Amazing picture from the sky

Comparison of RSS aggregators for beginners

I am writing this post after finding out that none of my friends know what exactly a rss reader is , neither what is twitter. This post is dedicated to them.

The web is huge. And you need to keep yourself updated with the happenings around you.

• Get a rss reader. I personally use google reader to read all my rss feeds. (I am a totally google man !!!! needless to say anything else ). But there are a tons of other readers

1) bloglines
This is how my bloglines page looks. The biggest advantage I find with bloglines is that it suggests a lots of rss feeds. So that you can start right away.

UI - 5/10
Suggestions - 7/10.
Reading Easeness - 6/10
Fun Suff - 2/10
Total - 20/40

2)Google reader . Advantage of google reader is it's google's reader :D. So you get added advantage of sharing the stories you like to your friends by pressing a "share" button below every post. But one thing that annoys me too much about googlereader is that the size of the windows looks too small. So you will have to do some extra scrolling. Also I find the suggestions provided by googlereader really crappy.Below is a screenshot of my Reader.
UI - 8/10
Suggestions - 2/10
Reading Easeness - 8/10
Fun Suff - 5/10
Total - 23/40

3) NewsGator : Now I love this one. Here they provide you with suggestions about topics. Click on topics you might like and you are good to go. They will add literally hundreds of subscriptions. Best part is these guys have a desktop client . A sleek looking client aggregating all the subscribed links directly on your desktop. One cool feature this has is "feeds you pay most attention to". A new reading column will appear after using newsgator for a couple of days and will show right away the feeds which you have been visiting the most.I have only one word about this ... yahooooooooooooooo!!! Their web client is also really gorgeous.


UI - 9/10
Suggestions - 6/10
Reading Easeness - 8/10
Fun Suff - 5/10
Total - 28/40

4)netvibes One of those sites which I do not use too much because of high loading time. But hey if you have a very fast connection definitely use it. Ajax powered. Might be one of the most beauiful looking aggregators out there. No much on the suggestion front though.Apart from rss it will also aggregate weather news, flicker photos, have a web note panel, and a todo task panel. You can create multiple pages to organize your stuff. And can also add a lots of widgets (though that is one of the main reason for your site to be slow).


UI - 9/10
Suggestions - 6/10
Reading Easeness - 4/10
Fun Suff - 5/10
Total - 24/40

Overall winner :: NewsGator. This post is only meant for those who do not know what a rss aggregator is or is not using one right now. So mY suggestion , if you are a out and out a google person use google reader , otherwise newsgator desktop client.


In my next posts I will post about how you can remain updated about the web in other ways.

Facts - a lots of them are here

A rat can last longer without water than a camel.

Your stomach has to produce a new layer of mucus every two weeks or it will digest itself.

The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.

A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.

A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate. I know some people like that!

A duck's quack doesn't echo. No one knows why.

A 2 X 4 is really 1-1/2 by 3-1/2.

During the chariot scene in "Ben Hur," a small red car can be seen in the distance.

On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents daily! That explains it!

Donald Duck comics were banned from Finland because he doesn't wear pants.

Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.

The number of possible ways of playing the first four moves per side in a game of chess is 318,979,564,000.

There are no words in the dictionary that rhyme with orange, purple and silver.

The name Wendy was made up for the book "Peter Pan." There was never a recorded Wendy before.

The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin in World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.

If one places a tiny amount of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.

Bruce Lee was so fast that they actually had to s-l-o-w film down so you could see his moves.

The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA."

The original name for butterfly was flutterby.

The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was the Victrola, so they called themselves Motorola.

Roses may be red, but violets are indeed violet.

By raising your legs slowly and laying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.

Celery has negative calories. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.

Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.

Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.

Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson."

An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.

The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.

The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.

Astronauts are not allowed to eat beans before they go into space because passing wind in a spacesuit damages them. Not to mention the other drawback.

Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.

Claim for technorati. dtmra938gf

Claim for technorati. dtmra938gf

OOO my god!!!

In February 1984, Mission Specialist Bruce McCandless II went further away from the confines and safety of his ship than any previous astronaut had ever been. This space first was made possible by the Manned Manuevering Unit or MMU, a nitrogen jet propelled backpack. After a series of test maneuvers inside and above Challenger's payload bay, McCandless went "free-flying" to a distance of 320 feet away from the Orbiter. This stunning orbital panorama view shows McCandless out there amongst the black and blue of Earth and space.

Image Credit: NASA

Michael Jackson's sample map

The american Declaration of Independence

Remember Nicolas cage movie National Treasure ? The Declarartion of Independence (offcourse of USA) was stolen in that movie. And that movie is one of my all time most favourite. If anyone out here is interested in history we all know there will be lot of interesting stories associated with such an important document . And here are something important::::

Of the approximately fifty delegates who are thought to have been present in Congress during the voting on independence in early July 1776, eight never signed the Declaration.

Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create, is still intact.

