Yahoo! My Web 2.0 Beta

Yahoo! My Web 2.0 (Beta) the social search engine.

- Search and save your searches
- Share your searches with friends
- See your friends' searches
- See everyone's shared searches
- Search tags
- Try Yahoo! My Web 2.0 Beta.

Personal - Cricket Nostalgia

Cricket nostalgia

A nice read on a rainy afternoon. Sachin and Kambli's 664-run partnership in Bombay's inter-school cricket.

Sachin was my Hero in school and college and still is, and I wish for his bat to re-create the magic of the 90s, once again.
Good luck, Sachin.

My favourite cricketing shot of Sachin is the straight drive played off the back foot against a left-arm fast bowler bowling over the wicket.

Visualize this...
Wasim Akram in to bowl (Feb. 1999 Chennai test) in the cauldron of Chidambaram stadium, the roar of the crowd reaches a crescendo of Saaaachinnnn... Saaaachinnnnn...as Wasim Akram starts his run-up to the bowling crease, zips past the umpire, and sends down a perfect outswinging delivery that pitches on the middle and moves toward the off. Sachin goes on the back foot, covers the line of the ball, the bat goes up ever so gentle and then with a low backlift swings to meet the ball seam-up, the meat of the willow taps the ball, it edges past the outstretched fingers of Wasim, brushes past the umpire and races toward the boundary, the mid-off and mid-on players giving up the futile chase half-way through.
Magic! Sachin's straight drive.

In school, life meant cricket and studies in that order.

- 7 to 8:45 am cricket practice.
- 9 am to 3:35 pm attend classes in school.
- 4 to 5:30 pm cricket practice.
Either in the mornings or in the evenings.
- 6:30 to 7 pm play cricket with friends in society
- Study in the evenings

Go to school. Play cricket. Study. Play cricket. Study.
Same routine the next day. Play cricket matches on Saturdays and Sundays.
It was simple, maan.

I strongly feel that schools should ban cellphones.
13, 14-year-old school children don't need an 'electronic leech' to stick to them in classes.

I had this thought after I saw my neighbour's 5-year-old kid, studying in the first standard - class I, playing with a toy cellphone.
Technology is good, but kids flaunting stuff because of peer pressure, as everyone does so, is wrong and I'd blame their parents for that.

Google Video Viewer

1. Google Video
Watch videos on Google. Download Google Video Viewer (1.15 MB)

URL of Google Video
http://video.google.com/

Sign in with your GMail account and submit your videos.
https://upload.video.google.com/

Note: Videos are currently not available in India.

2. Google's share price is $304.10
GOOG crosses $300.

Technorati please show the Ping Us link on the Home page

Request to Technorati, the Blog search engine.

Please show the Ping Us link on your new look Home page.

URL to ping Technorati
http://www.technorati.com/ping.html

New Rules in One Day International Cricket

New Rules in ODI Cricket

- ICC introduces Substitution of players in One Day International Cricket on a trial basis for a 10-month period from July 30, 2005.

- Fielding restrictions in ODIs increased from 15 to 20 overs.
# Only ten of these to be bowled at the start of the innings and the remaining ten to be adjusted in two blocks of five as per the fielding captain's wish.

- The close-in catcher field restriction will be in force for only the first ten overs.

An example of substitution:
India can play Anil Kumble and Mohammed Kaif together.
Kumble bowls his 10 overs and then Kaif takes the batting spot.

Read more about new cricket rules in ODIs.

Rains here

The monsoon has arrived in Pune. It's raining since morning.

Cricket: Schedule of SL Triangular Series

Schedule of Triangular Series featuring Sri Lanka, West Indies, and India. Starts July 30 at Dambulla in Sri Lanka.

Upload images from your computer to your blog

What's new at Blogger?

Blogger offers image uploading.
Click on the Add Image icon, in the header of the Create Post page, to add an image from your computer to your blog.

SpiceJet

SpiceJet offers low domestic air fares.

Power cuts on Sat and Sun

A 2-hour power cut and then six hours of low voltage last evening from 7 pm to 1 am.
Low voltage and more power cuts this morning and afternoon.

MSEB Joke:
Only in Pune can you have a 6-hour power cut for maintenance and a 3-hour power cut the next day for repairing a fault.

Tata Crucible Business Quiz July 2005

Take part in the Tata Crucible Business Quiz.

Register for the quiz. Registration is free.

Schedule for Pune: Starts with a written elimination round.
Day and Date: Saturday, July 16, 2005.
Venue: Nehru Memorial Hall, Pune.

