Google+, i am social again!

After a lot of excitement and then calling people (in vein) to get an invite to the Google+, finally i got in. Not being a fan (or user) of Facebook, i had made myself wait until Google came up with something that gives a lot of control over what i do and share. There has been a lot of talk about Facebook killer and the competition but i firmly believe getting things work from ground up is always more robust and sustainable than build something top down.

Looking at the number of different services that google offers for mail, photo, chat, Buzz etc.. it would be only obvious to have imagined the Google+ to be a smart integration of all of this. After looking at Google+ project, i am a little confused about having both Buzz and a new Stream. The Stream could very well have been the Buzz itself, as it already worked for private groups. I wonder if the Stream is Google's way of playing safe, that gives the users a familiar space, an entirely new system that can be trusted rather than take chances with ill-fated ones. Or may be it is just required.. and i am missing something huge..

the revolution

Not unlike the 'revolution' led by 'Morpheus' and others, this new protest against the authorities (dubbed as a cyber war by many) is an example of what a seamless, open communication platform(read internet) can do. A Wikileaks, with all its scale, was possible because of such a platform.  Leaving aside the political side of it and looking at the dynamics of the whole process, it seems clear that just by providing a open communication platform, a complex system like a society gets a power of self regulation, thus, leading to a sustainable society. The withdrawal of support of some companies(mastercard, paypal etc..) towards wikileaks led to a coordinated jamming of these sites. This kind of self regulation, can lead to a gradual change in structure of the modern society, if being transparent is going to help sustain humanity in the most optimized way, then this is how its going to be. The most common example given to explain behavior of complex system is that of a crowd clapping in a rock concert(say). The people start clapping randomly and within no time they some how sync with each other making a rhythmic sound. Now, consider if the individuals couldn't hear each other, then there is no reason for them to sync up. Now this is a simple example, as the only parameter to be tuned is the time interval of claps. But for system like the society, the variables are infinite. A fair bet would be to provide a seamless and open communication platform and connecting all individuals, from farmers to students to businessmen to politicians and see the world evolve to a more 'idealistic' and sustainable structure. This simple act could directly mean the solution of age old problems of poverty and unstable economy. 

chrome and cloud

Glad to have pdf support on chrome 8. I am already using it to open even local pdfs. The release of chrome webstore and the bunch of apps (some  of which also run offline, like the chess game) is ready to 'spoil' people by making 'em stick to the internet even more(..damn! i should get back to the books..). After using jolicloud OS for sometime and keeping the jolicloud pinned in chrome, ubuntu..i want more simplicity. Will try out the Chrome OS soon (no :(  i didn't get the CR-48s). The CR-48(no idea why they chose 48 isotope, halflife 21 hrs, from a bunch of others) seems really simple(search youtube) and has 3G support. So the idea is to keep it connected all the time. If the speeds were high one can even avoid buying external disks, and may be buy disk space in the cloud(cheaper). Store docs with Google or MS, store music and movies somewhere where you can stream it for free.. Alls good except you need a good speed. Google's experiments with 1Gbps connection would surely make sure of that.. making the cloud connection faster than the normal local harddisk speeds(not talking about the new seagate/AMD baracuda 6Gbps sata hard disks, but the naive 100-200Mbps ones). Internet speed will become a fundamental right of people. But wait, its already is..in Finland and in Spain! A minimum of 1Mbps connection is now a fundamental right of people!! Sounds futuristic.

hating facebook..

Ok the title of the post is a little misguiding, but its kinda close to what i feel about it. After all that has been said about facebook..good and bad.. it remains popular and growing like hell. Its not so hard to believe but people are almost building up a new culture inside. Yes, everyone there is different, but the culture of sharing every moment, every small and sometimes personal detail to all, may seem a little odd. Although this cannot be judged as good or bad, but its a good idea to stop and think about it for a while.