On the back, at the bottom, upside-down is simply written: "Original Declaration of Independence / dated 4th July 1776." Regarding the message on the back, according to the National Archives, "While no one knows for certain who wrote it, it is known that early in its life, the large parchment document was rolled up for storage. So, it is likely that the notation was added simply as a label." There are no hidden messages.

Pirate Hunting !!!!! huh ..........

When I first heard it I thought it was a sick joke, and, while the evidence is building, I still hope it is. Ananova reports that luxury ocean liners in Russia are offering pirate hunting cruises aboard armed private yachts off the Somali coast.

Wealthy punters pay £3,500 (US$5,800) per day to patrol the most dangerous waters in the world hoping to be attacked by raiders.

When attacked, they retaliate with grenade launchers, machine guns and rocket launchers, reports Austrian business paper Wirtschaftsblatt.

Passengers, who can pay an extra £5 a day for an AK-47 machine gun and £7 for 100 rounds of ammo, are also protected by a squad of ex special forces troops.

The yachts travel from Djibouti in Somalia to Mombasa in Kenya.

The ships deliberately cruise close to the coast at a speed of just five nautical miles in an attempt to attract the interest of pirates.

'They are worse than the pirates,' said Russian yachtsman Vladimir Mironov. 'At least the pirates have the decency to take hostages, these people are just paying to commit murder.'

A youtube killer ? Or a flop show ?

PirateBay one of the most popular illegar torrent tracker is ramping up to launch it's own video hosting website. Videobay as they have named it is now under development for more than two years.In true piratebay style they promise to host all copyrighted videos and audios.And now they have launched a super beta of the website. I am calling it super beta because IT DOSENT WORK. There is just one audio clip and two video clips for everyone to see. But the main problem is it is using HTML 5, so it cannot be used without FF 3.5 or chrome 3. But thats the problem after it is launches. As one spokeperson from PirateBay said it could be between one year and five. So lets wait and watch.

Not even a single word is necessary here

The guy who fought WW2 with bow and arrow

We have heard about all sort of crazy people in the world. This guy is from the time of the second world war. He faught the whole war with a bow and arrow and a sword. He once said "any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed". He was Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill.

Illegal prime a number which when decrypted in particular way will give you a copyrited or illegal executable program . Now hows dat ??? Acually what we tend to foget is every program is written in bits aso each code is a number !!! Dont worry I am a very generous person , giving you one such number.
Phil Carmody found this one in March 2001. When written in base 16 (hexadecimal), this prime forms a gzip file of the original C-source code (sans tables) that decrypts the DVD Movie encryption scheme (DeCSS).

4
8565078965 7397829309 8418946942 8613770744 2087351357 9240196520 7366869851
3401047237 4469687974 3992611751 0973777701 0274475280 4905883138 4037549709
9879096539 5522701171 2157025974 6669932402 2683459661 9606034851 7424977358
4685188556 7457025712 5474999648 2194184655 7100841190 8625971694 7970799152
0048667099 7592359606 1320725973 7979936188 6063169144 7358830024 5336972781
8139147979 5551339994 9394882899 8469178361 0018259789 0103160196 1835034344
8956870538 4520853804 5842415654 8248893338 0474758711 2833959896 8522325446
0840897111 9771276941 2079586244 0547161321 0050064598 2017696177 1809478113
6220027234 4827224932 3259547234 6880029277 7649790614 8129840428 3457201463
4896854716 9082354737 8356619721 8622496943 1622716663 9390554302 4156473292
4855248991 2257394665 4862714048 2117138124 3882177176 0298412552 4464744505
5834628144 8833563190 2725319590 4392838737 6407391689 1257924055 0156208897
8716337599 9107887084 9081590975 4801928576 8451988596 3053238234 9055809203
2999603234 4711407760 1984716353 1161713078 5760848622 3637028357 0104961259
5681846785 9653331007 7017991614 6744725492 7283348691 6000647585 9174627812
1269007351 8309241530 1063028932 9566584366 2000800476 7789679843 8209079761
9859493646 3093805863 3672146969 5975027968 7712057249 9666698056 1453382074
1203159337 7030994915 2746918356 5937621022 2006812679 8273445760 9380203044
7912277498 0917955938 3871210005 8876668925 8448700470 7725524970 6044465212
7130404321 1826101035 9118647666 2963858495 0874484973 7347686142 0880529443

WOW!!!! Try remebaring dat ..

Bliss -windows

We have all seen this picture in our lifetime atleast one. Haven't we ? The name of the pisture is bliss. The default windows XP desktop.

This image which I still believed was the work of digital art (as i know so many of you think the same too) is not. This is the image from a landscape in Sonoma County ,California. And the actual place how it looks today is :
This above image was taken at the exact location on November,2006.

Google thinks Michael Jackson died in August 2007, Aged 65, in London

#GoogleFail ... The GOOGLE indexed the wrong MJ .

Apple kills Routesy app, my iPhone gets less useful

Apple kills Routesy app, my iPhone gets less useful

Shared via AddThis

Just found this page on the web. Apparently people have way too much time. Kudos to the guy who created this page http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/AAAAAAAAA .

