Anand's Blog

GOOGLE CHROME Extensions

anandspillai — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 07:07:40 +0000

Extensions, available for Google Chrome in Windows, are a great way to add more features and functionality to the browser. Sometimes, a feature is really useful for some people, but not for everyone. Extensions let you customize Google Chrome with features you like, while keeping your browser free of clutter that you don’t use.

Browser actions

These extensions add a button next to the Page and Tools menus to let you conveniently perform a task (such as accessing a site or checking for updates) no matter what page you’re visiting.For example, try out extensions likeGoogle Mail Checker, Chromed Bird for tweets,Facebook Notifications ….etc

Page Actions

These extensions can detect whenever you’re on a certain type of page and display an icon in the address bar. Click the icon to do an action on the page. For example, RSS Subscription Extension displays a small icon whenever it detects a feed on the page you’re visiting. You’d click the icon to instantly subscribe to the feed.

Content scripts

These extensions can directly interact with the page you’re visiting. For instance, Google Translate adds a banner to the top of your page whenever it detects that the page’s language is different from language you’re using for Google Chrome. You can click the button in the banner to automatically translate the page to a language of your choice.

There are different extensions that you can find in Extension Gallery

My INDIA My Pride

anandspillai — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 02:00:41 +0000

26th January 1950 is one of the most important days in Indian history as it was on this day the constitution of India came into force and India became a truly sovereign state. In this day India became a totally republican unit.The country finally realized the dream of the numerous freedom fighters who, fought for and sacrificed their lives for the Independence of their country. So, the 26th of January was decreed a national holiday and has been recognized and celebrated as the Republic Day of India, ever since.

10th Year of Hungerstrike

anandspillai — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 07:11:09 +0000

On 2 November 2009, Manipur poet and activist Irom Sharmila, will enter the 10th year of her hunger strike demanding the repeal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). Introduced in 1958 the AFSPA grants the Indian military special powers throughout North-East India to:

Arrest citizens and enter their property without warrant;
Shoot and kill anyone on mere ‘suspicion’;
Enjoy immunity against legal action.

Under the cover of the Act the Indian armed forces have indulged in killing, torture, enforced disappearances and rape, bringing great shame to India and much misery to the people of Manipur. According to the government appointed Justice Jeevan Reddy Commission ‘the Act has become a symbol of oppression, an object of hate and an instrument of discrimination and high-handedness.’ The United Nations Committee on Racial Discrimination has urged the Indian government to repeal the law. Chanu has been on a hunger strike demanding the repeal of the AFSPA, on November 2, 2000, after soldiers of the Indian Paramilitary Assam Rifles allegedly killed ten young Meitei men in Malom. Three days later, police arrested Sharmila on charges of “attempted suicide”, suicide or attempted suicide being unlawful under Indian laws, and she was later transferred to judicial custody. To keep her alive, she was force-fed a cocktail of vitamins, minerals, laxatives, protein supplements and lentil soup through the nose with a pipe. As part of a major set of concessions, including the transfer of the Kangla Fort to the State Government, a long-standing demand, Irom Chanu was released on October 2, 2006, on the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. She immediately made her way secretly to New Delhi, visited Gandhi’smausoleum (samādhi) at Raj Ghat as her first act after being released, and immediately recommenced her fast at the Jantar Mantar monument in Delhi. She was immediately arrested once again and admitted to the All India Institute of Medical Sciences’ hospital (AIIMS), but her brother, Irom Singhajit Singh, has challenged the detention in the New Delhi High Court.

On December 2, 2006, Irom Chanu Sharmila rejected Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s assurance to ‘dilute’ the AFSPA and announced her intention to continue until complete repeal.

In late November 2006, Iranian activist and Nobel laureate Shirin Ebadi visited Irom Chanu at AIIMS and announced her public support for her campaign against AFSPA.

The details of Sharmila’s campaign against AFSPA can be found at Irom Chanu’s ManipurFreedom.org

inbflat.net

anandspillai — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 02:24:14 +0000

One of those websites you must visit for the seer novelty of the idea. Inbflat.net has taken a number of videos from YouTube, and arranged them in an array. The videos are of musicians displaying their skills in different instruments. Play the videos together, or play some of them, or play a selection at different times to remix and create your own track. There are 20 videos to buffer, so you will need alot of patience or a great internet connection for this to work smoothly though.

Google Wave

anandspillai — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 02:13:50 +0000

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform, andcommunications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking.It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, robust spelling/grammar checking, automated translation between 40 languages, and numerous other extensions.Initially released only to developers, a “preview release” of Google Wave was extended to nearly 1 million users beginning September 30, 2009, with the initial 100,000 users each allowed to invite up to twenty additional users.

The name was inspired by the Firefly television series in which a Wave is an electronic communication (often consisting of a video call or video message). During the developer preview, a number of references were made to the series such as Lars Rasmussen replying to a message with “shiny”, a word commonly used in the series to mean cool or good, and the crash message of Wave being a popular quotation from the series: “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”.

Google Wave is designed as the next generation of Internet communication. It is written in Java using OpenJDK; its web interface uses the Google Web Toolkit. Instead of sending a message and its entire thread of previous messages or requiring all responses to be stored in each user’s inbox for context, objects known as waves contain a complete thread of multimedia messages (blips) and are located on a central server. Waves are shared and collaborators can be added or removed at any point during a wave’s existence.

Waves, described by Google as “equal parts conversation and document”, are hosted XML documents that allow seamless and low latency concurrent modifications. Any participant of a wave can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process. Users can reply to blips within waves. Recipients are notified of changes/replies in all waves they are active in and then view the changes when they subsequently access a given wave. In addition, waves are live. All replies/edits are seen real-time, letter by letter, as they are typed by the other collaborators. Multiple participants may edit a single wave simultaneously in Google Wave. Thus, waves not only can function as e-mail and threaded conversations but also as an instant messaging service, merging the functions of e-mail and instant messaging. It depends only on whether both users are online at the same time or not, allowing a wave to even shift repeatedly between e-mail and instant messaging depending on the user’s needs. The ability to show messages as they are typed can also be disabled, similar to conventional instant messaging.

The ability to modify a wave at any location lets users create collaborative documents, edited in a manner akin to wikis. Waves can easily link to other waves. It is in many respects a more advanced forum.

The history of each wave is stored within it. Collaborators may use a playback feature in Google Wave to observe the order which a wave was edited, blips were added, and who was responsible for what in the wave. The history may also be searched by a user to view and/or modify specific changes, such as specific kinds of changes or messages from a single user.

As of October, 2009, Google Wave is still in active development and is expected to remain in development until later in 2009. It was launched to about 100,000 users on September 30, 2009. Google Wave access can be requested. Developers have been given access to Wave proper, and all wave users invited by Google can nominate up to 20 others.