apnerve

uhuroo - content collaboration made easy

2009-06-24T15:05:00.001+05:30

Recently, I've started playing with this certain web app called uhuroo. My very first response was -"Lol! here comes yet another online file storage service". But after using it for about 2 weeks and experimenting with various useful features it had, I must admit that I fell in love with this wonderful app. Why? read on...

what exactly is this uhuroo thing anyway

Uhuroo is a web based tool for information sharing, which allows creating online folders where you can share documents with internal team members (i.e. specially in distributed locations), customers, and other external collaborators. You can also maintain document revisions in a centralized repository and also record everyone's feedback on the content

a closer look at uhuroo

Well organised information is always easy to retrieve. Uhuroo makes it possible to organise data efficiently by means of tagging, ranking and discussion which helps users Collaborate Effectively. I feel there are 3 important things to look for in any information processing system:

Information Storage

Storing information should be easy and the stored information should be secure.Uhuroo offers an easy way to upload files(information) through email push. Once you choose an email account for a folder, files can directly uploaded using email attachments. The subject becomes the title of the document and the body becomes the description and the attached file is uploaded which is stored securely in uhuroo's servers which have zero downtime. Uhuroo also provides a web interface, browser plugins and desktop addons to do the same. view the complete feature list.

Information Organisation

As I said before, well organised information is easy to retrieve. If you are logged into the web based uhuroo system, you have a number of social networking / bookmarking features: documents can be rated,tagged,ranked and commented on.

Information Retrieval

When you login into the web based uhuroo system, you are greeted with a dashboard which is a birds eye view of what is happening across all your teams. It also shows the ranking statistics based on some of the above information: most frequently read, downloaded, subscribed document, most discussed document, most popular post or author, most popular tags.

The full text search helps us find data faster as it even searches within the files! One more feature that I liked in uhuroo is the filter option using which we can filter data based on Author, tags, date posted on and rank. Uhuroo also keeps you updated with the latest version of the document (in case someone uploads a new version) by sending you an email.

in a nutshell

Uhuroo makes it really simple to share data with your group at the workplace. (Data meaning doc, ppt, xls, emails, pdf, images, video files)
All this data is then accessible at one central location.
Features like search within your content (even within the documents), tagging, ranking to make it easy to search through heaps of data.

Hence, it is really made for teams overwhelmed with content getting lost or going out of sync in email, folders or corporate LANS, and are looking for better ways to share and manage content internally and with, partners, customers or other collaborators

For more information check out uhuroo website

7 random things about me

2009-05-27T16:39:00.008+05:30

I haven't been tagged by anyone for the "7 random things about me" meme. So I take the opportunity to start a meme myself.

meme?

A blog meme is ~~a meme~~something that requires active participation by the blogger and (rarely) traces back to an originating source. It is a question that a blogger answers to share some personal perspective or experience on random topics.

the rules

Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
Let them know they have been tagged.

7 things

When I was young, I wanted to become an astronaut.
I haven't seen the movie - Forest gump yet.
Once I fell in love with a cartoon character - jasmine, of Disney's Aladdin. She is still my crush ;)
I need food, water, air, sleep and a computer to survive
I've been awarded all the grades available except AA and AP. (yes! XX, II ,FR, FF … everything!)
I can write in reverse order (mirror writing) with the same speed as I write normally.
I hate JOOMLA (a Content Management System), Mallika Sherawat (who, by coincidence, shares by birthday) and CH101 (I still have an active backlog in it!)

7 people I tag

g2 - coz I simply love his humorous posts
vivek - coz he loves writing absolute random stuff
artagon - coz I wonder what his 7 things would be
pramod - coz he hasn't posted anything since a month
zubin - coz he compiled a long todo list
ravali - coz she has already posted 101+ things about her and I wonder which 7 will she choose.
manku - coz he remains a stupid!

PS: @ the above 7 people. Post a comment here once you are done with your 7 things.

blogger navbar hack explained

2009-05-25T20:54:00.010+05:30

Many people use blogger to power their blogs and find the navbar at the top very annoying. Some of them came up with some nice tricks to hide/remove the same. In this article, I'll be explaining how the trick works.

#navbar-iframe{ display:none !important;}

you might have come across this code in many articles. Well... this is how it works.

blogger adds the following code to your blog.

