Delhi’s first BlogCamp

What do Amitabh Bachan, Aamir Khan and Jackie Shroff have in common?

Each has a Blog and now you can get talking to them!

IBNMS (Indian Blog and New Media Society), in collaboration with DBNMS (Delhi Blog and New Media Society), is organizing the first ever BlogCamp in Delhi!! BlogCamp Delhi will see people getting together to discuss/rant/brain-storm/share opinions about blogging technologies & trends. Various aspects of blogging will be covered like micro blogging, photo-blogging, video blogging, social media - or anything else related to the world of blogs & new media.

There will be opportunity to learn about the basics of blogging, attend hands on workshop on creating a new blog and meet like-minded people from the blogging world.

BlogCamps are different in that attendees are strongly encouraged to give a demo, a session, or help with one. If you are not being a speaker, you can help by taking notes of the event, blogging the event live, help to promote the event, or even helping with logistics.

If thats got you excited then be sure to attend BlogCamp Delhi on 24th May 2008 (Saturday) at 9:30 AM. You will need to brave the Delhi traffic and reach the venue:

Microsoft Corp
5th Floor, Eros Towers
Nehru Place, New Delhi

Registeration is FREE for the event, you can add your name to the list of attendees here: http://barcamp.org/BlogCampDelhi

If you are an Indian blogger or new media user/producer then you can also join the IBNMS here, membership is free!

Computers are Dumb, let’s use People!

So maybe your computer can bamboozle you at math, but can it beat you at a game of football? Or for that matter, can it even recognize the people in one of your family photos? No! Despite all the teraflops, computers can’t do things even the dumbest people can, so what does one do to solve a problem like this?

Well, use people! The trick with human computation is to take a problem a computer can’t solve and package it in a way in which people can. Take for example Peekaboom, a game in which people compete against each other in identifying elements in an image, while at the same time helping tag images. Other similar games include Phetch and the ESP Game. Here’s how it works.

Peekaboom pairs you heads-up with a partner with which to alternate turns being both Peeker and Boomer on a greater quest to train computers to see.

As Peeker, your job is to use the clues your partner provides via the hint system to guess the keyword assigned to the image being revealed. As Boomer, your job is to locate and reveal parts of the image, simply by clicking on it, that will allow your partner to guess the keyword. You may also provide valuable hints on whether your partner is hot or cold, and whether the keyword is a noun, text, related noun, etc.

You have just four (4) minutes to identify as many images as both you and your partner can. Since you are both earning points for each correct answer, the best strategy—as well as the greater good of the game—is to hone in on the parts of the image that best convey its meaning, as it relates to the keyword given, to provide the best clues to your partner.

Luis von Ahn is one of the foremost authorities on human computation. The following is a Google TechTalk by him:

For the more academically inclined amongst you, here’s a copy of his PhD thesis. Meanwhile, other projects are underway to use Flickr’s extensive database of photos to help computers judge locations. More on that soon…

ARP and DoS

Today I had some free time so I was cleaning my desktop and found my reading shelf folder and it had over 70 files to be read, so I started reading. I came across one whitepaper from DEFCON 15, from Jesse D’ Aguanno. It talked about Forging of ARP packets, I kept on reading and when I finished it opened his homepage for the software to download. Unfortunately I didn’t have linux on my laptop and wasn’t able to find some good software for packet injection. Finally I came across Netwox and from there my R&D started.

1. Downloaded the binary & installed it.
2. Scanned the LAN and found some MAC addresses.
3. Then started injecting some packets.

The end result: I was able to block more than 20 PCs from accessing the internet. What actually happened was I sent ARP Reply packets to the LAN PCs telling them that the gateway 10.0.0.1 had a MAC address ff:00:ff:00:ff:00 which didn’t exist. So whenever they tried to access internet, their packets would be lost.

Accidentally I did this to one of my friends as well, question arised how to make internet accessible to him again? I first asked him to pull out the network cable and try again. But it didn’t work. Then disabled and enabled the network but still no go. Finally he had to restart his PC.

This technique can poision the ARP cache of thousands of PCs in just seconds. I think will study how to stop it tomorrow.

The blocking of internet this way is called DoS Attack i.e., Denial of Service Attack.

