Ohmygaad

Have sometimes wondered what is my purpose in life. Just when i thought i had the answer to that, these guys ruin it for me.

http://snipurl.com/tiop

anytime anywhere entertainment

Two breakthrough products allow time and place shifting of entertainment. TiVo and Slingbox.

http://www.tivo.com/1.0.asp
http://www.slingmedia.com/us/

Good for people who move around a lot and dont want to miss out on their daily dose of entertainment. On the flipside, this could go a long way in further screwing up the lives of tech obsessed people by making information and entertainment more easily accesible.

steganography

An act of hiding secret messages in things. Here you can find a tool to do just that to jpeg image files.

http://linux01.gwdg.de/~alatham/stego.html

The picture above has a text file embedded in it using this tool. If you are intereseted, you can retrive it using the same tool and the password "test". There is no secret message in this case though.

Melvin on Indian Soccer

http://snipurl.com/tiot

namma wikipedia

Checked out the one in kannada. But could only search by typing english. Dont have the kannada fonts. Hopefully someone will create one in Malayalam.

http://kn.wikipedia.org/wiki/

Gaming High

Video gaming market (including mobile gaming) is growing and so are the number of addicts.And soon we will have special gaming deaddiction centres to bring them back to the real world.

http://snipurl.com/tiow

And broadband connectivity seems making things more difficult.

http://snipurl.com/tip0

broad at my apartment

Not what you are thinking... how I wish!. Finally managed to get a broad band connection. It took so bloody long to get this one. First I had to choose from a variety of options and then after that the process of getting one is the standard duration of one month (atleast). Till then I had to make do with my phone modem and that was a paltry 256 Kbps (actually only 100 Kbps at best). Now I have a 50 Mbps ADSL connection (surely I wont be getting that much). But whatever it is, its good enough to download movies. Let the fun begin!

Ken you beat that?

China is known for manufacturing pirated goods of all types. But this one takes the cake....ingenious!! Guess goods like cars are also ripped off there.... interesting place eh?

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/27/business/nec.php

late to office

After getting a video player in my apartment and also a membership with the rental shop nearby, i am now enjoying watching movies late night.Not the usual late night pornos.Some good ones. And i sleep at 2am...get up late in the mornings and come to office in the afternoon.This has been happenning for 3 days now.Its fun...but dont know how long i can manage to pull it off without my manager knowing abt this.Maybe one more day.... plan to watch "confidence" *ing dustin hoffman and edward burns tonight. And will be late to office again tomorrow.

Mobile TV in Japan

Japan is the second country to provide dedicated digital terrestrial broadcast for mobile phones and handhelds after S.korea.

http://snipurl.com/olnp

New mobile services and technology seems to be originate here and in S.Korea. Japan is surely a great place to work on mobile technologies and i am enjoying it here. Unfortunately my vodafone handset does not support DTV.

Sobering down....

I dont like what i am seeing.. i dont think about drinking quite as often as i used to. Wonder if my internals have decided to take me on in a different way...not the usual stomach or liver problems..but kind of controlling my brain to stop me from thinking about drinking. I smell a conspiracy here....like i feel externals are conspiring against me all the time. Hmmm... lets see if i can get back to form.

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beer communication

Kirin is a japansese (see the effect?) beer. The company has beer joints called Kirin City. The slogan is "Beer communication". Neat, i thought.Being drunk is a good for conversations and communication.

haitus

Writing after a long time....almost 2 months now. Had been on vacation for a month after finishing my first project in tokyo. It was bloody hectic.... travelling to different places to get things done.Feels like i am on a vacation now here in Tokyo.
This time i hope to blog more often than last time. Will be shifting into a new apartment soon and will get Yahoo broadband setup asap so that i can stay connected.

Media folks should loosen up!

The last couple of years has witnessed some disruptive changes in the media field. Online availability of movies, TV series, video on demand, neat ideas like slingbox. The production houses are also loosing up a bit and becoming more consumer friendly. Now that proven business models (like iTunes) exist, i guess it makes more sense to join in and rake in moolah rather than sit out and get left behind.
And it is getting better with some production houses and distribution companies (mostly independent ones, not mainstream) deciding on releasing movies simultaneously in theatre, DVD and cable (maybe with a 24 hour delay).

