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Mr iPod heads ‘Powergeeks’ list 2007-07-18 00:00:01 Renowned for publishing wacky lists such as ‘50 Dumbest Rockstar Purchases’ and ‘Fifty Worst Things Ever to Happen to Music’, Blender - one of the biggest music magazines in America - have now compiled a list of the 25 most influential people in Web music. Of course they are referring to these web-based innovators as ‘Powergeeks’!
Topping the list is Steve Jobs, the founding father of the iPod
.
Co-founders of MySpace, Tom Anderson and Chris DeWolfe, have taken the second place, while Chad Hurley and Steve Chen - creators of YouTube - in the third spot.
The top 5 is as follows:
Steve Jobs (co-founder of Apple)
Tom Anderson & Chris DeWolfe (co-founders of MySpace)
Chad Hurley and Steve Chen (founders of YouTube)
Doug Morris (Chairman/CEO of Universal Music Group)
Ryan Schreiber (Founder of web magazine Pitchforkmedia)
The entire list can be found here.
TAGS:
Jobs, iPod, MySpace, YouTube, lists, founder, Apple, Steve Jobs, Blender
Creative ways to kill time 2007-07-17 05:41:15 Surfing the Internet, as a hobby seems to overtaken activities such as collecting stamps, sketching and even reading as the primary way of spending leisure time. We have scourged the World Wide Web to bring to you a list of websites, which give you the exposure to explore new ideas, as well as partake in creative indulgences.
SODA PLAY: Created by Soda Creative Technologies Ltd and based on the theory that people like to alter gravity and physics, this website gives you complete control over virtual wire frame models and lets you make them do your bidding. Try it out; it is more fun than you can imagine!
HOW STUFF WORKS: With a tagline that says ‘Learn how Everything works’, this website is for those who are fascinated with how everything in the universe works. It is a virtual encyclopedia that covers everything right from hot rods and space travel to DNA science and Harry Potter.
ZAPAK: As India’s largest gaming portal, Zapak offers you hundreds of online single and multip
Post-millennium silver lining for music 2007-07-17 02:03:35 Rid yourself of the obvious associations. Silverchair is an Australian post-grunge band that broke into the music industry at the age of 14, when most of our voices were still unbroken. The band, over the years, has transcended their own style repeatedly, going boldly where almost no band has gone before. Where most of the bands their age followed a pretty formulaic strategy in writing Cobainesque songs, Silverchair experimented liberally, dabbling in strings and tabla and painting rich landscapes of sound.
Nowhere is this more manifest than in Diorama, an album that came out in 2002. The band you knew and either hated or loved for their angst-ridden vocals and alternative rock swallowed itself in what singer Daniel Johns referred to “a world within a world”. The album stands out when you consider their age and the fact that most bands, with members and histories much older, hardly reach these heights.
The album has heavy songs that are vaguely reminiscent of their earlier
We know that you ‘DNT HATE MOZILLA’ 2007-07-16 03:28:48 A couple of weeks ago, I had written a post on how to decimate the supremely irritating w32.USB worm that could infect your system. After doing a bit more research on it, I have stumbled upon another way to ensure its demise.
Here’s how it goes:
Download HiJackThis (it’s free) from http://filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/>
Run this program and click on the &lsquo
;Do the Scan only’ button and then immediately navigate to the list item that says “O4 - HKLM..PoliciesExplorerRun: [winlogon] C:heap41asvchost.exe C:heap41astd.txt”; check the box near it and click on ‘Fix’ button from the left bottom corner (Don’t close the Dialog yet).
Open Task Manager by right clicking on the Task Bar and choosing Task Manager or pressing Ctrl + Alt + Del.
End the process that says svchost.exe in your Computer User Name
Go back to HiJackThis! and click on the Main Menu button in the bottom center. Again, go through the step 2.
Now, close Task Manager and HiJ
My name is…and I’m an addict 2007-07-13 00:11:15 Straining blood shot eyes, quivering lips, trembling hands and attention that reconciles into a state of meditation. Whoa!! Hold that thought. The symptoms are all the same, but the source is surprisingly harmless enough, video games.