 [iframe src="..." id="" navbar-iframe ...][/iframe]

If you observe carefully, this 'iframe' tag has an ID attribute set to "navbar-iframe". Inorder to hide it we set the CSS rule "#navbar-iframe{ display:none;}" which tells the browser that the element with the ID attribute "navbar-iframe" should not be displayed. However, Blogger adds the following CSS automatically

#navbar-iframe{display:block;}

And since this CSS rule comes after the one which we applied, the latter has more preference and our rule doesn't get applied. This is because of the CASCADING property of CSS. Inorder to override this, we have an "!important" declaration. A rule that has the "!important" property will always be applied no matter where that rule appears in the CSS document. So if you wanted to make sure that a property always applied, you would add the !important property to the tag. So we apply this "!important" property to our style:

#navbar-iframe{ display:none !important;}

Now, display of the tag with id attribute "#navbar-iframe" is set to "none" which tells the browser not to display the same. Hence, the navbar gets hidden.

The same thing can be achieved using javascript too.

document.getElementById('navbar-iframe').style.display='none';

This method has been used in http://apnerve.blogspot.com/2009/02/new-apnerves-hide-blogger-navbar-widget.html

PS: Few other CSS rules that work are:

#navbar{display:none;}

#navbar{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}

.navbar{display:none;}

.navbar{visibility:hidden;height:0px;}

twitterfilms

2009-05-24T18:07:00.006+05:30

Today I got addicted to the new trending topic in twitter - #twitterfims Here are some of the best tweets I came across while madly adding few of my tweets too.

Kyonki tweet bhi kabhi blog tha - @vivekk
140 ki last local - @rkavan
kabhi tweet kabhi retweet
140 akshar prem ke - @me :)
The retweet of extraordinary tweets - @me :)
Twitterers of Carebbean : the dead man's tweet
tweeting tiger … retweeting dragon
saving private tweet
tweets and the DMs

… and there are many many more sprouting up.

A comic is worth thousand words.

2009-03-01T03:52:00.004+05:30

Everyone loves comics. I love them too. As a kid, I always loved Tinkle, tintin, Chacha chaudary, Nagraj, (and few others from RAJ and Diamond comics).

Years rolled by and my taste also changed. Now I like XKCD and AbstruseGoose. Both are aimed at geeks and are about programming, physics, math and some geeky stuff. Check them out.

A picture is worth a thousand words

Most of the companies have realized this recently and now they have blogs with comic strips instead of boring text bragging about their product. Google, as always, is the first one to use comic strips for promotion of their product - Chrome. Another such company is CollCraft. They are planning to launch their product - uhuroo in a short while. They publish wonderful comic strips about enterprise software, in their comic blog - uwoes. Webcredible uses comic strips, instead of boring articles on user experience.
Just imagine how it would be if our academic material were presented as comics. As for me, I promise, I would never leave any chapter unread. Cuz a comic is worth thousand words and everybody loves comics.

Comment and win prizes!

2009-02-24T03:34:00.002+05:30

I never knew that we could win prizes just by commenting until I saw a tweet from @smashing regarding their "comment and win contest". After posting a comment I noticed a similar website called instantshift, which hosted a similar contest as per the entry - "comment-and-win-a-free-membership-to-elegant-themes". Without wasting a second I posted a comment there too.

Here is an excerpt from the post:

Taking part in this giveaway is easy… well, maybe not that easy. We’re keen on seeing a lot of comments and want to see at least 5,000 comments in this post, so spread the word and help us get to 5,000 or more comments and then win one of the smashing prizes below. The 5,000 comment challenge is important, folks. If we don’t reach that goal, then the prizes get torched. Okay, they don’t get torched, but the giveaway only kicks in after 5000 comments

I wish I could win one of them. Try you luck by commenting. May be you could win a prize.

apnerve's hide blogger navbar widget

2009-02-20T21:16:00.006+05:30

One fine day, I posted an entry on removing the blogger navbar, which can be found at :: How to remove Blogger Beta Navbar. This trick involved editing the HTML template, which confused many people (here I must admit that my description wasn't very clear). So I thought of making this trick easier for everyone and the result - a navbar hide widget.

All you need to do is click on the "Add to Blogger" button.

