aditya kumar's weblog

Barcamp is an event held globally for techie people to join in, talk technology and come up with interesting ideas. Barcamps usually happen at the city level and Barcamp Bangalore, Bangalore’s first ever, is scheduled to be held at Yahoo! Bangalore, on the 22nd of April.

India’s first Barcamp was held in Delhi on the 4th of March. (Many claim that they ‘beat’ Bangalore to it. Well, I just like to think that Barcamp is not a competition.) In fact, I think Delhi’s Barcamp was the first in Asia. (Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong)

The whole idea of an event like this is very interesting. I feel techies usually have some very interesting ideas inside their minds but the channels to let them out are absent. Those ideas die in the usual 10-to-8 job, add to it, the laziness inherited by each one of us. A conference (they actually prefer to call it unconference) like this could be the perfect launching pad for those ideas that could die a slow death inside a lazy geek’s brain.

Another thing that impresses me about Barcamp is that everyone needs to contribute and play a part in the event. One could help organizing it, help by giving a presentation, help someone else who is giving a presentation or could just help arranging for beer. Just can’t be a pure spectator. Everyone is a participant in his/her own way.

Though the event is open for anyone and everyone, the seats are limited and are available at first-come-first-serve basis. Bangalore’s Barcamp has a capacity for 100 campers and as expected, it’s all full. (I am camper #39 :)

Of course, I will be covering the event, making notes and posting them here :)

Links:
Barcamp Bangalore
Barcamp Delhi
Wikipedia on Barcamp

Last year we got gmail from Google. Wonderful concept of never being able to delete any of your email, ever. And the space keeps on increasing.

This year, of course, we got the Instant Messenger, Google Talk. No clumsy graphics, neat interface, ability to talk with anyone on the list by push of a button.

Google’s release of “Talk” was not expected by many. At least, not expected this early. So, in that sense, Google not only surprised the net community but also it’s competition.

It does not take much to see where this is all going. Google has unvealed it’s aggressive stance and they aim to take over the internet (and also the desktop) in more aspects than one.

Google’s strength, apart from this fact that they deliver software products that are easier to use by a typical PC user, lies in this fact that it is probably one of the most respected organizations in the market and certainly, the most respected software company, worldwide. All in all, People trust Google. I trust Google and odds are, that you too, do that.

But as I am habituated to take a skeptical stance on things like these, I can’t help but wonder how much does Google know about me.

Probably, a lot.

Besides the search engine, Gmail, Orkut, Blogspot, Talk and Desktop are all brands of Google. Gmail is the email service in which you never need to delete any email, Orkut is where you find people and communities, you can make like-minded friends, Blogspot is where you maintain your weblog, so you write about things that interest you (and do not interest you, for that matter), with “Talk” you can talk, literally, with your friends or message them the plain-old way and “Desktop” is the application you can use to speed up your searches on your PC. And that does not need an internet connection to work.

Add all this up, and Google knows what you talk about in your email (Gmail), your interests, your marital status, your age, the kind of people you like to be with (Orkut), your stands on issues, what you write (and what you read) while you blog (Blogspot), your friends you speak to on the messenger (Talk) and even the contents of the files on the Hard disk(s) of your computer (Desktop). And of course, your Google searches shall reveal if you are going to travel soon or not. By analysing the “googling” habits of people like me, it shall also reveal what computer language(s) do I work with.

What I wish to further focus on is the new Google project, called Google Web Accelerator. What does this do? Once you install this application on your desktop, It loads web pages faster than before, saving your time.

How does it do it? It stores copies of “frequently accessed pages” on it’s servers. Whenever you request a website on your browser (and you have Google Web Accelerator running), your request is sent to one of the Google’s servers which provides your browser with the latest copy of the website page that you wish to access. So in reality, your browser never actually accesses the website you requested. Only in the case when the website you requested is not there with Google’s server, will your browser actually retrieve the page from the intended website.

In essence, since all the web page requests coming from your browser go through Google Servers, Google shall not only know about all the websites you are accessing from your computer, you also run the risk of letting Google have the information that you fill in those forms over the internet, as in Google’s words, some sites “may” send the (form) information through Google. More of this, in Google’s own words, here. Remember, the forms that you fill on the internet usually carry personal information.

This concerns me.

This is alarming because never before has any internet based company offered so many services through a single account to the internet user. MSN and Yahoo!, the two companies who spiced up the internet wars in the late 90s and a good part of the post Y2k scenario until Google came are now reduced to mere followers. Clearly, Google has taken the lead.

Google’s biggest asset is the trust and goodwill it has with the internet community. I hope they never mess up that. And the “Google Show” is still on.

Meanwhile, think about what I said.

Okay, a couple of things here.

For good writing lovers, check Outlook Magazine’s 10 years: anniversary special.

It has columns by Pankaj Mishra, Tarun Tejpal (of tehelka.com), Sagarika Ghose , Pico iyer, Sham Lal, Khushwant Singh and Gabriel Garcia Marquez, to name a few.

And trust me on this, at Rs 15, it’s a steal.

Secondly, for all those lucky souls who have not upgraded their “yahoo messenger” to the new, “yahoo messenger with voice”- please stay away from this new version. It has lots of bugs. To name a few:

1. Sign in, Sign off and then Sign in again- and zap, the application crashes. I have checked this on both WinXP and Windows 2000 machines.

2. Late message delivery. The messages, for some strange reason, are not delivered on time. It takes a while for the message to appear on the other side. It is not because of any firewalls, routers etc because till last month when I was using the old messenger, anything like this never came up.

Now, you might ask how do I know that the messages are sent late.

I talk with my colleagues on Instant messengers all the time, even though they are seated a couple of feet away from me.

First is the FooBar2000 Audio player. foo and bar, as my friends from the computer science field will recognise, are two variables that are used extensively in syntax examples of the subject. But this is an Mp3 playing software that does its job nicely. It has no “jazz”, no skins, no “feel-good” look but it is probably the best Mp3 player that I have come across in terms of performance, memory usage (All it takes is a little more than 2MB of RAM– Compare that to 12 MB taken by Winamp and almost 30 MB consumed by iTunes!). It is highly configurable, and very flexible. You can download it here. And yes, highly recommended for techies. We all realise how much precious RAM is!

It will take time to get used to it but this is something that seems so simple yet packs quite a punch.

Second thing that has worked great for me is Coldplay’s X&Y album. Good music to the core. Chris Martin and the gang has come of age! With the burden of expectations on Coldplay, X&Y is genius work.

If you are into music of the U2, REM, Oasis kinds, I suggest you listen to this.

This album grows on you. It will take time to get used to it but this is something that seems so simple yet packs quite a punch.

[above: Foobar2000 playing ColdPlay’s X&Y]

Update:

For the past month and a half (almost) I had been preparing for the SCJA (Sun Certified Java Associate) exam. This is a free BETA exam which Sun probably intends to make a standard in the distant future for entry level Java Programmers.

Such overwhelming was the response to the free Certification exam that many ‘last-day’ registeration requests were cancelled. And mine was one of them. So a couple of days before my exam I have just come to know that the exam for which I had been studying for the past 40 days is not going to happen. Now, however, since the much needed momentum has been gained, I intend to do the SCJP (Sun Certified Java Programmer) which, by all technical standards, is not only better than SCJA but also costs a cool Rs 7000.

Meanwhile, I intend to post some of my Java Notes that I have scribbled during the course of my preparation, here on my site on a different page. Now that I will be appearing for the SCJP, the date of which has not been decided yet, I have some more time and I ought to be better prepared.