The term was recently coined by the media to isolate gamers as being compulsive absconders from reality. Arguments arose about the usage of the word addict
ion; some people contended that an addiction is a physiological reaction of dependence. Parents started worrying about their kids wasting time and space by compulsively improving hand-eye coordination in front of computers. Gamers started calling it as ‘clinical usage,’ for which, they gladly forsake food, job, and human interaction.
Worried by these debates and being a “good customer” for a long list of gaming companies, I wanted to know if I had a clinical dependency. After a really long minute of introspection, I knew what I was… an addict. The symptoms became clearer now and I knew Read more:hellip
Out of the box and in your face 2007-07-12 00:13:54 Social networking websites have become a rage on the World Wide Web. A phenomenon that has lured net users with possibilities of personal interactions, exchange of opinions, diffusion of innovations and even career changes. After social networking websites such as Classmates, SixDegrees and Friendster set the ball rolling during the early stages (1995-2002), innovative versions of the same like Orkut and MySpace joined in and carved their niches in the fields of entertainment, art, sports, dating and recruitments.
With over 30 million members worldwide, Facebook is now the latest craze in virtual social networking. The name of this website refers to the paper facebooks that depicts members of the community. Having earned the recognition of being the second most visited website, after MySpace, on the World Wide Web, Facebook is genuinely free to users and only generates revenue through advertising (banner ads and sponsored groups). Users can create profiles, upload images, and exchange
PDF vs. XPS 2007-07-10 00:18:40 Microsoft has come up with their own new royalty-free technology called XML Paper Specification (XPS), which is set to become the future specification for document viewing and creation in the Microsoft Operating Systems (OS). This has already been shipped with Microsoft VISTA OS. By providing better color conversion accuracy across devices, XPS emerges as a strong competitor to Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF) by supporting Windows Color System color management technology. It also includes a software raster image processor (RIP).
Now only time will tell us whether this specification will reduce the usage of PDF. Our fingers are certainly crossed.
TAGS:
XPS, PDF, technology, Microsoft, Adobe
A bite of the Apple 2007-07-10 00:04:27 A few days ago, Norwegian hacker - Jon Lech Johansen - claimed to have cracked the Apple
Inc. iPhone . Having gained an online cult status for his work on reverse engineering data formats, Johansen, better known as DVD Jon, is a self-trained software engineer.
Noted for involvement in the release of the DeCSS software and as a winner of the EFF Pioneer Award , DVD Jon has now turned his attention to Apple’s locked music format. Posting an article on his ‘So Sue Me’ blog , he claims to have “found a way to activate a brand new unactivated iPhone” without committing to an AT&T wireless plan.
Click here to read more about this Norwegian hacker’s exploits in the online world.
TAGS:
hacker, iPhone, music, blog, Apple
Crossing deadlines 2007-07-09 22:57:43 Deadlines are time limits given for performing particular tasks. Invariably as a member of the business development team, time has never been on my side. Recently I was faced with a situation at the workplace, which questioned my ability to balance time and work. It also got me thinking - “Is there a blueprint for beating deadlines?” To overcome my impending cup of woes, I did a bit of research on good ol’ Google.
Interestingly I found out that the usage of the word ‘deadline’ originated in 1864 during the Civil War. It was indicated as a real line, drawn in the dirt, restricting prisoners in Civil War camps. Many years later, emerging newspaper business gave a new meaning to the word by making journalists adhere to strict time limits in order to publish the latest news. In today’s world, deadlines have become an essential part of life itself, especially at workplaces. I realised that everyone fights time on a daily basis.
Employees at the petrol bunk have to ensure Read more:Crossing
‘DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE…’ 2007-07-05 21:25:38 Through the years I have been pestered by blood-sucking mosquitoes, bitten by vicious red ants and mauled by furry creatures, but nothing infuriates me as much as when I am attacked by computer worms. Having said that, this is the third time I have been attacked by a net worm called w32.USBworm, which gets propagated through USB drives. If the drive is infected, this consequently infects the machines, which auto plays the USB drive.
