Google to Shut Google Buzz

Google announced to shut down the highly-controversial social networking product Google Buzz, along with several other services in the coming weeks, Xinhua reported.

Google on its official blog, Google announced the death penalty to its code search engine, Buzz, Jaiku which let users send updates to friends, the Google personalised homepage feature iGoogle, and the University Research Program for Google Search.

The shut-downs came as part of Google's housecleaning effort announced in early September, in which the company said it will shut down a number of products and merging others into existing products as features.

"Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today's announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome," said Google in the blog post.

Google Buzz, a social networking and messaging tool integrated into Gmail service, has been widely criticised for privacy concerns and held back the search giant from expanding its businesses to the social networking space.

After Buzz, Google launched Google+ in June, which has been receiving a good response and passed the 40 million user mark, the company's chief executive officer Larry Page said.

Source: Times Of India

Facebook helping Indian Film Makers

In the era of credit crunch, social networking sites like Facebook and other online communities are fast emerging as tools for independent filmmakers to crowdsource their film projects.

Sanjay Suri-Onir's recently released film 'I Am' is India's largest crowd funded movie with more than 400 producers from over 45 countries. Happy with the success of the 'I Am' experiment, Suri is now crowdsourcing his next film 'Chauranga' again through Facebook. He has already put up some 60 posters of the film and is looking forward to pull in some talent also.

Paris based Indian filmmaker Prashant Nair, who debuts with his film 'Delhi In A Day', also sought help from the French government and online communities to pull in resources for his small budget movie, starring veterans like Lillete Dubey, Victor Banerjee and Kulbhushan Kharbanda.

Prashant is looking forward to perfect this method in his next film 'Amrika', which is again based in Delhi and takes a look at the Indian perception of the country.

An open forum, moderated by Reliance Entertainment CEO Sanjeev Lamba and including panelists like actor-producer Sanjay Suri, director Ketan Mehta, Russian director Vicktor Geinsberg and Nair, discussed various methods of co-production and crowd funding on thee sidelines of Mumbai Film Festival.

Talking about his experience, Suri said that an independent filmmaker looking for crowd funding should be prepared, transparent and should have a distribution plan in place. He also said that since the method involves many like minded people, the filmmaker should be prepared that the whole financing will take time.

Talking about the unique methods of film financing, director Ketan Mehta said filmmaker Himanshu Roy was one of the earliest directors to use unorthodox methods to raise finance for his films and then there was Prabhat studio, which was a producers body made of directors. He also talked about Shyam Benegal's film 'Manthan', which was produced by dairy farmers in Gujarat.

Russian filmmaker Vicktor Geinsberg, who made a film on one of the most loved novels of Russia in the post-Soviet era 'Generation P', said he initially approached the Russian producers to finance the film but was turned down because the film uses a lot of foul language, a taboo in Russian cinema. He then realized that since the film was about an advertising guy, he could raise money from the products featured in the film.

He is now planning a sequel to the movie 'V Empire', which is again based on the novel by Pelevin.

Original Post at Times Of India.

Here's to CRAZY ONES. Think Different

Here is to Steve Jobs who is been great inspiration for innovation.



Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.
You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.
They invent.    They imagine.    They heal.
They explore.    They create.    They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.
While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

Its all about content baby.... Interesting

All the website entrepreneurs out there, read this very intersting artcile that I found on plugged.in.  In the fast pace world everyone wants to move ahead and were content is most important criteria esp. for some web domains. Just don't copy the most important part of your business referring to this case model - which is very common around India and I bet across the globe.
Zomato has published strong proof against Burrp accusing them of copying restaurant listing data from their site. From what it looks like, there is no excuse that Burrp team can really present for this. And as usual saying, “User submitted data” is as lame as it can get.
In nutshell, Zomato publishes their own number for some restaurants that they have up tie-up with. Burrp, as accussed by Zomato, while copying data, also copied this phone number and hence was easily caught.

