of the Google search URL.

• Face Search – Now you can search for only faces! It seems that Neven Vision, a company acquired by Google in 2006, specializes in facial recognition, and thus adds the feature of face search to Google Images.

  A Google Images Face search can be done by appending the code “&imgtype=face” without the quotes, into the search URL. i.e. Go to Google Images, search for something, then append the URL with the code given above, and hit enter. You get a facial search done!

  eg : I searched for “rocket” using Google Images. I get the following URL -
  http://images.google.co.in/images?q=rocket
  &btnG=Search+Images&svnum=10&um=1&hl
  =en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla
  %3Aen-US%3Aofficial

  

  Then, I appended the URL with the query &imgtype=face to make the URL -
  http://images.google.co.in/images?q=rocket
  &btnG=Search+Images&svnum=10&um=1&hl
  =en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla
  %3Aen-US%3Aofficial&imgtype=face

  

  Check it out for yourself!

• News Search – apparently, you can search for the latest images which have come up in the news. The working is exactly the same as face search, and you can do it by appending a small query -
  &imgtype=news

  Simple and handy

    Yep yep yep Thats it from us. Yet again, Google brings in ultimate innovation! I wonder when Gmail starts giving Face Recognition Passwords

[tags]google, google images, face search, face recognition, news search, news images[/tags]

Hi all,
    Google launched, last week, a security blog. Titled Google Online Security Blog, this weblog is intended at fighting malware and spyware, and making people aware of the security threats online.

Online security is an important topic for Google, our users, and anyone who uses the Internet. The related issues are complex and dynamic and we’ve been looking for a way to foster discussion on the topic and keep users informed. Thus, we’ve started this blog where we hope to periodically provide updates on recent trends, interesting findings, and efforts related to online security. Among the issues we’ll tackle is malware, which is the subject of our inaugural post.

Malware — surreptitious software capable of stealing sensitive information from your computer — is increasingly spreading over the web. Visiting a compromised web server with a vulnerable browser or plugins can result in your system being infected with a whole variety of malware without any interaction on your part. Software installations that leverage exploits are termed “drive-by downloads”. To protect Google’s users from this threat, we started an anti-malware effort about a year ago. As a result, we can warn you in our search results if we know of a site to be harmful and even prevent exploits from loading with Google Desktop Search.

Unfortunately, the scope of the problem has recently been somewhat misreported to suggest that one in 10 websites are potentially malicious. To clarify, a sample-based analysis puts the fraction of malicious pages at roughly 0.1%. The analysis described in our paper covers billions of URLs. Using targeted feature extraction and classification, we select a subset of URLs believed to be suspicious for in-depth investigation. So far, we have investigated about 12 million suspicious URLs and found about 1 million that engage in drive-by downloads. In most cases, the web sites that infect your system with malware are not intentionally doing so and are often unaware that their web servers have been compromised.

    The basic advices are the same -

• Keep software updated
• Avoid visiting untrustworthy websites
• Use antivirus programs, and keep them up to date
• Never give out personal information on the net

    I believe that this blog will serve as a basement for all future Google security updates. Its a great initiative by the company, and very much on time!

[tags]google online security[/tags]

Hi all,
    The Nintendo WiFi service which allows Nintendo DS users to play wirelessly against each other has hit 5 million users, reports Cnet.

    The engine has over 5 million users, and more than 200 million games have been played already.

    Cnet reports that though there has been a rush of next generation video game systems like Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360, Nintendo DS is still the best selling of all game consoles, having sold 4,70,000 units in April!

    You got a DS?

[tags]nintendo ds, next generation gaming consoles[/tags]

Hi all,
    Found this at Digg. A cool ad on www.grou.ps calling for career oppurtunities for PHP coders in their company. It can be found here. It goes like this -

PHP Engineer (ref #001)

$q1 = Are you a master PHP Ninja?
$q2 = Excel at object oriented PHP, MVC pattern, Smarty template engine, caching
practices and PEAR?
$q3 = Familiar with CSS, Javascript,  XHTML, MySQL?
$q4 = Experienced with Zend Studio, Subversion, wikis?
$q5 = Love open source? Aware of RSS, XML-RPC, web services, memcached and all
other geeky stuff?

$q6 = Keen to learn much more?
$q7 = Ready to move to Silicon Valley?

if ( $q1 && $q2 && $q3 && $q4 && $q5 &&
$q6 ) {

    echo “YOU SHOULD <strong>JOIN</strong> US! drop
your resume to contact@grou.ps <br />”;
    echo “please include some php and javascript code snippets or
refer us to an open source project you’ve”;
    echo “already made. tell us our coding mistakes in this call
and let us know what you know about”;
    echo “the new javascript 1.7, mysql 5.2 and php 6. thanx,”;

    exit;
}
else {
    die(“maybe next time…”);
}

    Heh heh heh

[tags]placements, php placements, grou.ps, funny ad[/tags]

Hi all,
    There’s this revolutionary new service named mGinger available for Indians, or anybody on the Indian subcontinent, with a mobile phone. It might be made global later on… Whats the service? To keep it short and simple, you get paid to mobile…

    Thats right! You get paid to use your mobile!

    How does it work? You sign up at mGinger with your usual personal details, and mobile phone number. mGinger sends you SMSes from sponsors, which you read. For every SMS you read, you get paid. You can select your interests so as to restrict the advert SMSes to only of topics of your interest!