Surely, the mainstream folks would take time to move into this mode....but i think this is how it should eventually be. People do go to theatres to watch movies even if they could do it sitting at home in front of a good home theatre. Atleast i would (ofcourse i would since i dont have a home theatre....no DVD player also... just a small TV box). Watching a movie in a good theatre is a different experience altogether... the big screen and great sound effects and the people around.
Watching a movie in a theatre is like....watching a movie in a theatre.
Maybe if the theatre owners feel that they would lose business because of this, they could do great number of things to improve the quality and draw the crowds back into the hall. Like digital screening, superior sound effects, comfortable seatings ....make it a wholesome place with resturants, shops etc. All of them may not be able to adapt to changing times... but this is how things in general improve.... the mediocre players will have to learn to move on or adapt.

eXtreme Programming

Hearing a lot about XP nowadays. And it seems to make a lot of sense for programmers and project managers to follow this kind of programming style especially when it is a huge project with varying requirements. But i guess it takes time for people to accept change.

http://www.extremeprogramming.org/

And this is a solid case for XP. FBI's VCF fiasco...

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/sep05/1455

architects and programmers

If architects designed buildings the way programmers write code, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.

Nice dig at programmers eh?

iPod Zepto

Came across this funny stuff...

http://mcsweeneys.net/2005/11/28fitch.html

sing along when you plomp

Japan toilets just got more techno...

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/07/mp3_toilet_seat/

Now you can plomp and fart as long as you manage to synchronise with the music..may i suggest heavy metal... gothic type...for making things easier.

Japanese know how to make life a real comfort. I guess next would be video display terminals that pop out and maybe even wireless internet connection to the nearest wi-fi spot
and before you know it... you are working out of the toilet.

Kameleon

I hate chameleons and lizards in general.. but i liked this one.

http://www.oneforallkameleon.com/kameleon.htm

Amazing product to have for controlling all your entertainment units and it is future-proof.
Neat.

TRAI consultation paper

The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has come out with a consultation paper targeting telecom and broadcast convergence.

http://www.trai.gov.in/pr2jan06.htm

The agency seems to be in step with technology and regularly comes up with recommendations and orders to improve the exisiting telecom industry. But some of the important recommendations get knocked down by the government and opposition as it fails to pass bills on them. Guess there are lobby pressures from service providers and the likes who may take a hit if some of the recommendations are passed.

Hopefully, regarding convergence, the government of India would take the necessary steps to ensure that we make the machinery smooth for the inevitable convergence and emergence of services like IPTV and VOIP.

One thing that is good with slow development (atleast when it comes to adopting technology), is that we get to choose the better option. For Ex: India did not invest that much in telephone infrastructure (PSTN) and had the chance to increase teledensity by directly moving to mobile networks and standards. But not for long i guess... since we would be on par with the rest of the developed nations (atleast in terms of technology consumption) sooner or later and may need to make first-mover/adopter decisions. That should be more interesting.

the dumb cube and GooOS

Is GooOs is pronounced goose?? In either case, something is cooking and blogs mention that it will be served this Friday at CES.
Would be a damn interesting thing if it turns out as rumoured. A dumb PC with GooOs that does minimal OS stuff and everything else required available on the network. Atleast Google attempts and moves lately indicated something of this sort. Even though it requires broadband connection, i guess it would sell very well (if marketed efficiently) in developing countries like India and China where there is a huge market and broadband connections are on the rise.
Would indeed be a revolution for PC and broadband markets!!

http://gadgets.fosfor.se/the-google-cube/

spooky cat state

It would be great if we can really thrash the problems and crack quantum mechanics. Right now, it looks like there are some things that we observe and cannot be explained rationally. Maybe one day scientists would give up their quests for explaining all things in a rational manner and give some credit to the master conspirator (i dont believe in god and religion...but i do believe that there is someone or something out there who controls all things that we have seen and not seen...maybe this someone is a cat afterall....like it turned out in the radio series "hitch hikers guide to the galaxy" by douglas adams.
Now that would be spooky cat state!!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/science/27eins.html?pagewanted=1&ei=5070&en=56b8eeb993fd0ff8&ex=1136437200

I hope that above link does not ask for a login.

whale dialects!!??

Who says humans are selfish and dont bother about other living creatures? Look we just spent huge amount of money and time to create devices that can detect whale sounds underwater and maybe even identify the type. Now how would that be helpful you think... how about tracking a lost blue whale in a different blue whale group? We can just help that one find its way back to its own group. See ... we do good!!!

http://news.com.com/Sprechen+sie+Whale/2100-11395_3-6016480.html?tag=st_lh