Wasn't that easy?

ps: Using this widget, you can choose any template you want and still have your navbar hidden.

funny comment trick

2009-02-16T22:00:00.009+05:30

Yesterday, I sat all night before the comp, customising my blogger template. Starting with a 565 template by douglas bowmann, I ended up creating a new template altogether - a 3 column template with good SEO (Thanks to amanda of bloggerbuster and Antonio Lupetti of woork). But...(there is always a but) I wasn't happy at the result. Why? Because my blog seems to be still one among the most ignored and unread ones. So to make myself happy, I devised a small, funny trick. To be precise, it is too simple to be known as a trick. I added the following code


a.comment-link:before{content:"476";}

...And wow! I made the "0" comments to "4760" comments. Lol! but (again) the fact remains that my blog is still the same old unread and ignored one :(. So I removed the code now. Well... you can try this one out if your blog also gets very less visits :)

Please consider commenting if you like this trick. :)

aamir khan at IIT Bombay

2009-02-15T07:03:00.004+05:30

Aamir khan is in IIT Bombay, shooting for his forthcoming movie - "3 idiots". This movie is based on Chetan Bhagat's novel "five point someone".
UPDATE: Aamir khan was seen playing baddy with Mittal (Prateek Mittal, 3rd yr, B-Tech, Elec). y0! mittal \m/

1234567890 day!!

2009-02-13T21:05:00.004+05:30

On this Friday, Feb 13 at exactly 3:31:30 PM (PST), Unix time will equal '1234567890'. You can check the exact time left for this time on the site http://www.1234567890day.com/. Happy 1234567890 day!!

ping.fm - one ping to rule them all

2009-02-02T05:59:00.001+05:30

I just added the ping.fm's IM bot. Now I can update my twitter tsatus, tumblr, identi.ca, blogger, wordpress from gtalk using this bot.

Break!

2009-02-01T20:38:00.002+05:30

I'm taking a break from blogging for few days till I come up with a new template(my own) and ideas. I'll be on twitter all time though. So follow me on twitter.

Anagrams

2009-01-27T18:54:00.004+05:30

I've always been very fond of anagrams. As a matter of fact, "apnerve" is an anagram of my name "praveen". Today, I found these awesome anagrams while googling:

Dormitory = Dirty Room
Listen = Silent
Madam Curie = Radium came
A telephone girl = Repeating "Hello"
The country side = No City Dust Here
Evangelist = Evil's Agent
Astronomers = No more stars
The eyes = They see
The cockroach = Cook, catch her
Waitress = A stew, Sir?
The centenarians = I can hear ten "tens"
Desperation = A Rope Ends It
The Morse Code = Here Come Dots
The Meaning of Life = The fine game of nil
Mother-in-law = Woman Hitler
Funeral = Real Fun
Sunshine and Shadow = Show in Sun and Shade
Snooze Alarms = Alas! No More Z's
Vacation Times = I'm Not as Active
The Detectives = Detect Thieves
A Gentleman = Elegant Man
A Decimal Point = I'm a Dot in Place
The Earthquakes = That Queer Shake
Statue of Liberty = Built to Stay Free
Eleven plus two = Twelve plus one
Admirer = Married
New York Times = Monkeys write
Debit card = Bad credit

...and thus sank the TAJ!

2008-11-21T07:11:00.008+05:30

¶
The silent symphony, the unsung ode
of millions Loves, that bore no testaments
when turned into a Blue sea of tears
The Kings, the Lears
the crowns and the crowned
all of them drowned.
¶
For centuries they turned labour into ornaments
From Red blood of starving peasants
they made a monument of love
White as a dove.
¶
But with all their Yellow gold they sank
and sank with them
the extravagant symbol of the love royale
old and pale...
¶
The Taj !!
.

About the pic: This was my submission for a digital art competition at moodi (IITB). Thanks to Naash for the Poem.

Imified as replacement for twitter bot

2008-08-01T00:57:00.002+05:30

Ever since, the twitter bot stopped working, I almost stopped tweeting. Thanks to imified.com Now I can tweet, blog, update my google calendar and almost everything from my google talk. This is my first post using imified. IMIFIED ROX!!

TESTING

2007-07-17T17:05:00.001+05:30

SO HERE I GO WITH MY POST FROM MY MOBILE. THANX TO PLANET HUTCH GPRS. IT WORKS IN HYD TOO WITH NO ADDITIONAL ROAMING CHARGE.

