Tag Archives: TECH

Windows 7 sucks

Posted by toalakan-web on December 19, 2010 None comments

Yep true when my laptop was good when all was new but typical to Windows after a year I’m really hating it.I have about 4GB of memory and still my system is running crazy slow and I don’t even have any of my development tools running.

The last patches that Microsoft pushed has literally screwed up my Wireless network connection since after every time I  hibernate and restart it just wouldn’t connect, either I will have to restart the system or the router to get it working.

BTW I do have a Iphone4 and it works perfectly without any issues..I have never experienced a lost wireless connection with that phone, but still ATT sucks.

I’m seriously considering buying a MAC for home use because of this if I can get rid of this laptop.

Amazon S3 isn’t for everyone

Posted by toalakan-web on February 9, 2010 None comments

Its always been a pain to maintain a  backup of all photos and personal documents.When I heard about Amazon S3 cloud storage with its cheap pricing structure, I was in heaven finally a place I can store my data for eternity for cheap.

But when I started to move my data to Amazon S3 , the reality struck me hard was that

  1. my so called broadband connection which boasts a 512kbps upstream took me more than an hour to push a 200MB file and I have about 10gb of data.
  2. Most of all I can’t even switch to FIOS internet (Verizon) which has better up stream because they don’t have coverage in my locality.
  3. None of the freeware S3 sync applications like S3Fox, cloudberry and S3 Explorer support bandwidth limiting capability on up stream. So they basically occupy the pipeline until the upload is done annoying my room mate who was  trying to figure what the hell’s happening with the connection for like 2 days.

So until I get a better internet connection or smart app that can push data like torrents clients, I will not be able to use Amazon S3 as my primary back up storage.

Amazon S3 back up or file storage isn’t for people who are stuck in the cable world like me.

Where is bi.ng and Ap.pl?

Posted by toalakan-web on December 15, 2009 None comments

Just read the news that the mighty Google has released its own URL shortener tool http://goo.gl which is available with Google Toolbar and  FeedBurner according to press release.I’m sure the tool will slowly be used by all Google products and may be ship with Android and Chrome OS which would be cool.

Pretty much every IT companies have started their own URL shortener web apps. The next question is when Microsoft(http://bi.ng/) and Apple(http://ap.pl) are going to release their URL shortener tools?

Orkut No Donut for you..You can only add upto 250 favorites

Posted by toalakan-web on November 1, 2009 1 comments

Well who ever has used Orkut are aware the blog post title message which shows up when Orkut’s server are too busy to respond.

But this time no donuts for the whole Orkut team since they have set a hard limit of only 250 video links per profile which I hate personally hate and I’m not even a heavy user of Orkut. Here is the message I get when I add a video:

You can only add upto 250 favorites. Please remove some favorites in order to add new ones.

Looks like the Orkut network is going backwards instead of moving forward by implementing this kind of limit.  Considering India being one the major market for India this is a really bad move since Indian music industry is driven by the film industry with each having 5 songs minimum.  Don’t ask me why we need 5 songs in middle of a movie that’s a whole different story.

The reality is every orkut user bookmarks(embeds) all kind of youtube Indian film songs and this limit is going to make the users move to a different network. Wake up Orkut..

Here are some suggestions Orkut might do to improve the videos section which I personally used to like:

  1. Will it be too hard to create a playlist of all videos so we can listen to all of our favorite song.
  2. Has it even considering enabling search for the videos? It makes me wonder if this product is really from Google.
  3. If a youtube video has been disabled can it at least remove them by default instead of occupying my limited video library limit.

Considering all this downfalls of Orkut I do think may be I should join Facebook but I use these social networks to keep in touch with friends which Orkut does it ok for me.

May be I should depend more on my blog running on WordPress more where I control my app/data than letting them control me what I can and can’t do.

Universal Mobile chargers finally..

Posted by toalakan-web on October 25, 2009 None comments

CNET news reported that the International Telecommunication Union a branch of UN has decided to go for universal mobile phone chargers.

In a world where each mobile phone from same manufacture have different chargers working this is a welcoming sign.

I also hope ITU gets in to and standardize the chargers for all portable devices as well. I’m tired of carrying individual chargers for my mobile, Blue Tooth headset and mp3 player. If we can standardize the laptop chargers that will be awesome too..

