The 100 Top Brands 2006

Just wanted to blog this: Top 100 Brands of 2006. The two company I worked for are on the list as #36 & #37

Podcast & AudioShell

When I was shopping for an mp3 player, I preferred Cowon iAudio X5L over iPods as it had much longer battery life and radio. Since then, podcasts became very popular and iTunes is one of the best out there. Of course, it only works with iPods :(

So today I started to look for non-iPod podcast software. That's when I saw AudioShell, which is

"a freeware MS Windows Explorer shell extension plugin which allows you to view and edit music file tags directly in Windows Explorer. AudioShell support all files and tags standards supported by Tag&Rename. AudioShell adds tag editor and viewer tabs to the music files properties menu (you can edit tags file by file or by groups), detailed music files hints with tag and file information, and additional columns in the Explorer files list. Full Unicode support. Great tool for mp3 players owners! You can fast and easy fix files tags in Explorer before uploading its to your iPod/Creative or any other mp3 player."

I am a big fan of Tag&Rename but this little utility seems to do a good job too.

My quest for ideal podcast application is still going on. I have tried a few apps like Juice (aka iPodder) and MyPodder from Podcast Ready but had issues with both. Still searching...

NTFS with read/write support using ntfs-3g

One of the things I wanted to do but never got to is to be able to write to NTFS partitions from my Ubuntu Dapper. I came across a nice how-to doc here

I will post results once I try it out...
[UPDATE - 07/22/2006]
I tried the instructions today. It did not work for me but that was because I had a typo: I typed en-us instead of en_US which resulted in an error like "Couldn't set locale to en_us.utf8 thus you may not see properly or at all some files". Correcting the error in the /etc/fstab resolved the issue and now I can write to NTFS without any issues :)

Marcus Ranum on hard disk encryption "This stuff is really easy!"

I barely tested TrueCrypt just before my hard drives crashed one after another 2 months ago. I was planning to reinstall it but could not just get to it. After reading Marcus Ranum's article, I guess I have more confidence in this software: http://www.truecrypt.org/

read more | digg story

31 browser hacks in 31 days

Browser Fun blog has promised to disclose 31 browser hacks/vulnerabilities during the month of July 2006, one for each day. Apparently, there is a story behind all this :)

Welcome Rohit!

On April 27th, one of my co-workers, Mathieu Wache accepted my invitation to be a contributed to this technology blog. I had expressed my wish to have more contribution from other techies that share my passion for technology.

Andy Mei is on a business trip to Japan but will soon join us. And today, Rohit Pai became a contributor for scorion.net. Rohit proved us that he can cook! :) I added Rohit's blog to the links on the right side where he is sharing his recipes.

Gregorian Calendar

In my alumni e-mail list, somebody questioned the origins of Gregorian Calender... An informative link was given that explained a lot of things I did not know about the subject. check it out, you may find it interesting too.

Analytical Puzzles

Just noticed this on popular del.icio.us pages. On the site, there are logic problems in varying difficulty levels. Be careful though, you may get addicted to them :)

Google Notebook Review

The more I use Google Notebook, the more I like it! When looking for information on web, I usually find myself taking notes using MS OneNote, Outlook > Notes or plain notepad. As my blackberry is sync'ed with Outlook Notes, I tend to remind myself to put notes in there but it has a lot of limitations.

What Google Notebook gives me is the ability to select some part of a web page & simply make it a note that's available to me wherever I can access internet.

I downloaded & the plugin for IE and Firefox on all my computers. Both plugins work equally well. I created a number of notebooks as seen on the screenshot. If I want to move a note from one notebook to another, I can simply drag and drop it over.

I can edit the note anytime and really like the fact that it captures the original URL, I created the note from. So, if I have to go back to the original document, there is a reference to it.

By default, only "you" can see your notes. they are private. However, if you want to make them public, you can choose to do so. And of course, google's fabulous search engine lets you search your own, or public notes effectively.

What can be improved? Well, this is pretty good for taking notes from web sites. One step further would be to highlight any part of any document and upload it as a note! Now, I think that would be a killer-app!

Hi-Res Panoramic Images of Paris

Mathieu should have posted this but I saw it before him :) Here is a link to high resolution panoramic pictures of beautiful Paris.

