Google Side Wiki - New Tool from Google

Google has introduced a controversial new tool that allows the public to comment about any web site in a side bar displayed in their browser. It is integrated in the latest version of Google Toolbar and works with both Firefox and Internet Explorer but ironically, not yet Google Chrome. To use Sidewiki, download the most recent version of the Google Toolbar and set it to enhanced.

There are pros and cons associated with every product. Here are few points:

It happens a lot of times that we come across some poorly written and misleading articles where we strongly disagree with the content or with the author's opinion. And even frustrating thing is, they do not allow any comments on their page!! May be this is an excellent alternative to express our opinion about those web sites or the quality of their articles.

The same point can be interpreted as:
Google has now forced a blog onto every web site on the Internet without asking the owners permission. They also have not even offered a way for the site owner to opt-out of inclusion. People may not like to be forced into something without their approval, especially when it pertains to their own property.

Another thing that comes to the mind is spamming. It's inevitable that we will see SPAM on here, this is the internet. I think this tool will open a wave of problems with spammers talking rubbish about great sites, there is also nothing stopping someone’s competitor using this tool for creating a hate campaign against its rivals. It totally decentralizes web authors' authority, anyone can now say anything about anything on your site, and all the world can see it. I think that Google's will have to work hard to bury spam etc. hopefully through user ratings and Googles "SPAM control" it won't be as bad as one might think

Although there are probably millions of people who have installed the toolbar, there are millions more who have NOT installed the toolbar, which means the overall impact of sidewiki will be somewhat limited.

It can be used to help others save time. For instance, if I searched through a site trying to figure out something specific about a product or topic on the site, and after spending much time I still never ended up discovering what I was looking for; I could post a short comment explaining that experience and possibly a link to a site where I found such info. This not only could help save time of future visitors, but could give feedback to the author of the site on how to better the site.

So it can be very helpful if used correctly. With crowd sourced monitoring it could turn out to be a super dynamic wiki. It will be interesting to see how things work out...!

Feel free to add on points ...

Nokia announces new Mobile (N900) that runs on linux (Maemo)

We have always had linux for mobile devices. But use of linux as mobile OS has mostly been limited to enthusiasts who like to fiddle around with technology and somehow it has not been able to break into the mainstream mobile market.



But all that is going to change with Nokia, one of the largest mobile companies in the world, announcing their forthcoming release of N900 which runs on linux based Maemo platform. It not only has the capabilities of supporting the normal smartphone features but also utilizes the limited resources available in mobiles optimally (which comes naturally to linux :P). It has all the regular linux desktop features including multiple desktops. Just go through the N900 feature set and you will get an idea about its capabilities. And although it already has so many apps made for it ,as it is an Open Source you can expect regular improvements and loads of free apps as it catches on in popularity.


Another aspect of this release, which excites me the most is that finally linux will be used by common people who usually get scared hearing the name of linux (although unknowingly they use it very often, maybe directly or indirectly). Even though linux for PCs have become more user friendly over the years and still most people have the misconception that it isn't like that and is meant only for geeks.

So lets wait and watch the impact of this release.

How to enable voice and video in pidgin (linux only :D)

Finally we have voice and video support in pidgin. It had always been so hard to understand why it is taking them so much time to implement it. Better late than never.

The new pidgin (version 2.6.1) has been released with media support in linux only at the moment. It was done by someone as summer of code project. You can find the list of new features and the whole story about it on their site.

Now coming to the real point. As soon as found out about this release it soon tried installing. Now the issue is that it had been released as source and though it works perfectly on most distros, it wasn't working on ubuntu 9.04 (working with earlier versions) . The problem was that jaunty isn't having the right versions of libraries needed to compile it and so the debs available on the net didn't install pidgin with voice and video support.

But things move fast in the open source world ... someone managed to compile it successfully on jaunty and has added it to ppa.

So here are the instructions:

To add the sources, go to the main menu, click System, then Administration, then Software Sources. Click on the Third-Party Software tab, then click the Add button.

Paste Code:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kalon33/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Click Add Source, then click the Add button again and add the PPA:
Code:
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/korin43/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

Close that window then open up a terminal and put this in:

sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude install pidgin

This is it. It should work now :)

Opera Unite: a Web server on the Web browser

There has been quite a history of browser wars. Till sometime back each browser claimed to change the way you browse the web and claimed their superiority for the same. Now they claim that they will change the way you are a part of the web. Opera recently announced their plans for Opera 10 , their upcoming version , and they have introduced a new technology which they call Opera Unite.

Opera Unite is a web server on the web browser. It allows you to take control of what you share online. Opera Unite allows you to easily share your data: photos, music, notes and other files. You can even run chat rooms and host entire Web sites with Opera Unite. It puts the power of a Web server in your browser, giving you greater privacy and flexibility than other online services. Opera Unite services can be accessed from any modern browser, including mobile browsers. This video showcases their vision.



As it is a fully fledged web server integrated to your browser ,you can do all kinds of things like hosting websites, host chat rooms, share files, etc. 
from your very own computer. Read the following opera labs blog to find out more.

The Web is changing and changing fast !

Cooliris (Formerly known as Piclens) now available for Linux

I’ve always been a fan of Cooliris and I think that it has been a great innovation in the browsing domain but I was disappointed that I couldn’t actually use it on my own Linux machine.


But thankfully now finally the long wait is over. Much to the joy of hundreds of thousands of linux users Cooliris released the linux version about a month ago.

Visit this link to find all information regarding the linux version, the minimum requirements, install instructions etc. and go ahead and change the way you browse pics and videos on the web.

cheers

How to Fix the detached Video Bug in Vlc on Ubuntu 9.04

After upgrading to Jaunty when I played a video using vlc, surprisingly the video was being displayed in a separate window from the main interface of vlc. Also the controls were not being shown in it. It is really uncool as the bug had been there in intrepid for a while but was fixed soon. But the good thing is that the patch has been out quickly. You can use medigeek's repository and install/upgrade vlc from there :

Add this to your sources.list :

For Ubuntu Jaunty :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/medigeek/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

For Ubuntu Intrepid :

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/medigeek/ppa/ubuntu intrepid main

Then update your system via this command :

$sudo apt-get update

If you are getting a keyserver/signature error at launchpad, please follow the instructions given after the next step which is the final one in case you don't encounter the error.

Now you can update your vlc (via $sudo apt-get upgrade) or using synaptic manager or using upgrade gui tool or you can install vlc if you removed it or never installed (via $sudo apt-get install vlc).

If you add a launchpad repository to your sources.list and see this kind of error :
W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 6AF0E1940624A220

Stop worrying and just follow the steps....

Download change.pl from here.

And download the required packages :

$sudo apt-get install libhtml-parser-perl libio-socket-ssl-perl

Now make it executable by going to the directory in which the script has been saved and then

$chmod +x change.pl

Then run the script using:

$perl change.pl

Enter your root password when it is asked.That is all.

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