ClearType, InfinityRadio, Old Boy and the Pacers

In: movies, music, sports, technology

I'm waiting for the Pacers game to begin on TNT. In the meantime I thought I might post a few things I wanted to write about. So here it goes...

ClearType: If you use an LCD screen with Windows XP, then you might want to switch on ClearType. Microsoft has a page where you can turn the feature on if you use Windows XP.

InfinityRadio: A streaming radio station for Independent music from India. Cool. They have already played some of my favourite tracks - Ssh. Listen (Motherjane), The Steal(TAAL). Built using Open Source software, its a god-send for Indian rock music. If you want to hear what Indian Rock bands are playing, checking it out here.

Old Boy: Had seen Zinda, which draws its inspriration (read "rip-off") from this movie. But had also heard Old Boy is much better. I can now say it is and it is much darker as well. No way an Indian movie can show that kind of stuff. At least not for another 10 years. Check it out...

Pacers: How things can turn... At the start of the season, the Pacers were being projected as a contender to win it all. Then the Playoffs begin and experts now say they have no chance against the New Jersey Nets. The Pacers are leading the best-of-seven series 2-1 before today's game. Got to see what happens. If the Pacers have to win this one then Jermaine O'Neal has to have a good game; Stojakovic has to show up; Anthony Johnson has to continue his great game and the bench must deliver... I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


Update: Well, Except for a good performance by the bench, none of the others happened. So I guess, I didn't cross my fingers hard enough.

One Service to Bind Them All

In: Ideas

Listening to: Trust (Megadeth)

What if I want to maintain a journal of all my work on the web - my opus. It will include the content on my website, the papers I may have written that are published on a public site, any comments I leave on another blog or website; all of it. How do I do that? Most of the above content is quite easy to collect. But its tricky to collect comments I may have left on thirty or forty different websites, may be more. But since all that content including the comments are my creation, they in a way define me, tell people what I'm about. Then why not collect them and put them in a single place where people could view it?

How about a web-service that does that? A service that does not simply collect our blog posts, but all the content we have authored on the web including photographs, etc. One way to create such a service is by using ping servers. Edgeio, the listing service uses ping servers in an ingenious manner to create classified listings. Using ping servers, it searches newly created content (such as blog posts) to search for specific tags. It uses these to extract classified advertisements put up by people on their own blogs. Now if comments are also reported to ping servers, then it is possible to search these as well. What I'm talking about a service that users can register on. Once they register, they are given a specific key that they can enclose in a custom tag to enclose their comments, posts and other web-content. If they don't want to keep entering tags, they can add feed to the site they want this service to scan. Once that happens, the service will constantly search for content on the web that is tagged using the custom tags mentioned above and also other sites that the user has registered with this service. Then it will place either the content itself or permanent links to it in a chronological manner on its site. Users can create feed for this content. Then if I want to read whatever my friend 'A' publishes on the web, anywhere on the web, all I have to do is subscribe to a feed on this service. The biggest challenge facing this approach is to prevent identity-hijacking where a person uses the key of another person to masquerade himself or herself as someone else. One way to prevent this is by also adding a validating component to this process where any new content that is collected by this service has to be confirmed by the real author. I'm sure there are better ways to prevent identity-hijacking. But I'm too sleepy to think about it right now. Anyone's got ideas?

Comments on Comments and a Movie

In: movies, google, blogger, blogs

I want to be able to know when someone responds to my comment on someone else's blog. I'm not talking about subscribing to a comments feed as Blogger (Google, if you are reading this, please get your act together. You can't take a pioneering service like Blogger and then leave it lagging way behind its competitors.) and a lot of other popular blogging services don't provide that feature yet. Is there a way to know that without me polling the site constantly? Please let me know.

Btw, I saw Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara. Liked the movie. Anupam Kher has done a great job. His speech at the end of the movie is probably his way of getting back at the people who were responsible for taking his job as the Indian Censor Board czar.

Update: Regarding my search for a service for managing my comments, CoComment was exactly what I was looking for. It will even let me know if other CoComment users add a response to my comment. First read about the service from Scobleizer's post.

Easy Rider

It was a movie marathon again this weekend. Jarhead, Teesri Ankh, Memoirs of a Geisha, and finally Easy Rider. Jarhead - my roomate wanted to see it and I read some good reviews of the movie as well. So we finally got that. Btw Old Boy is still on the way. My comments about the movie are here. Teesri Ankh, hmm. Memoirs of a Geisha. A quote from one of the characters Mimeha (played by Michelle Yeoh) summarises a Geisga well:

... geisha are not courtesans. And we are not wives. We sell our skills, not our bodies. We create another secret world, a place only of beauty. The very word "geisha" means artist and to be a geisha is to be judged as a moving work of art. [Memorable Quotes from Memoirs of a Geisha (2005)]

. A nice movie. Easy Rider, I think my favorite movie of this weekend and also a movie that goes in my list. Having read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the Motorcycle Diaries, I kind of had a feeling it was a mix of the two. And it was. And it was good. A great movie in fact. I like these kind of stories - like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I highly recommend this movie, although beware, the movie is quite fluid and free form and may not appeal to some. And it is my movie of the week. Yeah, and about Tesri Ankh, let me just say this. I started watching the movie. Fell asleep soon enough, laughing for the most part I was awake for before that even though it was a serious movie. Then I woke up, not missing a thing. And I felt hmm., the real story should begin now. And well, the ending movie credits started rolling up. Now it was that kind of a movie. See it if you want. But even if you don't want to, good. I'm going to pay late charges for the movie, just as a punishment for getting a movie like this.