TAJ-MAHAL among the new 7 wonders of the world!

2007-07-08T20:38:00.003+05:30

Wow! Finally I got a good reason to BLOG again. TAJ-MAHAL has made it to the 7 new wonders of the world. Thanks to V V K Chandra for starting a campaign at http://votefortaj.org.in/ and many other TAJ lovers, who played their roles through their blogs /personal websites and status messages in yahoo, orkut and gtalk. I feel very much happy for this and at the same time feel pity for statue of liberty and Eiffel tower for not being able to secure a position in the list.

You can view the complete list of the new 7 wonders here

Life @ IITB - II

2006-10-11T17:08:00.001+05:30

Its almost over 2 months that I'm staying here. As days went by, I witnessed many things. Things that were wierd. Things that were funny. Things that were too good to forget. (sorry...I'm not a creative writer. I just type in whatever come to my mind).

The campus:

The campus is wisely organised with the departments on one side and resdential area on the other. All the departments are connected through infinite and semi-infinite corridors. And you know what? I walked many a time from end to end through this INFINITY corridor.

Many things changed after coming here. Like ... the language, time spent on the comp, night outs(watching movies or F.R.I.E.N.D.S or playing T.T or simply Lukkha), playing guitar or just chatting. Here, the term GODgiri was born long before GANDHIgiri ( lage raho munna bhai).

Sh** the only problem is that time runs very very fast here. Look..I'm trying to complete this post but...the time has run out. I mean I'm running short of time. Gotta go back to hostel. I'll complete this post sometime later. I promise...

... To be continued

Lord of the links - IV

2006-09-20T22:44:00.001+05:30

After a long long time, here I am again with my Lord of the Links series. Here are some new links I found out useful.

mouthshut: MouthShut.com - Compare prices, read consumer written product reviews on movies, music, books, cars, digital cameras and millions of other products and services.
flock: Flock is an amazing new web browser that makes it easier to share media and connect to other people online.
writely: writely is a web word processor. You can create, edit and share files from anywhere without anything to download. Moreover it is secure and free!
wikimapia: wikimapia is similar to google earth but only difference is that it is online and you don't need to download anything to use it.
box: box provides free online file storage upto 1 GB (free). You can also upgrade to 5GB for which you'll need to pay. You can access to your files from any computer and share it also.
goodtree: Search simultaneously in yahoo, google and other search engines. As a matter of fact, this site supports charity and hence you help someone indirectly by searching using their service.

I'll post some more useful links shortly in my Lord of the links series.

Forwards

2006-09-14T12:19:00.001+05:30

I got this mail today... found it good and think it is worthy enough to be posted here.

I want to thank all my friends and other unknown people who have forwarded chain letters to me in 2003, 2004 & 2005 and 2006.

Because of your kindness:

I stopped drinking Coca-Cola after I found out that it's good only for removing toilet stains.

I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS

I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer.

I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get a phone bill from hell with calls to Uganda , Singapore and Tokyo.

I also stopped drinking water outside for fear that I will get sick from the rat shit and urine.

When I go to parties, I don't look at any girl, no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me, then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.

I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times. (Poor girl! she's been 7 since 1993...)

My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland.

Made some Hundred wishes before forwarding those Dalai Lama, Ganesh Vandana, Tirupathi Balaji pics etc..
Now most of those "Wishes" are already married (to someone else)!

You can add your own notes based on your similar experience and send them to your friends.

If ORKUT deletes my account, it doesn't matter BUT PLEASE DON'T SEND me "Orkut is deleting accounts: Due to sudden rush..." Otherwise I'll delete my E-Mail account!

Wandering...

