announcing godsownchild
Posted by Taggy as NITT, Wordpress, chennai, community, internet, love, philanthropy, school, socie, society, uthavum karangal, web2.0
iam going to use this post to gather the initial views/thoughts about this idea which iam calling GodsOwnChild .
Long time ago i did write a post about how i believed Uthavum Karangal and other similar associations are doing a wonderful job .something each one of must also be doing .it was in the same post that Honey Bee commented why she thinks they aren’t actually doing a great job .
And i think her view was fair enough ,as much as famous these instituions may be and as big and remarkable work they seem to be doing ,the truth is there are still hundreds of such organisation which are struggling to support their cause . Money hasn’t simply reached them .
Two reasons that i think could be primary reasons
1.Lack of visibility
2.Lack of network
And i believe both visibility and networking are very essential for these organisations to survive.
GodsOwnChild is a small effort to be able to highlight such organisations through the web and hopefully be a channel for people who have the heart to give will be able to connect .
Anyone who visits an orphange or a school with limited resources and needing more ,would write down a description of he situation,needs and if possible pictures/interviews/audio of the people/kids and also the contact details so that people can reach out to the needy .
My idea is not only to write about the needs or poverty but also to find stories ,rather heroes among them ,for they would be great examples and people know that with some help from all of us the organisations could possible produce more heroes :) .
For the moment its only me who would be writing .But i would love to see people joining in. Not necessarily people who write content.
Designers who can make a great theme for wordpress ,people who can share camera’s.people who can help people doing the interviews with travel .
Helping maintain the content quality and contribute monetarily as well .
We are just starting up so feel free to reach out to me if you have an idea/thought or would like to join in and take this idea forward .
contact : t@theyagar.com
Mobile: +91 9962550285
PS:any WP designers listening ?
Popularity: 3%
September 6, 2008 | Filed Under NITT, Wordpress, chennai, community, internet, love, philanthropy, school, socie, society, uthavum karangal, web2.0 | Comments Off
OpenID stats on May 1st 2008
Posted by as news, openid, web2.0
“At the end of April there were 13196 RP’s.”
More and counting..
OAuth seems to be another interesting stuff. But that after openid.
Popularity: 3%
Yahoo to test Google AdSense; Microsoft objects
Posted by Anshu Prateek as network, news, web, web2.0
Wed Apr 9, 5:45 PM ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) - Yahoo, after years of battling Internet rival Google for online advertising, said Wednesday it would launch a limited test of Google’s AdSense for Search service.
The announcement drew a sharp response from Microsoft, which warned that a Yahoo-Google partnership would cover some 90 percent of online advertising.
The test is expected to last up to two weeks and will be limited to no more than three percent of Yahoo search queries, Yahoo said in a statement. The program will deliver Google ads alongside Yahoo’s own search results.
The Sunnyvale, California-based company said the test will apply only to traffic from yahoo.com in the US and will not include Yahoo’s network of affiliate or premium publisher partners.
Yahoo said the testing does not necessarily mean it will “join the AdSense for Search program or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result.”
Yahoo is also fighting off a takeover bid from software giant Microsoft, arguing the offer undervalues the Internet firm.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel, said in a statement: “Any definitive agreement between Yahoo and Google would consolidate over 90 percent of the search advertising market in Google’s hands.”
He added: “This would make the market far less competitive, in sharp contrast to our own proposal to acquire Yahoo. We will assess closely all of our options.”
Smith said Microsoft remains committed to a 44.6 billion dollar takeover offer for Yahoo.
“Our proposal remains the only alternative put forward that offers Yahoo shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers,” he said.
Popularity: 5%
Google services!
Posted by Anshu Prateek as web, web2.0
Well its been a long while since I quit wondering about the total number of services offered by google. They always keep coming up with something new. Well you can always get a list of various things offered by google at
http://www.google.co.in/intl/en/options/
and some more search features at
http://www.google.com/help/features.html
For example did you know that for converting one currenct to another you can use gogole search in a way like
100 USD into INR
http://www.google.com/help/features.html#currency
- 3.5 USD in GBP
- currency of Brazil in Malaysian money
- 5 British pounds in South Korean money
- 2.2 USD per gallon in INR per litre
You can also get a list of definitions by including the special operator “define:” with no space between it and the term you want defined. For example, the search [define:World Wide Web] will show you a list of definitions for “World Wide Web” gathered from various online sources.
http://www.google.com/options/specialsearches.html
Did you know that there is
google.com/microsoft
and
google.com/linux
and some more
Use Google to search within specific topics
Google’s special searches enable you to narrow your search to a specific topic.
Our Public Service Search offers educational institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide free SiteSearch.
Our University Search enables you to search to a specific school website. We now offer hundreds of schools. Try searching for things like admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news.
Google also offers these special searches:
U.S. Government |
Linux |
BSD |
Then there is always
Another similar post in here with many more listings:
http://www.quickonlinetips.com/archives/2006/04/the-big-google-search-tools-collection/
Popularity: 9%
my tryst with OpenID
Posted by Anshu Prateek as NITT, network, php, web2.0
The first time I had heard of OpenID was sometime in last sem when Taggy had told me about it. That was the time when we were hacking wordpress-mu to only allow authentication using ADS server. Later on we also managed to implement LDAP and use it for system login and mail and svn and trac 
Well then after that got busy with pragyan and the CMS developement, not to mention the Micromouse event.
And then came Google SoC. And I turn to the two things I know best, php and MySQL and something that I kept using in between, my openID (anshprat.wordpress.com)
Well now that am reading more and more about it, let me put in some of the things that I have stumbled across so far and which I have found intresting.
