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Google announced that they are pulling the plug on Google Reader – due to decline in usage. In reality, Google should taken more effort to spread awareness of this service. There are two petitions I have signed, and I encourage you to sign these too: Keep Google Reader Change.org Petition It’s not the first time Google’s done this to a favorite service of mine (Fast Flip, Answers, Desktop to name a few).

So, it’s been almost a year since my last post (again!). Reading through the archives of the site, which has been up for a little over 3 years now, I’m tempted to post an update to some of the older posts. What better way to restart blogging? In November 2007, I wrote about the iPhone and the hype surrounding it. I suggested looking at alternatives. Since then, Apple has released the iPhone 3G, 3GS and 4. Some of the issues I had with the 1st iPhone version were that it didn’t support 3G, corporate sync and 3rd party apps. The…

The latest blog post on Google’s official blog caught my attention. Due to recent cyberattacks, originating from China, resulting in the loss of some of their intellectual property (fancy term for ‘secrets’), they’re considering withdrawing from the country. Some of the points of interest: 20 companies were attacked: Twenty large companies were targeted and may or may not be aware of it. This has the potential to have far-reaching consequences Google.cn may no longer be uncensored: They’ve come under flak for censoring results in China (human rights ethics, etc.) Google may shut down offices in China: Mass exodus? Baidu.com will…

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch claims the current Internet businesss model is “malfunctioning” and says that NewsCorp-owned web sites will start charging for content within a year. His empire includes papers like the NY Post, the Sun and the Times spread across the globe. As a consumer of a lot of news and information online, I will NOT be willing to pay for content that will freely be available elsewhere. The rise of independent media (blogging, videos on YouTube and other such sites, Twitter tweeting, etc…) has been a pain for news conglomerates. They know they are losing the battle –…

This is one of the most shocking pieces of news I’ve heard in the recent past. An employee of a Swiss insurance agency called in sick, and was later fired since she logged in to Facebook on her iPhone while at home. Something smells fishy here. Maybe the company was looking for an excuse to fire the employee. It’s also interesting that a co-worker alerted the company of the Facebook activity. So, it appears that it is perfectly acceptable for an employee to log on to Facebook from work, but not from home when sick? Ludicrous. I wonder what the…

ashton kutcher (aplusk) on Twitter. Obviously this looks like a bug or someone just ran a megascript, but check this screenshot out (not doctored). Taken at 10:41 p.m. PDT Almost 2 million followers …

Google recently announced a new look for the GMail client on the iPhone (and Android). The new interface is pretty intuitive, and pleasing to the eye. However, since GMail supports free IMAP, I use the built-in email client to check my email. The new architecture involves more usage of the internal database on the iPhone to cache data. This reduces the number of calls to the server, which is more than handy when on EDGE or 3G. According to their blog, they’ve even implemented some HTML5 features. Related Link: Official Gmail Blog: A new mobile Gmail experience for iPhone and…

The April Fools’ Worm, or Conficker has been in the news for a few weeks now. This is one of the few times since Y2K that a date was important. People around the world braced for April 1, 2009 – the worm was supposed to wake up and cause havoc of epic proportions. That never happened. Maybe the author(s) were waiting till people’s defenses were lowered. Maybe it woke up early and no one knows what it’s doing (the sheer possibilities send a shiver down my spine). It’s not like this came out of the blue. The author(s) took advantage…

Last weekend, I was watching an online video, when my custom-built desktop machine suddenly shut down. I attempted to boot it up, and it shut down within 5 seconds. It was apparent that it was a hardware problem. The lack of POST beep pretty much confirmed this. A lot of forum-surfing led me to believe that one or both of my RAM sticks were fried. I unseated both RAM sticks and booted the machine. There was a lot of beeping (expected due to missing RAM), but it shut down within a few seconds. RAM wasn’t the issue. Other suggestions on…

Interesting Wikipedia stat: 98.3% of registered Wikipedia users are inactive. While researching for a topic, I was led to Wikipedia. I noticed that they had almost reached the $6,000,000 figure they were targeting for donations. ($5,775,345 at the time of writing this). Just before this round of appeals, there was an earlier donation appeal (and I think, one earlier as well). Given the track record, and current state of the economy, I doubt this will be the last of donation appeals. Why does the Wikimedia foundation (who run Wikipedia) not want to place any ads on Wikipedia? If Wikipedia places…