मनकामनाको यात्रा !!!

म, प्रकाश, उपेन्द्र र रमेशजी सबै जना २०६३ कार्तिक २५ गते शनिबारका दिन मनकामना माईको दर्शन गर्न जाने योजना बनायौं । Himgiri Travel Agency Pvt. Ltd. ले मनकामना दर्शन गर्न जानेहरुको लागि विशेष प्याकेजको व्यवस्था गरेको रहेछ । हामीले पनि सोही प्याकेज अर्न्तगत जाने निधो गर्यौं र शनिबार बिहान ६:०० बजे तिर हामी सबै अनामनगरमा भेला भयौं । करिब ६:३० बजे तिर उक्त ट्राभल एजेन्सीको बस आयो र हामी त्यस बसमा चढ्यौं । काठमाण्डौंको विभिन्न ठाउँबाट मानिसहरु उक्त बसमा चढ्न थाले । यस्तै क्रममा करिब ८:०० बजे तिर बस थानकोटमा पुग्यो र आफ्नो गन्तव्य स्थल तर्फ हानियो । केबुल कार र मनकामना माई दर्शनको यो मेरो लागि पहिलो अवसर थियो । त्यसैले म आफैमा केही हषिर्त थिए । बस आफ्नै गतिले अगाडी बढि रहेको थियो । हामी पनि कहिले गित गाउँदै त कहिले रमाईला रमाईला गफ गर्दै मनकामना यात्राको मजा लिदैं थियौं । करिब ११:०० बजे तिर बस कुरिन्टारमा रोकियो । हामी पनि केबुलकार चढि मनकामना जान अगाडी बढ्यौं । तर सायद शनिबार भएर होला त्यहाँ मानिसको भीड निकै नै थियो । हामी लाइनमा बस्यौं । करिब १:०० बजे तिर मात्र हाम्रो पालो आयो । करिब १:२० तिर हामी मनकामना माईको मन्दिरमा पुग्यौं । त्यहाँ पनि निकै भीड थियो । करिब आधा किलोमिटर जति लाईनमा हामी पनि लामबद्ध भयौं । ३:०० बजि सक्दा पनि हाम्रो पालो आउने कुनै काट छाँट नै थिएन । फेरी ६:०० बजे कुरिनटारमा हामीलाई पुग्नु पनि थियो । तर्सथ हामीले त्यहाँ लाईनमा बसेका एक जना मानिसलाई हाम्रो पूजा सामाग्री चर्ढाईदिन आग्रह गर्यौं र बाहिरबाट नै पूजा गरी फर्कियौं। बिहान देखि पानी पनि नखाई बसेका कारणले हामीलाई धेरै नै भोक लागि रहेको थियो । त्यँही नजिकको एक होटलमा खाना खाई हामी कुरिनटार फर्कियौं । फर्किने क्रममा पनि हामीलाई निकै बेर लाइनमा बस्नु पर्‍यौं । ३:४५ बजे देखि लाइनमा बस्दा पनि हाम्रो पालो करिब ५:३० बजे तिर मात्र आयो । ६:०० बजे तिर बस काठमाण्डौं फर्किने भनेता पनि धेरै जना मानिसहरु मनकामनाबाट फर्किन बाँकी नै रहेका कारणले करिब ७:३० बजे तिर मात्र बस काठमाण्डौं तर्फ हानियो । राती ११:३० बजे तिर मात्र हामी आफ्नो कोठामा पुग्यौं र हाम्रो त्यो रमाइलो दिनको अन्त्य भयो ।

Yahoo! Mail, it rocks!!

No, I’m not talking about the existing Yahoo! Mail, which is not bad in itself, but I’m talking about the Yahoo! Mail that’s not yet available to the masses. Yes yes, I’m of course talking about the new look & interface of Yahoo! Mail, which is currently in beta and accessible only to a very small percentage of Yahoo! users. I got the invitation yesterday when I logged in to mail, & asked me whether I want to try the beta, I of course wanted to & clicked the button, but I hit a snag there, as on the next screen I was informed that my browser(Opera v8.51) is not supported & that either I get a browser which is supported(IE6 or FireFox or Mozilla) or I continue on with old UI of Yahoo! Mail. Not one to let go of the opportunity, I immediately changed browsers & logged in again & there, the new interface loaded, & after the first look, my first reaction was ….. “wow”!!

Even if you are one of the kind which rarely or never appreciate good things in life, you certainly will appreciate the work those guys at Yahoo! have put into this new interface, this is certainly what I would expect to see when someone says that the interface resembles Outlook, not that clunky unholy UI that Windows Live Mail pushes forward!! I think that they themselves have forgotten how Outlook UI looks like, or else they wouldn’t label their mail interface as that resembling Outlook!!

