Spezify - A new search bin ?

And just when you thought they have stopped popping up, here comes another one – Spezify.com . A snazzy search bin devoted to “taking web search further, away from endless lists of blue text links and towards a more intuitive experience”.

Looks nice and the results are collaged with bits and pieces of information which infact look like an online newspaper. As mentioned in their “About Spezify “page, the main intent is to present the data in a better (Colorful, brighter) way. Though it seems a bit doubtful (May be I am too used to the Google way). The search results are amassed from different sources like MSN, Yahoo, Amazon, Flickr etc (Google is not a source, wonder what the catch is) and presented as in the picture above. It reminds me of Picassa’s timeline feature which gives you scroll navigation across the surface. I wouldn't call it a search engine since the results are retrieved from other search engines.

The beta of spezify had some user comments which requested for a Zoom in/out option which they have obliged to. Press the spacebar and you will have a broader view of your results if you are already on one particular search.

• One major issue I had is with the way the results were to be selected. With a newspaper reel sort of an interface, I expected a simple click to work. But instead of that, a click on it will zoom in on the result with options presented for you and with the URL mentioned in right hand corner. Click on it and you will be transferred to the needed page.

• Though I believe the settings could be tweaked, I find it an annoyance to have another explorer window popping out when you try to dig into a result. Many users like me expect it to continue on the same page.

• The settings when changed are stored locally on your computer in a cookie. Thumbs down for that.

It’s fun to move the results around on the surface (a pinkish background. Ok. I am colorblind ;-)). The catch here is that search engine requires Flash player by default for the visual effects to work (Correct me if I am wrong).

So the verdict is: You want to show off that you know a different search engine than G, Y, or MSN, you have a good one. But other than the aesthetics, it doesn’t have much to offer the end user.

Options present:

Favourites (Don’t all of them have it now ? )

Tweak Settings (didn’t try it)

You can turn the sources on and off.

Hide types of results (multimedia , text )

Are we thinking in 140 Characters?

All of us are drifters. Or just tying to keep up with what’s new (I am no exception). When it comes to adopting or adapting to a new Social networking site , blogging space or whatever ; there are two kinds of people .Some who join in because his friend told him that “ it’s so cool “ that his neighbor yelled at him in his Facebook account for keeping the music loud ( DUH !! ) . And some like my nephews who have kept time apart to understand the lingo of the site they have joined so that they can brag about who “OWND “who in the Crisis “tournie” they had yesterday.

And you felt that the dust has settled on who will be crowned as THE BIG thing? WRONG ! ( Alarm ). Blogspot, Wordpress, Facebook,Myspace,Orkut,Twitter , Yammer – Just to name a few. You see a new site emerging every day with invites spamming your email account. And if that’s nothing , developers are trying to make money out of these popular ones with their own rip-off’s which has multiple accounts linked in one way or another ( Too much of a mess if you ask me ). Gone are the days when some one asked you “ What’s your email account ?“( My mom gives a stare and asks me “ What happened to Whats your name “). No surprises when the contact addresses are changed to twitter.com/nick

All of us want to blog ( or want to be there for the heck of it ). Books were written on Blog-Etiquettes ( Give me a break, I want to be express myself freely somewhere ) and it was almost certain that blogs were the next big thing when Evan Williams dropped out of one of the major players and formed Twitter with a small bird as the logo ( The whale is a big contender if you ask me ;-) ) . With no effort , your followers increase in number and you get a tweet-by-tweet report of what Jack Black did when he was in the backstage of Ozzfest last time .Frenzied media have moved into the space as well with updates with “links” to their news page. The best I know of anyone gaining from twitter is that guy who made a CNN user account even before tweets were making rounds/waves. Heard he was hired or CNN bought the account for huge sum ( Not sure of this.) breaking twitter’s rules.

So , is it for the better or worst ? Have we started thinking in 140 characters these days? Are you an addict ? The tweets thoughts linger.

Klueless 5

Lost my partner as he went home and I am trying to get this done ;) .. got to say this .. I am Klueless.

Immediate requirements nearby : A Webster English dictionary ;)

At lvl 13 !

PS : at 21 ( A bad day at work and you cant even open a URL ) .. Blocked :( ..

Karmic

The new release of Ubuntu - 9.10 aka Karmic Koala is out. The download link is here .
Tried it as an update on my lappie running Jaunty and everything seems fine till now. Well , you never know what others would claim.

Wifi - running , check
Sound - running , check
Pidgin still remains as its an update . Empathy would be there in a fresh install.
The new backgrounds are something which you might feel as different as you start off with tweaking your machine. Yeah , yeah : the UI splash screen has undergone many changes as well. The blinking filesystem check is another .

