IT Digest - Ingenious Tejas's Digest Blog

Ha Ha, These are very funny. Have a look here http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=1322360 . People love to use Google everywhere, don't they!

Tejas Patel

Guys need your help here. Help me to get the search engine juice to bring my new blog to the top. My new link is http://itejas.com/index.php .

Tejas Patel

Update:- Thanks Vasanth.

After few days, I think my blog is ready for me to blog. Guys I am moving to my own domain called Itejas.com. From now on I will be blogging from there. I am going to be blogging in the same way and on nearly the same topics. On Itejas.com I have set up mainly two blogs. One is my main blog called IT Digest - Ingenious Tejas' Digest Blog (Syndication )and the other one is link blog called Tejas' Link Blog (Syndication). With the link blog I will be mainly linking to people and their posts. There is also a Total Digest for people who want to get my aggregated post from both the main blog and the link blog. I am using b2Evolution blogging engine. Also as the time permits i will be evaluating picture gallery software for my site.

So guys update your records and from now on see you on my own site. I realise that it will take a while before I get my audience back to my new site, but with the flexibility of having my own site and my own rules I am going to take this risk. I will like to leave this blog as it is as it is getting a lot of traffic from the web and from other linked blogs. Thanks to Jeff Julian again for providing this space to blog.

Thanks to all readers for being here with me on this blog.

Tejas Patel

Ok, since last week I am both busy with work, extra activities and setting up my new website. I set up a website called Itejas.com on the weekend. I choose to go with WordPress blogging software. As my readers might already know, I am not a programmer or developer. I just follow the written instructions on the website on how to install things and so on. I had a hard time getting WordPress blogging software to work. Firstly it was my hosting provider (Brinkster) who were having some technical problems and then the installation of the software was giving me heaps of problem. I had nearly given up, but William Luu saved my day. He helped and solved the major problems with the installation and get my site to up and running where it is now.

I still have to get quite a few problems fixed on my new site. The main ones are:-

1) The feeds are not working. The main feed cannot be subscribed from aggregators like Newsgator and few others. The comment feed is giving me some error message that I don't understand at all.

2) Whenever somebody comments on my blog, the comments are not posted without moderation, even though I have opted out of it. I have followed some of the instructions on the WordPress support site, but it does not help and the problem stays.

3) I don't get email notifications when someone comments on my blog.

I would request people to help me out on this and guide me as to take the necessary steps. Your help would be much appreciated. I have enjoyed blogging on Geekswithblogs.net site, but there were few reasons that prompted me to start a website of my own. I will make a seperate post regarding it. Till the things don't get fixed on my new site, I will keep on double posting ( that is here and on my new blog site at http://itejas.com ). I will again like to thank Jeff Julian of this site to have helped me out and get my own up and running here.

Tejas Patel

Live Journal lost it's power the other day and here is a post martem of what happened and what the guys at Live Journal did to restore the service back. Good lessons on disaster recovery. This has turned out more complicated than I thought it would be. Now I will have more respect for the people behind these kind of services.

VIA Adam Kalsey

Tejas Patel

Guys, I am looking for a hosting service. Criteria is as follows: -

1. Reliable
2. Cheap (under $US 10 per month)
3. Offers MySQL server (100 MB)
4. Offers upto 10 GB of data transfer per month
5. offers for hosting more than one domain (not compulsary)
6. Email services

I am looking at Brinkster at the moment. Are there any others you can recommend?

Tejas Patel

SPIT is what the new term is for SPAM which comes through VoIP. SPIT stands for Spam over Internet Telephony. Now intruders and spammers can insert SPIT onto our VoIP systems too. More details can be found from this article on Business Times.

Tejas Patel

Using Speegle one can listen to the search results searched through Google Search engine, that too in different voices. Interesting I would say. Just thinking about this technology, will people like to integrate this technology into their website or blogs? I can see people integrating this technology on their blogs, where a voice similar to their's will read out the posts and can even read the comments in a separate voice. Won't this give a more personal touch?

The other option is, when people create a post on their blog, they can also upload a voice version of their post in their own voice. This way, the true emotions of the author will be felt when he was writing that post. When people post comments to the post, they could have a option of uploading their comments in their own voice. Well more time and bandwith will be consumed, but it could be worth it! Yes, this is something very similar to podcasting, but here people can enjoy the post in both the versions, the text as well as the voice. If people start reading the post and they think it is a interesting, then they can download the voice file and listen you talk. Just imagine Bill Gates commenting on your blog in his own voice! With the podcasts, not all podcasts are interesting and I won't know that until I have heard the whole podcast and they swear and delete the podcast.

