Notes from a Desi Geek

I don’t think any of my readers (are there any?) got affected by the fact that my site was down for 2 days. But none the less, sorry for the interruption as I moved my site from JodoHost to TextDrive. I have quite a few interesting stuff to post about, so stay tuned!

Ever found a link to article on website, clicked on it only to find that site requires registration for you to read article?? What would you do? Will you register OR you will simply close the browser window?? I think I will do the later.

Anyways, there is great news for lazy swords like me!
Bug Me Not is a site which will give you login details for common sites who unnecessarily bug you to register on their site. So go and get your login details to read NYTimes.com!
JD

Recently I received mail. Have a look at the ‘To’ field.

It seems that some smart person has found a way to spam all zdnetindia subscriber with their general mail id. Talk about smartness of spammer and foolishness of zdnet india folks!

JD

If you ever needed reasons for not putting your picture online…

Check http://www.smlinks.com/sotw/why/

It’s funny + I am wondering who is the talented guy who did this whole stuff!

JD

Man, my hosting provider changed his machine and in the process, MySQL became un available. After struggling for 1 hour, finally I was able to copy files from old mysql database to the new one.

Looking forward to post more often!

JD

I know that I can type 5 times faster than I can write using my hand. But sometimes when you want to write a letter, you want that personalized touch which typed letter can not convey.

Don’t dismay, there is a solution! Fontifier let’s you create a font which mimics your handwriting! I don’t know how the do it, but process is very simple for the end user. You have to send them a scanned image where you have typed all the letters by hand. That’s it! That’s all you have to do to get a font which mimics your handwriting. And the service is cheap at 9$! I am tempted to create the font. Now only if I can get hold of a scanner…

JD

The brilliant folks at 37 signals have come up with Basecamp - An elegant web-based project management and client extranet tool for creative service firms.

I was one of the lucky guy to get an early email about basecamp launch. I checked it out and believe me the application JUST WORKS! I mean, I signed up for trial acocunt and within few minutes, I had configured the tool. They have made it so intutive that even Geoffrey Boycott’s mom can use it!

Now ask me what is the best feature of this tool?
The best feature according to me is that the tool ITSELF DOESN’T REVEAL it’s name while you are using it! What I mean is that it doesn’t have any stupid ‘Powered by’ buttons/text. So when your clients are accessing the tool, they will feel as in you have some really nice internal tool and they will be more inclined to work with you!

For my trial account of Basecamp, I showed it to one of my client, and this is what he wrote back to me:

[i] This is very nice and is going to be very useful, and I will use it regularly Is this a web service you sign up for? I did not see a website at see****.com and the www aliases was a redirect. Just curious as I want to use this for something else as well.[/i]

My client already got some ideas about how he can use this tool, I guess you get the hint about the power of tool!

I think folks at 37signals.com have gone beyond the conventional wisdom {of publishing web application name on every page} and created a tool which all the service firms will be more than willing to use! Hats off to them!

I feel extremely irritated when I see ‘Error Reporting’ dialog box after any application crashes. Once I install my Windows, 1st thing I do is to turn them off. But I never thought about how Microsoft will be using this information and how it can be very useful in improving the quality of software that we use.

Chris Pratley has written two very insighful articles on what goes behind the scene of that ‘Error Reporting Dialog’, how you can deliever software as huge as MS Office. I thought I will share this excellent articles with you all.

Check Watson and More on Quality

BALLADE by Charlotte Lambert is one of the most beautiful design I have ever seen on CSS Zen Garden. Go check it out, now!

JD

Hi All,

My weblog is up again! Harris (my webhosting provider) moved my website from a FreeBSD to box to a Linux box and it took me few days to move the scripts and database to the new server.

But everything is working again! Hope to see you here more often!
JD