The human network

This is the time for collaberation over the internet. There are lots of sites today that allow people all over the world to cooperate and collaberate on whole lot of different things and lot of them are coming to life everyday. Myspace, Orkut, Facebook, Youtube (Gootube soon), Flickr lead this revolution of shrinking the world. How can the networking giant Cisco stand back ? It started the human networking portal last week. On the right side, it has a list of networking sites. I spend some time exploring some of the interesting ones..

• http://www.knacktion.com/ : This site allows people to show of their talent. The TalentZone has some interesting videos and pics. It has some contests running too. People can sell and buy thier content on this site.
  
• http://www.thisonenext.com or http://www.whatshouldireadnext.com/ : This is the most interesting site I found. Enter the the books you read. It will analyse your tastes and recommend new books depending on what other people of similar taste liked. They are extending this idea to Music and Films as well. I feel it is great idea. I need to create my favorite list and find out if it gives good recommendations. Planning to do it in my free time.
• http://idealist.org/ : Action Without Borders connects people, organizations, and resourcesto to provide a one-stop shop for volunteer opportunities and nonprofit services in communities around the world.. This is a place where charitable organizations and individuals to co-operate on voluntary and non-profit activities. Idealist has become one of the most popular communities of nonprofit and volunteering resources on the web, with information provided by over 57,000 organizations in 165 countries, and thousands of users every day.
• http://www.thelivinglink.net/, http://popurls.com/ , http://digg.originalsignal.com/ : These are the sites which are always open on my browser. They give a snapshot of what is happening in news sites, tech news sites, geek sites like digg.com, slashdot.org, del.icio.us, technorati, gizmodo. They are the fancy versions of online RSS aggragator, although they can not monitor custom feeds. If bloglines comes up with such an interface, it will rock the world.
  
• http://tenbyten.org/10x10.html : This is not a site which is built on collaboration of people. It is an aggragator sort of tool. It scans the news items on different feeds and finds out 100 most important or relevent words and pictures. It considers this ensemble as a snapshort of that moment in time. At the end of each day, month, and year, 10x10 looks back through its archives to conclude the top 100 words for the given time period. This way it claims to create an record of our world. Whatever be their claims, the interface looks very good. I enjoyed scrolling through the list of words :-)
  
• http://radar.net/ : This is a flickr like site. People can share their camera phone pictures online with their friends. I could not try this out much.
  

The number of internet joints for collaberation and social networking is increasing day by day. Some of them are really good ideas.

Another star from Kerala calls it a day

He is not a sportstar or a movie star. But his name is familiar to malayalies all over the world. His retirement is reported by BBC. He is our very own "Theeta Rappai" from Thrissur. Known for his unlimited appetite, he is famous for consuming 700 idlies on top of 10 kgs of halwa on one go.

BBC honoured him by this headline. India's 'monster eater' retires
It is heard that hotel owners in Thrissur are thinking about resuming their unlimited lunches and buffets.

Quote : Linux vs Windows

Came across an interesting quote:

If you face problems in Windows, reboot. If you face problems in Linux, be root

Courtesy: Jimmy Louis

Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'

"Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'"
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things and no good thing ever dies"
"There's somethin' inside that they can't get to, that they can't touch. It's yours."

These are some memorable lines from a classic from Steven "Horror" King. "The Shawshank Redemption". I wonder how I missed this movie for so long. Perseverance and hope pays of for Andy Dufresne after a long wait of twenty years. But, do I have to wait for that much ?


N.B. Software bugs can create problems in relationships. Look at bug#330884. So be careful when you write code. :-)

BTW, my article found a place in Slashdot's front page today. My karma is positive now :-)

A Job change

A Job change
Originally uploaded by Dinuraj K.

Never thought that I will do good in this job. Has cooked food for some time. But, it was probably the first time that I was serving. :-) The occasion was GP and Sreenu's house warming. Got some suggestions for improvement from their relatives :-).