Sometime back I realised something really peculiar. That’s what I am going to dicuss today – ‘The Placement of Buttons’.

Consider the screenshot below.

It’s from the website Dare2compete.com we built sometime back. This is a shot from the Uploading Events module of the website. While testing the website I realised that out of the 10 times I opened up this page, 9 times I clicked the button “Back to Dashboard” whereas I was supposed to click “Proceed”.

Now I thought why was this always happening even when we only had placed these buttons here. That’s because most of the applications or installations we do, always have a “Next” button on the right hand side and the “Back” button on the left hand side. That’s why I always apprehended that to proceed I need to click the button on the right and very spontaineously, without reading the text on the button, I clicked it everytime.

Probably, something to learn from :)

We got a special preview for our reader here.

[...]None of the people you see in there are my good friends mate. In fact I can vouch for the fact that I have fewer than you do, and the ones that I have are countable on the fingers of my right hand. [I happen to have an extra thumb :P] But yes, all of them are acquaintances. People I have known at one time, and people I tend to keep in my contacts book. Even if I know that they are the meanest of mongrels I’ll ever see. Why? Because the shift + delete option isn’t such a good option in the system of life. When you’ve got infinite storage space, you oughta use it to your advantage[...]

Read more at Living Like Windows.

Analogies, it is true, decide nothing, but they can make one feel more at home.

– Sigmund Freud

Life’s all about analogies they say. Comparisons with the past, living up to the present, planning the future – it’s all about analogies. Peers, who’s who, role models, siblings all set examples for you and sometimes maybe, you want to give it back to them.

What if the examples come from weird sources. What if you need to read a handbook or manual when a certain analogy or it’s premise seems to be way over the top? Surveys show responses might vary. [Yes I've conducted a thorough survey of my own, alright.]

You might do one of the following –

• Ridicule the whole thing, abuse and move on.
• Ridicule the whole thing and move on.
• Don’t feel like wasting your precious time even though you find it interesting.
• Go buy and lookup that damn manual, because you so want to get to the root of it.

If you have ever used .htaccess file on your web server, you would have an idea of what I am talking about. It’s not possible normally to create .htaccess file in Windows.

Try creating a new file and renaming it to .htaccess and you will get an error.

Now there’s a very easy way to do it. Just open a text editor like ‘Notepad’.

Type in the commands and select the ’save as..’ option.

Once the dialog box opens up type in the file name – ‘.htaccess’ and select the ‘all files’ option.

Click on the ’save’ option and you’re done !!

You can now upload the .htaccess file into your web space in ASCII mode. The .htaccess file will affect the folder that it is uploaded to and all its subfolders.

You may check the following web address for a comprehensive guide on the functionality of the .htaccess files:

http://javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

[Edit : I know  that they will ban me one day ;) ]

And then the television turns off. You suddenly realize that that the bus has been standing still for the last 10 minutes. The driver tells somebody that people have blocked the highway it may take around 2 hours to clear off. Sigh.

The television is turned off. You look outside the large glass windows trucks on every side. You have nothing to do. Try sleeping. No, it doesn’t work. The air condition slows down. 5 minutes later it is turned off. You start feeling the heat. You can hear faint murmurs of people complaining. Some people get up and go outside. The driver warns them that it’s hot outside. They beg to differ. They get down and 2 minutes later they come back. Probably it’s hot outside.

It’s then you start thinking about it. You suddenly remember that there were numerous news reports of people blocking highways and protesting. In this case it was people of Ghanor (some place near Panipat if I remember clearly) who were protesting against the government. They get electricity for only 2 hours every day. I could feel their agony; it was hot inside the bus as well. The thought process was interrupted by the sudden flash of blue lights from NHAI vehicles. They had come to resolve the issue and send the protestors back home.

The engine starts. The air condition is back. For the next 1 hour the bus continuously moves and stops. By this time, you are probably too tired to look what’s happening outside. 10 minutes later the bus picks up full speed.

People move from the troubles of the world to the silence of their comfort. And everything is forgotten as it never happened.

The bus later stops for dinner. It’s 12.30 in the night. You are hungry but the dingy restaurant turns you off. It smells as if it was opened after weeks of inactivity. The conductor complains of the delay due to the protests and their usual dinner place being closed.

I later try to find out if there has ever been any report on this issue of the people there. Nothing. And months later I have forgotten even what happened. It’s during a conversation with my friend I realize that I have this written somewhere and now it’s time to put it out.

But then I thought it would be neat to add the same functionality that Wordpress has. It always confirms before deleting any post. Now the easiest way to do it is write some Javascript code.

<script type=”text/javascript”>
var reply = confirm (“Do you want to delete this article ?”)
if (reply)
//write the delete script here
<?php
delete from table where id=10;
else
//do nothing
</script>

Now what is does is it shows a confirm box. Reply will get a value YES if the user clicks on the ‘Yes’ option, otherwise it gets a NO value.

Peace.

