StickyChicken

A day in the sun

A day in the sun
Originally uploaded by kayanunwalla

Amazing Bombay

The Paradox of Choice!!!

Found this really nice Google Tech Talk.
Its not at all tech but talk a lot about how we think.....
Even though it an hour long but quite entertaining, specially after the first 10 mins.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200

There are also some images shown during the presentation which haven't been captured by the camera, you can see them here
http://www.si.umich.edu/ICOS/Presentations/20040917/003.htm
some of the images are quite funny.
The images might seem slightly out of order since they are from an older presentation.

more updates.....

I am continuing with the updates....I just moved my Links section a level up so that its easier to access. It has a link to my del.icio.us page which has a bunch of cool links. They are updated as and when I come across something useful or just something that seems interesting........

Are today's systems preventing us from doing great things?

I recently read an article where this question was posed by Thomas Frey.

Even though there were some great Greek mathematicians, there weren't any known Roman ones. It was not that Romans were dumb, it was just that their system of representing numbers was preventing them to do complex calculations.

In the recent world, Thomas Frey gives the examples of the half - implemented metric system of the US and the complicated character set of China.

So are there any other systems that we depend on, but they are the ones that prevent us from doing great things?

You can read the entire article here.

Upgrades!!

It feels good. Finally I managed to finish the changes that I was planning for my blog. I upgraded the template, modified it (so that it works for me), added pictures and tabblos and finally posted something......
It feels good...now the thing is to bring it up in searches. So will be working on that.

Also, I will keep posting cool tools and links that I find. It will be the section on the right side.
I am adding a link to my del.icio.us account to the links section that has some bookmarks that I use.

There will be many more following

cool utilities

Recently, I have come across some cool utilities which I want to share with all.

1) How many of you are very irritated by the ads that you see on the web pages? There are text ads, animated ones and flash ones. Well, there is a solution for that. For people using Mozilla Firefox, there is an add-on called "Ad-Block Plus". Its a simple tool which when installed and after a little tuning can block most of the ads. As you keep on adding more websites and add more types of ads, it gets more stricter. Try it....
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865

2) Another cool utility is Foxy Tunes. After adding this, you can get all the controls your music player right in your browser. It has support for all the major music players including Winamp, Windows Media Player, iTunes, etc. So if you are using your browser, you don't need to minimize the window to play, pause, skip the songs.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/219

3) The other one is a tool from a website. Tabblo is a site where you can add text to pictures. Basically, you can create stories using text and pictures. There are a lot of pictures which are connected and a common description applies to all. Its a lot easier to do that with tabblo.
www.tabblo.com

4) Then there is one called Yahoo! Pipes. Using this tool, you can club multiple web applications to create your very own. An example would be, suppose you are looking for some apartments in a particular area, you can use the craigslist application. Taking that results, you can use a Maps applications which picks out the address from the craigslist results, takes pictures of the neighborhood of the apartments listed and send them to you along with the listings. Thus, by doing so, you have a very own applications of yourself. I haven't used this myself, but a friend has introduced me to this concept and I intend to used this.
pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

Blu-ray v. HD DVD: Where do we stand?

Original Post Click Here

Posted by Erica Ogg

The expected next-generation DVD format war isn't quite the deadlock many expected.

Target's announcement Thursday that it would sell a Sony Blu-ray player in its stores alongside Blu-ray discs in a special feature promotion is important because the second-largest retailer in the U.S. doesn't sell HD DVD players in its stores, outside of the external HD DVD drive made for Microsoft's Xbox 360. It does sell a Toshiba HD DVD player on its Web site, however.

When the battle between the competing optical disc formats--HD DVD and Blu-ray--began brewing last year, analysts predicted protracted trench warfare, many refusing to choose sides. But just six months after the first Blu-ray players went on sale, the numbers show that the fight may be nearing its conclusion.

Blu-ray got way out ahead of HD DVD by virtue of Sony's PlayStation 3 console, which came preloaded with a Blu-ray player. Of the 1.5 million Blu-ray players sold in the U.S., 1.4 million are PS3s, according to the Digital Entertainment Group, which promotes both formats. HD DVD had an advantage in that its players were less expensive than Blu-ray--at first. Though HD DVD prices have come down, Blu-ray's have as well.

Toshiba, one of the staunchest supporters of HD DVD, said last month that initial forecasts of sales of discs and external HD DVD drives was probably a bit ambitious. The Japanese electronics maker said it anticipates selling 1 million players and recorders in North America this year, down 44 percent from the earlier estimate of 1.8 million. The Digital Entertainment Group reports that HD DVD has sold 300,000 HD DVD players, and half of that figure is the external drive that pairs with Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Things looked bad for HD DVD last month when Blockbuster said the only high-definition DVDs it would rent in its stores would be Blu-ray. HD DVD will be available, however, on its Web site, Blockbuster.com.

In yet another sign that two competing formats may be a thing of the past, earlier this month Warner Bros., a studio supporting both formats, announced that its Total HD disc--HD DVD on one side, Blu-ray on the other--would likely be delayed until early 2008. Though Warner Bros. says the timing isn't right and the dual-format disc will still be a viable business idea six months from now, it's looking more like it won't even be necessary.

Click on the chart above for a breakdown of the numbers.