Stubborn Fanatic - Vivek Sanghi's Tech Blog » internet

Contest Suggestion: 31 Days of the Dragon

viveksanghi — Wed, 14 May 2008 19:31:00 +0000

‘lo. After a long time I am posting some thing here for you guys. I hope until now you have enjoyed the existing set of Blogger mods that I had published. While this is not related to blogger mods, I am sure those of you who were unaware, will definitely love it. The other day I came across a big contest while browsing some of sites I read regularly, and simply could not resist sharing it with you.

HP (in association with Buzz Corps)is promoting its latest 20.1″ notebook i.e. The HP HDX Entertainment Notebook using a contest called “The 31 Days of Dragon”. Before I proceed further note that this contest is open to everyone from any part of the world.

Contest Info: There are 31 participating web sites, with the sponsorship of HP where HP is working with them to offer 31 prize packages – one a day for 31 days during a period from 09 May through 08 June 2008. Here are the details of the price package (which btw is worth well over USD 5000 in retail value):

Display: 20.1″ diagonal WUXGA High-Definition HP Ultra Brightview Widescreen (1920×1200)
Operating system: Windows Vista Ultimate (64-bit)
Processor: Intel Core2 Extreme Processor X9000 (2.80GHz, 6MB L2 Cache, 800MHz FSB)
Memory: 4GB DDR2 System Memory (2 Dimm)
Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTS
Personalization: HP Imprint Finish (Dragon) + Fingerprint Reader + Webcam + Microphone
Networking: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965AGN Network Connection and Bluetooth(TM)
Hard Drive: 500GB 5400RPM SATA Dual Hard Drive (250GB x 2)
Optical: Blu-Ray ROM with SuperMulti DVD+/-R/RW Double Layer
TV & Entertainment Experience: Integrated HP HDTV Hybrid TV Tuner and 4 Altec Lansing speakers + the HP Triple Bass Reflex subwoofer
Primary Battery: 9 Cell Lithium Ion Battery
Productivity Applications: Microsoft Office 2007, Corel PaintShop Pro Photo X2, Corel Painter 4, Ulead VideoStudio 11.5 Plus
Games: Viva Pinata, Microsoft Flight Simulator X, Microsoft Flight Simulator X Acceleration Expansion Pack, Gear of War
Blu-Ray movies: The Pirates of the Caribbean Trilogy – The Curse of the Black Pearl, Dead Man’s Chest, At World’s End.

And here is a list of websites that are running/will run a seven day contest between the following dates (begin – end):

13 May – 20 May www.geekstogo.com
14 May – 21 May bink.nu
15 May – 22 May www.mediablab.com
16 May – 23 May www.last100.com
17 May – 24 May www.labnol.org
18 May – 25 May www.notebooks.com
19 May – 26 May www.slashdotreview.com
20 May – 27 May www.neowin.net
21 May – 28 May www.geek.com
22 May – 29 Mau www.lockergnome.com
23 May – 30 May www.planetx64.com
24 May – 31 May www.thegreenbutton.com
25 May – 01 Jun www.istartedsomething.com
26 May – 02 Jun www.bleepingcomputer.com
27 May – 03 Jun www.hardwaregeeks.com
28 May – 04 Jun www.geeknewscentral.com
29 May – 05 Jun www.geekzone.co.nz
30 May – 06 Jun www.thetabletpc.net
31 May – 07 Jun www.gearlive.com
01 Jun – 08 Jun www.gottabemobile.com

Some of the website site where the winners have already been declared are:

02 May – 09 May www.absolutevista.com
03 May – 10 May www.arstechnica.com
04 May – 11 May www.osnn.net
05 May – 12 May www.jkontherun.com
06 May – 13 May digitalmediaphile.wordpress.com
07 May – 14 May www.bostonpocketpc.com
08 May – 15 May www.the-gadgeteer.com
09 May – 16 May www.thedigitallifestyle.com
10 May – 17 May www.digitalhomethoughts.com
11 May – 18 May www.windows-now.com
12 May – 19 May www.windowsconnected.com

So I suggest you to head over to these website and track them to win the super prize package. For details about the contest please visit here. There is an RSS link and an OPML available so that you can track these sites conveniently.

In addition, most of these site have very good articles which techies and computer enthusiasts will definitely like. So go now and start participating, I am also competing

Google page creator: headache

viveksanghi — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 18:37:00 +0000

Google’s Page Creator software is seriously pissing me off:

I hope I don’t end up breaking my monitor, keyboard or mouse the next time I see this:

BTW Google should hire someone who has written error messages for Microsoft ) Coz: “oops! I don’t like your error messages”. Better still don’t give me the donuts, just get the page working. Just a thought (pun intended)

Update: Page creator behaves much better after I turned off the experimental features.