Information via Kiruba's blog. Thanks.

Ad Copy

Draft of Ad copy for promotion of Web content writing.

# Net surfers are searching the Web for sites like yours.
# Potential clients are the searching the Web for businesses like yours.
# Consumers are searching the Web for products like yours.

Bring them to your site.
Engage them with your content.
Sell to them.
Writing that sells. Abc Web Writers.

Make the world your market through us.
Writing that sells. Xyzee Advertising.

List of Contextual Advertising Providers

Contextual Advertising Providers.
For my reference, reading, trial, research, and review.

Alternatives to Google AdSense.
Thanks to Threadwatch for the information.

1. Google AdSense
http://www.google.com/adsense/

2. Clicksor
http://www.clicksor.com/

3. Targetpoint
http://publisher.targetpoint.com/

4. AdBrite
http://www.adbrite.com/

5. Chitika
http://www.chitika.com/

6. AllFeeds
http://www.allfeeds.com/

7. Adhearus
http://www.adhearus.org/

8. AffiliateSensor
http://www.affiliatesensor.com/

9. BidVertiser
http://www.bidvertiser.com/

10. Veoda
http://advertise.veoda.com/

11. RevenuePilot
http://www.revenuepilot.com/

12. Kanoodle
http://www.kanoodle.com/about/advertise.cool

13. Quigo
http://www.quigo.com/

14. Enhance Interactive
http://www.enhance.com/

15. BidClix
http://www.bidclix.com/

16. Miva
http://www.miva.com/us/

17. SearchFeed
http://www.searchfeed.com/

18. FastClick
http://www.fastclick.com/

19. AdEngage
http://www.adengage.com/

20. BannerBoxes
http://www.bannerboxes.com/

21. contextWeb
http://www.contextweb.com/Corporate/home/

22. Vibrant Media's Intellitxt
http://www.intellitxt.com/site/index.html

23. Nixxie
http://www.nixxie.com/

24. InfoGrabber
http://www.infograbber.net/

25. Yahoo! Contextual Advertising (Coming soon...)
http://publisher.yahoo.com/

26. Mirago
http://www.mirago.com/

NYT Article

An interesting read: Almost all libraries in U.S. offer free access to Internet.
Read The NYTimes article. (Free subscription required).

Stock Market Quiz

Take the stock market and BSE Sensex quizzes on Rediff.

Spot Quiz: What is the market capitalization of GOOG, YHOO, AMZN, ASKJ, INFY, and MSFT? Select the links to find out.

AFI's List of Top Hundred Movie Quotes

American Film Institute's choice of 100 famous Hollywood movie quotes.

Also read, a list of 400 nominated movie quotes (PDF, 235 KB) from which these hundred were selected.

Technorati Tags: Quotes, Movie Quotes, and Hollywood.

Trivia

This will make for an interesting quiz question.

Q: Name the cricketer who has played the most number of One Day International (ODI) matches without winning a Man of the Match award?
A: Former Indian wicket-keeper Nayan Mongia

ImageBank

Use ImageBank's advanced image search to find royalty-free images.

Note: The previous post - June Quiz will be back on June 30.

June Quiz

This month's office quiz. I've kept it simple.
Last month I'd sent a Google Quiz.
This month it's on Pune, cricket, telecom, finance, and technology.
I invite readers to take a shot at it.

Update: I will post the answers on June 30 at 7 pm IST.
Update: Posted answers to the June Quiz 2005. June 30. 07:10 pm IST

Answers to the June 2005 Quiz

1. Which area in Pune is named after a German city? (Hint: Near Pune University)
- Bremen Chowk/Bremen Circle after the German city of Bremen

2. Why is Pune's Sangam bridge, the bridge that joins COEP to RTO, called as the Sangam bridge? (Hint: Rivers)
- The bridge is the meeting point (confluence) of Mula and Mutha rivers, hence it is called the 'Sangam' (union) bridge.

