Krishwords

My favorite ToDo List site, Remember the Milk, now uses Google Gears for offline functionality. Slowly we are going to realize the importance of Google Gears in our internet connected world.

Microsoft has released this amazing new gadget called “Microsoft Surface”. It changes the way we interact with digital content. You can use your hand to grab photographs, manipulate it and even transfer it to another device all with hand gestures. It is an amazing new technology. Few months back, I saw a similar technology in action at the Scoble Show. He went to Microsoft research lab to film the technology. Now it is in a consumer product form. It will be available for general public by the end of 2007. Head over to surface.com to see it in action. I can’t believe I am saying this. But, this one from Microsoft is way too cool.

You can see it in action at the Popular Mechanics Site.

I have been checking our Zoho Notebook since its alpha days. As I have told in various forums, I am pretty impressed with it. Its UI is comparable to Microsoft’s One Note. After they moved to beta, I decided to start using it for my daily personal activities. Today, I completely lost a “book” on Zoho Notebook. I spent almost 2 hours getting ideas into that notebook. It is all gone now. I have sent a feedback to Zoho about it and asked them if it is possible to recover it from the backup (I was just editing a “book” I made few days back and it should be there in their backup). I will have to wait now to see if they can recover it. Anyhow, the moral of the story is that we should remember that it is still in beta and not put anything into it without a backup elsewhere. This post is not against Zoho Notebook (I love it) but this is a warning to others who might be keeping their data on it. Keep a backup elsewhere.

Update 1: Zoho guys were prompt in their response. They are going to implement auto-save and recycle bin pretty soon. This will ensure that such accidents doesn’t cause any harm. Thanks Arvind and Arun for prompt response on this issue.

Update 2: Zoho has added the auto-save feature into the notebook. Check out their post here.

Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror offers some power savings tips if you are in a position to keep PC on 24/7

So, how can you reduce the power draw of the PCs you leave on 24/7?

* Configure the hard drives to sleep on inactivity. You can do this via Control Panel, Power, and it’s particularly helpful if you have multiple drives in a machine. My server has four hard drives, and they’re typically asleep at any given time. That saves a solid 4-5 watts per drive.
* Upgrade to a more efficient power supply. A certain percentage of the input power to your PC is lost as waste during the conversion from wall power to something the PC can use. At typical power loads (~90w), the average power supply efficiency is a disappointing 65%. But the good news is that there’s been a lot of recent vendor activity around more efficient power supplies. The Fortron Zen fanless power supply, for example, offers an astonishing 83% efficiency at 90w load! If you upgraded your power supply, you could theoretically drop from 122w @ 65% efficiency to 105w @ 83% efficiency. That’s only a savings of $20 per year in this 90w case, but the larger the power usage, the bigger the percentage savings.
* Don’t use a high-end video card. I’m not sure this is widely understood now, but after the CPU, the video card is by far the biggest power consumer in a typical PC. It’s not uncommon for the typical “mid-range” video card to suck down 20+ watts at idle — and far more under actual use or gameplay! The worrying number, though, is the idle one. Pay close attention to the video card you use in an “always-on” machine.
* Configure the monitor to sleep on inactivity. This one’s kind of a no-brainer, but worth mentioning. A CRT eats about 80 watts, and a LCD of equivalent size less than half that.
* Disconnect peripherals you don’t use. Have a server with a CD-ROM you rarely use? Disconnect the power to it. A sound card you don’t use? Pull it out. Redundant fans? Disconnect them. That’s only a savings of a few watts, but it all adds up.

A OpenID promoter, JanRain has joined with global name registry to offer .name based openID. The intiative called freeyourid.com offers you .name based openID. You can register firstname.lastname.name as your openID. For example, I have registered krishnan.subramanian.name. They are now offering 90 days free trial. If you think this is convenient, you can then continue using this id for $10.95 per year (which is the usual cost for a .name domain but, here, you only get a subdomain here because another person with the same last name but different first name can still use your part of lastname.name). For more info, read this post by CEO of JanRain. I am not sure if I want to pay $11 for just a subdomain when I can buy a domain name for the same cost and activate openID with just a 2 line code in my website. If it is around five bucks a year, I might consider continuing after the trial period.

Update: Check out Dmitry’s post on this topic.

A professor at Bowling Green State University writes on The Chronicle about his use of Tor and the reaction of the campus network administrators

So in the head-on collision between my appreciation of the role IT staff members play on my campus and my understanding of the role I have to play for my students, my need for academic freedom won. I found myself lecturing my three visitors into near catatonia about the uses of Tor.

Finally, they shook my hand, thanked me for talking with them, reminded me that I was probably violating the responsible-use policy, and left. They had bigger game to catch: the other Tor user on the campus.

Check out this user guide for Yahoo Pipes.

Microsoft press release says

Microsoft demonstrated momentum with industry partners that are working to apply this technology to help consumers realize a more confident online experience. This includes the announcement of collaboration on use of Windows CardSpace with the OpenID 2.0 specification.

Steve Jobs says

So if the music companies are selling over 90 percent of their music DRM-free, what benefits do they get from selling the remaining small percentage of their music encumbered with a DRM system? There appear to be none. If anything, the technical expertise and overhead required to create, operate and update a DRM system has limited the number of participants selling DRM protected music. If such requirements were removed, the music industry might experience an influx of new companies willing to invest in innovative new stores and players. This can only be seen as a positive by the music companies.