The only reason I’m worried is it wont happen soon enough. Since this is something driven by a branch of UN and we all know how long it would take for all countries to accept these protocols. Lets hope all the manufactures fall in line and accept it soon…

At least I’m happy that some where in distant future that there will less chargers lying around in my house.

How to get Exclusive online Indicators

Posted by toalakan-web on November 6, 2008 1 comments

Exclusive online indicators is one of the features that Yahoo messenger power users get which can be used to display those special status images in Web and Messenger. Since Yahoo power user is one of the top 5 search keyword that get users to my site I decided to reveal a simple to get the web Exclusive Online indicator.

The exclusive online indicators are just better images nothing more than that. The online status indicator was their with the old Yahoo profile which got removed with new beta profile and I initially thought they removed it to prevents bots from getting user id. But every ones surprise they just hide this feature under the carpet and re-marketed the same Indicator with new images as a special feature for power users. One good marketing strategy which created the buzz..

Well not to bore you here is the URL that you would have to change to get online status of a user.

http://presence.msg.yahoo.com/online?u=XYZ&m=g&t=14

Just pass the user id to the U query string and t is an integer (0 – 16) and viola you get the beautiful icons. If you have too much time then you can create your own icons and switch the image.

Well here is something people should know about this service. The service will return an online status for an user when

  1. User is online in any of the messenger.
  2. User is invisible to a particular user but visible to other users. Yes the stealth setting are not stealth enough its like covering an elephant head with a paper towel and leaving the other area open.

It returns the offline when users is offline or invisible for every one.

Portable apps is gr8

Posted by toalakan-web on September 18, 2008 1 comments

I was looking around for a U3 drive to buy and I found out there is an open source portable application loader called Portableapps which is gr8 and has all my favorite applications running directly from the drive.

It can even run from my mobile…:) I’m on my way to order a non U3 drive…

Yahoo Power User

Posted by toalakan-web on August 19, 2008 1 comments

Today I got an email from the Yahoo messenger team stating that I have fallen in to the category of power user usin yahoo messenger which basically means I stay online more often then other users and annoy my friends :) .

As a way to thank me for using Yahoo messenger they are providing me with these new features which I’m happy to accept. You can also find the benefits of being a power user @ the following link.

  • 24/7 customer care. Not interested I’m already a premium user I pay for service so I better get 24/7.
  • Exclusive Online Indicators. Nice features and I have already added the online indicator to my sidebar. Check it out its nice. I will have to test this feature since I don’t want bots to IM me using the link. It would have been if they have given me an encrypted URL that hides my User ID.
  • Get exclusive icons and VIP recognition from friends. Not really fun but fine.
  • Access to Yahoo messenger closed beta programs before it goes public which again I get since I’m a premium Yahoo mail user. Not fun here as well.

Things that I would like to receive from Yahoo for being a power user/premium mail user which I have been asking for a long time.

  1. No more ads in my Yahoo messenger.
  2. No more ads in any email that I receive from my contacts who don’t have a premium mail account.
  3. No ads anywhere period.
  4. Online chat log storage similar to Gtalk. Well this should be available to all users.

Yahoo Message Archive Decoder (Yammy)

Posted by toalakan-web on August 13, 2008 Comments Off

I have always wondered why Yahoo didn’t implement a message archiver that exports the message and a search interface to search the log which Gtalk has been doing it for a long time.

This has been nagging me for a long time and today I finally found a free ware called YAMMY that converts all the message logs to individual html file. It doesnt have the search feature but at least I could back my messages now.

Its a very simple future that everyone needs but Yahoo denies the end users small wishes.

Talking about this I just remembered; When will Microsoft add the future to delete multiple book marks in IE.

Do you see it Microsoft – Yahoo are made for each other both deny the end user their small wishes.

I guess this song will be an apt situation song.

Chinna Chinna Aasai..

Buxfer personal expense mgmt web app

Posted by toalakan-web on July 20, 2008 1 comments

My room mate introduced me to this web app for maintaining the room expenses and it does what it promises to do with ease.

Its web 2.0 too also so everything is done through clean ajax calls.

http://www.buxfer.com

One less thing to keep track off..

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