Let me go back to it ;) ..

Untitled .. Unfinished

Fun with a Capital F ( Oh , Well .Isn't it how you have already written it . **guess I am going nuts ** )

That would be the aftereffect of meeting some faces ( Ofcourse ,with the bodies intact) which I would have wanted to meet a bit back . I have only myself to blame for it. As my sis used to put it “ You are missing out on so many things my dear Bro “.

Was I just waiting for an invitation to hit the road and end up in a room filled with some 15 odd faces to which I ( with a guilt ) in heart , I was trying to associate names? Good God ! It's just been 4 years since you were not in a similar room with the same faces. Or was it 5 ? Conscience is a heavy thing.

Still writing....

I

In the silence of the shadows
I dwell
In the draftiness of the winter
I sweat
In the sounds they call evil
I found my soul
In the exuberance of the carnival
I felt apathy
In the fields of despair
I tread
In the colors of life
I felt like a dog
In the strings of life
I find those hidden notes
In the comforts of a lie
I exult in vain
In the answers which said 'the other way is tedious'
I thought why not
In the songs of the Rofous
I found a longing
In every sailor's heart
I saw a bigger ocean
In every friend I had
I found a stranger
In every street I passed by once
I saw my life in reels
In Beethoven's symphony
I hear a deafened soul
In every tear that fell
I saw broken dreams
In every drops of blood spilt
I saw a mother wail
In my every step
I felt close to perdition
In the face of a smiling kid
I found heaven
In the faith of my lord
I found solace
In the arms of my love
I surrendered

Morning Blues

Getting too much used to the long weekends.
After effects : The blues have left Mondays for Tuesdays !

Good God !

Film : Tomorrow Never dies
Actor : Gerrard Butler !!

Windows 7 Yippie

Though the recent purchase of a Dell laptop ( Studio 1555 - mike Ming Sunburst edition ) set me back by a 57K , I found out a week back that Dell had a plan in place for folks who bought some of the selected models to have a free upgrade to Win 7. I registered today for the same and guess what !. I am entitled to get it too ;) . Just need to figure out if that is an upgrade CD or a fresh Install CD or just an upgrade option . !

Sea of Poppies : A review !

Normally, books or authors do not make a lasting impression on me, largely owing to the fact that I have very little memory of what I have read before. The only reason I picked up the ‘Sea of Poppies’ was that it was nominated for the Booker, though I was not particularly kicked that the tiger finally won it. A few pages into the book, I recognized the author Amitav Ghosh’s other books and I was hooked.

Set in the early 1800s, history comes alive as Ghosh weaves a masterful tale that starts at Bihar where the East India company has converted the farmlands to seas of poppies which has driven the farmers to debt traps forcing them into labor at the opium factories. Deeti, married to one such opium addict and subsequently widowed is rescued from her husband’s funeral pyre by Kalua, a low caste and is forced to elope to save themselves from certain slaughter. The reader is then transported to the archetypal lives of the Europians in India where Paulette, daughter of a liberal French botanist, brought up by an Indian nurse has to subject herself to the snobbery and pretensions in the home of her care takers. The scene deftly shifts to the palace of Raja Neel, a Bengali royal who is too naïve and honorable for the wily ways of the British and is soon booked for financial fraud. We also get a glimpse of the slave ship where Zachary, the American sailor finds himself pushed to the role of second command, with tips from the leader of the deckhands on appropriate command behavior.

It is at Ibis, the ship set to sail to Mauritius, that these motley assembly of characters converge,each with hope for a new life ahead. The only complaint I have is the dialects Ghosh injects into some conversations in the ship which turns a bit weary.The voyage across the ‘Black Water’ is sprinkled with a wide range of emotions among these strangers thrown together seemingly randomly.The novel ends with promise of a new life for the protagonists in the next two volumes of the trilogy.

ME

Who am I ? Remember a young Jackie Chan running around buildings doing spectacular martial arts asking the same question in a flick by the same name which became a classic ?

Who am I ? I am bewildered young man ( at heart atleast , though the lines on my face say otherwise ) with the same question. Masks ; lying here and there : of a son , a lover , a brother , a friend and so many more . The day will come when I need to be ME . And as I recollect , I can't distinguish that ME from the masks I have been wearing . Or have they outgrown the real ME ?

Dreams : HONDA

GOd , these are just amazing . Have a look here .One of the few good videos I have seen in a while.

Rio to host 2016 Olympics ..

I ( as always ) didn't know that the South American country was in the run for the bid for 2016 Olympics. I have heard from a friend that the economic condition of Brazil hasn't been smooth in the recent years.

