Google enhances search for Firefox

Google will use the Mozilla Link prefetching feature to make user searches faster. I already see a potential problem here. Think of the cases where your search results include links to *inappropriate* sites which are normally banned from being accessed from corporate environs. Prefetching is no different from you actually clicking the link. So some users could potentially get into issues here. Luckily Google has a way to actually disable this feature as well.
Update : InsideGoogle notes another problem(?). Prefetching pages like this could cause websites to register a site hit even if no one actually visited the website.:)

Kiruba stops blogging

That came as a real shocker. I sincerely hope thats a Pre-April Fool Day's Joke. Kiruba was one of the main inspirations for me in starting my blog two years back. His non-stop blogging and his varied interests made it a great and interesting blog. Here goes wishes for everything that Kiruba does in his life. We'll miss you pal! [ And hope you reincarnate in a different form soon enough!]

Yahoo! 360°

Got a Yahoo! 360° account. This looks more like an Orkut+Blogger+Yahoo Photos+ Yahoo Groups all put together in one big basket. Wonder how long it will be when Flickr also gets integrated into this basket. May be i can use this as a photo blog, if i find the time and inclination to use my Canon to click some pictures which will be fit for public consumption! :)
Ping me if you would love to have a Yahoo! 360° invite. Send me either an e-mail or leave a comment here.

Greatest Innovation of the Past 15 Years

Texas Instruments today announced that its digital signal processors (DSP) that helped spawn the wireless communications revolution were named the “Greatest Innovation of the Past 15 Years.” Honored by EDN magazine, TI’s TMS320C55x DSPs were heralded as the most significant design innovation in the last decade and a half, beating out the likes of Intel’s Pentium processor and products from HP, ADI and others.

TI's Press Release

An excellent essay!

Organics and Mechanics - Figuring out how your manager acquires information

Today's Links!

How to be a successful intern programmer

Problems of search personalization

A Google OS by 2010? - More speculation!

Tips for Mastering E-mail Overload - A few really good ideas.

Links!

• ZoomInfo - Search for info on people!


• Is Public opinion tide turning against Google?


• The 18th International Obfuscated C Code Contest started on 21st March.


• Metafor: English as a Programming Language


• How does the 'Google 20% time' work? (*Must Read*)

Today's Links!

Q&A with Subramanian Ramadorai, chief executive of Tata Consultancy Services
Eric Sink chimes in on the new Microsoft Team System pricing
Mark Fletcher on the lessons learned building Bloglines
Queryster - One more GoogleX look-alike search interface
The PC Era is just beginning - Bill Gates

Today's Links!

• Windows are not cheap objects


• An interview with Alan Kay. Alan Kay is the creator of SmallTalk and an Alan Turing Award winner


• Google Hyderabad


• Do Ads still work?


• SuperKaramba - Themes for KDE

Mallu Rock Band!

Avial - A mallu rock band. I love the music as well as the Video. (via Ashwin)

Help a deserving student

Raj has posted an appeal from Propoor on his blog to help a deserving student from Chennai. Please read through it and help the deserving boy.

Omea Reader

Finally found a RSS aggregator, that i seem to like. Omea Reader is the lite-version of the Omea Pro which is an all-in-one software. According to the site

Omea pro is a powerful universal client for aggregating and organizing all kinds of information: emails, files, web links, RSS feeds, newsgroups, tasks, contacts, and even custom resource types that you define.

Omea pro costs around 49$, but the good news is that Omea Reader is free(for now). What i liked more is that i can now read usenet newsgroups and RSS feeds in a single tool. And even though the UI looks complex, i somehow felt nice in using it. One thing is sorely miss in this tool, is a way to sync my RSS feeds with Bloglines. That would have been the killer feature for me.

Firefox crashes'

Last two days, and four times Firefox(on Windows XP) has crashed! And iam also unable to report the problem using the Mozilla feedback agent. The feedback agent tries multiple times but fails to send the report. As i normally have multiple tabs open during each crash, iam unable to pinpoint whether the crashes are site-specific or whether iam seeing a general stability issue. Side Note : By any chance, Is "Stable software" an oxymoron?

Cool Photos of Pixar!

A trip to Pixar. Scroll down the page to see the pictures. Really fascinating

Google Personalized!

Google Personalized! You can even set the amount of personalization to be included along with the normal search results. Cool stuff! As Jeremy pointed out a few days back, what seems to be missing is a login functionality. Is Google expecting us to save preferences in every machine that we use?

Today's Links!

• Why Venture Capitalists are the way they are!


• Windows XP Embedded team starts blogging


• How to destroy the earth! Doesn't look an easy thing to do after reading this!


• An article on Donald Knuth (audio)(via Larry)

MSN Desktop Search vs GDS!

Why Google Desktop Still Falls Short of MSN Desktop Search - I tend to agree completely. I have tried both tools for a considerable amount of time. What i have felt is that Google Desktop Search loses out on the relevancy aspect of the search results.