Here is the link

Now this is something I created -

In this application the user enters a location. It is searched from the Yahoo! databse of through the Location Finder. It then pipes the location to the Google Weather API to check the weather conditions for that particular location. This is done through the URL buider. It then returns the data in terms of the RSS feed. The RSS feed is then filtered to output the tgas that are reuired. That’s it !

Many people have asked me what is mashup application in terms of the web ?

A mashup is a Web Application that combines data from more than one web data source into a single integrated web application. Yahoo ! Pipes is based on the principle of Unix Pipes. Just as Unix pipes is used to combine data from several commands, Yahoo ! Pipes aggregates data from various sources to create a useful web application.

Peace.

The extraordinary Forever Flashlight uses a single blue LED and requires no replacement bulb and no batteries, ever! Shaking for 15-30 seconds provides up to 5 minutes of light. Shaking for 90 seconds or longer will provide longer lasting charges. The powerful beam of light is visible for up to a mile. The Forever Flashlight is great for cars, boats, campers, and emergency kits where flashlight often sit for long periods without use.

Features

• Waterproof casing
• Sliding ON/OFF switch
• No replacement bulbs required because LEDs cant break like ordinary light bulbs
• The Forever Flashlight works on the Faraday Law of Induction — any change in the magnetic field of a coil will induce voltage converting it to electric energy. A simple magnet slides back and forth though a coil to generate electricity.

Want to run Google Talk with multiple Gmail identities? If you have several Google Gmail accounts you also may want to run multiple instances of Google Talk This is especially important for families that share a single PC. Nothing worse than a family member signing you out so they can sign in under their own account!

Basically, to have “Google Polygamy” you need to run Google Talk with the following switch: /nomutex

Step 1: Right-click on the desktop
Step 2: Select New
Step 3: Select Shortcut
Step 4: Paste this into the text box:

c:program filesgooglegoogle talkgoogletalk.exe” /nomutex

Step 5: Click Next and choose a shortcut name such as Google Talk1, Google Talk2, or something related to your Gmail account for easy remembering which account is which.
Step 6: Click OK a few times.

Peace.

Do you know your audience? You will with ClustrMaps!

Now here’s a great service that gives you deep insight of the visitors to your site. Cluster Maps lists your site’s visitors and categorizes them according to their regions and countries. It even shows up the visitors on the WorldMap which you can show off.

Visitors don’t need to click on anything: just viewing your page is sufficient.They provide (free) the HTML that gives you a tiny map, like the one below. When it loads, it increments a counter and shows the locations of all visitors to your page, cumulatively (even for huge numbers).The red dots vary in size depending on the number of visits from that particular area.

Although there are better services available like Google Analytics, but I like the simplicity of this tool. Google Analytics, although this is very detailed but it is very heavy and a little bit complex for the average blog users.

Peace.

The film is the ultimate animated comedy of an average male desperately seeking love or friendship from the opposite sex. Along his quest he is tortured, maimed, and killed several times, simply for trying to be friendly. While this animation is insanely funny; it is also painfully accurate and bitter.

Personally, I couldn’t help but to feel sorry  for the little guy again and again. Also it portrays  how ‘we’ are often misunderstood every time we try to be natural or simply casual. A few women may be offended at this cynical view, but I think most of us can relate and appreciate this bluntly honest view of the way some play the game of love. Although relationships are soul stealing ordeals that are best left hidden but this is brilliant. Check it out for some of the most truthful metaphors of rejection.

Found some more interesting facts about the film :

“Ah, L’Amour” (1995) was produced during Don’s freshman year at UC Santa Barbara for a beginning production class, and was never intended to be screened publicly.

The movie initially saw limited action at film festivals because Don was embarassed by it. He was also afraid of being pelted with rocks by angry women, until screenings revealed that women usually cheered very loudly for the cartoon girls, and always applauded much louder than the men.

A few of the “evil women” in the film are crude caricatures of some of Don’s ex-girlfriends – drawn not so much out of bitterness but from running out of different hair styles to think up. No one could tell that Don drew caricatures because you can barely tell that Don drew people.

My favorite – the part above with the salt !

Be sure to witness the painful game of love. A masterpeice.

Peace.

Scroogle is a web service that disguises the Internet address of users who want to run Google searches anonymously. Scroogle also gives users the option of having all communication between their computer and the search page be SSL encrypted.

The tool was created by Google critic Daniel Brandt, who was concerned about Google collecting information on users, and set up Scroogle to filter searches through his servers before going to Google.
I checked out the traffic graph of the website to see if people actually use it, and I was surprised to see 250,000 visitors per day.

Besides anonymous searches, the tool allows users to perform Google searches without receiving Google advertisements. There is support for 28 languages, and the tool is available as a browser plug-in.

From what I’ve seen/investigated it is merely a proxy around Googles search (with limited results returned – 20,50 or 100) to avoid all Google’s cookies. It is basically just to be considered as another search engine, yet it is Google’s results.

For people who are frenzy about the privacy issues this could be good option. I would stick around with Google for the time being.

Peace.