2009 saw lot of new, useful and innovative products that resulted out of simple human dreams. The creators saw what the present [and the future] generation needed the most and put their ideas on the design table. We saw the release of several OSes by computing giants this year. Includes Windows 7, Google Chrome OS and Mac Snow Leopard. I am not including Ubuntu 9.10, because I believe that the October 2010 release  of Ubuntu shall defy all standards.

Because Google has been foraying into several new fields and many of my friends are Google fanatics, they asked me if it is OK to switch to Google Chrome OS.

My answer, “It ain’t the time”.

What the cloud has to offer as is software and even hardware as a service and over the internet. It offers to provide software and hardware as a pay by use model rather than permanently investing on it.

Yes, for people in countries like India it is not the right time to move onto Google Chrome OS. The most important reason for this belief of mine is the fact that Chrome OS is dependent on the cloud.

Cloud computing is the new talk of the town. Everyone wants to know about it and wants to use it.

Google Trends for "Cloud Computing"

See how people have searched for cloud computing on google? It started somewhere around October 2007, and kept rising with occasional peaks and falls. But I can observe a fall by the end of 2009. We will have to wait and see if the term continues to generate interest in 2010. Also, the largest number of searches were from India, especially from Bangalore [source: Google Trends]

From what I have understood, Chrome stores your data on the cloud. Your computers hard disk, stores the Operating System alone. Every other thing from software to storage space is provided over the internet. (Google Services cater to the softwares of the cloud and your data will be stored in your Google Account Space).

Though the term generated so much of interest in India, yet it is dependent on Internet speeds in India to become a feasible facility in Indian households. Till then we will have to buy our own Hardware, and Software (if you aren’t exactly an open source fan).

So we will have to wait for internet speeds to catch up for Google Chrome OS to become a plausible replacement. Even then the existing drawbacks of Cloud Computing (later on this), might just leave people with the option to use non cloud Operating Systems.

Technorati Tags: 2010, chrome, cloud, google, os, trends

The final few months of 2009 wasn’t good for my blog. Readership and Viewer-ship simply fell. The last week, nobody visited my blog. Yes zero visitors.

I would love to add the statistics graph to show you, but at the moment I am short of photo manipulating images (or I don’t know what to use on this computer I am using.)

And I came to know of all this because I installed Wordpress Stats. Yeah, it wasn’t there by default, had to install it manually.

But because I installed it I came to know of several other fancy stuffs.

One was this blog’s birth. I had totally forgotten that, I started blogging in this domain in April 2009. I have been active in the blog-o-sphere for quite some time. I used to blog at Novice Investigator.

I visited my old blog’s dashboard. Startled to see, that blog got greater number of viewers than this current one.  Content indeed is king.

Another thing I noticed was the “Busiest Day”. 316 viewers and it was on my Birthday! Surprise Surprise!

I had viewership between 1000 and 1500 during July, August and September. The time when I was blogging actively. Should have stuck to it.

Enough of what has passed. It will soon be a new year. With the new year comes new resolutions!

My first resolution for 2010 is that I will manage my time well and use it productively. I have returned, with a determination, to blog.

Happy Holidays!

Technorati Tags: 2010, blog, resolution, Web

I am facing it yet again. Yes, the same scenario that left my earlier blogs to die. I can’t let it happen again. I…. must…. blog….

I know what you might be thinking now. This article might not be worth reading, it might be just another, ‘bump’ post just to show others that the ‘blog ain’t dead’.

Of course, this blog isn’t dead. Neither is my desire to express myself through my blog.

Though I haven’t been blogging, yet I have been surfing and reading a lot. And humor being something which everyone likes I ran into several humor specific blogs, especially desi ones (I mean by Indian Authors and mainly about India and Indians).

Who doesn’t like to catch a laughter and release some steam.

9gag

9gag is a collection of pictures, comics, videos and text (very less of this). A collection from different parts of the world and created during different occasions. The collection will leave you laughing. Check it out!

The Secret Journal of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala

This is one “fake” Rakesh guy. Go read the blog. It will tell you all.

Doing Jalsa and Showing Jilpa

This blog by one Mr. Krish Asok, is again a humorous take on different incidents in life. Humour again.

Fly You Fools

A comic blog. Full of comics, made out of a collection of pictures of Indians, styled out in a beautiful way and also garnished with humorous dialogues! Totally Desi!

Off the Record, On the Net!

There are many ways to review movies. There are many ways to spoof movies. This blog shows yet another way. There are lots of information on the internet. Reading articles sometimes becomes irritating. And long articles makes me close the tab. But in this blog, the post is long, but is entirely in a comic fashion, with crude stick images. A fun way to know about the movie, before deciding on spending some bucks on it. Totally Bollywood though.

Well, that’s five amazing humor blogs for you to devour this festive season! Laughter some say is an instant vacation!

A good laugh and a long sleep are the best cures in the doctor’s book.

It’s midnight now. The night is calm. Signing off for today!

And Merry Christmas! Have fun this festive season.

Technorati Tags: Blogs, internet, laughter, posts, Web

desktop jithinkr

That’s my Ubuntu Desktop. It’s Karmic Koala, Ubuntu release 9.10. I have installed AWN 0.4 with customised HUD theme and also Docky (on the right side). That’s docky ‘without’ Gnome Do. The wallpaper is ‘Assassin’s Creed’ (that’s pretty obvious right!).

What do you think?

Technorati Tags: desktop, ubuntu

Lately so much of exciting and eye candy stuffs have come up on Ubuntu. Ubuntu Karmic Koala had improvements and a whole lot of software that let you customise your desktop OS. And from whatever I have heard as of now, the next Ubuntu edition, Lucid Lynx will have lots to look forward to.

This post on the other hand will be all about recent Google releases that have made web surfing and image browsing easier.

You must have definitely heard about and used Google Chrome and Picasa, if you have used Windows ever.

Google officially released Chrome beta for Linux, and it works without crashing for me. I have loaded it up with extensions, and I am pretty happy with the results. [I had installed Chromium from the developers channel before, I still have it. More about it later.]

http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=linux&hl=en

Visit the link above, and download the beta (Yes, beta. It’s safe to download. Google has kept Linux users in dark for long)

Run the deb/rpm file and yo! you are ready to Chrome!

Google Picasa and Image Viewer(deb file only [for Ubuntu like distros])

Google Picasa Image Viewer is something really handy and something way ahead of other image viewers. For this we need Picasa 3 pre installed. Head over to the link below and download to install Picasa 3.

http://picasa.google.com/linux/download.html

Remember, Picasa 3 (Beta) and not Picasa 2.7.

http://www.caiacoa.de/Transfer/PicasaPhotoViewer-1.0.3.deb

Download the deb from the above link and install it. Now you can view a photo/image by right click, open with > custom command > PicasaPhotoViewer.

To set it as default, right click an image, Properties > Open With > PicasaPhotoViewer.

I am happy to have found these, especially Picasa Photo Viewer on Linux. Thanks to OMGUbuntu, for this. Many a thanks to Irakli Gozalishvili and Caiacoa to have made it possible!

P.S. Did you notice that, Google did a short cut with Picasa? It ain’t actually made for Linux, it’s just the Windows version running on Wine. Thank God we have Wine.

Technorati Tags: chrome, google, Linux, picasa, ubuntu