If your machine is infected with this particular worm, then you will get a message box titled “USE INTERNET EXPLORER YOU DOPE”. The message contained is far creepier. It says “DNT HATE MOZILLA BUT USE IE OR ELSE… “, leaving you to wonder if Big Brother is monitoring your online activities! It also bans you from accessing www.orkut.com and www.youtube.com websites.
So how does one trample this worm and send it to virtual oblivion? Here’s how…the infected machine will have a hidden folder c:heap41a. The folder will have some fil Read more:lsquo
SHOOT TO SELL 2007-07-20 04:10:19 Being an avid viewer of viral videos, it largely fascinated me to discover that the Web Video Marketing Council (WVMC) has authored what is believed to be the first white paper dedicated to the web video marketing categor - the white paper “Web Video Marketing: The Birth of a New Online Marketing Application“. The recent trends in marketing has witnessed online videos being viewed as an educational resource for professional marketing agents taking advantage of this emerging interactive marketing category.
Apart from being an insightful source of information on web video marketing strategies, the WVMC also offers guidelines, examples, membership details, campaigns and other helpful resources related to the video marketing industry.
It seems to me that the official kickoff for a surge in web video marketing has begun. Let’s wait and watch.
TAGS:
videos, video marketing, online videos, white paper, web marketing
SIT BACK, CLICK AND TRAVEL 2007-07-19 05:37:44 As much as I harbor intentions of seeing places that look like they fell out of dreams, I am not much of a traveler. Laziness and lack of time have prevented me from being one. However with the advent of travel technology, I can comfortably sit inside my room (or office cabin) and take virtual tours to exciting new places.
A few websites that take you along for adventurous rides…
Lonely Planet
Widely reputed as the most popular series of travel books among backpackers and low-budget travelers, Lonely Planet’s website offers the world for you to explore on your PC. The scope you have to embark on virtual tours on this website needs to be seen to be believed.
Egypt Voyager
Paying tribute to Egypt and its wondrous monuments, Egypt Voyager takes you on a trip through the land of the pharaohs. With a truckload of information sprinkled with interactive features, this website is sure hit for history buffs, as well as lazy travelers such as me.
Mysterious Places
This website is a personal
Go offline and watch a video 2007-07-22 22:53:47 Three easy steps to capture and save a flash video
from the Internet:
Enter the URL of the flash video on KeepVid - a downloader helper website - and also specify the source of the video. There is a list of video websites to choose from.
Right-click the ‘download’ link, which will appear below the URL
‘Save Target As’ and download the video
Note: KeepVid is a completely browser-based website, so you don’t have download any software. Having said, it only downloads the videos in their original formats. This means that you have to have an FLV player or a media conversion software to change the file extension from .flv to .mpeg/.wmv/.avi etc
Get your own FLV player here.
TAGS:
video, flash, download, KeepVid, flash video
Read more:watch
Big Bang 2020: Part 2 2007-07-25 08:14:13 With the free float of all major currencies it is implicit that a correction will happen. Wage growth rates of companies that offshore will show a southward trend, while the same for vendor countries will see double-digit growth annually. “Vendor” countries will see technology and infrastructure investments from “client” countries, which will put an upward pressure on local currencies. Some of these inflows can be managed through macro economic policy making, but the days of nappy feeding technology exporters are far behind us.
I will not extend this theory to conclude that outsourcing will stop. It will not. The “Vendor” countries will be the first movers still in the “level” playing field, because over the past 20 years of outsourcing they will have developed the scale and specialization to execute business out of any corner of the world qualitatively better and with a reasonable amount of value arbitrage. Enter then, the truly “Global Corporation”. By 2010, some Read more:Big Bang
Our Tube 2007-07-25 08:11:27 Last Monday, CNN held a political debate that featured Democratic candidates responding to videos from YouTube users. Moderated by CNN’s Anderson Cooper, this two-hour show broke cable news records by delivering the highest viewership for a debate among adults in the 18-34 category.
