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Google, GCalDaemon, and Geekery

By: Goyal
23-09-2008
Tech

I was tired of writing and rewriting and then editing the BSchool essays, and wanted to hit the bed. God knows why I opened up GReader!!

Anyway – I saw this article on how to jazz up the Windows desktop. Pretty useful and fun I would say. 10 minutes later, I had finished downloading and installing RainLendar and RocketDock.

And then I thought how about syncing RainLendar with GCalendar. After some googling GCalDaemon came to rescue. I used the instructions on their website but the damn things wouldn’t work!!

At Step 3 you would need to edit the location of the iCal file. Also, the sync by File method is not enabled by default and you would need to do it manually. Finally, I had a perfect system of syncing my calendars, and combined with an SMS service provided free of cost by Google, I have myself a perfect alert system. Wow!!

Hang on. That’s not all. As I browsed the GCalDaemon website, I saw that I could use it to run a local LDAP server and replicate the Google Contacts within my Thunderbird system. By now I knew what needed to be done [enable LDAP] to get it up and running. At around 2 in the night, I had finished doing all this and was really satisfied with myself. I now have a less cluttered desktop, which not only looks awesome (I use this as my wallpaper), but is extremely useful!!

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LinkedIn Reccos

By: Goyal
10-09-2008
Tech

LinkedIn is a great professional networking tool. I have used it often to get answers to professional queries, and have also benefitted from the questions and answers posted by others.

However, I was checking up something today when I saw this strange trend where people reccomend someone else, and the same set of people reccomend them back. I mean no harm done, but its wierd when a person has 20 odd reccomendations and you notice that a majority of them are from the same people they have reccomended. It’s like you scratch my back, and I will scratch your’s.

Maybe LinkedIn should institute some method of highlighting such reccomendations. Any thoughts??

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Vista rant!

By: Goyal
22-08-2008
Tech, WTF

I have been using the Windows Vista on my brother’s Sony Vaio for a couple of weeks now, and am amazed at the uselessness of the OS. I would say that XP is at least a thousand times more user friendly and smarter OS. In fact it is so irritating at times that you feel like gnawing your arm off!!

1. The UAC – Stupid. You are making an OS for people. Not for asses. If I click on Windows Update and want to go ahead with installing some update by clicking on “Install Updates”, it means I want it done. Please do not ask me if I want to continue with it!! If I did not want it, I would not have made two effing clicks.

2. The Windows Update – The Vista applied some updates everyday till yesterday, and suddenly decided today morning to install the SP1. Can someone tell why the fuck did it not do it at the first go itself instead of installing a copy of those updates individually earlier when the SP1 has been available for months now?? Further, it would not allow me to install SP1 till I plugged my laptop into a power supply despite having 90% battery life left. For God’s sake – Stop being my mom!!

3. Stability – Its a joke. It hangs more than Windows 98 I would say despite having very few installed software, latest drivers, and all OS updates.

4. Speed – Yeah right!!

Thankfully Vaio provides all XP drivers on its website and I am thinking of “upgrading” to Windows XP within the next couple of weeks. I think the Vista team can let go of the Mojave, and start being smart.

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iPhone dreams smashed!!

By: Goyal
20-08-2008
Tech

If you think the iPhone was expensive, think again!!

Its a complete rip-off here in India. Both Vodafone and Airtel have priced the iPhone so high that I guess you won’t see it going mainstream in India anytime soon. Also, with India not having a 3G network yet, the new iPhone is not of much use anyways.

The 8GB model is priced at ~USD 710 while the 16GB is priced at ~USD 830, without the data that is. The only option left now is to get an unlocked device from US (for ~USD 550) – sigh!

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Facebook redesign flaw

By: Goyal
21-07-2008
Tech

facebook redesign error

The new Facebook interface has screwed the Google Reader Shared Items & Flickr. I think its the error in the FriendFeed like application Facebook has. Is anyone else seeing the same error?

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Software release names

By: Goyal
18-07-2008
Personal, Tech

When I was upgrading the WordPress installation, I noticed that the particular version was code named “Tyner” after McCoy Tyner, a jazz pianist. WordPress releases are mostly named after Jazz musicians, like Ella Fitzgerald, and saxophonist Stan Getz.

These codenames have always fascinated me since the good old days of Prithvi and Agni, at the Insti’s IPC – not International Patent Classification but Information Processing Center. Prithvi was the codename for the Linux server, and Agni for Unix. Vi used to be the editor of choice. Pine for email. Cat and Man were commands, rather than species name. Anyways I digress.

I was always fascinated by the way “Valhalla” used to appear on the terminal (screen) when we tried to log on to the network. And since then I have tried to follow these release names for various softwares. Below is a quick look at the names used by RedHat Linux.

  1. RHL 7.0 – Guinness
  2. RHL 7.1 – Seawolf
  3. RHL 7.3 – Valhalla
  4. RHL 8.0 – Psyche
  5. RHL 9.0 – Shrike

I think post this RedHad became Fedora, or atleast a part of it did, and they used different names. Maybe I will follow up with some other interesting ones later (Ubuntu follows a cool method).

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ABN Amro lacks FF support!

By: Goyal
10-07-2008
Tech

ABN Amro – India, recently made some changes to its website which renders the NetBanking option unusable on Firefox (any version!). I sent an email to their support desk about this, and am reproducing their response below.