3. What is the Kasturba Gandhi Memorial in Pune popularly known as? (Hint: Palace)
- Aga Khan Palace

4 Everyone knows about Parvati Hill in Pune. Name the other hill near Dhankawadi with a temple on the hilltop?
(Hint: Name starts with T)
- Taljai

5. What is Pune's meteorological obervatory known as? (Hint: Office)
- Shimla Office

6. Folklore has it that the wives of the seven founders contributed Rs.10,000 to help start this company in Pune.
Which company are we talking about? (Hint: Too big now)
- Infosys

7. Which five-star hotel in Pune was earlier known as The Holiday Inn? (Hint: Part of it was once demolished by Arun Bhatia).
- Sun N Sand

8. Who represents Pune in the Lok Sabha? (Hint: MP from Pune)
- Suresh Kalmadi

9. When was the Fergusson College established? (Hint: Take a walk and find it out! :-))
- 1885

10. What was the real name of Sinhagad fort before it was re-named as Sinhagad (Lion's Fort) in honour of Tanaji's memory?
- Kondana

11. Which country in the world has the largest number of mobile phone users? (Hint: Who else?)
- China

12. What is MMS in telecom terminology?
- Multimedia Messaging Service

13. What is the desgination held by the chief of the Reserve Bank of India? (Hint: Check your notes)
- Governor

14. Which financial institution is based at Phiroze Jeejeebhoy Towers in Mumbai (Bombay)? (Hint: Finance)
- Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE)

15. What happened to the Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex on June 20, 2005? (Hint: Benchmark)
- The BSE's Sensex crossed the 7000 mark for the first time.

16. What does the 'S' in HSBC stand for? (Hint: China)
- Shanghai

17. Which principle states that 80 percent of a company's profits must come from 20 per cent of its products? (Hint: Principle)
- Pareto's Principle (The 80-20 Rule)

18. Bill Gates and Paul Allen derived the name Microsoft from 'microcomputer' and which other word?
- Software

19. Which famous company got its present name from 'integrated electronics'?
- Intel

20. Javed Miandad hit a famous last ball six to give Pakistan a win in a one day match in 1986 in Sharjah.
Name the cricketer who snatched a last over win for India versus Pakistan during the Independence Cup Final in Dhaka, Bangladesh.
(Hint: He is from Pune).
- Hrishikesh Kanitkar

21. Against which country did Steve Waugh play his last cricket test match?
- India

22. Who holds the record for the fastest and the second-fastest One Day International hundreds in Cricket? (Hint: Pakistani cricketer)
- Shahid Afridi

23. Who is the new coach of the Indian cricket team? (Hint: Australian)
- Greg Chappell

24. Where is the 2007 Cricket World Cup going to be held? (Hint: Beaches)
- West Indies

25. What is the highest individual score made by an Indian batsmen in test cricket?
- Virender Sehwag - 309 versus Pakistan

26. Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli shared a famous unbeaten partnership of 664 runs in Bombay schools cricket. Can you name the school they were representing?
- Shardashram Vidyamandir

27. Which movie displaced Sholay as India's longest running film? (Hint: It completed 10 years at Mumbai's Maratha Mandir cinema hall)
- Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (DDLJ)

28. Who won the best Bollywood newcomer award (female) at the recently held IIFA 2005 awards in Amsterdam, Holland? (Hint: Comic book)
- Ayesha Takia

29. Name Hrithik Roshan's second hit film after Kaho Na Pyaar Hai? (Hint: Jadoo)
- Koi Mil Gaya

30. Googlebot is Google's web spider. What is the name of Yahoo!'s web spider/ web crawler/ robot? (Hint: Noise)
- Slurp

Cricket

Too much is being made of Australia's recent defeats. All it takes for the Aussies to bounce back is for Gilly to fire. Australia are still favourites to win the Natwest Series.

ESPN and Star Sports channels are not shown on cable TV, so I haven't been able to follow the cricket matches.

Sunday afternoon

A 3-hour power cut in the morning; no water supply, and then again a 30-minute power cut in the afternoon from 3:45 to 4:15.

Update: A power cut from 6 to 10 this morning.

Google plans an electronic payment system like PayPal

Google has plans to start an electronic payment system like eBay's popular PayPal. Read more on Google's reported plans of developing an electronic payment system.

Use Twingine to view Google and Yahoo Web search results on the same page

- Yaagoohoogle (Google and Yahoo Web search from one page) is known as Twingine.
Search twingine.com and see Google and Yahoo Web search results on the same page.

Search Google and Yahoo Together

- See Google News and Yahoo News search results on the same page.

Yahoo! Search Subscriptions

Use Yahoo! Search Subscriptions to search for access-restricted content that requires login/registration.

For example, use Yahoo Search Subscriptions to search for documents on
blogs and rss marketing from Forrester Research.

Use Yahoo! Search Subscriptions to search for subscription content from sources like Forrester Research, Consumer Reports, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, IEEE, The New England Journal of Medicine, and TheStreet.com.