Television and web technology. Quite a pair, aren’t they?
TAGS:
YouTube, CNN, debate
Big Bang 2020: Part 1 2007-07-25 07:56:08 Will it be the web services bellwether Google or Microsoft, IBM, HP, TCS, Infosys or a new entity we have not heard of as yet that will breach the trillion-dollar market capitalization mark? Will we have to wait till 2020? Microsoft leads to race today as the world’s most valuable software technology firm with a market capitalization close to the $ 300 billion mark. Google has been the notional leader though, with its growth from the garage to $ 170 billion market cap within a decade. So will it be Google then?
Google has rushed in to fill a void as a search engine pioneer and quickly grew into being a web services supermarket. It has you and me in its pocket. But does it have the rest of our known world, enterprise applications, infrastructure and the rest of the commercial software world eating out of its hands? Guess not, and but who are the leaders in this space? IBM, HP, Microsoft, TCS, Infosys, Accenture and like-minded ones. Let’s collectively refer to them as the “vendor Read more:Big Bang
The truth behind agility: Part 1 2007-07-24 00:45:09 Being a cynic sometimes cripples the mind of beliefs, but nevertheless I have a few things that I am most willing to bet my life upon! I have firmly believed in two things. One being that multiple tests that grill you on the same topic repeatedly are conspiracies against mankind. And that all things, which you believe should be erased from planet earth, keep coming at you all your life.
The second point became quite clear to me when I previously landed a job in a Software Development environment. Quality Testing, White Box Testing, Black Box Testing, User Acceptance Testing have all toppled me over as many times as they could (conspiracy, remember??).
Generally softwares are developed using following methodology:
Get/Dream/create a project
Hire a bunch of engineers, then hire more
Put them on the project
Set up a date of when you want it to be launched
Whip them until they are dead/software is launched, or both
Throw a cheap launch party; maybe this step is optional
Start all over aga Read more:behind
Locked and loaded 2007-07-27 03:28:51 Do you find it hard to press CTRL+ALT+DEL, to lock your computer every time?
Then, here is a shortcut for you…
Right click an empty spot on the desktop, point to ‘New’ and click ‘Shortcut’
In the ‘Create Shortcut’ dialog box, copy the following into the ‘Type the location’ space of the item text box. (rundll32 user32.dll, LockWorkStation)
Click Next
In the ‘Type a name for this shortcut’, type ‘LOCK’ and click on ‘Finish’
Now every time you want to lock your system, just double click on the icon.
Read more:Locked
Monkey see, man do 2007-07-26 00:48:38 There is supposed to be an experiment performed by a few Japanese scientists with a penchant for the unknown and apparently not much else to do by way of work. It involved taking one monkey out of a lot of monkeys from different islands and training it to wash a sweet potato before eating it. Having done this, this monkey was then put back on the island it was taken from. Within a relatively short period of time, the monkey had every other monkey washing its own sweet potato before eating, which is all very communitarian and cute, but wait, there’s more.
Within a significant period of time, monkeys on other islands who had no access to these monkeys were washing their sweet potatoes. While the scientists attempted to theorize how this could have happened, in some other part of the world, another bunch of scientists were performing similar experiments on how earthworms respond to light when they recognized a similar phenomena.
Finally, the theory they put together was that when on
As the worm turns… 2007-07-30 00:25:31 With the W32.USB worm creeping and crawling to net users worldwide, a variety of technology-based blogs and anti-virus websites are offering solutions to battle it. A colleague of mine has even uploaded two posts on this blog that offer a remedy for the worm.
‘Dnt hate Mozilla but use IE or else’
We know that you ‘Dnt hate Mozilla’
Spyware Guide - a renowned and comprehensive online hub dedicated to covering all aspects of challenges faced by PC users today - have this to say about the dreaded worm.
