The happening world of web2.0 services

Web2.0 seems to be the buzz around for many new services mushrooming all around the web (on a daily basis). These cater to the needs of people volunteering to fill the gap for things that range from bare necessities in a web-enabled PC user's life to just plain what if's...
Here, I've just put some of those websites I've hit (thru search or referrals or ads) recently.
EyeJot: what could be the next in emailing! Don't tell me all that Google, Yahoo and M$ have to offer with integrated search and schedulers and what not!
Well, Eyejot is different. A client-free online video messaging platform for personal and business communications.
Offers: The ability to create and receive video messages in a self-contained, spam-free environment.
Client-Free: With no client to install, start using Eyejot immediately with any browser, on any platform.

Yugma: If you're a MS LiveMeeting or WebEx user and still want more, then Yugma is the one killer Web2.0 app for ya.
It's free, and you can use it for Desktop Sharing, Teleconferencing, Presentations, Shared File Space and Session Recording.
Share your computer screen in real-time so that everyone sees what you see - regardless of the application, software or operating system you are using. With Yugma, you can accomplish any task you can in a traditional meeting.

Box: Ever thought how storage has become so important for us that now we need it on the fly, wherever we go and all the time. My laptop or an external drive can promise me some but not all the features that a web app dedicated to storage and collaboration gives us and yet again, free ;)
Box.net is an online Web storage provider. Users can store 1GB of whatever they want.
Pro Features: It provides slick-looking file-sharing widgets. Users get instant previews of images, music, and text documents. The files reside in your Box.net storage area, and as the widget owner you can even upload files through the widget.
Box.net has also launched a development platform for 3rd party sites and services to tap into it's file systems to run applications right within the file browser. Users can add these services to their Box.net accounts free of charge, and tap into them by right-clicking on files. There are more in this category out there like sugarsync that provides more sought after features like Multi computer data (music, text, video and wat not) sync and Automatic online backup (but it's a paid service app)... And the options are growing ;)

Google Reader: One of the greatest web2.0 hits from Google's stable of online apps, this one has simplified and popularized the single-window concept of getting abreast with information. Not just that most of the websites now have an RSS/Feedburner option for you to get the latest w/o re-visiting the site. With this app, users can subscribe to as many RSS feeds as they want, then browse them in a lean and simplistic two-pane story browser that feels a little bit like Gmail. Other than photos and text, Google Reader can display embedded video clips from several popular services.
It provides you features like: sharing the RSS feeds/stories with others. It even integrates your list of shared stories with buddies on Google Talk.
Works on any browser, versions available for mobile phones, the iPhone and the Nintendo Wii. Google offers iGoogle, a personalized page that can set up an RSS startpage for you and your colleagues. Netvibes is another one that offers similar features.

Mint: Don't worry, there has to be a web app for financial management services and that's where this one fits in, free.
Pro features: Interfaces directly with your bank and credit card companies to keep your accounts up to date. Not just a budgeting tool, but also a way to keep track of accounts w/o going to a bunch of different sites.
E-mail or mobile alerts. Caters to alerts like accounts dropping to critical levels, bills due, or when large purchases are made on credit cards you're tracking. Mint makes money for itself, and for you, by analyzing your spending habits and your accounts and recommending offers that will save you money. Got a high-interest credit card? Spending too much on mobile phone? Mint's advertising network will match offers from its partners to your particular situation.
Although this works only for people managing their stuff in the US currency it won't take much time for other such web apps (do I hear moneycontrol) to provide similar or better features for your localized needs.

As I write this review, there are hundreds of new web2.0 apps coming up to enable you with essential and good-to-have tools for productivity, entertainment and information search and analysis. Explore some of the best rated ones too.

Do you use GoogleCodeSearch?

Recently one of my team mates was looking for a library call or some implementation to be able to get the subnet mask given a CIDR notation like 172.xx.xx.xx/16. There's a command "ipcalc" that can show you the subnet and other info given a CIDR notation, but we wanted to see how its implemented. With the kernel src code RPM not installed on that machine, we thought of doing a search for it's implementation on Google. It turned out that Google (which seems to be the parent of all searches) isn't as good in doing these type of code searches as it's more specific child Google Code Search

Although I've used Google Code search for finding out algos, implementations, generic API's for some typical scenarios and areas of interests in development, but it works much faster than tracing it locally for Open source code, even the kernel code and other system level implementation like in the above case.
What else, you get some really cool re-implementation of Linux code; some with improvements and customizations that can be useful.
The search results that we got also displayed implementations for some important related commands like ifconfig, iproute etc.

But then there's lot more to GoogleCode Search than searching just linux source code.
Like if you need to put your application or IDS/IPS firmware thru a burst traffic load then you can just search for a packet generator and voila!







For similar code searches I tried koders but it stands a bit low as can be seen by the search results (and interface) for the same query. Clearly, the interface as well as the results are not that intuitive and the search doesn't add anything to what you're looking for, say for e.g: more similar implementations or some links that provide more information on the searched item.

The one that gives a close fight to GoogleCodeSearch is Krugle.

With a search result providing different levels of implementations, modules to look for on this topic and one that also offers technical help, white papers and other related links on the searched context, this one sure is a better place to code-search. To promote it further, these guys offer an enterprise version that can sit on your desktop and provide code-searches both for internal and open source indexed code.

Other code search engine that can be referred:
Oreilly, Ucodit

I found another review for these search engines at: 5-great-code-search-engines

Code search can be fun too!

