Alternatives.. Alternatives.. Alternatives! Newest Article saran 10:40 PM

When I got my new phone, I was quite happy about it. My old one, Sony Ericsson W550i was a music phone, not a phone for social networking. Of course I was able to install Snaptu and Opera Mini in it, still I needed something much more productive. I went for a phone with wireless connectivity, 3G support, GPS etc etc, and I finally settled on Nokia 5800 Express Music.

Now, when I explored the Ovi App Store, I found out that some best apps for social networking like Gravity came with a price tag. Its true that the best things in life don't come for free.. but what I think is Better things in life come for free!

I was unhappy on one thing. I could see a numerous social networking apps for iPhone and Android, even Blackberry, but not for Symbian. Recently I joined Foursquare. There also, this same thing was a problem. They had apps for Android and iPhone, but for symbian, it was their lame site. I felt "damn!! screwed!! No single social networking service has their own app for Symbian."

And then, I began to search for alternatives. And yes i got them! in fact, now i am totally happy!!

Given below are a list of the alternatives that i am using now.

Facebook+Twitter: Snaptu

Twitter+Foursquare: Waze

Gtalk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, ICQ etc etc: Nimbuzz

Twitter Client: Gravity (of course it is not free.. but one can easily download the full version using the link.)

Sharing: PixelPipe

Always remember: The better things in life come for free! ;)

Official Gmail Blog: Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts saran 8:55 PM

Official Gmail Blog: Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts: "Improved comment collapsing for Google Buzz posts
Friday, April 02, 2010 7:50 AM
Posted by Sean McBride, User Experience Designer"

Happy 6th Birthday Facebook...!! (Infographic) saran 8:28 PM

Launched on February 4, 2004, Facebook has come a long way from a Harvard-only networking site to the world's favorite social networking site within a short timespan of 6 years. It is undoubtedly the social networking giant. It has redefined the term Social Networking, to a more meaningful form.

Below is a closer look at what kinds of numbers and user activity this growth translates.

Muhammad Saleem is a social media consultant and a top-ranked community member on multiple social news sites. Follow him on Twitter for more social media insights

Courtesy: Mashable

Integrating Facebook and Twitter into Gmail saran 6:57 PM

Google has just launched Google Buzz , which "has stormed the web like a swarm of locusts. An array of strong features, integration with Gmail, and lots of press have turned Buzz into an overnight phenomenon" (courtesy: Mashable) . But for me, it was a bit disturbing and a BORING!!

Some of us know and MOST of us are unaware of the fact that we are actually able to integrate Twitter and Facebook into our Gmail. YES!! it is possible.. And by doing so, u won't have to sacrifice tweeting and facebooking.

By using third party gadgets, we'll be able to club Facebook, Twitter and Gmail into a same window! Aint that good?

Here I'll be giving a step by step procedure on HOW TO INTEGRATE FACEBOOK AND TWITTER INTO GMAIL.

Step 1: Go to Gmail Labs and activate "Add any gadget by URL". You'll be able to find it towards the bottom of the list.

Step 2: After completing step 1, go to Settings -> Gadgets.

Step 3: Add the TwitterGadgetApp, by copy-pasting the below mentioned URL on to Gmail Gadget Settings.

https://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml

Step 4: Next, we add the Facebook Gadget, the same way we added the TwitterGadgetApp.

Copy-paste the below mentioned URL on to Gmail Gadget Settings.

http://hosting.gmodules.com/ig/gadgets/file/104971404861070329537/facebook.xml

Refer to the screenshots.

TwitterGadgetApp:

Facebook Gadget

Thats it..!! Now Buzz, Twitter and Facebook are wrapped together in a single packet!! Now you don't have to sacrifice tweeting and facebooking even if u are bloody addicted to BUZZing.. :)

Along with all that.. I am putting forward a question.. With all those Buzz, FB and Twitter along with Gmail, Ain't that information overloading.??? :(

Google Wave, New Orkut Invites Give Away! saran 5:35 PM

I've got around 23 invites to Google Wave and around 15 New Orkut Invites. If anyone needs it, please let me know.. Leave ur email id below.

Remember.. First Come, First Serve!

Leave your email ids below!

P.S if u need an Orkut Invitation, add me as ur temp friend and after u've got the invitation, u can delete me from ur friend list.. Visit My Orkut Profile

Installing TweetDeck in Ubuntu 9.04 saran 2:31 AM

I've been tweeting for a pretty long time. The most useful twitter app I found was TweetDeck. I had to refresh the site periodically, which made me feel unconfortable. Then I remembered reading somewhere that Adobe Air applications are platform independent (correct me if i am wrong). Now, it occured to me that why not install TweetDeck in Ubuntu, as I work on GNU/Linux more than windows now a days. Given below is a step by step procedure of installing TweetDeck in Ubuntu.

(Please note that sentences highlighted with green color are commands that are to be executed in terminal.)

Phase 1:

Installing Adobe Air:

1. wget http://airdownload.adobe.com/air/lin/download/1.5/AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

2. Save the file in Home Directory, with the file name AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

3. chmod +x AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

4. sudo ./AdobeAIRInstaller.bin

5. The normal installer will now start. Install it. From now on, download any file with .air extension and double-click it to install.

Phase 2

Installing TweetDeck

1. Go to http://tweetdeck.com/beta/download/ and download the latest version of TweetDeck.

2. Save the file and double-click to run it.

Install it and Tweet on..!!