So, moving ahead from Microsoft bashing, after my initial shock over Yahoo! Mail’s interface subsided, I got into really admiring the smoothness and usability of the UI that Yahoo! has conjured up!! Having used Merak Webmail software from Icewarp & some other similar ones, pretty Webmail interfaces or an Outlook like interface is not new to me, but Yahoo! certainly scores better, their interface is much more flexible & smooth. Its pure eye candy!!

And if you move forward from the eye candy, you’ll notice(in the image above) that apparently Yahoo! interface doesn’t lack the basic usability stuff that Windows Live Mail does, the first one being, when you click a folder to navigate messages in it, no message is opened by itself. You’ve to select a message to view it in the preview pane & a double click on the message will open it in its entirety, hiding the preview & message panes. Secondly, unlike in Windows Live Mail, you can read emails in separate windows in Yahoo! Mail, something that pleased me a lot, the fact that they’ve taken care to maintain usability of their interface. The “Bulk Mail” folder is gone, replaced by a “spam” folder, which serves the same purpose. The functions of old interface, like flagging a message or moving it to another folder or marking it as read/unread are all there & usable.

But the thing that impressed me was that you can compose your emails & yet can switch back to the messages without having to wait for them to reload. Because when you click on “compose” button, it opens a new tab in the interface(so the whole window is being emulated as an application window that has its own tabs etc.) with the rich text editor etc., so anytime you want to go back to message you were reading, just change the tab & you are there, without loosing your message or having to save it as a draft. You can switch back to composing the email anytime you want!!

Another feature that I noticed is that I can also have all the RSS feeds that I want in this same interface, no need for a separate feed aggregator!! This is quite handy & useful, I might start keeping up with all my feeds again, which I stopped doing since starting out Sharpreader again & again was too cumbersome & keeping it open meant letting eat into the memory, and using an online feed aggregator like Bloglines didn’t sound exciting to me since that meant yet another service which I’ve to checkin with!! Not anymore though, this new UI from Yahoo! might change everything!!

The whole UI is indeed soaked in the sweet fragrance of AJAX, but its not something that’s been put together as a quick hack & thrown at users, this one seems to have been nurtured with love, the interface despite its eye candy, loaded up quite fast, but then I’ve a 128kbps line, so I don’t think dial-up users would agree with me on the speed!!

So this interface of Yahoo!, its pretty, its usable & it works, though there might be a few snags here & there which I encountered while using it(like refresh requests dying out in middle) its nothing that can’t or won’t be fixed!! This UI gives the correct impression as to how a next generation web application should look, & I very much think that the Windows Live team can improve a lot by taking a leaf or two out of Yahoo!’s book. The only plus that I found in Windows Live Mail over Yahoo!’s interface is that the former seemed to be a bit fast in loading new messages than the latter, though that might not be true as some more usage of both will prove, nevertheless, I’d rate Yahoo! interface 8/10 on looks, usability & features, while I won’t give Windows Live Mail interface more than 3.5/10 on same measures!!

The ‘Real’ Video iPod on the way!

Apple is all set to announce their full fledged video iPod by the end of March, in tandem with full-feature movies on the iTunes Music Store, and there is plenty of evidence to support this.

Apple has acquired an impressively equipped but never-used data center in Newark for an estimated $45 million to $50 million. The 107,000-square-foot facility, originally conceived for communications company MCI WorldCom before getting mothballed after its 2001 completion, is along Eureka Drive on Newark’s western fringe. Data centers generally house computing, data-storage and networking equipment assisting in Web-based services and transactions. This could only be for an infrastructure upgrade for the iTunes Music Store or .Mac. Also, ThinkSecret reports that negotiations with major studios have entered the 11th hour.

The time for the move seems reasonable because of Steve Jobs’ excellent placement in Disney will give him access to their entire catalog, while he can negotiate with other studios too.

According to a highly placed industry executive, talks between potential partners from movie distributors and Apple have been in “the fast mode” for the past three months on how to sell full-length feature films through Apple’s iTunes service. Major obstacles remain to a finished deal, however.

“[A deal with Apple] is much closer than it ever has been, but is not a done deal by any means,” the executive told Think Secret. “There’s been a lot of progress, but big issues remain unresolved. It could happen fast or it could happen slow. It’s all up to Steve Jobs.”

Source : ThinkSecret

We also know that Apple has filed patents for a virtual clickwheel which I do not see being of use in anything but a portable media player. So, the only question that remains is - When? My guess is that the new iPod will be part of Apple’s 30th birthday celebrations on 1st April, so watch out, and if you’re going to buy a new iPod, I suggest you wait.

