Orkut's tasteless to OpenDNS

Shaurya Anand — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:34:22 GMT

Well, I'm a huge fan to OpenDNS, say it helps me load my pages faster, prevents phishing site from opening, and makes my life go e-to-o-to-aha! Well, it was recent that I figured Google owned Orkut, "an online community designed to make your social life more active and stimulating" is categorized tasteless which in definition from OpenDNS are "Sites that contain information on such subjects as mutilation, torture, horror, or the grotesque".

This happens when you block Adult content category for the current network.

Well, I would not consider Orkut to be the place where distorted piece of me resides, over that it really made me connect to my friends and compass lost friends. I would say OpenDNS should cut some slack to Orkut unless until they are funded by the 'Indian Government' or the 'Microsoft Corps'. Oh! Kidding!

For those who are unaware on how to r-enable Orkut on OpenDNS and not access Adult content at the same time, you should white-list the domain on your dashboard and block the Adult content category, as follows:

Just for the gist, Facebook is enabled when 'Tasteless' category is turned on. I hope OpenDNS does not discriminate Orkut from FaceBook, Hi5 or any other social site. And note, this is not that I favour Google - I hate them as always, I just want some net neutrality here.

Inside Google's Indic Transliteration

Shaurya Anand — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:34:00 GMT

Well, here we have Google India's latest hot shot (or the only), a Hindi typewriter. Kidding, its not pretty much a hardware typewriter but a web application that transcripts all your English typed Hindi mnemonics into Hindi fonts. Truly, this is a magnificent stuff for an Indian having no Hindi (worst a German laid) keyboards but like to express the stuff in India's national language.

Google along with this provides an automatic interaction with your blog (if and only if: Blogspot) that will help you blog in Hindi fonts directly from the text area where you jot your text. But that's just another flash that prints "Blogspot is Google product", one can copy the text after transliteration to wherever he or she wants. Oh! Btw, do your things here: http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic, this is the site!

Now as you know, I'm developer (a lazy one), and I like (maybe love) to copy others work, I tracked the inside for this application and I'm pretty much disappointed to see that the application design is very ugly. Yea, ugly... Ugly as awwwwh! Nah... What I mean is, Google (or the developers working for Google) managed to make a small dictionary (106K) and use this one to translate the basic words.

When it comes to complex (or fundo) words, a server call is made to return a list of available options!

http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic?tlqt=1&langpair=en|hi&text=ugly&tl_app=3, gives the list.

Note, the client gotta download this dictionary to his or her machine and then use the server to process a few complications. This is NOT true AJAX and is more like a desktop application running on a browser updating words here and there when needed! duh!

It is also said that for the transliteration, Internet connection is a must, but now that we know the Google's little secret we can make a basic model for simple words for the offline purpose.

Here's what I could do: http://google-india-labs.googlegroups.com/web/transliterate.zip (~~117K~~ 78.9K)

The group for this Google tool is here: http://groups.google.com/group/google-india-labs

Just a hunch, if some Google dude can get to me: Is Google Indic Transliteration eligible for Google Lab and be ever listed here?