Learn more about Yahoo Search Subscriptions.

Google Mobile

Use Google Mobile to search the Web from your cellphone. www.google.com/xhtml

Whitehart Theme for Firefox

Install Whitehart theme for Firefox browser. Give a silvery white look to Firefox.

Thoughts for Today

Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle.
~ From the text of Steve Jobs' commencement speech delivered at the Stanford University on 12 June.

Learn to respond instead of reacting.
~ From Azim Premji's speech

Links taken from Rashmi's Youth Curry.

China View

China View. To make it a part of my daily reads.

Football

FIFA's list of top 100 football players. To read later.

Nostalgic Sher

A nice Sher, but nothing personal.

Chupke chupke raat din aansoon bahaana yaad hai
Humko apni aashiqui ka woh zamaana yaad hai

Power Cuts

A power cut for the entire day in office. No electricity at home in the evening and again a power cut from 10 p.m. to 12 midnight. One can never say when the lights will go off in Pune. Seems like anytime is the right time for a power cut in Pune.

Update: Thu., 16th June. 07:20 p.m.

Lights went off and on this morning at work, and the UPS was down in the afternoon.

Personal

I'll be 29 next week. Maan, birthday is a time to introspect.
A year has almost gone and I have done few things out of the ones I'd decided last year.

I'm nowhere near earning Rs. XK per month. Although I think it will be possible sooner or later.

Targets/ Resolutions

- Do something different apart from going to work and coming back home
   # School teacher
   # Story Writer
   # Journalist
      * Buy a digital camera and blog about Pune.

- Read more books

- Watch more movies

- Get Engaged

- Get Married

- Go for shopping
I haven't shopped for clothes since last November.

- Play Cricket
It's been a long time I haven't played even tennis ball cricket.

Let me narrate an interesting office incident related to Cricket.
Abhijeet is in the Accounts dept. in office. I had a hair cut after a period of almost four months, and incidentally I'd gone to his desk for some work.
He asked me the name of my school. Turned out both of us are from the same school (I wasn't knowing this before). He recognized me from my sideface after the haircut.
He was six years junior to me in school and he remembered me from my cricket playing days in school. (I used to open the batting in school; bowl off-spin; field at forward short-leg and take diving catches (was fun) standing in the first slip).

Proves that being good at sports always makes schoolmates remember you.
I came first in school in class ten. If I meet schoolmates they still remember me as Chirayu, the cricket player and captain of the school cricket team.

I have fond memories of my cricket playing days in school and I can recollect many interesting incidents to narrate. I'll save those for some other time.

A Thought for Today

Imagination is more important than knowledge.
Knowledge is limited; imagination encircles the world.
~ Albert Einstein

Weekend

The quality of Bollywood script writing is getting vulgar by the day.
What else can one expect when the Queen of Television trash, Ekta Kapoor produces one more film to promote her brother Tushar Kapoor.

Kya Kool Hai Hum is replete with cheap double-entendre (meaning) dialogues, corny jokes, vulgar comedy, and some plain old PJs.

That's the taste of the audience. The film is going strong in its sixth week.
It's a film one can watch with friends (guys), not with co-workers or relatives.

The eye candies (Isha Koppikar and Neha Dhupia) look good. Isha has a meatier (pun intended) role as an uncouth policewoman. Neha makes an appearance in the second-half and looks good (and beautiful for a change) in those black specs.

Good reads on Google

Interesting reads on Google.

$80 billion Google is the world's biggest media company by stock market value.

The Independent's Jeremy Warner says, "Can changing the world really be worth £44bn ($80bn)" or is GOOG over-priced?

Take a poll on, "What would you call GOOG watchers?" I'd call them Googillionaires.

A 1-page cheat sheet on Google's Advanced Search Operators

Technorati, the blog search engine, gets a makeover

Technorati, the blog search engine experiments with a makeover.
See Technorati's new look at http://beta.technorati.com/

I'd prefer a white background with green bars and white font links, rather than the entire space taken up by a lightgreen box in the centre and whitesmoke boxes at the top and bottom.

The search box at the top looked better than the one at the centre.
The site requires horizontal scrolling at 800 by 600 resolution, which needs to be cut down.

The look and feel is gaudier than the green on white of the original Technorati. I haven't tried the new features in searching. Will do so and post again.

Technorati Tag: Technorati

Firefox - Unable to initialize memory stream

I'm unable to open Firefox browser. I'm getting an error message window that says, "Unable to initialize memory stream." It has got something to do with spools.exe. What is it? I'd appreciate your guidance.