Another thing to wonder is how did they manage to make everybody give their real name and photograph. From an outsider perspective, this may seem like a coincidence, but is it? I am not an expert here but it could be because of the way it started, by making real friends who knew you, or it could be because of some algorithmic bias embedded in the total facebook ecosystem.(or a combination of both). Lets look at the later. Somewhere i read, the site actually 'prefers' people with photos in their search results. This small bias may directly lead to either total rejection or adaption into the new format. So as the number of people build up and time goes by, the total ecosystem will move towards this new format, a real name space and real picture, in this case. This in turn could lead to a number of things one of them being trust. Now a sprinkle of trust here and there would turn the most not-so-social person into a fairly social person and this can cascade. 

Another interesting thing, that i donot really understand is why build a smaller internet inside internet? (Completely understand the point of view of mark, but looking at the 'big' picture). Now there are pages for buying stuff, playing stuff..etc only that its built upside down.. social 1st. This question can be easily answered though, its just the matter of growth of market and arrival of more social options. In this case, Google gets a thumbs up for slowly making all their major products social and integrated. The best part is giving more freedom to the user and let the ecosystem develop on its own, rather than try and engineer it by adding biases under the hood. 

castles in cloud

I have been waiting for something like a cloud OS since ever now. After an year of announcement of Chrome OS, i was still waiting, untill now. But, in an year a lot of different web apps have come up. With all the heated coffee-time discussions i have had about cloud, there was never a clear answer to the question "whether i can ever expect all standalone-like features in webapps? or am i supposed to ask that question itself?" .Now with the new OSes like jolicloud, its a good time to review some of the webapps that are out there already to give 'that' experience. i am sure there are lots more out there, here are a few of my favs yet.

First of all, the OS jolicloud. I found it to be awesome. Based on Ubuntu 9.04, and uses prism, along with a very intuitive interface. I checked out ubuntu 10.10 netbook with unity interface, but this ones much better, both in terms interface and utilization of cloud . Its also a proper cloud OS where you have a login to jolicloud and your desktop is available to you from any browser at any place. You can also load local softwares and access all of your local resources(other partitions and all), but if your on net all the time, i am sure you wouldn't need to. The boot up time time is also impressive, loads up in 13 sec on my laptop(standard core2duo, 3GB).

After installing jolicloud, i discovered a world of webapps i wasnt aware of!! And surprise..

Here are a few.

1.pixlr.com 

Everyone has/had a doubt about having a Photoshop like experience in a webapp, or atleast something close to it. Well, here it is. There are sites like picnic but this is different check it out.

2.newsmap.jp

This one is interesting, it literally tiles up the whole real estate of your browser, with the news you want. One cool site.

3.Stereomood.com

There are many music sites utilizing the cloud, Grooveshark being one of the nicest ones. But stereomood has music categorized in to mood! Must experience this one. 'thecloudplayer' is another one but it mostly has electronic and remixes created by people, the player itself resembles itunes. 

4.notebook.zoho.com

This one may seem like google docs or ms-office online, but its more. Its more feature packed that google docs and free(hence better that office!).It offers spreadsheets(with macro!!!) among other things. But i liked the notebook where one can put text,video, image and anything on it. 

5.280slides

This department a plenty options, google docs, zoho , but this one's cool too.Kinda resembles ms and feels like a real standalone presentation app.

6.wunderground.com

This one doesnt have much purpose but its really cool, gives you weather on a google map background!!

Finally, if one doesnt want to install another OS like jolicloud, still can use it by logging in and using it as a homepage. you can install your webapps there and u have your own chrome OS(untill we see the real chrome OS wid the app page!). But surely chromeOS is lucky here, now after using jolicloud i can see the potential of a cloud based OS, Now in jolicloud i have to open chrome separately to browse internet, so it kinda gives me two bars, one for the jolicloud and another chrome tab bar. Its a lil redundant. After using this i can feel why chrome os will be different experience. But in anyway,its the cloud and theres a lot to be discovered!