Dear Customer,

This is with reference to your email dated July 09, 2008. At the outset we would like to thank you for the time taken and effort made by you in sharing your concerns with us.

We wish to inform you that currently you will not be able to access our Net banking service through Fire fox browser. However to access our Net banking services we recommend Internet explorer browser version to be 5.5 and 6 and we would also request you to kindly check if your Internet Explorer browser is configured for JAVA applet.

Should you require any other assistance, please feel free to call our 24 Hour Bank by Phone service* in your City and our executives will be glad to assist you.

Assuring you of our best services.

Yours Sincerely,
Service Delivery, Consumer Bank, India

While I appreciate their quick response to my query, I am thoroughly disappointed with the response. For a company of ABN Amro’s size, simply stating that it does not work is not acceptable.

Just for the record, ICICI Bank which runs the same software (FINACLE by Infosys), supports all sorts of browsers and their NetBanking is much easier to use.

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The post about Yahoo!

By: Goyal
20-06-2008
Tech

So much has been said about Yahoo over the recent past, that it seems like a blessing in disguise for Twitter. The laundry list of senior execs leaving has not gone down well either.

However, I do not agree with Mike Arrington when he says that Yahoo should have sold out to Microsoft. I have great respect for Mike but I think he is wrong, and big time at that, about this issue. Maybe the decision seemed to make business sense, but personally I feel that the two companies are so different that merging them together would have been the great disaster since Yahoo’s move with Geocities.

Anyways I would like to agree with a contrarian view put forth by Danny here. And to add to it I have some suggestions. Yahoo currently owns some of the best stuff on the internet.

1. Yahoo Mail – As much as I dislike the service now, loads of people still use Yahoo mail. Provide free POP access. Remove those obscene ads. And think of a better way to monetize it. STOP THE SPAM. Let me say that again. STOP THAT SPAM. And no, Ymail won’t solve your issues here. Also, the RSS reader (does anyone use it??) is a joke. Do away with it.
2. del.icio.us – Yeah, the founder is leaving. But you guys are to blame. Release the new version already. You know what people using it are thinking. Use it. Use it with Answers. Use it with Search. Probabaly integrate with Flickr.
3. Flickr – Again, the founders are leaving. Don’t mess with the product. Its awesome. Think integration with Image search results.
4. Messenger – Cut those stupid ads. Simplify it. Let it do the job. I dont need bull shit on it. Let me talk and chat.
5. Answers – Something I know least about, but have heard awesome stuff about it. Let it be.
6. Finance – Good as is. Let it be.

Get back into the game by getting back those users who used to swear by Yahoo at a point of time. You can always look at better ways of monetizing. Get rid of non-committed people. Don’t let go off good ones. Get rid of pro email. Perhaps you missed the memo but people have stopped paying for it ages back!! Get rid of competing products. Get rid of stupid execs. Focus on technology, the money will follow. You don’t need to do everything. Get rid of non-core products. Slim down and focus your energies.

I grew up on the internet with you folks. Don’t throw in the towel just yet. Stop eating peanut butter.

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Gmail spam filter gone nuts!

By: Goyal
03-06-2008
Tech

That’s an email from the Google Alerts not spam!!

Google spam filter is broken

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STN vs GenomeQuest

By: Goyal
31-05-2008
Business, Tech

… or why STN is going to fail. DGENE and USGENE recently introduced an option to limit sequence searches (BLAST) by % match. But I think it might just be too little to late for them.

For too long now STN has enjoyed the benefits of monopoly in the field of patent sequence searching. However, a new entrant in the domain threatens not only to end the monopoly but might also bring an end to STNs business in this field. GenomeQuest has quietly, but steadily has become the tool of choice for patent information searchers. More and more people, including some patent offices, have started accepting it as a standard. So why exactly is this happening??

Sequence searching on STN is complex, not-user friendly, and extremely expensive. On the other hand GenomeQuest offers a easy and intuitive interface for searching. Also, for searches with more than 50 odd patent results GenomeQuest becomes a more cost effective option, that too if you are searching on one database only through STN.

However, GenomeQuest is not without its share of problems. Their coverage so far is not comprehensive, and they do not have clear information on what patent-ranges (date or jurisdiction wise) are covered by them. Also, GenomeQuest lacks amount of filtering offered by STN.

The geek in me loves the STN for the impressive options, and here is what they need to do to get back ahead.

  1. Introduce a simple single combined search on all interfaces with automatic duplicate reduction. I understand this might not be possible in cases where the databases are supplied by different companies, like CAS Registry and DGENE, but you got to do it for business – so figure it out, will you!
  2. Reduce the cost and make the search affordable. Treat sequence searches (structure too if possible) as one search and charge a fixed amount (say USD 200-250) to do the search and display the results. No separate display charges.
  3. Keep up that brilliant customer service :)

So here. No go ahead, make the changes and be the best again STN!

PS: The views expressed above are mine alone and do not reflect those of my employer. Also, this post is not to defame any service.

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Comments

  • Vijit Jain: My thoughts exactly – they should have automatically created/suggested a circle of people already...
  • Ojas Sabnis: I agree with most points Goyal and I am also mighty pissed with the loss of sharing feature. I hardly...
  • Sumit: We have developed the habit of being “politically correct”. Everybody accuses Modi for Godhra...
  • Ojas: Anything that has story telling in it must have a mention of the greatest (or worst) storyteller of the...
  • Teanju: Thanks, All awesome

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