Its buying season - Blockbuster proposes to Circuit City

It seems to me that buyouts are in the season with companies looking to mate with others. Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar proposal to Yahoo! still hasn’t gone cold & now we have US movie rental service Blockbuster putting forth a proposal to electronic goods retail chain Circuit City!! Apparently Blockbuster made their billion dollar offer to Circuit City in february this year but haven’t got any response from them yet so Blockbuster decided to go public with its offer. It hasn’t been a walk in the park for both companies off late; Circuit City posted a $200 million loss at the end of 2007 while Blockbuster has been fighting hard with competitor Netflix which provides both physical deliveries of movies as well as digital downloads(something which Blockbuster doesn’t provides & which definitely is looking like a serious threat lest company changes itself).

But how acquisition of retail chain Circuit City help Blockbuster? I can’t find an answer to this, unless Blockbuster is looking to diversify its business to have a fallback if Netflix puts their movie rental business out!!

via c|net

MySpace Expanding - Now in South Korea, soon in India!

Popular teen website MySpace has entered the South Korean market with the launch of its localized Korean website MySpace Korea. But the problem that they might face is that east asian markets like Japan & South Korea have a broadband & mobile penetration thats way way ahead of US and thus the consumers of web services in these markets are quite tech savvy & used to real rich user experience. This is where MySpace might hit a snag as the current MySpace is to South Koreans what were those silly homepages to us back in 1998-2000 and social networking virtual worlds like Cyworld already have a grip on these markets!! Myspace will be hosting the launch party of its South Korea edition tonight in Seoul.

But that’s not all, MySpace India will be launched later this week. Here MySpace will face competition from Orkut which has a big share in the market and also a stiff one with Facebook. But a quick look at the India edition of MySpace tells that while South Koreans get their website in korean language, MySpace will be dishing out english website in India!! So how the heck its gonna compete with Orkut & Facebook? With the ability to change themes & use HTML etc.? I think that people know about Blogger & Googlepages etc. for that kinda thing!!

How does MySpace fares, only time will tell, for now they have stiff competition to face in these two asian markets!!

via c|net

Reincarnation? Yeah!!

Its been 5 days more than three years from the day when this blog started. Its seen many ups & downs since then, prolific & minimal activity periods, 5 minutes to fame, etc. But it has been in hibernation for last one year as other priorities in life took driving seat!!

Now I guess is time for a second innnings, a reincarnation of this project!! I guess it will be work from start again, putting the building blocks from the base & starting fresh here. Lets hope that this time higher objectives are achieved, the first target being coming back to this blog’s popular old self!!

If you would like to write here on this blog then please feel free to contact regarding it, could definitely use some helping fingers typing on a keyboard!

The battleground is expanding!!

Locked in a head on battle to become the most used & most popular portal on internet, Yahoo!, Google & MSN have been fighting for the top spot for the browsers on computers, but with the mobile services coming along, mobile devices getting better technology juice everyday, the battleground is expanding.

About an year ago, Yahoo! launched Y!Go, a software suite for mobile devices which allowed the users to access Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Mail & other services anywhere!! This software had mixed reactions from people, some even went on to attacking Yahoo’s VP of Global Mobile Products & the software not because of any shortcomings(in a beta software) but to merely write a sensational piece for a news website & to quench their sadistic thirst!! Maybe Yahoo! refused to employ the writer!!

Anyways, I got my own Symbian S60 mobile(Nokia N70 Music Edition) last december & Y!Go came pre-loaded on it. After a quick install it was ready to go. My first impressions weren’t bad at all, it surely looked good as I tried out the Y!Messenger & Y!Mail. After the initial tests, I didn’t get around to use it again until recently. But the software doesn’t seem to like my regular mobile operator(I used another SIM with GPRS earlier), so I was looking for any updates etc. on Y!Go website when I came across the Y!Go 2.0 Gamma version & the website said that its a limited thing!! Don’t know about the “limit” of it but I sure got in on first try & installed the Java application on my mobile & started it.

A first look at it & it certainly looked better. Soon it asked me to select an access point for GPRS & it was all loaded up. The interface looks pretty cool with a horizontal service switcher at bottom which includes OneSearch, Mail, Weather, Sports, Finance, Maps, News, Entertainment and also includes Flickr!!! Whats missing is Messenger which I think many(including me) would like to have even if that means sacrificing some trival & unimportant stuff like Finance & Sports!!

The email feature is quite basic but still its good enough for reading up important emails & sending of a quick one when you are on the move. The sports & news features keep you updated on whats going on, even if you are out of your city or country!! If you have snapped a photo, you can upload it to your Flickr account easily & even see your or your contacts’ photos and any activity(comments etc.) on them. Since this service is still under testing, I do think that this will improve with more stuff coming in & current features getting better.