Tejas Patel

I am reading Steve Crescenzo's blog. Steve's blog just got my aggregator.Steve is posting a question, 'Are you network worthy?' Steve I am visualising how my face would have turned out if someone asked me that question upfront. Well for me, I would say it won't harm anybody in anyway to network with me. All in all, at the end of the month/year they won't feel that networking with Tejas was a utter waste of time. And this applies not only to people working in Computer industry but from other sectors as well. Seems as if I am boasting now..... I have quite a few online friends, friends scattered around the world, doing different things. I know people working in different industries as well as at different levels. It's amazing how much discount one can get if he/she knows somebody's friend at a local computer store or a local Clive Peters :). I reply to email messages and return phone calls. I don't pretend to be very busy when someone needs my help on something, which quite a few people do (they think that nobody will think that they are pretending).

I would say there are many benefits of networking with the right people or right people's friend. Which brings me to another question. What do you look for when you are networking with people (what qualities)?

Tejas Patel

OK, while reading Cameron Reilly's blog, just found out that Cameron and Mick stanic have a podcast site called G'day World Podcast. Good on you guys. I have just started listening to my first podcast from this site which is an interview with Om Malik. I am going to explore the site as time permits me. While surfing the sites, I just realised that Mick and others (not sure who these others are) are organising Australian Blogging Conference. I am excited and try my best that I can attend this. So when does the registration process start? Any early registration discounts on this?

Looking forward to the conference.

Tejas Patel

Robert Scoble points to Joe Wilcox's article on Microsoft riding on the beta train. My say on this is, beta software are good. Here are my thoughts on them. Mind you I am no software developer or anything. I am just a end consumer most of the times who loves to try on new things and recommend it to people from time to time when they are looking for solutions. So forgive me developers if I don't understand your so called 'software development cycle'.

• Beta software helps out to fix initial bugs as a large number of audience is looking at the software, which otherwise will be fixed and released as updates lateron
• Beta software increases the awareness of the software and it's capabilities
• Developers can get a lot of input from the end users during Beta testing
• Developers get to enhance their products and broaden the product scope during the alpha and beta phase

What I don't like about beta software and services is:

• It seems to be never ending time limit to beta. I think the companies should post a date when that beta software or service will go into a full working production system. Here I can complain about Gmail, we have been using it for months now, but not many people know (end users) when it will come out of beta phase. I have met people who would refuse to use Gmail as their primary email as they don't know when it will come out of the beta phase. They are scared that the idea might just get scraped after all!
• Not all the developers/companies tell you about the changes and enhancements made to the software/service when a beta product is updated. I think if the companies tell you what they have enhanced or updated than it works more in their favour than of customers.
• I would agree that Companies should not have array of beta software on the line, I think this can be difficult for big development houses like Microsoft, but...

Any more points?

Tejas Patel

Google yesterday (18th Jan.) launched a new version of Picasa, a picture organizer software which can do more than just organising pictures. There are quite a few good features in this version for editing the pictures as well compared to the free version of Photoshop which can be installed when Adobe Acrobat Reader 7 is installed. This new version can be downloaded from here.

Tejas Patel

Carnivore is a controversial software that has been used by FBI for few years now. The news is FBI is retiring Carnivore software now and are going to use other commercial products ( I am sure other products are smarter than Carnivore was).

“FBI surveillance experts have put their once-controversial Carnivore Internet surveillance tool out to pasture, preferring instead to use commercial products to eavesdrop on network traffic, according to documents released Friday”

Tejas Patel

This is an update to my last post. As pointed out in the comments of the last post and by Will, I can use IFilters to index the file types that I want and than I can search for those files and the content within using Windows OS. I can use this to benefit MSN Desktop Search as well.

I am going to use MSN Desktop Search on my home computer now and see how it goes.

Tejas Patel

Today I took the chance to trial out Yahoo Desktop Search and MSN Desktop Search along with Google Desktop Search. I already had 'Lookout' and 'Blinkx' installed on my system.

Yahoo Desktop Search: - I know this one is in beta, but guys make installation screens a bit better. The indexing was faster and there was simultaneous indexing done on different things i.e. email and documents and stuff ( I could see that). The things I liked about this tool was the feature of search as you type and also the integration of file viewers into the tool itself. With this feature I don't have to necessarily open Adobe Acrobat just for viewing what was in the file. I like that this can index mostly all kind of widely used file types. The integration of the search tool into Outlook can be handy as well. The ability to limit the index file size is very helpful, afterall I don't want to have a index file which is 10 GB in size!

The thing I did not necessarily like is that this tool has no integration on the web. I am sure Yahoo can tell us many good reasons for this, but having it integrated with the browser is very helpful in day to day searching. Is there any other neat feature that I should have looked at?

MSN Desktop Suite: - Although this tool came out more than what I expected from Microsoft, there are many things that I do not like. I am forced to install their whole suite of tools which I dont' want to. Firefox does not recognise the fact that Desktop Search is installed and so I cannot use Firefox to search my local files. Is this Microsoft's way of forcing us to use Internet Explorer? I wish I could add and remove document types for indexing!

