Most decorated Christmas house?
Check out some of the “far fetched christmas” decorations photographed by vladdythephotogeek at flickr. Reminds me of the Onida ad – Owner’s pride and neighbors envy! But?Ç if ?Ç everyone starts like this I wonder what will happen to US power grid! He says,
I have nothing against people decorating their houses for Christmas. I actually like it. Most of the time. This guy on the other hand takes decorating FAR beyond what is reasonable. According to the local Newspaper (as you can imagine this kind of decorating gets a *bit* of attention) the inside is decorated with the same gusto and with all the lights on, he can’t use his microwave without blowing all his fuses.
Turn the fish puzzle
Eight matchsticks?Ç are arranged to form a fish swimming to the left as shown on the right. Can you make it swim to the right by moving 3 sticks??Ç
Click here if you are unable to solve it! You can also download a printable PDF version here. This puzzle was probably first devised by the famous puzzle guru in Japan – Kobon Fujimura
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Christmas gift from flickr – Increased upload limit
Christmas gift for Flickr?Ç (photo sharing site?Ç from Yahoo)?Ç users! There will be no limits on the monthly upload for Flickr pro users (earlier there was a 2GB monthly limit) and for free accounts the monthly upload limit is increased to 100MB from 20MB!
Here is what Flickr now offers,
Free account
100 MB monthly upload limit
3 photosets
Photostream views limited to the 200 most recent images
Only smaller (resized) images acessible (though the originals saved in case you upgrade later)
Pro Account ($24.95 per year $47.99 for 2 years)
Unlimited uploads
Unlimited storage
Unlimited bandwidth
Unlimited photosets
Permanent archiving of high-resolution original images
The ability to replace a photo
Ad-free browsing and sharing
Million dollar guy is back with pixelotto
Remember Alex Tew who created milliondollarhomepage and made a million dollars by selling pixels on his Web page? It was a cool idea and soon thousands of sites tried to make money in a similar way. Few even succeeded in getting some money!
After all the interviews and TV shows, Alex is now back with a new venture called pixelotto. This time he is offering the Web site visitors a million dollars! Here is how it works – Advertisers can place ads for 2$ per pixel and there are a million pixels available. Now the visitors must click on the ads if they want to get the million dollars prize!
Man, that is one clever idea! It is sure to generate a lot of Web traffic on to the advertised pages. Also Alex is going to get the other million dollars generated 
Pixelotto has already generated over $130K in ad revenue. The site was down today (13th Dec) for sometime. It appears that the site is unable to handle the traffic.
Google adsense adds 4 new languages
From today Google adsense is supporting 4 new languages – Croatian, Czech, Slovak, and Traditional Chinese. This brings the total number of languages supported to 22. In addition Arabic, Bulgarian, Greek, and Hebrew are supported for search alone.
I have been waiting for Google to enable my mother tongue (Malayalam). I don’t think it will happen anytime soon. Meanwhile there are a lot of Malayalam sites which are hosting ads in their site violating adsense terms of service. I think Google is ignoring most of these violations as I am seeing these sites running for years!
Google toolbar beta 3 for firefox is out!
Google has released beta 3 of the Firefox Google toolbar. This toolbar requires Firfox 1.5 or above version. It seems that the beta doesn’t work with Firefox 2.0 on Windows XP. I tried installing on two different XP machines without any luck (Yes, I tried the Google suggestions also!). It is quite unbelievable that Google releases something without testing on such a common configuration!
Key new features are,
Custom buttons – You can now add your own custom buttons to the toolbar. A button gallery is also available.
Bookmarks – It is possible to create and save online bookmarks in your Google account. Probably this indicates that stumbleupon/del.icio.us features may be incorporated in future!
Send to feature – Allows you to send Web pages via SMS or email. You can also select a portion of a Web page to send.
Google docs & spreadsheet integration – Drag & drop office files in the toolbar! Also clicking on a link to supported file types will open the Google office tools.
Further Reading
New features in Google toolbar 3 for Firefox
Download Google toolbar 3 for Firefox
IdeaWins by Microsoft – A chance to start your business!
Microsoft is running competition called “IdeaWins” for the best small business idea. The best entry will get $100,000 in venture capital to start the business and free retail space in New York city! This competition is open till 31st January 2007 and only residents of United States can participate.
The ideawins site is also offering free download of Microsoft Office Accounting Express 2007.
I was wondering what type of business idea can I submit? Here is what the site says,
The Dry Shower? Caffeinated Salad? GPS Shoes? Entries can be submitted for almost any original idea for a consumer-based based business that sells goods and services at a storefront retail location and via the Internet. However, please note that ideas that fall in the following categories will not be eligible for this Contest: Not-for-Profit, sexual aids, pornography, tobacco, alcohol, firearms or other weapons, and any unlawful activity.
Further Reading
Idea Wins competition
The best of answers 2006
Since the closing down of Google answers, Yahoo answers future looks very promising.?Ç Yahoo has recently?Ç invited former Google answers gurus to Yahoo answers!
Yahoo answers is now featuring the best of answers 2006. From the yahoo answers blog,
To help commemorate Yahoo! Answers?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ upcoming first year birthday, we combed the depths of Answers to find some of the most eye-catching and memorable questions and answers from the past year.
What we came up with is Best of Answers 2006 – a repository of editorially-selected questions and answers featured throughout the year. These questions were highlighted in various places around the Yahoo! network including the Yahoo! front page, the Answers front page, the Answers blog, and places like Yahoo! Sports and Yahoo! Food. We?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ve also added to the mix some of the celebrities who posted questions and answers on Yahoo! Answers.
