Re-Starting !

Decided now.

Will post atleast two articles per week. And, will link from twitter.

80% Wireless. 20% everything else.

Starting 08-Aug-2009 .

DMK is being shamelessly greedy

And, congress is facing the music of a party plagued by dynasty-greed.

“… DMK wants seven portfolios, four of them of Cabinet rank for Karunanidhi’s son Azhagiri, daugher Kanimozhi, grand nephew Dayananidhi Maran, besides incumbents A Raja and Baalu and three more MoS berths...” WoW!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Talks-fail-DMK-to-give-outside-support/articleshow/4561427.cms

Fore sure, DMK is going to be a big pain in the back for the govt. No point being happy abt getting a clear majority verdict in this elections. !

“… The DMK’s list has been prepared to balance various interests like accommodating seniors and giving representation to different castes and regions, besides rewarding family members. “

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/DMK-wants-8-posts-Cong-offers-6/articleshow/4558198.cms

Hope Mr.DarkGlasses is aware of this:

“… The Congress, which is now much less dependent on the DMK than in 2004, wants to form a compact ministry, not a jumbo cabinet, sources said. For a resurgent party, this policy decision is in keeping with its assessment that its tally of 206 in the Lok Sabha means it does not have to bend over backwards to accommodate its allies.

Also, the Congress has pointed out that the DMK no longer has the PMK with it and the Dravidian party must consider the crucial support it gets from the UPA’s lead player in the Tamil Nadu assembly …”

And, not to miss this:
Mayawati’s simple demand: “DMK has 18MP seats. We have 19. So, we need just +1 cabinet seat than DMK!”

I shall shift to Google Chrome only if:

A blog-post after an insanely long gap.

After fully using Google Chrome for a few days, I realized that I have to compromise several of Firefox’s features to be able to continue with Chrome.

I shall move to Google Chrome only if:

• Adblockplus works.
• RSS feed reading is supported
• Better Cookie management (including disabling 3rd party cookies and filters)
• Improved password management : (Must: a master password)
• Better control of what applications to launch for downloaded files
• Intuitively selectable search options
• Reconfigurable location bar.
• Better bookmark management. (esp, more explicitly settable keywords)
• Improved Tab handling. (more preferences needed)
• Pause-able downloads
• Zoho.com should work (it doesn’t work on the present beta version of Chrome I use)

That said, I indeed love these aspects of Google Chrome

• The full-screen view is better
• Simplified interface
• Tabs as separate processes
• Rip-able & paste-able tabs
• Of course, the speed.

With so many of ‘wanted’ features, I have moved back back to Firefox. I can truly live with Firefox’s (a bit) slower page-loads due to the enormity of the features & customizations it has and also for the Addons avaibalbe. W.r.t Firefox’s addons: my slogan is : “you think, and its already there”

I am not a browser developer; but I am sure Firefox can be made to load pages faster than Chrome does. And that would be an important task to maintain Firefox’s user-base. Most of Firefox users are a ’step forward’ type, and they wouldnt mind switching to a new browser if it offers all of Firefox’s features plus better speed & simplicity (and of course, it isnt IE!)

Am I getting bored of the web ?

Of late, I feel I am getting bored of the internet. Websites, blogs and news aren’t as interesting as they used to be.

Either, it is ‘familiarity breeds contempt’ (= I am indeed getting bored), or the articles are really losing focus. Principally, once I feel a site / blog is good, I tend to stick with it, and loyally visit it regularly. Once I get attached to  a site, I don’t feel the need to surf for another one in the same category. Let me deal it with on a case to case basis:

1. Lifehack.org & stevepavlina.com: These used to be my favourites during 2005-2007. I had subscribed to the articles using r-mail.org, and would read every article every day. I had even printed a few articles, since I felt they were really awesone. I dropped Stevepavlina much sooner, by around mid2006. I felt lifehack lost focus when its branding changed to stepcase-lifehack. I hoped there will be a change, and kept holding on to it, but, had to drop visiting that too, by around early 2007.

2. Joelonsoftware.com: I became a fan during 2004-2005 time. Esp, the big-mac article was very well analysed & presented. Since early 2007, the frequencey of articles abruptly went down, most of the articles were bragging about fogcreek, promoting their podcasts and became long articles about very small idea. So, this one went off my list.

3. 43Folders.com: It was in my radar for quite a short while (during the inbox-zero series). later, reading too much of productivity articles reduced my real productivity. So had to drop this off.

4. LifeHacker.com: The tips and tricks were infinite, very valuable, and saved lots of time. Most of them were realted to my needs, so I was a regular visitor. Later, I began to feel its no more the story, and werent of match to me. Again dropped this/

5. Theregister.co.uk: wow! I used to read every article during 2004-2006. Then, I began to be selective. The coverage on phorming (late2007) was very nice. Also, nicely written articles on security related areas were frequent. Since early2008, I feel there are very few attention-grabbing articles, and they were writing lots on totally unimportant incidents. So, one more dropped off my list.

6. TheSimpleDollar.com: This one *is* very good. (note the ‘is’). Very good advice to American families, and to the growing generation in the developing countries (BRIC). Very relevant for the present situation, and environment-friendly, economy-friendly, and ideal-parenting topics. I would say, the author is trying to suggest an economically future-proof way of life. Its very good. A year ago, 90% of the articles used to be great. Now, I feel it has come down to 70%. Of the rest, 10% are irrelevant to me, and 20% are totally irrelevant. The author needs to take serious note of this. If this good-ones ratio comes down to 50%, there will be a huge drop in the readership, for sure. And it will be tough to build back the audience.

Perhaps I need to start looking out for newer sites / blogs now. And, is it high time I started my own series of articles, like this ?  Such a venture needs solid focus on a certain area, and good expertise at the subject. Hmm !

Free Web : For how long. Part-II

Now we come to the title-story.

We had dialup access to internet. Agree, it was slow. I best suited text-based browsing. But that’s for geeks only. Still, grinding our teeth, we managed to pull along with the dialups. The websites added more features, and became more heavy. And luckily, there is DSL on the horizon. Go, go, go for broadband.

Okay, we are happy, with broadband.

No, they don’t want you to be happy. The website providers inserted ads. Not just text or .gif ads. Now its .swf. Thats INSANE. *.swf ads are too heavy on the webpages. They are useless, distracting, and overloading.

in many sites, we cant avoid swf. in some sites its must too see the 15 min swf before proceeding. ads in videos too & cant be skipped. evrything needs money. and ad gives that money. so insert ads.

The days are near where you’ll see ads in between every line of your email.. no end to greed.

Lots of sites have started subscription-based services. sooner, we’ wont have free-email.

We need to end your dependency on the free web. And start using it as if its paid. Only then, you will use it less, will be less dependent/addicted, and they cannot force you to pay.

Economy of scale does not apply here. the more you use, the more they will make you pay. They are also listed companies, need to show profits, feed employees, and answer to shareholders. same as airlines charging for first bag, and even for you belly weight,  you will start paying for the basic email. the day might be far now. but it is far approaching.

If its fast, it will be in 2012. medium in 2015. and latest by 2020, everything you use online will be charged. of course, you’ll pay for a bundle of services to a single counter: Google / M$ / Yahoo. but we WILL HAVE TO PAY. We shouldn’t fool yourselves by thinking of free internet forever.

Already, net neutrality is becoming a joke, due to unrestrained capitalism. And, ISP’s are planning how to suck money from the app-providers like Zoho, google, skype etc which assume net is free for eveyone.