TAGS:
dnt hate Mozilla, use IE or else, W32.USB, spyware, blog
Read more:turns
, hellip
BBC set to revolutionize TV programming 2007-07-29 22:50:59 All set to revolutionize the way viewers watch television, the BBC launched an online service on July 27 that allows people to download television programs from the last week. Comparing this new innovative service with the first colour television broadcasts in the 1960s, BBC Director General Mark Thompson announced the arrival of the ‘on-demand’ iPlayer through which viewers can choose from 400 hours of television programming, between 60-70 percent of the total TV output.
Available to Microsoft XP users in Britain, the iPlayer is free, but people will only be allowed to save temporary copies to their computer. In this day and age where technology has made television more user friendly than ever before, BBC has just upped the ante on providing flexibility for its viewing audience.
I imagine that other broadcasters such as Channel 4 and ITV in Britain will now try to innovate the similar services that they offer. That’s what I love about broadcast technology; the urge for them to c
They’ve got mail…new and improved, apparently 2007-08-01 00:05:11 Both my social and professional lives have been streamlined through emailing services. Ever since I got my first email ID in hotmail.com, I have scheduled appointments, sent documents, written polite refusals, got in touch with old friends - all through the wonderful world of web mails. Having been a hotmail user for over three years, I jumped the bandwagon to Google’s premier mail services - Gmail - only as recently as eight months ago. The value add-on features in Gmail such as online chatting, file transfers and quicker mail-enabled services caught my attention and retained me as an avid user.
Yesterday, Indiatimes (digital venture of Times Internet Ltd) announced the launch of their new mail service with Web 2.0-driven technology and functionalities. Simple, futuristic, fast, intuitive and collaborative. Indiatimes claims these traits as being ground realities of their services. To get rid of bandwidth issues, Indiatimes have also introduced Ajax and HTML versions, for both high Read more:improved
eMusic learns to rock 2007-07-31 21:22:26 In what would be a major boost to the Independent music scene, the second-largest online music seller in the US – eMusic – is on the of announcing a deal with AT&T that will allow cellphone users to buy songs from independent labels through their cellphones.
The arrangement with AT&T Mobile Music will make millions of obscure songs made by not-so-popular yet talented musicians readily available just as easily as the more conventional songs.
Songs that are bought through eMusic are immediately downloaded to the customer’s cellphone with a duplicate copy made available to download to the customer’s PC at no extra charge.
TAGS:
music, cellphone, users, AT&T, songs
Kicking up an online buzz 2007-08-05 22:31:17 What happens when sports collides with web technology? As yesterday’s events have proven, history occurs. Premier English football club Manchester United have recruited nine-year-old Rhain Davis after his grandfather presented a four-minute video clip of the kid’s football prowess in an Under-10 side in Brisbane, Australia.
You may ask, how come the footage generated enough interest to warrant recruitment? Well, apart from the kid’s unique football skills, this video clip has also been setting YouTube ablaze by garnering over “three million” hits.
Now Rhain Davis has moved thousands of miles from Brisbane to Cheshire, with his family to kick up a storm on the football field.
Click here to read more about how YouTube has introduced to the sporting world - a future star.
TAGS:
sports, football, video, Rhain Davis, YouTube
Read more:Kicking
, online
Of magicians and physicists 2007-08-10 06:26:30 More often than not, physicists are an ambitious lot, desperately trying to make sense of gravity, equilibrium and other such laws that govern our daily lives. Recently UK physicists have claimed to be able to create “incredible levitation effects” by manipulating the Casimir force. Of course, street magicians have perfected the art of foiling the masses with their so-called levitation techniques, but as it has been revealed, these amount to nothing more than creating illusions.
TV celebrities such as David Blaine and Criss Angel have beguiled audiences all over the world with their defiant stands against gravity, not by manipulating physics but rather by playing willful tricks on our minds! However those white suits-clad men in good ol’ England have apparently reversed a natural force, which causes tiny particles to stick to one another, thereby enabling them to create a sort of levitation.