Google Docs & Spreadsheets (updated)

viveksanghi — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 08:03:00 +0000

You might have come to know by now that Google has released a service called Google Docs & Spreadsheets . In this service, one can use an online text editor (similar to Microsoft Word and others) to create posts and publish it to their blog.

With this service, you can:

- Have your documents published online (as a webpage) to share it with others (dedicated URL to each document, as in Google pages)

- Export your online documents in word, openoffice, HTML and PDF file formats to store it on your hard drive.

- Import various document (.htm, .doc, .txt, .rtf, .odt, .sxw) and spreadsheet (.csv, .xls, .ods) file formats into this service and publish them online instantly or save it to your hard drive in a different format. So if you want to convert a Microsoft Word file into Adobe PDF format, you can do it easily using this service.

- Collaborate and work with others on projects and set access permissions to files.

- Post to other blogging tools (other than Blogger) like wordpress, LiveJournal etc and also use with custom hosted sites.

To learn more about this service, you may visit this page.

Problems

1. Unable to Login to Blogger

While editing my posts yesterday, I noticed that Blogger had even added a small side-box on the edit post pages to inform users of this service. That’s how I came to know about this service. However, when I used this service, it could not authenticate my blogger beta account (even after my providing the correct login credentials). I knew this was a bug and it was confirmed when in the evening, I noticed that the side-box no longer appeared on the edit post pages.

Once this service is ready for blogger beta, I need to check how this thing works with the tables. If you are used to copy-pasting text from Microsoft Word you might remember that tables cannot be pasted into the post editor in blogger.

2. Formating issues with spreadsheets [Updated (14th Oct, 12:36)]

There are formatting issues with imported Excel files (as seen in the images above).

3. Issues with Spellcheck

I noticed that the spell check is not up to the mark:

Google needs to fix this problem at the earliest, because if any bloggers were to use this service, the bare-minimum they will look for is proper functioning of basic features like spell-check.

Support

Other than the usual support by Google, there is a Google help group for Google Docs & Spreadsheets, where you can post you questions, concerns and suggestions regarding this service and share your experiences with other users.

Conclusion

Google Docs & Spreadsheets is a powerful software/service but lots of errors and problems need to be ironed out before its ready for use (thats why its in beta stage). In a recent news article, I had read that Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt wants his developers to focus on improving current software/services. I couldn’t agree with him more. In the recent years, Google has brought out a range of powerful softwares and services from its labs but its the continuing improvement, feature additions and support for these services that will win the day for it.

Update (Nov 12, 2006 IST): It appears that the connectivity problems between Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Blogger Beta is now fixed. So go ahead try using this service now.

Google blog ping service in FeedBurner

viveksanghi — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 17:43:00 +0000

Hello Friends,

While browsing though A consuming Experince, I came across this post regarding Google Blog ping service being added to FeedBurner’s PingShot utility.

You might want to add this option to your FeedBurner feeds to increase the chances of appearing prominently in Google search.

Now about phishing

viveksanghi — Mon, 09 Oct 2006 18:03:00 +0000

I wrote a post on spam, praised Gmail and now I get a phishing e-mail that even Gmail couldn’t block.

Whosoever wrote that mail was such a dumbo. It had a glaring spelling mistake. They “tanked” me for my patience ). Here is a picture of the e-mail with a link pointing to a bank’s website. The link appears to be legitimate and normal at first glance.

And once I hovered my mouse cursor over the link, the real link underneath was revealed. Also, observe the “Tank” right underneath (lolz)

To know more about phishing check this wikipedia page. Until next time.

Do spammers use crawlers like search engines do?

viveksanghi — Sat, 07 Oct 2006 19:03:00 +0000

Hello all,

I have been receiving a huge number of spam E-mails in my inbox and I was wondering how these spammers work.

I don’t know much about how spammers work and the title of this post might sound crazy. Those who have been following my blog closely might have noticed that I have changed the default e-mail address associated with this blog. The reason was incredible amount of spam in my Gmail inbox. However, Gmail is very smart and it keeps the crap in the crap box (spam folder) but still one thing I do not understand is that how do so many people (assuming that each spam mail comes from a different person/machine) actually pickup e-mail addresses from so many blogs and websites and spam those addresses. It looks like spamming is their sole profession )

I had only recently removed my original e-mail address, put a new e-mail address in my profile and on the blog and boom! The spam count is running into hundreds already. I was wondering if these guys use crawlers to hunt for mailto: href tags in the HTML code and pickup the e-mail address there in to spam the user’s brains out.

Update (8th Oct, 15:23)

I found this article on howstuffworks.com where in its mentioned that spammers use a spidering technology popularly called spambots.

“The second source for e-mail addresses is the Web itself. There are tens of millions of Web sites, and spammers can create search engines that spider the Web specifically looking for the telltale “@” sign that indicates an e-mail address. The programs that do the spidering are called spambots.” – howstuffworks.com

Great! What I was imagining, turns out to be old school stuff. Smart spammers, eh?