We have been experimenting with a few business models and have for a few restaurants put our own phone numbers on which we take table reservations on behalf of the restaurant. These instances are very few in number (~1% of our database). So these numbers are our numbers, the restaurant staff doesn’t know about this and these numbers have no business showing up on some other website (even our API does not serve these numbers). Also, we have our own proprietary GPS systems which help us collect very very accurate (within 2 meters) GPS coordinates for restaurants listed on Zomato. So when these coordinates, until the 5th decimal point show up on some other website, we have a problem.
Now, we found a few such instances on Burrp.com; these instances are incomplete listings (they didn’t take our data which they thought would be proprietary), but these listings have our phone numbers and our GPS coordinates in them. Here is a screenshot:

Note: I have saved snapshots of these Burrp pages on Freezepage at these URLs:
Zinos on Burrp on Freezepage
Mangal’s Profile on Burrp on Freezepage
Btw, we found these listings by doing a simple “site:burrp.com 49422222” search on Google. 49422222 is a Zomato owned phone number in Delhi.
We have found multiple other such instances on Burrp.
Now, we have pointed out such issues to Burrp twice earlier and the response we got was:
“This was a user upload, we have nothing to do with this, we will take down the listing. Thanks for keeping an eye on us. And please don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. We maintain 150,000 listings, so we don’t bother about copying your data at all. We don’t do such things.”
Now, this is not a user upload. The ‘user’ who added this listing is a Mangal84, who has added 11052 listings to Burrp (yet) with 0 reviews (!). Clearly a Burrp employee, since May 5, 2009. More about it here: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/mangal-shewale/23/519/867 or http://www.freezepage.com/1316835281MDMFHBHHQU
With user uploads, I can understand, shit happens. But even then, you just cannot pass off shit in the name of user uploads. It’s a well known fact that Burrp verifies and moderates every listing upload that is submitted on the website. How could such a thing get through the moderation and verification system? So, if it is indeed some users uploading Zomato data to Burrp’s servers, we strongly recommend that Burrp should either strengthen its moderation systems or shut down the sections of its business which they clearly cannot manage.
What I have not been able to understand is the map coordinates available for a few restaurants on their system. I don’t really think that a user would go to the extent of going through our source code, extracting the map coordinates and submitting them to Burrp. As far as I know Burrp doesn’t even have a facility to submit raw map coordinates. And I think there is only a one in a million chance that the user accidentally dropped a pin on a google map which is exactly the same as the super accurate coordinates collected with our GPS systems. I would like to give Burrp the benefit of doubt, but it is highly unlikely that a user is doing this. As shown above, its quite likely that a Burrp employee is behind all this scraping from Zomato.

This is not the first time that Network18 has been accused of data stealing, earlier JustDial had sued Askme for data theft and the latter was asked to shutdown as well. It seems Network18′s web presence is nothing but a content farm. Their in.com property is also known to be reproducing SEO rich content from all over web on connect.in.com. They are so sure they are violating copyrights that they have published a notice for Copyright Infringement Issues on all pages.
While there are strong and might we say ‘insensible’ laws being made around web publishing that even go on to restrict fundamental rights of speech, there is no action on mass infringement like these. You need to individually go fight cases. I wonder why Google’s Panda update hasn’t taken up on this. Though one remarkable thing here is that in.com was doing all this through help of Bing until now but now Bing’s logo has been removed.
On web where having data is major part of your product it seems people have taken it for granted. Earlier even Cleartrip has been accused of data theft by Travelocity. The case led to momentary arrest of Cleartrip’s CEO.

Daily Expense Manager - Android App

My Mom wants me to write accounts every day and its very tedious job. I either forget to enter the things or have trouble to get any stats over my expense.
Anyway I been using this Android App called Daily Expense Manager and its great. It does almost all the things that I need. I can take backup on SD card or email it to myself, make entries any time as its installed on my phone, have stats of my mode of payment (credit card, cash, debit card, cheque), total expense - monthwise, date wise etc.

Overall a great app for anyone who wants to write accounts. Simple and effective.

More details can be found at : https://market.android.com/details?id=com.techahead.ExpenseManager&feature=search_result

Great App on Android for Daily Expense Management and logging.