Good things that I like about the tool is it's integration with browser ( I wish this can be done for browsers other than IE) and also Deskbar. What I would suggest is rather than having it only on taskbar, people should have the option of letting the search bar floating on the desktop where ever they like. I prefer not to waste precious space on my taskbar with such big tool boxes. I like what they have done on MSN Desktop Search page in the browser. I can limit my searches by the type of document, which is a good thing. I am in love with the web interface that is designed for Desktop searches.

With this tool and the new MSN Search portal, they are giving people a good reason to switch over their primary search engine.

Google Desktop Search: - After checking the above tools, I think Google should release a new update to their software soon. They are a bit behind I think on the features offered by their tool. I don't like the tool, as it takes a lot of hard disk space in the form of index file and it seems that my machine is always busy while not in use ( this might be because I have big hard disks that need to be indexed).

Lookout: - I am still in love with this tool and am not planning to move away from this tool in the coming days.

Blinkx: - The tool is good, but is there any special reason I should still keep on trying or using this tool, seeing the features of other tools as mentioned above?

For now I will keep on using MSN Desktop Search and Lookout. What are your opinions?

Tejas Patel

I read Eric's article 'Google loosing grounds to Competitors'. The statistics look a bit serious to me. MSN Search is getting better and better and Yahoo Search is improving too. I go to both the search engines every now and than and try them out. Yes they are improving. Yahoo is giving me much more better search results compared to last time. Personally I am still with Google as my main search engine. I want to migrate to other engines (read as try them out thoroughly), but need really a good reason as to why I should migrate to other search engines. I cannot find any good reason for now.

By the way, still have to try MSN Desktop Search tool and Yahoo Desktop Search tool. Are there any special features in them compared to Google Desktop Search?

Tejas Patel

I just found out from Will's blog that there was a Geek Dinner on this 10th January and am sad that I missed it. One more reason that I should catch up with blog reading ASAP. Am waiting for the next geek dinner in Melbourne now.

Tejas Patel

Bookofjoe made a post on Blogcritics about a website for finding out red light cameras in your area. The website is called Photoenforced.com. Now I am a safe driver (this is what I think), but sites like this can come handy especially when you are travelling in a strange areas and you are one of those persons who come into panic mode or feel a bit confused in these situations. I have seen and known people who would over speed in such areas or will forget to give way to people crossing the road. I myself fall into this category but my wife handles new roads very efficiently and without panic. I see that there are a bit more than 500 Cameras listed in here. Unfortunately I could not find entries that relate to my city Melbourne. Also would have to note that the search function on the website does not work very efficiently (It just does not work correctly). The good thing is one can add and edit entries in the database on the website.

I might soon add some red light cameras with their locations that I am aware off. Do any of my Australian readers know of any such Australian website providing similar functionality?

Tejas Patel

I don't understand! I just got an Wallop invitation from a friend of mine. The invitaiton comes from mywallop.com domain. Here is a copy of the email.

“Dear Tejas Patel :

*********has invited you to join Wallop, where you can share photos, blog and interact with your friends!

Click on names of people in your social network to explore what's new with your friends and their friends. In Wallop, the more you interact with your friends, the more you will appear connected. We will let you know who's interacted with you in Wallop through email.

To join Wallop, go to http://www.mywallop.com. Your login name is "my email address", and your Wallop password is: "my password".

Here is a personal message from *********: “

I really don't expect Microsoft Research to send me my password in a simple email message. Are'nt they aware of the security threats? Will anybody explain me why would they do so, especially when people handling this work for a company like Microsoft! Am I missing anything? Explain , please explain.

Tejas Patel

I had to try this. Since I came back from holidays I heard from people that Microsoft came out with a anti-spyware program. They said they won't be trying it soon as it was still in Beta. Well I could not wait nor do I care of it breaking anything on my system. So I searched for it and here it was. The installation was smooth. I started the scan and it finished scanning 15200 files on my system (Intelligent Quick Scan) in 1 mintue 30 seconds on my system. As my system is well protected by firewall and stuff, there were no spyware found on the system. I have tried some other Spyware programs before but this one is neat. 5 minutes of roaming around the system should make one familiar with the features and functionalities of the system. Well I like this application as I now won't have to install 2-3 different small apps. I used to use 'Hijackthis' and 'Lavasoft Anti-spyware'  before to clean out all the spyware from my system.

Specially I liked the System tools (which contains System Explorer & Browser Hijack  Restore) & Privacy tools section of this application. I think Browser Hijack Restore and Privacy tools can be handy to most of the people and can be used on a daily basis. If I continue to use this tool, I can use these features on a tool on a daily basis. I can delete my traces from my system (superficially) while leaving for home from office and while going to bed at home. Well I look forward to see a better product with better and more features in the future. Not sure if the rumours are right or wrong, but I have heard that Microsoft is going to charge for this tool as soon as this tool comes out of Beta.

A recommended tool to try out.

Tejas Patel