July 2006

I am sure very few people know about the existence of this site. As the name suggests, this site helps you in finding sound effects and musical instrument samples on the Web. It is a Web search engine, like Google and AltaVista, but with a focus on sounds. Snapshot of different search engines and their search focus: The search results in FindSounds can be filtered based on the following criteria: File Format : AIFF, AU, WAVE Number of Channels : Mono, Stereo You can filter more results using the sampling rate and size of the file. Few query examples can be found at this link I wonder why ...

Few days back I happened to see the statistics for different Instant Messengers in Techcruch. Google talk was way behind in 4th place holding just 1% of the total IM market. Here is the statistics for the month of May 2006. MSN is still way ahead of Yahoo and Google. However this count doesn’t include the number of people using Google chat embedded in GMail. I myself know many people who use this route. But again, even if we include this count , the market share for Google Talk is very less. Google talk is now being tested with many features requested by the users of GTalk. This is what the latest post on Google talk says: We've been working hard to add your top-requested features to Google Talk, such as fast and reliable file transfer, and the ability to send and receive voicemail messages for free. We've even created a fun little feature for you music lovers. This link has more details on the new features. With the exception of Voicemail message, the other 2 features are already there in MSN and Yahoo IM. File Transfer This is supposed to be the top requested feature by GTalk users. With this feature, you can send files from the chat window. Additionally you can share photos, videos and documents, and the best thing is that there is no restriction on file size of file type.

Few days back I stumbled upon an interesting website. Incidentally its name was “StumbleUpon”. It’s an application which helps you to find new sites of your interest. StumbleUpon lets you "channelsurf" the best-reviewed sites on the web. It is a collaborative surfing tool for browsing, reviewing and sharing great sites with like-minded people. This helps you find interesting web pages you wouldn't think to search for. It’s not just surfing the best reviewed site, you can even rate on the Stumbled sites. Rating these sites shares them with your friends and peers – you will automatically 'stumble upon' each other’s favorites sites. In effect, all the members collectively share the best sites on the web. How to Install ? If you are using Firefox, download the extension from this link: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/138/ (If you are not using Firefox, it’s high time you did ) Recently, support for IE is also added. You can get the installable from this link : http://www.stumbleupon.com/StumbleUpon.exe Once the toolbar is installed, click on “Start Stumbling”

Wondering about the title ? Rappai is the name of the champion eater who is currently resident in Thrissur. Also known as ‘Theetta' (monstrous eater), this guy shot to fame after he took on a Thrissur hotel that offered an all-you-can-eat buffet. He polished off everything in the kitchen, and finally the hotel owners asked the police to intervene !! Once college students took sweet revenge on a restaurateur with Rappai’s help. He took an “unlimited meals” coupon and emptied the day’s food -- three buckets full of rice, one bucket of fish curry and 10 kg cooked meat -- in no time. Since then, Mr. Rappai's presence has been the staple of eating competitions across the state. He has been the mascot of eating and good food, and many hotels in Thrissur display his photograph !! Mr. Rappai can have 750 idlis or 25 kg. halwa, or drink 25 litres `pal payasam' at one go. At the end of it, he would say, "Still hungry!" Now wondering why is he in news ?

Search engines are the entry points for most sites. Recently I found 2 tools which scan the search results and protects you from visiting sites that spread malicious viruses or spyware. 1. Scandoo Scandoo integrates with all the popular search engines i.e. Google, MSN and Yahoo. Recently support for Ask.com was also added. When you search for a keyword using any of these search engines, Scandoo other than displaying the search results adds a site safety icon for each search result link.

If you are tracking a lot of blogs and additionally also leave comments in the blog, one problem you always face is tracking these comments. You never know if anybody has replied to your comment unless you bookmark the site and open it again at regular intervals. But again how many website posts can you keep track of ? coComment is a innovative application to get over this mess. coComment allows users to track comments they’ve left on blogs in one centralized place. In effect, CoComment keeps a blog of your distributed comments. The main feature of the service is much like an email inbox - a place which centralizes all the comments you've made on different sites, shows you the follow-ups to those comments, and keeps them neatly organized and easy to follow for you.

Tiger knocks a 4 iron shot in the hole from 209 yards, for an eagle on #14 at the British Open on Friday !! Brilliant ! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGZtkEzC7fw

Microsoft has released instructions for users planning to upgrade to Windows Vista.The upgrade options are dependent on the version of Windows that you are currently running. The table below outlines the upgrade options mapped to the different Windows Vista editions The two upgrade options available are described below:

Odeo is a podcast service that lets users search, find, and subscribe to podcasts, as well as a tool to create your own podcasts with minimal hardware. I am not much of a podcaster or a podreceiver. One feature that I liked in Odeo was the ablility to send voice messages. You can embed the HTML code in your blog/website, like the one below. Visitors can use this to leave a voice comment rather than a textual comment. You can record the voice,

In the late 1990s, IBM began development of what we now know as Eclipse. In the mid-1990s, a number of powerful commercial development environments were available; Microsoft Visual Studio was becoming a more general-purpose tools platform. A number of Java-based IDEs were also coming into play, including Symantec's Visual Café, Borland's JBuilder, IBM's Visual Age for Java, and others. Primary Goal The platform began development by Object Technology International in 1998 (a subsidiary of IBM purchased in 1996, now known as the IBM Ottawa Lab) to address the problems raised by customers that dealt with the cohesiveness of IBM software tooling. Customers complained that IBM's tooling looked like it came from different companies and didn't work together. IBM wanted to establish a common platform for all their development products to avoid duplicating the most common elements of infrastructure. This would allow customers using multiple tools built by different parts of IBM to have a more integrated experience as they switched from one tool to another Beginning of the phenomenon In November 1998, the OTI team was given the go ahead because they had experience building several generations of IDEs. Also, another IBM team was going to build the first product on this new platform.