But what about Google, some may ask! Well, the search giant is not far behind. They’ve recently revealed their own portal & also have come up with a mobile application for Gmail. Just go to gmail.com/app in your mobile’s browser and if your mobile platform is supported then it’ll give you a link to download the software.

After installing it, you would be able to login via your Gmail account details and a typical Gmail clean interface will load in the Java application that allows you to go through your Inbox & also lets you customise what views you would like to see, like some or all of your labels which will let you sort your email, and a minimalistic compose screen which lets you compose new emails or replies to an existing email. The features are indeed basic, no flashy stuff, the interface is also neat & clean, a typical Gmail interface which is fast!! But I’ve no doubt that this application will expand in future & become a Y!Go like suite, just like it happened with the Google website.

MSN is still to enter this race, I think for now its only on Windows Mobile but for any serious competition, it’ll need to support multiple platforms, especially Symbian. But regardless of what happens & who wins the race, the user will always be a winner, long live competition! :tup:

Joost: Television on Internet!

Skype & Kazaa makers Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis have introduced yet another service that just might proove to be as revolutionary as their last two. Earlier codenamed as “The Venice Project” and now branded as Joost and pronounced as “juiced”, its a new internet based television service that might just change the way you watch your soaps! Currently in a test phase with a limited beta release, the service has comdedy, sports, music & documentaries as their content right now, with several more that will come as they’ve made deals(among others) with Warner Music, September Films, Endemol NV(creators of “Big Brother”), National Geographic and plans are on to make content deals globally as the service grows. A free software is required to be downloaded to avail the service which allows users to browse through channels, clips etc. and might be what can be termed as “Television on Demand” with viewers able to watch whatever they want whenever they want.

Some say that Joost will have a tough competition already with existing players like some free online channels, file sharing programs like Bittorrent and video services like YouTube, however I don’t think there’s much of a competition right now for a service like Joost as instead of providing one or two free channels, this thing will be just like your regular television with a satellite/cable connection where you can select from different channels/type of content and watch whatever you want and whenever you want. So really, the way I see it, there’s hardly any competition right now in this segment of internet based services, however it will become a hot cake in recent future with the introduction of many more services like Joost!!

More in News at: FoxNews :: iTWire :: TimesOnline

Installing XP from DOS the easy way!

Have you ever tried installing windows Xp from Dos, but couldn’t figure out. :hypnotised: Then the guide below will surely help.

1, download the win98SE boot floppy from here if you don’t already have one

2, format a floppy with a normal format

3, run the program you just downloaded to create the floppy

4, start your computer with the win98 startup floppy without cd support.

5, type “fdisk /mbr” (without the inverted commas)

6, type “fdisk” (without the inverted commas) and use the screen that comes up to delete all partitions (unless you have a partition you want to keep).

7, reboot if and when requested. Next step is to create a partition

8, format the partition in FAT32

9, Use the 98 boot floppy to boot the computer with CD support.

10, Insert the win XP cd, and copy the I386 folder from it to your hard drive. Do this by typing each command in order (below) and pressing enter after each one…

11, Change directory to the I386 folder on your harddrive, and run winnt.exe. Do this by entering the following commands, as you just did above…

WinXP should start installing.

spoolsv.exe at 99% CPU usage

My friend called me few days back and he told that his PC is acting very slowly. To me, first it looked like a case of my newbie friend not regularly cleaning his PC with spy or virus removal tools.I checked his PC with Spybot S&D with latest spy definitions , and also check for any virus’s with Norton Anti virus. But still the Pc was lagging. Then I ran the Windows Task Manager and checked which program was using up all the Cpu resource. Fascinatingly a executable named spoolsv.exe was using up 99% of all the resources and wasn’t eager to go down. I even tried to kill the spoolsv.exe process manually, but after a few seconds it again automatically ran in the background and started hogging the CPU.

First look at the exe name, says it has something to do with the printer spool. I looked up at the internet about spoolsv.exe and it’s not a virus anyways, spoolsv.exe is the spooler service responsible for managing spooled print/fax jobs. After a while, I manage to find a way to solve the spoolsv.exe from shooting up to 99% cpu usage problem.

It is advised to turn on the Print Spooler service first. You can do it from Control Panel -> Administrative Tools -> Services. Look for Print Spooler and stop it.

If it is already stopped, just follow the next step.
Delete ALL files in C:\WINDOWS\system32\spool\PRINTERS. It should have files something like 00020.SHD, 00020.SPL and etc…
Now spoolsv.exe should run but it’s at 0% CPU usage. Nice fix discovered.