Feedburner to Google - MyBrand and 404s

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Its been a while since Google allowed AdSense ads in feeds served by its Feedburner service, but to get those ads served the publishers had to move their feeds over to Google’s setup. Now Google is asking everyone to move their feeds from Feedburner to Google Accounts - the last date being given is 27th Feb. 2009 when all feeds will be moved whether a publisher wants it or not.

So thinking that, I also moved feeds of all my blogs yesterday. Since I use the MyBrand feature of Feedburner, which shows my domain name as feed URL instead of Feedburner’s domain, I thought that the process would be smooth & without any hiccups. I changed the CNAME DNS records for all the domains as advised on the MyBrand settings page but voila - all my feed URLs started giving out 404 errors.

I did a little bit of search and found out on Known Issues page in Feedburner Google Group that there appears to be a screwup in Google’s system. If one was already using MyBrand when they had their account migrated from Feedburner to Google, the MyBrand URLs will probably give 404 error. To rectify this, one needs to deactivate the MyBrand after migration (& after getting all ok thumbs up from Google regarding migration) and then activate it again & add all the domains back.

And yes, this trick works as all the MyBrand feed URLs of my blogs started working normally after this deactivation & activation! You might feel like saying WTF but seems someone goofed up at Google, eh!

Yahoo! Mobile site up for a facelift…..

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Things have been changing rapidly in mobile internet space in last few months. If I were to say that the year 2008 has seen some speedy facelift of mobile services on mobile internet than ever seen before then I wouldn’t exactly be exaggerating!! New services with Mobile 2.0 user interfaces and cool stuff have been popping up here and there and old players have also woken up from their slumber to do a bit of house cleaning and decoration. Giants like Google & Microsoft have also realised the importance of mobile space & its emerging popularity. Afterall, mobile internet is no longer remaining a thing of exclusivity and people are embracing it.

Yahoo! was also sleeping so far. If you were to have a look at current Yahoo! mobile website then you would be rather surprised how ancient it looks, straight out of the early 1990s and indeed not a pretty sight.

But this troubled giant is no longer sleeping as far as the mobile space is concerned. While it has been working on its mobile software suite Yahoo! Go for quite sometime, it seems that the team behind mobile website has also woken up and are preparing for a bit radical facelift of the mobile website. Yes, indeed it would look radical as you can see in the screenshot alongside that the new version that they have been working on looks way too much better than what the current situation is. And this is just the homepage of the mobile website, how it can & will probably look (once you are signed in).

For this new website they seem to have done away with all those ridiculous portal features like free downloads, movie stuff etc. and instead have put up three of their more consumer centric services - email, messenger & flickr photo sharing.

Along with those they have added the usual but useful widget like tidbits like ability to show current weather of a preferred city, some feed on latest news, finance and sports. And ofcourse the mobile version of Yahoo! oneSearch is also there.

 

 

 

 

Looking first at the email, I’d say the inbox looks quite neat & light & straight forward without any clunkiness. Its a simple partial listing of emails in inbox ordered by date and if you scroll down then you get option to either see more of the inbox (if available) or you can choose to see emails in any other folder if you so wish.

The emails are rendered in a mobile friendly textual format & open quickly. Since its all a single column deal, the options are available at the bottom of the page where you can choose various options like deleting an email or replying or forwarding or moving to a folder etc.

The compose screen is also quite simplistic. But one thing that I noticed and liked is that if you have your Yahoo! Mail configured to send email from more than one email address then there’s a From field on the compose mail page which lists all the email addresses from which you can send email. Gmail does not provide this drop down in its mobile version - neither on its mobile website nor in mobile software - which is rather odd but not surprising.

For the Flickr part, well, though Flickr has its own mobile website to which they are giving a facelift as well, its also available in this Yahoo! mobile website. The page opens with a typical Flickr greeting in one of the many languages of world and then you have various options like checking out contacts’ latest photos or selected photos from all over Flickr and seeing latest activity on one’s own photos. They have also integrated Yahoo! oneSearch with Flickr here meaning you can use that to search Flickr from here which doesn’t sound bad.

The messenger available on the mobile website is just like what it is at present, they have not applied this new look to it yet but will do so hopefully before rolling this new version of mobile website. But I don’t think there would be anything fancy there, just a simple HTML refresh based messenger as it is right now.

Though this upcoming new look of the Yahoo! mobile website is quite simplistic without any bells and whistles but its quite straight forward and neat and doesn’t look shabby & ancient like the current Yahoo! mobile website. Its in beta right now and you can access it here.

Another feature of HTC Touch HD revealed…..

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The guys over at PDA.pl have dished out a video of HTC Touch HD which shows yet another feature of Touch HD - the ability to re-arrance & remove tabs. Even if not for the new feature, the video still looks cool with good music, so do watch it!

HTC Touch HD…..

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A few weeks back among other things, HTC announced their upcoming kickass phone, HTC Touch HD. The phone’s specifications reveal that it will have a Qualcomm MSM 7201A 528 MHz processor powering it with 512MB ROM & 288MB RAM memory. It will sport a 3.8 inch TFT-LCD touch sensitive screen with 480 x 800 pixel WVGA resolution and will ofcourse be running Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional which will be spiced up with HTC’s TouchFlo 3D interface.

Already this phone is generating a lot of interest & from whatever pictures & videos of it have surfaced, its really looking like something worth drooling over unlike some phones which are nothing but useless hype & which are slackers(ahem.. the jesus phone)!!

But so far the videos of the previews that have surfaced have not been in English; there have been a video in French which compared HTC Touch HD with Apple’s iPhone & which it was clearly visible that HTC HD beats iPhone pretty heavily (as if that is any difficult), and there was about half an hour’s worth video in German which displayed just about all features of HTC HD. But now German website AreaMobile have posted their video preview with English subtitles so that sheds some more light on the already bright HTC HD.

Here’s their video preview with English subs. To turn on the sub-titles, click on the up arrow on the right side of the bar at the player bottom.

 
And the french video that I just talked about, it seems that an English dubbed version of that has also surfaced, so here’s that video which pits iPhone against HTC Touch HD. It clearly looks like HTC Touch HD has a better screen & colour reproduction than Apple iPhone!

 
Now its already looking like a pretty long wait till November end when HTC unleashes this kickass phone into the European & Asian markets.

Now available in Hindi too!

The return from hibernation has been slow & the blog has been slow as well since that, perhaps it still was in slumber. But things do progress and now its progressing here at diGit Blog as well.

So I’m happy to announce that diGit Blog will now also be served in Hindi as well.

The Hindi edition will contain translations of articles published here & also its own set of articles as well which might find their way here in English, or might not.

If you can understand Hindi, I suggest you head out there and read more at the brief launch announcement.

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