Tweak | How to optimize FireFox to use less Memory

I had been facing a lot of issues lately with Firefox when I've multiple FF windows and tabs open. Usually I'd have atleast 4 FF windows: Markets, Code/Tech Search, Reader/Blogs, Misc opened at my Desktop, each having half a dozen tabs.
With my belief that FF is less buggy (or so you'd say I'm biased towards open source browsers) and has less mem leaks than it's in-famous counterpart IE... I've been living pretty happily with this browser for some time until recently when I started facing heavy memory usage issues (maybe it's normal but I still wanted to squeeze it down when FF is resting at the task bar). Googled out one such solution:
Courtesy: This web-link

Steps:
Note: Just check your FF memory usage from task-manager for the no. of win/tabs open(firefox.exe)
1) On the website url toolbar type about:config
2) A page full of words will show up. Right-click anywhere and choose New -> Boolean
3) For the name input type "config.trim_on_minimize"
4) Select True
5) Restart FireFox.
6) Ctrl + alt + del (this opens your task manager)
7) Go to process and choose your Firefox process (usually called firefox.exe)
8) Look at the Memory Usage Column (average is 20,000-40,000, for me it was 100,000 for two windows having 2 tabs each, other things could also account for heavy mem usage; one being lot of script based, data-intensive, client-side calc, auto-refresh websites)
9) Now minimise firefox and you will see the memory usage to be less than 10,000 (for me it came down to 45,000).

Normally, the memory usage is bound to go down for most apps with Win-key+D option when you put everything un-used back into the task bar. But, if things still doesn't go better with FF, I believe this tweak is for us to use.

Just a follow-up: To have more such tweaks done in FF do visit this link

Just got hooked on to blogging? Register your URL to search engines for free!

And this isn't just it... There's a significant lot more we need to do when it comes to getting attention in this wide world of blogs (over a million blog-posts happening everyday)
Being a novice blogger myself, I won't cover all that you need to seek attention for your blog. Surely though, you can at least make the search engines to throw-up your blog URLs when a relevant keyword is searched for.

Here's what we can do:
1) Add your URL to Google using at: http://www.google.com/addurl/
Most of the search results of smaller/niche search engines are fed by crawlers/bots from Google.
So, adding your blog's URL to Google can not only make them appear in Google's search results (localized country wise) but also in AOL, Euroseek, Netscape and Earthlink.

And that's not it. Google helps you in getting more specific information about your website that can help your attention seeking efforts and tell you about page-hits, links to your page, broken-links, statistics etc. So, after registering the URL at Google, you're re-directed to Google Webmaster Tools.

Google Crawler does some sample searches for your site and provides indexing stats. Lists out various posts on your website, provides information on webpages that link to your website and a list of sites related to your site's name/content.
There are other options like Crawl stats and subscriber stats that offer information on page-hits and other link statistics.


Check-out a whole bunch of tools offered by Google to enhance your blog's visibility and hits on the internet, increase traffic to your site and connect you with interested visitors.


2) Yahoo! offers free website submission as well as paid Y!directory option. Do it at http://submit.search.yahoo.com/

3) MSN/Live is the third most popular search engine. The link to add your website in it's search index is http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx

4) Gigablast: Add your website to Gigablast at: http://gigablast.com/addurl

5) Alexa: Add your website to Alexa, using: http://www.alexa.com/site/help/webmasters

6) AOL: If you are registered with Google, your site will appear in search results of AOL as well.

Almost all other search engines use the search index from one or the other above listed search engines to query and show results. So, as long as you are registered (and listed) by the major search engines listed above, you will also appear in search results of many other search engines.

So, don't just blog! Take another step and get other's to read and appreciate your blog by getting your blog searched from these commonly used search engines ;)

World famous fleet operator (package delivery) uses technology to cut costs and save Earth!

Have you ever taken a different route to your destination to escape crossings, right hand turns (in Indian context) or traffic?
Daily commuters in Metros these days would take to less-common routes (the road less traveled sometimes proves the road to success) to ensure an easy, congestion-free drive (saves time in most cases). But all such path discoveries happen either by exploring yourself or by a route-tip from friends(at least in India we're still limited in technology to have a live traffic beat). GPS and FM Radio Stations have started filling in but there's still a long way to go.
Just think of situations when we're waiting at the crossing (sometimes even to go straight/left which is supposed to be free), waiting for residual-traffic to clear off, engines all around revving up to cruise thru once the signal goes green... a waste of time and peace-of-mind (for all who're otherwise crunched of time in the work-place)... and also of fuel and money that goes in to fill that extra fuel.
But who cares, it's just a 2min wait, fuel wasted is negligible (I've a 100cc that runs 90kmpl).
Think about a lac big carrier trucks running in similar conditions all over the country-line that eat up not in liters but in gallons and that release a measurable amount of CO2 even when they're waiting to cruise! And what could be the cost-savings
when you own a gigantic fleet of vehicles delivering packages everyday?
Yes, small improvements in the efficiency of each one will translate to huge savings overall — and this is what led U.P.S. to limit further the number of left-hand turns (in US context) its drivers make.

Can't help but to highlight this article from NYT in my blog! One of the best use of technology towards the goal: "Let's make things better"

The company employs a “package flow” software, which among other hyper efficient practices involving the packing and sorting of its cargo, maps out routes for every one of its drivers, drastically reducing the number of left-hand turns they make (taking into consideration, of course, those instances where not to make the left-hand turn would result in a ridiculously circuitous route).

Last year, according to U.P.S., the software helped the company shave 28.5 million miles off its delivery routes, which has resulted in savings of roughly three million gallons of gas and has reduced CO2 emissions by 31,000 metric tons.