Pad Thai Noodles

Ingredients (note the ingredients are approx. and as per my taste, please alter as per requirement):

• 2 Cup Pad Thai rice noodles (linguini-width)
• 2 Onions
• 3 Garlic
• 2 sticks Cilantro
• 1/2 lime 
• 2 Pinch of Salt and Chlli
• Small portion of Cauliflower, Carrots and French Beans
• 1 Spoon Soya sauce 
• 1 Spoon Chilli sauce
• 2 Spoon peanut butter - creamy or chunky.
• 1.5 Spoon Coconut Milk
• 1 Spoon Olive Oil

Preparation:
1. Take half a pan of water and boil the noodles in the pan for 10-15 min. or till it gets soft. Add a pinch of salt so it doesn't stick and tastes better.
2. Drain all the water and set the noddles aside.
3. Take the Pan and put 1 spoon olive oil in it.
4. Throw 2 chopped onions and 3 Minced garlic
5. Once golden brown, put the stove on low heat and put some peanut butter sauce (crunchy or creamy as per your taste. I like it crunchy).
6. Add Cauliflower, Carrots, and french beans as per the taste and availability
7. Pour 1.5 spoon coconut milk.
8. Put pinch of salt and Chilli powder. Also put 1 spoon soya sauce and 1 spoon chilli sauce. (If you don't have chilli sauce or soya sauce then also its fine)
9. Add 0.5 spoon lime juice and mix well.
10. Serve hot in a plate with chop sticks or fork :) .

Done.

Note: 
- Peanut and Coconut Milk Sauce can be pre-made for faster preparation. You can make those sauce by following this recipe and thus add noddles and soya sauce + chilli sauce + veggies and then done.
- Peanut Butter is available at good groceries stores. (Sundrop has recently come out with peanut butter and is available for Rs.100)
- Coconut Milk is available in tetra pack or tin. Tetra pack is usually available for Rs.58
- Suggestions are most welcomed. 

Pad thai with small rice noodles and chunky peanut sauce.

Satay in Peanut and Coconut Milk Sauce

Ingredients (note the ingredients are approx. and as per my taste, please alter as per requirement):

• Peanut and Coconut Milk Sauce
• 1 Firm Tofu (see note)
• Two thin Bamboo sticks
• Grill / Oven / Toaster Oven

Preparation:
1. Prepare the Peanut and Coconut Milk Sauce
2. Drain all the water of the Tofu packing
3. Place the Tofu in the sauce and marinate. Let the juice get inside the tofu.
4. Pass the bamboo sticks through the Tofu and lay it over the grill. I have Toaster oven thus I am using that. Turn it after 4-5 minutes and keep it on the grill/oven for 12-15 minutes. Make sure it don't burn.It should be grilled.
5.Serve it in the plate using same Bamboo sticks or Chop sticks.

Done.

Note: 
- Tofu is now easily available in India. It is also sold as Soya Paneer. It usually cost around Rs.50 / 500gms. If the Tofu has an option of Firm or soft then get Firm or extra firm. If it doesn't have any option and no choice - buy whatever is available. Usually Soya Paneers don't have any options. 
- Peanut and Coconut Milk sauce can be made by using following recipe. 
- Suggestions are most welcomed.

Satay with Tofu, Peanut and Coconut Sauce. This is a non liquid sauce. Made with Chunky Peanut butter.

Peanut Sauce for Thai Food

Ingredients (note the ingredients are approx. and as per my taste, please alter as per requirement):

• 2 Onions
• 2 Garlic
• 2 sticks Cilantro
• 1/2 lime 
• Pinch of Salt
• 2 Spoon peanut butter - creamy
• 1.5 Spoon Coconut Milk
• 1 Spoon Olive Oil

Preparation:
1. Put 1 spoon olive oil on the pan
2. Throw some Garlic and Onion
3. Once golden brown, put some Creamy Peanut Butter, Coconut Milk.
4. Put 1/2 lime and then add a pinch of salt.
5. Finally add Cilantro

Done.

Note: 
- Chop all the veggies nicely.
- You can also add Crunchy Peanut Butter
- For more liquidity texture, add more coconut milk and water.
- Peanut Butter is available at good groceries stores. (Sundrop has recently come out with peanut butter and is available for Rs.100)
- Coconut Milk is available in tetra pack or tin. Tetra pack is usually available for Rs.58
- Suggestions are most welcomed.

This sauce is made with Chunky Peanut Butter. It is non-liquid sauce.