Hello all,

Facebook, the popular social networking website, has introduced a new type human verification system - using phone numbers to verify your "humanness" ( ) permanently, rather than using a CAPTCHA every single time.

Earlier, like in most other websites, you needed to enter a CAPTCHA code (an image verification system) for every single "questionable" action you took. This could get to be quite annoying, as a person will have to strain his eyes to read the scrambled text displayed by the image. And it also takes away precious time. Thus, an alternative had to be brought in soon.

Facebook has seemingly pioneered this alternative. They have introduced verification by phone. i.e. Instead of the CAPTCHA, you can confirm your phone number, and get rid of CAPTCHAs on Facebook for ever.

You’ll be asked to enter your mobile number, along with your country code. A message containing a verification code is SMSed to your mobile phone, which has to be entered in Facebook. And voila, bye bye CAPTCHA!

V

V

I don’t know how long this system has been existence, but it sure wasn’t there a couple of weeks back. This is a pretty good alternative to CAPTCHA, but gives rise to questions about privacy.

Also, the question arises - why can’t CAPTCHA be one time? If phone verification can be one time, why not CAPCTHA? The idea behind CAPTCHA at every step is to prevent bots from being unleashed after a human sign up.  Now, with phone verification, a bot creator (Homo sapien sapien) could sign up, verify using his mobile phone, and let loose the bots of hell! Facebook will have to look into this factor.

Anyway, most of the Facebook users will opt for the mobile verification, since it get rids of CAPTCHA permanently, a great relief while posting URLs or adding friends.

Technorati Tags: facebook, captcha, verification, mobile verification, phone verification, sms verification, verification code, captcha alternative

Hi all,

I was a bit late to catch up on this news, but Google is planning to release a Wikipedia-Squidoo style social content website. Christened "Knol", Google calls this a "tool" which will "encourage people who know a particular subject to write an authoritative article about it".

In short, Google is trying to chase an area, in which Wikipedia currently rules the roost. With a big difference - Google will be commercializing Knol. Which means that a user can opt for an advertisement, Google Adsense of course, on his/her article pages, and he/she gets a "substantial share" of the revenue.

(click to enlarge)

Now the debate raging throughout the web is whether Google will give unfair advantage to pages from Knol on their search results.

Extract from the Official Google Blog

"Our job in Search Quality will be to rank the knols appropriately when they appear in Google search results. We are quite experienced with ranking web pages, and we feel confident that we will be up to the challenge. We are very excited by the potential to substantially increase the dissemination of knowledge.

I hope that Udi Manber, the writer of this post in the Google blog means what he said in a positive sense.

Anyway, experts argue that the Google brand will give value to these Knols, which will encourage users to link to Knols, and thus organically increase the ranking of Knols. This is again a far cry, since this same image and reputation exists even for Wikipedia. Ok, so Google is set to earn profit for Knol, unlike Wikipedia, but does that really matter?

Meanwhile, I’ve contacted a couple of my friends, well placed at Wikipedia, to try and get invites to Google Knol. Hopefully, they might succeed, and give me an insider review.

Now, bloggers are opining that Google is going a step too far with Knol. To be exact, Duncan Riley of TechCrunch. He’s given quite a comprehensive insight into how Google could do foul play with Knol, but then, Riley is known for his hopelessly ridiculous What-If posts (not that his intuitions are not accurate, but sometimes, when he plays with the "hot" of the moment, he gets carried away; otherwise, his reviews are excellent).

"He’s right. Google is moving away from simply indexing the worlds content to being a content provider itself. Of course Google in response would argue that it is simply facilitating user generated content (like with Blogger), that ultimately they are the host as opposed to the creator, but it still competes with existing content providers, many of whom rely on Google search results for their living. Which takes us to question of search results.

(TechCrunch)

Well, pretty true that Google is moving towards being a content provider, so what? So whats the big deal? If Google doesn’t cash in unethically, then why the big hue and cry?

Well, I guess we’ll wait and see…. And then we’ll decide to knol, or not to knol…

Technorati Tags: google knol, knol, knowledge, social content, wikipedia, squidoo, advertisements, make money, write articles

Hi all,

The Online Games blog has listed a very good list of the top 10 3D Linux based games in a blog post which came up today. Typically, like these Top Blah Blah stuff get top clicks in socially promoted content, like in Digg, reddit etc., this Top 10 also got featured on the Digg front page. Owing to the fact that he/she’s hosted on Blogger, ths site hasnt crashed yet. The images are on flickr, so we can expect the blog to withstand the Digg effect.

Anyway, the reason why I point to this post is that, unlike all other Top 10 stuff, this post seems to be written with more than one aim.