    Handy eh? Its been causing a WAVE of media attention all around India! They say that you get paid 20 Paise per SMS. i.e. 0.2 Rupees. Which is… Well… 41 Rupees make a dollar, so, $0.005 USD.  Yeah, half a penny. Half a penny per SMS.

    And you make 10 Paise per SMS read by your referrals, and so on. So, the typical teen/youth thinks “I can read 100s of SMSes per day! I can sure earn thousands!”

    Small problem. Theres a maximum limit of 10 SMSes per day. Thats the maximum. So you may receive from 0 to 10 SMSes per day. Imagine that you receive 10 SMSes per day, still, you make only Rp 2 per day! Which is like only Rs 60 ($1.5) per month! That is, IF YOU GET 10 SMSes per day!

    Honestly, why waste your time? Thousands have already signed up! Are they nuts?

    No, this post was NOT to encourage users to use mGinger. It was an honest to goodness review of the service. I’ve signed up for a day now, and I havn’t got a single sponsored SMS yet! At this rate, I’ll be stuck at something like a dollar (Rs 40) at the end of the year!

    Think twice before you sign up! Why waste your personal details, for something so little and measly? I can’t believe that the media has been rooting for this absolutely stupid service! I believe that this is all a scam. It proves how much India has to learn from the web! I do hope that people open their eyes before jumping in the next time!

[tags]mginger, get paid, paid SMS, SMS, get paid to mobile, paid mobile, get paid to read SMS, india, earn money india, mginger scam[/tags]

Hi all,
    I came across an article at The Marketing Pilgrim, written by David Vogelpohl, titled “Tin Foil Hat Alert: Is Google Indexing Your DNA?“.

    The article talks critically about Google’s acquisition of 23andme, a privately owned DNA sequencing enterprise. In other words, a website working towards Google’s aim. And they’re taking the Mickey off Google because a co-founder of 23andme is Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brin’s wife.

    They also talk about Google prying into our private lives. Actually, they’ve got it all wrong.

    Google’s aim is simple. Sequence every part of the Human 46 chromosomal DNA and find out which part deals with what, and make it available on the internet for searching. By doing this, Google allows people to compare their DNA’s with the Google database for diseases or other disorders, thereby making DNA scanning free of cost, and easy to do. It also allows information inherited traits, ancestry and genealogy.

    No one’s asking you to submit your DNA on the internet. No body is forcing you to give your DNA. Its in no way NECESSARY to check your DNA with the Google databases.

    23andMe along with Google can make milestones in the biotechnology world! Here, David is making implications to Google’s involving in a bad guy scenario like in Michael Crichton’s book, Next, doing biogenetical crimes. Yeesh! Fiction is Fiction buddy!

[tags]23andme, Google, genetics, genetical search, DNA search, DNA indexing[/tags]

Hello all,
    As I was researching some material for my previous post on Moser Baer, I did the usual Googling for Moser Baer, and to my complete astonishment, I got this Malware warning from Google when I clicked on the displayed search result.

click to enlarge

    The search result on clicking, redirected me to this warning page, instead of the Moser Baer website.

    So I read a bit up on such warnings and I found an explanation for the warning on a Google Web Search Help Center page. To my further surprise, the page said -

We want our users to feel safe when they search the web, and we’re continuously working to identify dangerous sites and increase protection for our users. This warning message appears with search results that we’ve identified as sites that may install malicious software on your computer.

    You HAVE to be kidding me! Or is this another outdated April’s Day prank? One of the leaders in Optic Disks in the world, and the pioneer in HD DVD disc manufacturing, has malware on their corporate website?!!

    Well, I trust Google to a certain extreme, thus I sat down and went through every bit of code in the Moser Baer website. Nope. No malicious scripts. No unsolicited codes. No malware. No spyware. Not even ads!

    What is Google playing at? Does this mean that the feel good programmes by Google need a little more in depth viewing and manual touch?

[tags]moser baer, malware warning, google, google malware, moser baer malware, search malware, malware[/tags]

Hi all,
    Indian Television reports that Moser Baer India has made a breakthrough in technology development in next generation optical media formats. The company, along with recently acquired OM&T, the former R&D subsidiary of Philips, has developed what it says is the world’s first high speed 8x Blu-ray disc (BDR).

    The BDR market worldwide is witnessing development in the 1x-4x recording speeds discs. Moser Baer, with its innovative technology, demonstrated new benchmarks in 1x-8x discs. This is the first of its kind in the world, is supposed to be yet another milestone for optical data reading, and the BDR revolution in India.

    End users can now have a faster media that can record a 2-hour transmission equivalent of HD (High Definition) quality data in less than 15 minutes. The next generation formats have a capacity ranging from 15 GB to 50 GB and offer more than five to ten times the data storage capacity of standard DVD media. These next generation formats offer an ideal solution for reliable business backup, including medical and government imaging, photography, videography, as well as high definition video recording.

    Moser baer VP R&D and engineering Giriraj Nyati says, “This is a significant landmark for us. We are very proud that an Indian Company has once again set global benchmarks in the optical media market. Our intensive in-house R&D focus coupled with the capabilities of OM&T will ensure that we continue to set new global benchmarks for the industry. This is inline with our strategy of transforming Moser Baer from a technology recipient into a technology developer and innovator.”

    We can expect to witness blazing fast high definition movies very soon…

[tags]moser baer, high definition discs, bluray disc, BDR, high speed BDR, 8x[/tags]

Hi all,
    Check out this funny animation Cheers

[tags]funny, animation, gifs, cows fly[/tags]