Some of the “best of answers” are,
How do I wipe a NTFS hard drive file system?
Which products, used by few today, will be essential in five years?
How to I keep dampness out the house?
What would happen to video tapes if you stored them away for year or so?
Newspaper for the extemely busy! – simplyheadlines.com
SimplyHeadlines is a free, customized newspaper that is delivered to the subscribers via email. You can choose your news sources, format of the newspaper (graphics or text), special features (daily photo, comics, stock quotes etc) and delivery time.
Following screenshot shows the options available for simplyheadlines subscription. For stock quotes etc. you have further options such as the companies you want to track.
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But I soon got bored. I think Google news is good enough for me!
Upload Youtube videos instantly! – Quick capture
Youtube has released a new tool called Quick Capture. This allows you to record a Youtube video instantly! Webcam or any other camera connected to your PC can be used for this. The video is automatically uploaded in .FLV format. Uploading videos to Youtube cannot be any simpler now!
WebSphere Application Studio Developer (WSAD) Tips
WSAD from IBM is one of the best tools available out there for enterprise Java development. It is a perfect IDE where everything in Java (EJB, servlets, JSP, webservices etc.) can be developed with ease. Here are some WSAD tips which my fellow programmers find quite useful.
How do I change the workspace in WSAD?
Normally when you start WSAD, you get an option to change workspace. If you had checked the “Do not show this dialog” option, you will not get get this option again. To enable workspace selection again,
Right click on WSAD shortcut and insert -setworkspace in the target field of the shortcut. In my case it is “D:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere Studio\Application Developer\v5.1.2\wsappdev.exe” -setworkspace
Why is VSS plugin not working in WSAD?
To enable VSS plugin with WSAD 5.1 modify “wsappdev.ini” in WSAD working directory and comment VMArgs=-Xj9, for example #VMArgs=-Xj9
Why is my JDBC settings not working in WSAD?
You need to add classes12.zip to the classpath of the JDBC provider.
Can I install WSAD 5.1.2 on Windows 2003?
Yes you can! But you need enable?Ç compatibility mode for the installer. Right click on the installer and then select properties->compatibility->compatibility mode for windows 2000.
Which shortcut keys you use in WSAD?
| Key | Shortcut |
| F4 | Open hierarchy (context sensitive) |
| F3 | Goto selection source |
| Ctrl+Space | Content Assist |
| Ctrl+Shift+Space | Parameter Hints |
| Ctrl+1 | Quick Fix Errors |
| Ctrl+Shift+P | Match Bracket |
| Ctrl+F3 | In place outline (context sensitive) |
| Ctrl+Shift+T | Find a Type |
| Ctril+Shift+F | Format Source |
Last page and first page on Internet?
There are a lot of last pages and first pages on internet. But how can there be multiple last and first pages on the Web? .?Ç I must admit that none of them looks very interesting. Some are maintaining domains just to?Ç host the last and first pages!
Here are some?Ç last and first pages of Internet?Ç I found out.
The first page of the Internet
The very first page of the Internet?Ç
The last page of the Internet (yes another one!)
The last page of the Internet (no! not again!)
The very last page of the internet?Ç
Want to turn off the Internet??Ç
Some guy has even setup the middle page of the Internet!
Further Reading
Wikipedia on last page of the internet
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Free C# (csharp) ebook resources
C# is very similar to Java language. So if you are a Java language expert it hardly takes a week to learn C#. Here are a list of free C# (csharp) books I was able to find on the net. Unlike Java there aren’t many good quality free books on csharp. Let me know if you know of any good books not included here.
1.Wiki book on Csharp programming?Ç – ?Ç A work in progress.
2. Sams Teach Yourself C# in 24 Hours?Ç – This is in HTML form and hence downloading is a pain.
3. Vijay mukhi’s csharp basics. HTML book can be downloaded as a zip file.
4. Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in C# by Bruno R. Preiss?Ç – This is a bit old (2001) but still useful.
5. Programming the .NET Compact Framework in C#?Ç – ?Ç Can downloaded as PDF. Focuses on .NET framework.
6. Dissecting a C# Application: Inside SharpDevelop?Ç – This looks at SharpDevelop IDE and its source code.
7. C# in detail by Jon Jagger -?Ç Can be downloaded as a zip file.
Infy by night! – An interesting set of Infosys photos
Infosys is one of India’s best software companies. Started in 1981, Infosys is now one?Ç among the?Ç top 100 in Nasdaq with a revenue over 2 billion dollars. Infosys campus in Bangalore is a well managed campus with all modern facilities. Check out the following set of cool photos of Infy campus at night?Ç taken by anita bora.
Further Reading
Infosys Web site
Infosys campus
Accessing blocked yahoo messenger, google talk etc – Meebo!
Is instant messengers blocked at your office or school? Are you unable to access yahoo messenger, google talk or msn messenger at work? You may find Meebo site very useful.
Meebo (instant messaging everywhere) is a browser based instant messenger client which uses Ajax. You can login to aim, yahoo, msn or google instant messenger accounts from the Meebo homepage. You can also register at meebo at then configure all your instant messenger accounts at one go!
Good, now what happens if your network admin finds meebo also and blocks it? Obviously meebo wants to address this problem as well. So they have released something called Meebo repeater. This is a kind of proxy server which can be downloaded and installed on your home computer. After installation, it will give a URL which can be used from office! Pretty neat:)
The best and the promising product from Meebo is the Meebo me widget. This allows you to embedd an Ajax based widget on your Web site. You can chat with your Web site visitors if you are logged on to Meebo. Your visitors need not register, they can straight away talk to you!
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Further Reading
Meebo home
Get your Meebo me widget