Did you know that France was the most visited country in the World in 2004?
2. Spain
3. US
...
12. Turkey
(Source: http://www.world-tourism.org/facts/menu.html)


Site is a bit slow but I saw some mirrors in digg. I don't know for how long they will stay:

http://www.gourp.com/paris-360-110.jpg
http://195.62.29.95/paris-360-110.jpg

15,000 px X 520 px (1.8 mb)
http://duggmirror.com/design/Hi-Res_Panoramic_Image_of_Paris/fc08a2cad710de1774c7d1d76eb11fce_paris-360-110.jpg

Direct Links to two other images on same website:
4200 px X 520 px (500 kb)
http://www.arnaudfrichphoto.com/Images/paris-neige-panorama.jpg

15,000 px X 520 px (1.9 mb)
http://www.arnaudfrichphoto.com/Images/paris-360-110-texte.jpg

On Bill Gates...

When I read today that Bill Gates is stepping down from day to day managerial works of Microsoft, I felt happy for him. Unlike many other rich people of the world all throughout the history, he did not become slave of his own wealth and managed to put it into good work. So I always admired him!

"With great wealth comes great responsibility. Many years ago I made it clear that almost all my wealth would be returned to society," Gates said in an afternoon press conference in Redmond, Wash.

I think it could not be put better. He has created a giant industry and became the richest man on earth all in a very short time. He is a one of a kind, a great man that I think, most of us in the IT world owe him a big "thank you"!

He is setting a huge example that I hope other rich people will follow! Thank you, Bill!

System Administrators Toolkit

Just blogging a nice write up about Unix SA Toolkit on digg.com

Opt-Out of Credit Card Offers

Are not you sick & tired of receving credit card offers everyday? Don't you want the junk mail STOP? Who does not? :)

Well, you may not be able to stop getting all junk mail but to remove (or add???) your name from firm offers based on your credit information, it's possible to call Consumer Credit Reporting Industry Opt-in, Opt-Out Number: 1-888-567-8688
or write to:
Equifax Options, P.O. Box 740123, Atlanta, GA 30374-01123
Experian Target Marketing, P.O. Box 919, Allen, TX 75013
TransUnion Opt Out Request, P.O. Box 505, Woodlyn, PA 19094-0505

You can either choose to opt-out for 5 years or permenantly and you can add your name back any time you want.

To give you and idea, it took me about 5mins to remove both my name and my wife's name for 5 years. Of course, because they already fed many businesses with your information offers may keep on coming for quite sometime. and if you want your name to be removed permenantly, then they will send you a form that you need to fill in and send back to them and you will be removed from the lists of 4 Credit Reporting Agencies.

Ubuntu Dapper Install Issues

Today, I downloaded Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 LTS Desktop CD to install it on a new hard drive. I ran into some issues but luckily I was able to fix them. I will write them down here just in case someone out there runs into a similar issue and may benefit from the solution

1) Ubuntu CD would not boot
I knew that CD was good because it was booting fine on a different PC. On the other hand, if I inserted an XP or Vista set-up CD, they would be detected fine but not the ubuntu CD.

I suspected that CD was not detected because of the Promise UltraATA133 TX2 card I was using with my "large" drives. The motherboard of my HP XW6000 pc did have ATA100 but not ATA133.

Anyway, to solve the problem, I disconnected my DVD drive from Promise Controller and connected it directly to the motherboard's Primary ATA. Then, Ubuntu CD happily booted.

2) "Out of range" error while Ubuntu was booting
So, to install Ubuntu Dapper 6.06, I chose "Live CD & Install" option from the boot menu. However, at some point Ubuntu would disappear and I would just see an "Out of Range" error on the screen.

Fixing this was pretty easy actually. I hit Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to prompt and then edited the display config
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf

I removed all entries before"1280x1024" for my nVidia card so that my card would not try to load a resolution that it can not support and saved the file.

Then, I hit "Ctrl+Alt+F7" to go back to the screen where I was seeing "out of range" and hit "Ctrl+Alt+Backspace" to restart Gnome Display Manager (gdm) and voila!

Then, ubuntu user logged in and there was a "Install" icon on the desktop. Using GPart, I first created three partitions on the free space:
1 GB for swap
7 GB for / (formatted with ext3 file system)
25 GB /home (formatted with ext3 file system)

Installation did not took long and in about 20mins, my ubuntu dapper was up and running :)

sudo issues

While testing linux to linux nxclient with my coworker andy Mei, a rogue line was accidentally pasted to /etc/hosts just before we saved & exit.

