Ever wondered why and how your normally demure and shy colleague morphs into the uber-monger of rumors and snitches when you happen to instant message her one night?
The New York Times tries to explain here.
KIA: Thanks for reminding me I am slacking off :). I'm trying, I'm trying.
Things that bother me:
- Otherwise intelligent, educated persons revering a man/woman as god and as a consequence, sycophantically championing anything the said pseudo-god says and does.
- India's media hyped growth story:
Typical news bites these days - 9% year-on-year growth...massive FDI..."sustained" growth...huge surplus Forex...country oozing tech whizzes by the bushel....not un-true and yet these are like false echos in a hollow cave. There are a million problems but here is the biggest - incompetence and focus on the wrong issues.
Here is one statistic that says everything - India's economy hit 4 trillion $ last year - more than double that of the whole of Africa - and yet, 46% of her children under 3 years are malnourished. - The sense of lethargy that hangs over me like a cloud these days.
- Thoughtless, uninformed judgments passed on cultures, religions and countries
This is my link blog which basically is the feed posts I have shared on google reader which is my reader of choice:
http://www.google.com/reader/shared/08235842837105824062
This is the feed link in case you want to subscribe.
A friend just sent me this email. It's possible I might be the last person on the planet to see these but these are pretty compelling images...
1957. The Dorothy Counts's first day at the Harry Harding High School in the United States . Counts was one of the first black students admitted to the school. She was no longer able to stand the harassments after 4 days.
January 12, 1960. A second before the Japanese Socialist Party leader Asanuma is murdered by a student.
1963. Thich Quang Duc, the Buddhist priest in Southern Vietnam , burns himself to death protesting the government's torture policy against priests. Thich Quang Dug never made a sound or moved while he was burning.
1962. A soldier shot by a sniper hangs onto a priest in his last moments.
1965. A mom and her children try to cross a river in South Vietnam in an attempt to flee from the American bombs.
1966. U.S. troops in South Vietnam drag a dead Viet Kong soldier.
February 1, 1968. South Vietnam police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shoots a young man, whom he suspects to be a Viet Kong soldier.
1973. A few seconds before Chile 's elected president Salvador Allende is killed during the coup.
1975. A woman and a girl falling down after the fire escape collapses.
1980. A kid in Uganda about to die of hunger, and a missionary.
February 23, 1981. Colonel Molina ve military police seizes the Parliament building in Spain . The photographer did not expect the scene, and hid the films in his shoe.
1982. Palestinian refugees murdered in Beirut , Lebanon.
1987. A mother in South Korea apologizes and asks for forgiveness for her son who was arrested after attending a protest. He was protesting the alleged manipulations in the general elections.
1989.Tiananmen A young man in China stands before the tanks during protests for democratic reforms.
1992. A mother in Somalia holds the body of her child who died of hunger.
1994. A man who was tortured by the soldiers as he was suspected to have spoken with the Tutsi rebels.
1996. Kids whose lives are destroyed by the civil war in Angola against a bullet ridden wall .
2001. An Afghani refugee kid's body is being prepared for a funeral in Pakistan .
2002. Soldiers and villagers in Iran are digging graves for the victims of the earthquake. A kid clutches his father's pants before he is buried.
2003. An Iraqi prisoner of war tries to calm down his child.
This was reportedly built by Adobe in 4 weeks flat..no kidding! Says something about the platform of choice which of course is Flex. Very well designed and built App. And the subject at hand is bikes!!
http://www.amgentourofcalifornia.com/docroot/tourtracker2/index.html
Came across this separately on
riapedia.com
forta.com
Adobe has entered the "lets get it on" (read "social") rss aggregator fray with myfeedz - "A Social Newspaper".
To quote Adobe, "myFeedz uses artificial intelligence techniques to show you personalized news about topics you are interested in."
I am going to give myfeedz a fair chance to get social with me for a few days before commenting on it but a couple of things - especially since my opinion can make or break a "Web 2.0" site :). I've been using it sporadically over the weekend.
The first thing that struck me as soon as I took at look at the myFeedz main page was that there were a whole lot of completely unnecessary Flash movies (See screenshot below - the "Adblock" signs indicate where Flash movies are located). All the section headings on the page are Flash movies! This is totally a case of throwing a grenade to kill an ant!!! (Forgive the analogy). Granted perhaps the only way to guarantee custom fonts look the same way on any platform and on any browser is to use Flash but you have your priorities wrong here people. You can have great aesthetic looking section headings without the use of relatively heavy Flash movies. You are Adobe, you have to have a clue about this kind of thing. Use Flash but use it for what it for what it is meant - for achieving complex richness and usability- not for displaying custom font section headings.