The girl with a vanity URL i.love.anal

Facebook vanity URL registration opened last week . From then till now only 5% of all fb users have a ctually registered for one. But today we came across a particular URL http://www.facebook.com/i.love.anal :D. Apparently the girl have no clue and someone did this to her. (could have easily happened while shes busy with the guy in the pic and one of her old lovers did that to take a revenge) .The reddit guys are laughing a lot about this. But it reminds us a very serious issue of logging out from an account when anyone else is in vicinity.

One thing which I have always wondered about was the "Recommendations in upcoming" section on digg. Never helped me very much. I always thought might be it is of great help to someone else. But today I discovered a site called http://sub.diggerplus.com/ . This looks promising. I can now see all updates from all my friends on digg at one go at one place. Can read the actual article they have digged without opening a new tab. And the best part is they have opened it in a subdomain. Which make me believe these guys have some good plans in the future for their actual domain. Right now all I can say is all the digg frantaics digg into this site and wait for the future.

Mashdeck -Mashable joined the twitter madness

As the twitter madness continues to grow over web ,mashable , one of the topmost web review sites on the net joined the madness in a big way . Tweetdeck the adobe AIR platform based twitter desktop application joined hands with mashable to launch mashdeck. The tweetdeck application with own column for all mashable twitter feeds. (ok.. my assumption is you know what is twitter :)). It is launched today. I downloaded it immediately and start using it right away uninstalling my earlier tweetdeck app. hmmmm it's handy. But I wonder what will happen if tommo techcrunch launches their own desktop client, followed by engadget,then Inhabitat, wired , what will happen to me ?? :( . Let's wait and see what other big guys are planning with twitter.

Mike Keith - Cadaeic Cadenza

One
A Poem

A Raven

Midnights so dreary, tired and weary,
Silently pondering volumes extolling all by-now obsolete lore.
During my rather long nap - the weirdest tap!
An ominous vibrating sound disturbing my chamber’s antedoor.
“This”, I whispered quietly, “I ignore”.

This looks like an oridinary post right ? But it is not. Have a look at it once more... A hint cadaeic : 3141593 . Yep those are the first few digits of pi :P. Find out many such stuff throughout the post.

Visit the cadaeic site here.

Monkey pee-ed on a President

Zambia's President Rupiah Banda pee-ved after monkey urinates on his jacket :D

Cricfeeds – A really cool but old Indian site

I wanted to write about a site which I discovered today. It’s called cricfeeds. It’s an Indian site. And to start off with the review I will saw just one word brilliant. This site creates a ball by ball virtual simulation of a live cricket match. It will show you the whole stadium and will show all fielders with tiny labels indicating their names. A ton of customizations are also available for the game. The reason I told it’s brilliant because before seeing this site I had no idea that even such a thing is possible. A search on the whole web via firefox add-on similarweb did’t turn any positive result. Which make me think this site is ingenious and unique . And a true invention out of India made me feel really good.

I did’nt have a chance to watch a live match on this site but the demo which I saw itself was quite promising. The site is on live for quite sometime now and it is alexa ranked at 25k range. A lot of websites including indirocks,cricket fundas have already embedded the application in their websites.I checked out the T20 worldcup final on Indyrocks site. It has nice features to chat while watching. An inset view. As well as options to share with your friends. Really cool app.

Two toddlers born today

One day you go to the bathroom and find out your detergent and shampoo are over. And you are frustrated about yourself. Here comes alice to address this exact problem. alice comes from the founders of social shopping network Jellyfish (bought by Microsoft in 2007). When you sign on it will ask about inhabitants in your house (Adult female, adult male, female child , male child , toddlers and infants ) . Once you select that it will take you to a page where you can make choice about your household usage items over seven categories (Bathroom, office, medicine cabinet, laundry room , cleaning closet, pantry , nursery kitchen ) . And on the basis of all these info it will remind you when your stock of toothpaste is going to get over via e-mail. (To be very frank , this is height of technology.) And then you can choose your favorite brand from the very wide range what they have to offer for every product. And alice offers everything at a discounted rate without even charging for shipping. On their product range I found out 83 varieties of toilet paper J . I can say this is of no use to we Indians as we don’t use toiler papers at all!!

The service is really intuitive and brilliant but they do not provide service outside US .

The second website is thismoment an inventive new platform for people to save and share their life’s Moments .It comes from the with the The New York Times, Time Inc., and People Magazine on board.

This is a the site which will make you forget putting your photos on picasa/flicker , your memorable moments in your blog and videos on youtube .Now you can put all your stuff together and share with your friends . You create your account and state your moments, add text, pics and videos. And all your friends can see it at once. This is a great website for sharing all your best moments with your family and friends. The GUI is intuitive and clean. And the presentation will actually tempt you to share all your special stories. Lifeblob the Indian site launched more than a year ago tries to do the same thing. But thismomemt according to me is way ahead in the game. You can link your twitter , facebook, picasa accounts bringing all your updates from across the web together. Looking forward to meet you guys on thismoment.

Happy webbing !!!