It was something like this
192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net192.168.1.1 myubuntu.scorion.net...

That caused some grief! It broke sudo. So everytime I typed `sudo ...` I would get an error:
sudo: unable to lookup via gethostbyname()

I was not able to sudo and therefore I was not able to correct /etc/hosts. So, I rebooted (I could not `sudo reboot` but I could reboot from GUI) to login in Recovery Mode.

As luck would have it, I ran into another issue. I was always getting "keyboard error" while system was booting up but it would be fine after GUI came up. So, I never paid attention to it.

To fix the issue, I connected my keyboard to a different usb port (but this time at the back of my dell pc) and then I was able to login in Recovery Mode as root. Once the offending entry was deleted, everything was back to normal.

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS released

New Ubuntu Release Available for Desktops and Servers, with Long Term, Global Support

Ubuntu, which has become one of the world's most popular Linux distributions in recent years, launched its latest version on June 1 following months of intense testing. The new release is titled Ubuntu 6.06 LTS (Long Term Support), and has a specific emphasis on the needs of large organisations with both desktop and server versions... Read the rest of their announcement.

BTW, check this nice blog entry called "25 tips to make Ubuntu 6.06 LTS perfect
by Keir Thomas"

Office 2007 Beta 2 Test

I downloaded Office 2007 Beta 2 from MSDN and testitto see if I could use it for my day-to-day needs... I did not really use everything but Word, Excel & Outlook. I installed on top of my Office 2003 and installation was without a hitch. I liked the new interface in on all of the Office products I tested. I think MS did a very good job!

I will mostly talk about Outlook as I used it extensively for two days. I was very impressed when I started to use Outlook. It asked me for my e-mail address & password. I enetered them and waited for the screen to ask me for pop3, smtp addresses etc. It did not happen. In fact, it did not ask me anything else and just informed me that my e-mail configurion was complete! See below


What else I liked? RSS support! It worked very well. I was able to import my OPML file of feeds and in a few seconds all of them were downloaded to Outlook. It also gave me an option to download the complete feed as a html attachment.

Search was considerably faster compared to Office 2003, however, it asked me to download MS Search companion which did not install on Windows 2003 Server.

Now, the worst part. I could not keep Outlook on. It would just keep on crashing. I would click "Forward" and it would crash, I would click Reply All and it would crash. Guess what? I would leave it on by itself and it would crash after sometime. I really tried but after two days of constant crashes, I had to give up and remove it. I am not sure how something can be crashed so frequently in beta 2 stage, I would expect a little bit more stability. Oh, well...

Traffic Info from Windows Live Local

In the newest Windows Live Local release, users will be able to see how heavy or light traffic is along specific U.S. roads, find out if and where there are accidents, and how serious they are. For this new feature, Microsoft is partnering with Traffic.com.

Also new is a functionality Microsoft calls "collections," which lets users save their favorite places and locations to an online notebook, upload photos and add notes. Users will also be able to share with others these scratchpads’ content via e-mail or the MSN Spaces blogging service, creating a sort of social network based on Windows Live Local.

This new version also features integration with the Windows Live Messenger instant messaging service, so that users can initiate an instant-messaging session from within Windows Live Local while seeing and interacting with the same map.

In addition, Microsoft is releasing a new plug-in for Windows Live Local that extends the service’s mapping functions to the company’s Outlook e-mail, calendaring and contacts application. With the plug-in, Outlook XP and Outlook 2003 users will be able to find and print Windows Live Local maps from within Outlook. The plug-in will be available as a free download. Read the rest of the story here.

Ubuntu Tips & Tricks

Just wanted to blog a very nice tips & tricks page for Ubuntu which is part of Ubuntu FAQ.

On a separate note, I installed Skype which is missing all the bells and whistles of the Windows version (like Video conferencing) but works fine. It start up very slowly though, I am not sure why...

How does Yahoo, MSN stack up against Google?

According to the latest numbers compiled by Hitwise Blogger Bill Tancer, Google is the search-king (no surprises there) but Yahoo leaves Google in dust when it comes to e-mail, news, finance etc. Nice compariso tables over there, check it out!