As already mentioned, myFeedz aims to use an algorithm to judge on your behalf what is relevant and important to you using the rss feeds you ask it to look up. The way I feel about it, if you are a serious enough information hound to subscribe to multiple RSS feeds, you probably like to be in control of the way you go through your feeds - although I would also be interested in the suggestions myFeedz threw up. myFeedz does seem to prioritize and throw up information from other users' feeds based on my reading habits - which is a good feature - will have to wait and see how well the algorithm does.
The myFeedz page is made of multiple parts:
The user can personalize myFeedz by adding or removing tags that the user might or might not be interested in respectively. The user can also pull tags from suggested system tags and add to his/her own.
- It has two tag clouds - my tags pulled from my feeds and hot "system" tags, probably meaning tags popular amongst all myFeedz users.
- It also has two "Top Articles" sections - again one based on my profile and habits, one based on everybody on myFeedz.
- Also has a Recent Articles section listing the latest articles from my feeds - there doesn't seem to be an option to set how many articles I can see in the recent articles section though.
While writing this, I realized why I haven't taken an instant liking to myFeedz. It's cramming too much into one page, trying to do too many things at the same time - and not in a very elegant fashion. It's controlling both quality and quantity of my desired information. While I am very interested in the social side of things, I also want an option alongside to be able to go through my feeds in an organized fashion. It shouldn't be and doesn't have to be one or the other.
I love being social but myFeedz is like being social after 50 Tequila shots - I don't know what I am being social about anymore!
Came across myFeedz first via the Adobe XML News aggregator on tacfug.org[Update] Also agree with the "River of news" feature that Robert Scoble talks about here. I've gone through all the usual and not so usual desktop and online aggregators and usually get the itch to change readers after a week or two. I have been with Google Reader for 3 months now and am the most content I have been in a long time.
Previously known as Adobe Proxy, the mag has been relaunched now as Adobe Magazine. I like the way content is presented in this magazine. It's designed and edited for the online viewer rather than the print reader. It's in the pdf format and serves as a good showcase of the capabilities of this format.
The content is rich and makes full use of animations and the PDF format's graphical capabilities and the capability of content to be 3-dimensional rather than flat, encouraging user interaction rather than just scrolling through. In future versions though, I hope Adobe will support embedding of video, flash movies and streaming content such as Quicktime movies and Flash video streams in the document itself. Currently, the documents have to link outside to have the browser play video content.
I have always wondered why document tools such as MS Word and Adobe PDF don't allow the embedding of video formats and Flash movies in documents - and if I was to be a little more long-sighted, allow format plugins! I see enormous potential and use here. From the perspective of a Software Engineer, the ability to embed Flash movies or AVI movies (for example) would allow the embedding of prototypes or proof-of-concept movies in design or architecture documents. This can be taken even further to build modeling tools that generate interactive models and diagrams such as UML diagrams that the user can "explore" from inside a document. That's just one area where this will prove useful. There are probably far more important possibilities this functionality will bring. What do you think?
You can sign up at :
http://www.adobemagazine.com
or download the magazine directly from http://www.adobe.com/special/magazine/adobemag1/adobemagazine.zip
I originally came across this on Adobe Photoshop Product manager, John Nack's most excellent site
For best viewing, use:
*Adobe Reader 8
*A Wide-screen LCD if possible
*Some links lead to video and audio content that are heard best with good quality speakers
For Atta & Amma...
John Legend's Coming Home [Album: Once Again, 2006]
I will be posting a detailed review of tabblo a few days later. I like certain features like the fact that there is a picasa plugin - however the implementation of the plugin sucks...more details later...
My first tabblo with a few sample pictures taken at the Osellus New Year '07 Party in Jan:
I find it difficult to start things. This is no different. So, I have decided to continue things. I am going to pretend I have been blogging for ever and just hope that this works where 5 previous attempts at regular meaningful blogging didn’t.
I’m no sage, luminary or prophet - of these I had illusions but no more. I now think of myself as a rake : not the long-handed tools with tines - but the term used to describe a stock character in a play or a movie.
Stock character or not, I have something to say and everything to save for my own posterity. Presenting…