How To Kill a Dragon With Various Programming Languages saran 4:09 PM

There's a beautiful princess, prisoner in the highest tower of a castle, guarded by a mighty dragon, and a fearless knight must rescue her. This is how each language would manage to rescue the princess from the hands of the dragon

Java - Gets there, finds the dragon, develops a framework for dragon anihilation with multiple layers, writes several articles about the framework… But doesn't kill the dragon.

.NET - Gets there, sees the idea of the Java developer and copies it. Tries to kill the dragon, but the monster eats him.

C - Arrives, looks down at the dragon, pulls out his sword, beheads the dragon, finds the princess, and ignores her to see the last checkins of linux kernel cvs.

C++ - Creates a basic needle, and gathers functionality until he has a complex sword that he can barely understand… He kills the dragon, but gets stuck crossing the bridge because of memory leaks.

COBOL - Arrives, sees the dragon and thinks that he is too old to kill a monster that big and rescuing the princess, so he leaves.

Pascal - He prepares for 10 years to create a dragon annihilation system… When the moment comes, he discovers the program can only take lizards as an entry.

VB - Builds a dragon destruction weapon based on several components, jumps to the back of the dragon and in the most critical time he discovers that the sword works only on rainy nights…

PL/SQL - Gets data from other dragon slayers, creates tables with n ternary complexity relations, tridimensional data, OLAP, takes a lot of years to process the information and by the time the princess became old.

Ruby - Arrives with massive fame, saying he is the best at anything and when he faces the dragon, he shows a lame motion picture of himself killing a dragon… The dragon eats him out of boredom.

Smalltalk - Arrives, analyzes the dragon and princess, turns around and leaves, they are way too inferior.

shell - Creates a very powerful dragon slaying weapon… But in the moment of truth, he can't remember how to use it.

shell(2) - The guy approaches the dragon with a two line script that kills, cuts, disembowels, impales, chops to pieces and packs the beast, but when he runs it the script grows, it fattens, irritates and puts alcohol in the fire of the dragon…

Assembler - He thinks he's doing the right and most efficient things… But he writes an A instead of a D and kills the princess instead of killing the dragon.

Fortran - Arrives and develops a 45-thousand-code-line-solution, kills the dragon, meets the princess… But she calls him a weakling and runs after the Java programmer who was elegant, and also rich.

FOX PRO - Develops a dragon killing system. It's gorgeous and works on the outside, but it's really patched inside, so when he runs the dragon anihilator, he realizes he forgot to index the DBFs.

PROCESS ANALYST - Approaches the dragon with two tons of documentation, develops the unified dragon-killing process, he develops a DFD to free the princess and marry her, convinces the dragon that it's the best for him and it won't hurt. When he executes the process, he estimates the effort and the damage he will cause with a plan signed by the Pope, Buddha and Michael Jackson. Then he buys a couple of nukes, 45 cannons, an aircraft carrier and hires 300 heavily armed men… When all he needed was the sword he was holding in his hand in the beginning…

CLIPPER: Sets up a routine that loads a codeblock array to insult the dragon, serenade the princess, load the sword in memory, beat the crap out of the dragon, clean the mess, prepare a raspberry milkshake for the princess, make love to her, take a bath, start the car, put it some gas and come back home. When he runs it, he gets a "Bound Error: Array Access" and the dragon eats him with fries.

Lisp: where the famous knight-errant, after speaking with numerous experts in dragon-killing, and modeling the knowledge they possess, he programs the system, and when he runs it he realizes he forgot a bracket (bender the offender).

HTML: Mounts a web on famous swords used to kill dragons, but he ignores the W3C standards. When he meets the dragon, he finds out the code isn't compatible with his browser, so he's left swordless. The dragon eats him as an appetizer.

Prolog: Thinks he needs a weapon to kill the dragon. Searches in a catalog for 182014 weapons. By the time the princess dies of her age, he's achieved to know how to make every weapon starting with A: Atomic Bombs, Anti-Air Weapons, Arches, Ammunition, Axes...

PHP: Creates a web page that when he executes it would eliminate the $dragon selecting from a weapons database in MySQL over an Apache server. Nevertheless he forgot the WHERE in the DELETE query and kills the princess, the dragon, the peasants, the witch, the sorcerer and the programmer himself.

JavaScript: The programmer tries to kill the great green dragon that spits fire through his mouth. He creates a script that will delete the dragon when he loads a webpage, to create seconds after, some damsels to throw him flowers and make clapping sounds. Unfortunately he didn't take into account the DOM structure of the lizard, also known as Mozilla, and the only thing he gets is to fill his console of errors and that the Book of Mozilla tells how he was devoured.

ActiveX: The programmers create a tunnel to enter the dragon's lair from the castle and run a program that will kill the dragon from a safe and prudential distance. The dragon discovers the tunnel, eats the workers who dug, the dragon slayers, and enslaves every servant in the castle. The castle becomes a dragon-breeding place, full of little dragons that the dragon sends in pop-ups to other castles. The untasty remains of the knights are put in cans of Spam and sent to other castles as well as a warning. (aquelquesiente)

Basic. He creates a weapon able to kill paper dragons, but no matter how they improve it, they discover it's not good enough to kill any dragon bigger than a baby poodle.

Matlab: They create a loop that calculates the trajectories to shoot a giant arrow at the dragon. The program works flawlessly. What they need now are the voluntaries capable to launch the arrow with the necessary strength and accuracy.

Videogame Programmer : Spends two years programming a state-of-the-art sword with shaders and all. When the time comes to kill the dragon, he finds that half the knights aren't strong enough to raise the sword.