Today's Links!

• The long tail of software


• Firefox Tweak Guide


• Wikipedia has an entry for Madras Bashai (via Sowmya)

Quote!

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image. - Stephen Hawking

iPod Shuffle look-alike!

LuxPro has come up with a iPod Shuffle look-alike mp3 player, with FM Tuner and voice recorder. It should be interesting to see how Apple tackles this!

Amazing statistics!

Iam amazed reading the recent recruitment figures of the Indian IT companies! A few snippets..

Infosys Technologies has been hiring about 50 people a working day for the last nine months
Wipro adds three employees to its staff every working hour
Satyam will see an addition of 30,000 to the present 20,000 in the next few years
TCS’S headcount stands at 43,681 people with over 6,200 added in last two quarters.

Read the full article here

FYI : Amazed because, after starting operations more than 15 20 years ago, we(TI India) are still at a total employee strength of around 1300. That number is approximately what Infosys or Wipro adds in a month. :)

Bloglines!!

What the heck happened to Bloglines today? Its been down all day long, and i dont even have the backup OPML file. Looks like i should start using a desktop RSS aggregator as well. Any suggestions for a simple and free RSS client?

End of an era!

Kasparov retires! And what a nice way to retire!

Link-o-mania

• OSS Software, Deaf Developers & Unsatisfied Users - Interesting read!


• Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble - eWeek


• Advagato's number - Advice for young free software developers (via Sudhir)


• Best hacking tools and tutorials

MSN Sandbox

MSN Sandbox. This is where MSN puts up its tech previews. Much like Google Labs.

Today's links!

• Why blogging is good for your career?


• Paul Graham on How to start a startup


• Colorization Using Optimization - Excellent (via Chris DiBona)


• Linux Kernel Programming by Examples

Reading wishlist!

My updated reading wish list

Today's links!

• Why Google isn't what it used to be


• The Ten worst engineering pitfalls


• Sony's new range of flash-based MP3 players - Looks interesting, but doesn't have the simplistic look of an ipod!


• Journey of mankind. An amazing animation. (via Chandrachoodan)


• Parsing Techniques.- A Practical Guide (online book)


• Fast Company carries this article on Georgia becoming the outpost of many Indian technology companies.

That's strange!

Boeing's CEO ousted for having an extra-marital affair! I couldn't figure out why the CEO's personal affair could be such a big problem for Boeing's board!

:-(

You know you have been wandering too much on the web, when you read a newspaper headline "RSS conference from March 11" and think, "Oh, Great! They have a RSS conference in India! ", only to realise a bit later that RSS here means the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, and not the RSS protocol for syndication

GNOME memory bloat reduction!

In case you have some spare time to donate, you can help GNOME reduce its memory bloat! And in recognition for this donation you can also pick some handful bounties. Link to the MemoryReduction wiki. As quoted at the site,

The plan is to reduce the amount of memory that Gnome applications consume. Gnome is barely usable on a machine with 128 MB of RAM; contrast this with Windows XP, which is very snappy on such a configuration.

Some quick links!

• Kernel Locking Techniques - Robert Love


• How to get ahead in the software development business


• Larry Osterman is running a multi-part blog post on Concurrency. Very interesting read! He has already in the 11th part, and here is link to part 1


• Google wants your brain :-)

Sick!

Down with fever and extreme cold. And the Bangalore climate isn't helping either! Looks like its much hotter now here than in Chennai or Trivandrum!

Peeking into Google

Another look into the Google Internals.

Today's Catch!

• Interesting recruitment posters


• Al Zimmermann's programming contests


• Code as Design: Three Essays by Jack W. Reeves (pdf)(via /.)


• opensource.adobe.com


• Jeff Atwood On interviewing programmers


• Some quotes by Feynman and Einstein

Amazon has a development center in India and they have an interesting blog on blogspot too.

Currently Reading

Update: Even though the novel was fast-paced, and the author had done his research well, the climax seems straight out of a bollywood flick. Other than the climax, a readable novel.

Google Code Jam results are out!

The Google India Code Jam 2005 Qualification round results are out. The qualifiers are being individually intimated of the result. Here is some info of what i understood of the selection process. A total of ~2500 people participated in the Qualification round. The qualification round was conducted in 20 online 'rooms', with 10 sets of questions. So two rooms shared a question set. The top 50 scorers in each set made it past the qualification round. That gives them 10*50 = 500 qualifiers for the next round. However due to internet connectivity issues a good number of people couldn't properly attend the test on Sunday. For these people, a makeup test is being conducted today evening starting at 6pm IST. So the final number of people for the next round may be slightly above 500. One interesting comment made by one of the contest admins was that they had to disqualify about 300 people who they suspect have been involved in cheating! Thats a pretty good percentage of the total number!