Thanks, Chirayu

Update: 16th June 2005. 06:54 p.m. IST.

Solution to open Firefox browser and remove the 'Unable to initialize memory stream' message window.

Delete spools.exe and mmsvc.exe malware from your Registry Editor.

Step-by-step Instructions:

1. Go to Start --> Run (Short Cut Win Key + R)
2. Type regedit in the Run window
3. Click on the OK button
4. The Registry Editor opens.
5. Click on the + sign on the left of My Computer

6. Navigate to the subkey
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersion\Run

7. In the right window pane, delete the values mmsvc32.exe and spools.exe
8. Exit the Registry Editor.
9. Refresh and open Firefox browser. It opens :-)

Pune - Drizzle in the Evening

A 15-minute drizzle in the evening
It's raining in Pune. There's a power cut. I've opened the windows and I'm waiting for the wind on my face.

Yahoo!'s Buzz Log

Yahoo!'s Buzz Log provides a glimpse of What the World is searching for, and always makes for informative and interesting reading. I like the content of Yahoo! Buzz Log. The posts have links to search results and the what and whys of those searches. Always a good read.

Rediff's Air Fare Search

Rediff introduces Air Fare Search for India. Rediff's Air Fare search finds and compares air fares from all domestic airlines in India.

Keyword Suggestion Tools

Keyword Suggestion Tools for my ready reference.

- Google AdWords Keyword Suggestion Tool

- Digital Point Keyword Suggestion Tool
Thanks for the link, SG.

- Overture Keyword Suggestion Tool

Nice Lines

Tera mujh se hai pehle ka naata koi
Yunhi nahin dil lubhaata koi

What's New at Google?

- Google Research Publications
PDFs of Research Papers written by Google employees.

- Google Sitemaps (Beta) is an experiment in crawling the web that enables the Google spider, Googlebot to find what pages are present on a Web site and which of them have recently changed.

Update: Tue., 7th June 2005. 11:32 a.m. IST.

Add a plain Text file Sitemap

1. Open Notepad and write the URLs of all the Web pages on your Web site.
2. Name the plain text file as urllist.txt
3. Upload the text file on your server.
Example: http://www.yourwebsitenamehere.com/urllist.txt
4.
- Log-in to Google Sitemaps
- Click on the Add a Sitemap link
- Enter the URL (link) of your urllist.txt file.
Example: http://www.yourWebsiteNameHere.com/urllist.txt
- Click on the Submit URL button
- Your Sitemap has been submitted to Google Sitemaps (as a plain text file)

- A good read: An article on Nikesh Arora, Director of Google's European operations.

- Meet the Google Engineers at WebMasterWorld's conference in New Orleans.

- Google's Summer of Open Source Code.

Nice Lines

Kabhi to subh tere kunj-e-lab se ho aagaaz
Kabhi to shab sar-e-kaakul se mushkbaar chale
~ Faiz Ahmed Faiz

For once let my mornings dawn from the corners of your lips
For once let my nights walk through the fragrance of your hair

GOOG

GOOG ($290 02:10 p.m. ET) guns for $300 on Nasdaq. CSFB ups Google's price target to $350.

The Cluetrain Manifesto

Point nos. 44 and 45 from the 95 theses of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

- 44. Companies install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.

- 45. Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals co-operating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.

This is where Blogs can play a major role in an Intranet - to start a bottom-up conversation on matters that center around employees and reach the management or is it too far-fecthed? Intranets have always been top-down. Which major organization will take the lead to make a bottom-up intranet or a part of an intranet?

- 3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

So why do we have the yada, yada, yada... stuff that no one reads. The agreements, terms and conditions, privacy policies. Isn't it time for all those to be in a human-readable form like the Creative Commons License.
# Had the above thought after making changes to a 9-page Partner agreement that no one is going to read, except when it is going to be edited, like I did yesterday.

Read the complete text of The Cluetrain Manifesto.

Google Syndicates its Press Releases

Read the latest Press Releases from Google in your News/Feed aggregator.
Subscribe to the Google Press Releases Feed.

Add the URL of Google Press Releases feed, http://googlepress.blogspot.com/atom.xml to Bloglines, My Yahoo!, NewsGator, FeedBurner, Feedster, My MSN, FeedDemon, Onfolio, Pluck, or any other news/feed aggregator that you use to read syndicated content.

Technorati Tag: Google

May the Blog be with You

May the Blog (Force) be with you!

Read Yoda on Blogs.