First and foremost the specifications. Its a first time that I have actually been able to read some specs and actually follow them more thoroughly than usual. Maybe the pleasant looks of the specs page also has a big role to play in that.
http://openid.net/specs/openid-authentication-2_0.html
Will soon put up a copy of my OpenID authentication
Then something that James Walker introduced me to, the OpenID attribute exchange.
You can read more about it in my Google SoC proposal out here
OpenID attribute exchange implementation
And another of my GSoC proposals out here
http://anshprat.wordpress.com/google-soc/
Ok, so coming back to OpenID.
Well openid.net is the place to begin all your head hunting.
Ok, after so much of wasting your time with my personal experience, and if you are yet to check out the above linked sites, here is a brief summary of what OpenID is.
OpenID is a shared identity service, which allows internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.
Using OpenID-enabled sites, web users do not need to remember traditional authentication tokens such as username and password. Instead, they only need to be registered with any OpenID “identity provider” (IdP). Since OpenID is decentralized, any website can use OpenID as a way for users to sign in; OpenID does not require a centralized authority to confirm a user’s digital identity.
OpenID is increasingly gaining adoption among large sites, with organizations like AOL, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Orange, VeriSign, Yandex and Yahoo acting as providers.[1][2][3][4][5] In addition, integrated OpenID support has been made a high priority in Firefox 3[6] and OpenID can be used with Windows CardSpace.
Other than the list of OpenID Identity providers listed here, the following are a few of my preferred identity providers.
wordpress.com. Yes! anshprat.wordpres.com is an openid! Basically username.wordpress.com can be used to sign up on any openid enabled sites. (Of course provided you are already logged into your wordpress account!)
yahoo.com
Beginning the february of 2008, all yahoo users can use their yahoo account as openid.
and some other identity providers like
Well the last one in the list is verisign provided OpenID. But just that the openid you get is a bit too long, as in username.pip.verisignlabs.com
Maybe they should come up with something like sf is for sourceforge. So maybe a pvl.com?
Will post my GSoC proposal for OpenID soon as that contains more info about the OpenID.
Popularity: 7%
Testimonials facebook app
Posted by Taggy as Friends, Personal, Technology, apps, facebook, hacking, orkut, people, python, server, society, web2.0, webapp
I have just released my latest facebook app ,testimonials .
One of the best features in orkut to me was writing testimonials to your friends and facebook somehow missed it and thats the reason why i decided to make it up .
Share it :)
Popularity: 30%
March 11, 2008 | Filed Under Friends, Personal, Technology, apps, facebook, hacking, orkut, people, python, server, society, web2.0, webapp | Comments Off
Twitter bot for yahoo
Posted by Taggy as GNU, Geeky, Technology, Unix, apps, blogging, hacking, internet, linux, mediatemple, opensource, python, twitter, web2.0
After my previous attempt at making a twitter bot resulted with a decent liking from people ,i thought i would hack up another one .
Some of my friends are addicted to yahoo and they r on it most of the days so why not a bot to help you twitter from yahoo messenger ?
However there were some fundamental problems,one of them was to maintain sessions . There was virtually no way i could keep a user logged in without having to store his/her password which i absolutely hated ! and asking on the twitter mailing lists only told me that i would have to wait until twitter adopts OAuth .
But still myself and Doniv ,making a yahoo bot for twitter was worth a try for two reasons .
- We <3 twitter
- Making a bot for yahoo was going to be a little more challenging than making ajabber bot since yahoo messenger protocol was not open like the jabber .
But thanks to Philips Tellis and his Libyahoo2 ,life was going to be much easier .
And we started with it . First we setup a page tocheck for user credentials and update his yahooid in to out database.We only store their twitter and yahoo username .
Then set about writing the bot in C/Python .
Here is how its going to be started ,its not the bot you want to use everyday because it does have a few flaws but if you are out without Gmail then you could as well use it .
After registering with the website here http://theyagar.com/twitter ,add twitterme as your friend at yahoo.
Now the most important part ,the tweet sending part .As i mentioned earlier ,we could virtually find no way of having users logging in without raw text passwords and so this ugly looking way (honestly) .
twitter_username twitter_password twiter_message is the format .for eg,
myusername mypassword hey test message to twitter
Now what happens next is it goes in to our DB and tries to match your followers with registered users and if it does then the yahooid is sent a tweet .
So while you can always send a tweet from out client ,you can recieve it only if your friends send it from yahoo bot too .
Twitter i dont think has any hook to be notified when there is a tweet although we could poll but all that for later .
This works from Gaim/Pidgin ,Meebo and Yahoo messenger Windows .Iam not sure about the other clients since all these client send out html messages and parsing out them was a headache .
Let me show you some screenshots of how this works
Sending the message from Pidgin
A follower recieving his friends tweet on his yahoo account :)
I will put the code up for download ,i understand if some people have problems in giving out the passwords as plain text in the IM window but we couldnt find a way out . If you know a better way to do it then please leave back a comment or mail from the contact form i would love to hear back from you .
Again as it started this bot was made purely for learning and for the fun of it .You can use it trusting us .
I will put up the source code in sometime after cleaning up the mess . Or if you dont mind having a code that can be a little difficult to understand then mail me and i would send it to you .
So please go ahead ,use out bot and tell us why it sucks :P .
And yes the bot is now running from a adhoc server and it wont run on the mediatemple servers :( gives me a error . Is anyone willing to host our bot ? it certainly doesnt require root( I run it completely on a non root) .We would love to have it hosted in a place it can run freely .
It requires gcc and python 2.4 installed anyone willing ?
or any ideas/sugegstion/improvements ? please feel free to comment
Popularity: 10%
January 30, 2008 | Filed Under GNU, Geeky, Technology, Unix, apps, blogging, hacking, internet, linux, mediatemple, opensource, python, twitter, web2.0 | Comments Off
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