• One aim is definitely to get onto Digg and receive a lot of Digg Juice
• Another aim, which I feel is relevant, is that everyone was downtrodding Linux for the fact that Linux didn’t have many good games to play. This seems like a plea from the heart of a hardcore Linuxian that Linux isn’t all bad.

The post was an eye opener for me. I, like many others, had believed that Linux didn’t sport many good games. But after seeing games like America’s Army and Nexiuz on the list, I’m forced to change my opinion. I never knew that these were available for Linux!

Ok, so I’m not a certified Linux geekie. I love my Photoshop and Dreamweaver and Flash and so on and so forth. I can’t part with all these… And GIMP is a substitute for MS Paint, not Photoshop!

But I don’t have anything against Linux, and I have Ubuntu on dual boot back home. But still, I never knew that there were such good games available for Linux.

So by this post, this guy got on the Digg front page, and enlightened 20,000 Digg visitors about the best games available on Linux. Keep up the good work buddy!

Technorati Tags: linux games, 3d games, 3d linux games, games, linux

Hi all,

This is the age of information. We get all information we require at the click of a few buttons or keys. And this information age lead to the rise of online news portals like Google News, Yahoo! News etc.  These portals enabled live access to news, from anywhere in the world, for free!

Yes, we’ve seen, experienced, and enjoyed the various news services… So when Arun started talking about Taazza during the BarCampBangalore5, held at IIM B, I thought I was in for a boring 1 hour… Boy, way I wrong!!!

Taazza, I found, as did the 30 others in the room, was not just a news portal, but it was a news portal of our dreams! Taazza combined a jazzy, Web 2.0, live look with hard hitting news organised and presented in a refreshingly new manner!

Fresh News, Refreshing Perspective. Their tag line proudly says. And I’ve got to admit, its pretty right! The service is updated as soon as one of the hundreds of news websites are updated. With a unique algorithm, they have taken into consideration several factors which define which story should come first.

The news has been tagged as Places, People and Quotes. This is one of the highlights of Taazza. Its pretty cool to do research! Imagine you have a story with, say, Mr Osama Bin Laden. But you’re a beginner, and you don’t know who Osama is. So, when you’re reading the story on Osama, you see in the People tab, "Osama Bin Laden". Click on that link, and it takes you to a page with background material on the person, previous stories, and pictures. How cool is that?!!

But you’ve think you’ve seen it all? Wait till you experience the Newsmap view! Click on the small icon with two rectangular boxes( ), and experience the master of all views! Experience the joy of reading a newspaper, just as it is, but in a live form, with the most relevant headlines selected automatically and placed according to relevance. You get news accurate to 2 minutes. You get references to blogs, to Wikis, to social networking sites. All mighty fast, thanks to their back end based on Ruby On Rails.

So what do you think? Why don’t you go ahead and check it out? Leave them a few comments as well! They’re planning to introduce new features, include personalisation, and start a web forum. I say, HatsOff to the Taazza team!

Technorati Tags: taazza, news, news portal, refreshing perspective, india news

Good morning all,

I’m writing this as a continuation to my Domain Name Realtors series. Josh Catone takes it from Associated Press that Whois searches might be soon retired by ICANN. Whois searches, if you don’t already know, enables anyone on the net to search for the details of an owner of a particular website.

I’ve picked out certain statements by Catone -

Privacy advocates in favor of shutting down the database feel that individuals should not be forced to give out private information — which is then potentially available to spammers or scam artists — in order to register a domain name on the Internet. Those who want to keep the Whois database operational, feel that it is a valuable tool for doing business and making sure you know who you are dealing with.

And AP -

Law-enforcement officials and Internet service providers use it to fight fraud and hacking. Lawyers depend on it to chase trademark and copyright violators. Journalists rely on it to reach Web site owners. And spammers mine it to send junk mailings for Web site hosting and other services.

Now lets examine this…

If Whois shuts down, then we’ll be left with no option to find out the details of the owner of a domain name. The privacy of a domain owner will be guaranteed.  But it will also mean that there is now way of tracking down owners of illegal websites. It will be good and bad for domain name realtors. The realtors will not be able to form a pattern of domain names based on the previous ones obtained by a particular person. But it will be good in the sense that no one will be able to track down a particular realtor, who happens to be the owner of many domains. He can deny being a realtor.

Another implication is the complete privacy of anyone starting a website. No one will know the details of the owner, until and unless he/she himself/herself decides to reveal it. Pretty neat eh? Terrorists are going to have a ball

Now what COULD be done, is that the amount of information revealed to public searchers be limited to name and email. Or make Whois a membership device - with only paid members being able to search. A total shut down of the Whois database will mean utter chaos, and heaven knows what.

Lets hope ICANN is reading…

Technorati Tags: WHOIS, ICANN, Whois shut down