2006-09-06T14:50:00.002+05:30

With almost 0 scraps and emails, I thought of surfing the deep web for a while. As I went on, I found this:

The Indian Institutes of Technology is another name for IIT, which is the acronym for Institute of Infinite Tension, Institute of Indian Technology, etc. They institutes of so-called national importance set up by the Indian Parliament at seven campuses across India, decided purely on merits of political alliances of the ruling party. It was the mastermind of a certain Jawaharlal Nehru to reduce the average intelligence of Indians that led to the establishments of these institutes. Just like Zion in Matrix, where 3% of the people who do not accept the Matrix are gathered together to prevent dissent as a whole, IITs were formed by the Government of India to gather at one place the 2% of the intellegensia of the country and dumb them down. There is a similar prophecy that The One would appear one day to lead these students to their destiny…

Courtesy: uncyclopedia.org

What the hell? An encyclopedia... describing IIT in such a manner? I almost decided to write a post on this matter. A hate post infact. But what is this? This is not some kinda of encyclopedia. This is infact an UNCYCLOPEDIA. This is how they describe themselves:

,p>Uncyclopedia is an encyclopedia full of misinformation and utter lies. You might say it puts the "psych!" in "encyclopedia". It's sort of like Congress or Parliament, but unlike Congress or Parliament, we do have a sense of humor. Nonetheless, this is one of the only factual pages, before everything turns into a puddle of utter confusion and disarray. Savor it. And for the love of Sophia, we know you like disarray, (and confusion) but stop adding confusion to this non-confusing page which leads to confusion, and possibly disarray. Which we wish to stop. Non-non-confusion, that is. Not disarray. Or is it the other way around?

Happy september

2006-09-02T15:22:00.001+05:30

Here goes my first Post of this month. The time seems to travel faster day by day. I can't believe that it has been a month since I joined IITB. May be the speed of light is decaying or whatever but, the time really seems to travel faster as never before. Hmmm… what to write and what not? I'm not able to decide. Signing out…

How to remove Blogger Beta Navbar

2006-08-31T16:53:00.004+05:30

I never happened to like the Blogger Navbar at the top of my Blog and I bet all the Bloggers have the same opinion.

Ok... lets waste no more time and get into our work. Lets learn HOW TO REMOVE BLOGGER BETA NAVBAR

First, login into your blogger (beta) account and click Template.
Now, click on Edit HTML. Wait... look at the code and go to line which says
```
/* global
----------------------------------------------- */
```
Infact, you can add the code anywhere in the stylesheet but I recommend you to do as I said so that you don't screw up the layout.

Now add this style anywhere in the stylesheet

/* Apnerve trick
more info @: http://www.apnerve.blogspot.com
----------------------------------------------- */
#navbar-iframe{
display:none !important
}

Save the changes and have a look at your new Blog. You'll find that the Navbar has disappeared

Update:Now there is no need to edit the HTML template as a widget is available to hide the navbar. Check out my latest post "hide navbar widget" for that

Technovanza (...continued)

2006-08-25T18:32:00.003+05:30

People started wondering about the machine I was holding and I had to convince them that it was an AERORAIL. Two wheels, two motors, two castor wheels, two groove wheels and some bolts, nuts, wires, switch, soap box... piece of ply wood and a pipe. All these things made our machine a bit more bulkier and the poor thing couldn't get more than 12 volts supply from the eliminator we borrowed from ~~Nithin~~ nitin and Aniket (As a matter of fact they won the third prize in the contest) to move faster. The contest started. Our turn came. I mounted the machine...switched it on. Voila! it covered the track in 3.3 seconds. We were in the second position till that point of time. But..but..but.....in the second round we screwed it up. How? C'mon guess it and answer using the post comment link.

Technovanza

2006-08-25T12:18:00.001+05:30

Robotics was one the many things I started admiring at IIT Bombay. Technovanza - a techfest kind of thing of VJTI. No sooner did it was announced, the (Technic)seniors started pumping ENTHU. After certain amount of hardwork, aquiring GYAN from seniors and sleepless nights, other people of my wing geared up for the event with their machines complete. Coming to our group, we had sleepless nights too...but for discussion and arguement. Somehow, we managed to complete our AERORAIL and I was chosen to represnt our team(as I was ever-ready to bunk the classes on that day).

The journey

I started off for the technovanza arena with few of my wingmates and a senior to escort us. Of all things under the sun, we had to travel by the local train.I got in. You know? it is very easy to board the local trains in mumbai...just stand near the entrance,scratch your head and wait...the crowd rushes in and carries you in that process. The same method can be applied to come out. Inspite of the heavy rush, I was told that we were lucky as the train was somewhat KHAALI. Finally, we got down( infact, I was carried out by the crowd) and reached the arena.

The arena

The hall was not fully packed. The participants were busy checking,re-checking their machines. Some were still wondering about the thing I carried in my arms- THE AERORAIL.

To be continued…