2016 can be a like a coin which can flip any side.

Pros :
1.A good economic boost
2.More inflow of money due to tourism
3.Olympics as the major factor of attention helping more in point 2.

Cons :
1.PRESSURE !! ;)

Pooj .. I need a place to stay for two for 2016 Olympics.. Hope that can be arranged ;)

MS Essentials free

A free malware , Virus protection tool from MS. Now don't go start asking about the hidden agenda behind this being free and all. Just enjoy the stuff unless you get evidence that MS is actually tapping into your life ( G was there already ;-) )

Source : Lifehacker

Download link : MS Essentials

Size of download : 4.71 Mb

PS : It does check the Windows Genuine thiingy as you proceed with your installation.

Update : As you finish the installation , an upgrade picks up and it took some time .

Diet plan - not for me ...for Linux and some softwares ;)

"We are definitely not the streamlined, hyper-efficient kernel I envisioned when I started writing Linux"

Linus Torvalds

The always-witty “nerdy Helsinki techie" as he calls himself is not to be misapprehended with this recent statement of his at the LinuxCon in Portland. The remark which many feel would raise a tantrum in the internet world or a “flame-war-of-sort”, had it been made by some spokesperson of an alternate Operating System, is getting looked at by every other tech-blog you know.

Wasn’t that in the cards always (Though Linus is pointing @ the kernel which he believes has gone scary these days)? With each new Linux distro trying to go mainstream and compete heavily with all the rest of the alternate OS’s. Something to contemplate, says many.

My .02$ on how bloated the OS’s or softwares (not the kernel, since I decided to keep my mouth shut on things which I know for sure that “I-don’t-know-enough-to-comment-on”) these days are:

1. Blame it on the end-user. Most of the users who come into Linux these days come with an expectation which they hold due to their experiences with their older OS’s (which apparently are eating into their wallets with every new release – both Software and Hardware wise). And then you can’t blame the Linux devs trying to bring in some of that flavor ( or the eyecandy ) to woo the new found audience .
2. Creeping Featurism -- The addition of so many unwanted “packages” into the base system makes even the Linux OS’s grow chubby. Why not let the user handle their needs? But there definitely comes a divide when you have a majority who loves all of it to work out of the box( I am not an exception ) and have them pre-built or incorporated rather than going about to add them later. Firefox is one example which handles the bloat efficiently ( as I can perceive ) . With an array of plugins to add on , Mozilla has let the user take the control and has always provided a base which can be tweaked according to their needs.
3. One example of a software which I feel has grown too big is the pdf handler from Adobe. I still remember a good friend of mine pointing out the same a few years back and predicting it to go heavier with every release. For a normal/casual user , the use of pdf reader limits to the point of just reading it . I couldn’t but not ponder on the good old days – where you had the pdf reader for around 3Mb or something ( Acrobat 4 or 5 ) with the full installation going up to a maximum of 20 Mb. The recent versions have their installer amounting to some 105Mb.

To sum up , if I am to strip down a software to my needs I wouldn’t find myself using 1/3^rd of the features included. The fairly sizable footprints which many of these leave are unnecessary in most cases. Then why are we using it? If it’s just to stay with the crowd, I prefer to remain where I am unless I am forced to.

Disclaimer

The above mentioned piece is completely based on how the author understands it. There may be fatal errors and hence not to be taken as it is.

My angel

An unlikely angel
Yeah, that’s who she was
Draped in black
Like a looming darkness
The wings hidden from the world
Or were they cut away?
The halo had lost its shine
Like just another thing that “was”
Held tight in her soft hands
A pen in the other
Where a wand should be
An unlikely angel
Yeah, that’s who she was.

Death ?

The gates of Valhalla are opening again
Of Odin’s they are claimed to be
Or the chosers of slain
Behold, here comes
The Valkyries
Ragnarok Awaits
And the Army of dead is building up
Chosen was I
From the depths of death
Came a raven clutching me out
Was a there a wolf?
I can’t remember
Don’t call me slain
Coz I am einherjar now
One among them
The army of dead
Valkyrie..
I see in her a virgin Priestess
I din see those blood stained corselets
I see her without her armour and spears
I see in her a beautiful princess
Or was it just a myth?
Am i still lying dead?

Random clicks

Any guesses ?As in , where I took this from ?


He was in a hurry and this was all I could manage in a few seconds- Blame the crowd and Apple*

Temptation .Must resist.Nooo, I give in !

The neighborhood Liberty store has some surprises !!

Waiting for a rainbow ?

. Just a random one from a stroll through IndiraNagar !