Their findings, which have been reported in this month’s edition of New Journal of Phys
Archie gets a dose of Desi 2007-08-08 04:31:48 Meet Raj Patel - the first Indian to inhabit Riverdale town, a quaint little place that can only be found between the pages of Archie
comics. The teenager Patel, modeled by veteran Archie creator Fernando Ruiz, is touted to make cameo appearances in the next three issues.
Despite Indians’ rooted cultural history with both graphic novels and comic strips, they are still portrayed as stereotypical characters or goofy caricatures. Case in point, Dilbert, Doonesbury and various other comic strips that show Indians as being geeky and outsourced or superstitious and prone to chattering endlessly about spiritual philosophies! Even in visual mediums (television and cinema), Indians are often seen as characters who find it immensely difficult to cope with western culture.
Now, enter Raj Patel. Young, energetic, and obsessed with films. He even walks around with a camcorder, recording the crazy adventures pursued by Archie and the gang! According to Rik Offenberger, the public relations coordi
Know your identity 2007-08-08 04:18:32 So what is identity
management? According to Wikipedia, it is the management of the identity life cycle of entities. As far as I am concerned, identity management is the process through which authorized identities are implemented in line with established policies.
Recently, I had a bird’s eye view regarding its usage in daily corporate activities. An employee at MGL had quit and joined a different company. I sat inside my cabin and observed the swift precision and quick time in which the system administrators at my office changed the username and password to the leaving employee’s system. I was told that unless personal access is denied, ex-employees could penetrate the internal networks, which would lead to a whole lot of mess.
Net users come into direct contact with a variety of corporate applications and e-business interfaces; an individual at the corporate workplace generally possesses several digital identities. Therefore the need to manage and control authorized identities be
French tube connection 2007-08-13 23:57:08 In September 2006, Marly-Gomont - a sleepy town located north of Paris with 423 inhabitants – felt the viral video wave sweeping through its scenic landscapes. Kamini, the hometown rapper, wrote a song, which was a humorous recounting of the daily life in rural France and forwarded the music video to numerous music industry giants. The song - Marly-Gomont –featured lyrics about cows, goats, tractors and the difficulties faced as a member of the only black family in town. The French
media quickly lapped it up as the video garnered more than 2.3 million hits since it was first posted on YouTube. Pretty soon, the young French rapper bagged a record deal with RCA, a feature article on Time magazine and a new career!
Yilmaz Karamana started his career as a Turkish chef in the 18th district of Paris. And then a friend shot an amateur video that featured Karamana dancing and rapping in the restaurant, coaxing his customers to order the kebabs (“Eat kebab, eat kebab, my friend”!). The Read more:connection
Raising a toast 2007-08-13 23:10:48 Last weekend, I attended a corporate dinner party with a few of my colleagues. Having successfully implemented a new service offering from MGL, we decided to celebrate with a few drinks and a whole lot of exotic culinary dishes! Being the designated teetotaler, I was halfway through with my glass of brightly coloured fruit punch when one of my colleagues hinted that I needed to raise a toast.
Ten seconds later, there I stood with yellow stains on my shirt and a silly expression on my face. I am not too much into physical humour, so this was purely unintentional. But gathering from the laughter that resounded in the restaurant, I got the feeling that the humour wasn’t lost. What happened was that I tripped on the chair and spilled the drink on myself while making the toast. I didn’t know whether to stand or sit, but I certainly knew that ending up licking the carpet is not the way to go!
This embarrassing incident urged me to fine tune myself on how to raise a toast. So back I went Read more:Raising
MGLUNPLUGGED.COM 2007-08-17 06:27:35 We, at MGL, indulge in blogging for a variety of reasons. Some of us enjoy creative writing as a way of escaping the burden of constantly staring at our computer screens. Others blog since they believe that knowledge sharing is the only that the world will learn to be a better place (I can personally vouch for the existence of such people at MGL!). Mostly because we have this urge to update each and every one of you about what is IT and what is not.
I have this sneaking suspicion that we have taken our interest in blogging to another level.
So what does this all mean, you might ponder. Well, MGL Unplugged has dot com-ed itself out of wordpress into a private domain.
Do visit us here and remember to stay tuned and unplugged.
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