Restroing my pain !!!

I was in the inner part of the Xanthine
Only the rays from the Sun were kissing me
No one could know and glance me at that time
Because I was restoring my pain in the Xanthine

Now One red ghost is flying over the Xanthine
All the secret is going to be broken by here
The competition is very dangerous
Because I was restoring my pain in the Xanthine

At the same time a bold idea comes into my mind
Collides with the heart & drops from the eyes
But nothing happens at that time
Because I was restoring my pain in the Xanthine

But my mother used to say me that
You must wait the sound I Love You
Until she knows the value of your tears
Because still you are restoring your pain in the Xanthine

Search Differently!!

The search engine market is hot, both the old giants Yahoo! and MSN have woken up from their slumber to thwart the search king Google and to get their share of the multi billion dollar pie. Yahoo! have already revamped their search, MSN did it as well, but perhaps it didn’t cut the cake for the latter, so Microsoft went to the drawing board again, and they’ve come up with a new solution. Like email, it seems that this new search solution will be the end of MSN probably, as they move the search as well to their services portal, Live.com.

So, the Live Search, as its being called, is sunk to its teeth in Javascript, a very much of a Web 2.0 application, what with AJAX powered search and a wierd looking interface.

When you enter your keywords and hit the search button, a sort of content window opens in the lower part of the page with a menubar on top and the search results in the left pane. If there are ads available for the searched keywords, then they are displayed in the right pane. So far all predictable, so what’s the difference some may ask. The difference lies here itself. Only 2 results are displayed by default. There’s a kind of scrollbar on the right side of the results pane, just where one would expect, its just that its not your regular scrollbar, but a Javascript powered one. You drag it to the bottom & the search results start scrolling, being queried from the server real-time using AJAX ofcourse. And if you want to view previous results, then they are available as well, just drag the scrollbar above and the results scroll back up. Well, you gotta feel and experience it to know what I’m talking about.

Its every bit cool that a Web 2.0 application is expected to be. But that’s just all. Right now it seriously lacks some accessibility and useability. For instance, it doesn’t work in any browser except Internet Explorer. It does seem to work in Opera but that’s just it, it doesn’t actually work!! And secondly, when I click the down arrow key of my keyboard, the search results should scroll down, which they don’t, however if I want to get the first result in a jiffy, all I need to press is the “Home” button of my keyboard & there I’m, at the first result of the search. Though the application like other Web 2.0 apps, is in beta, so we can only hope that these quirks etc. will be smoothed before its rolled out.

Meanwhile, you can try your search at http://search.live.com/ and enjoy its Javascript goodness!! Its a neat application, no denying the fact!!

Free Call to USA & CANADA

So you’ve heard of VoIP and Skype, the company that eBay bought for $2.6 billion, which lets you make free PC-to-PC calls worldwide via VoIP for free? Big deal?? That still requires you and the person you are talking to, to have a PC and internet connection. But what if one wants to call a regular phone from Skype? That service is ofcourse available but isn’t one supposed to pay a few cents per minute to avail that facility?

Not anymore. Yes, you no longer have to pay for calling traditional landlines and mobile phones from Skype, you can call them for free now, but only the numbers of United States and Canada. Though it might not be a happy news for all, but it certainly is a good news for a lot of Skype users and will definitely be a good news for people who regularly call phones in United States and Canada and who might now switch to Skype. Broadband penetration is increasing nowadays and Skype with its super cool audio compression, can serve pretty decent quality even on slow connections!!

Though, Skype will continue to charge its current fees for calls made to phones in other countries & for the traditional phone numbers it provides to allow its users to receive calls on Skype made from any phone, it certainly is a start. The eBay subsidiary said that this free bonanza will remain in effect till the end of this year but you never know, they just might extend the free ride!!

www.Skype.com

Source: Yahoo! News

If 2GB isn't enough!!

The more storage space, the more rocking service it is. Or is it? Well, some do believe it to be the case, one of them being AOL.

Since Gmail made its rocking debut two years back, Gmail has spelled trouble for others & itself in different ways, the most notable being that it offered just many hundred times the amount of free storage that was being normally offered by email giants Yahoo! and Hotmail. Both Hotmail and Yahoo were forced to increase their free offering to keep up as millions tried to get their hands on Gmail invites which was the only way to get a Gmail account & in fact its still the only way even after two years, not that it matters since millions are now using Gmail, having obtained an invite or two by crook or hook!!

Yahoo now offers 1GB, Windows Live Mail now offers 2GB, Gmail offers about 2.5GB, Lycos offer 3GB, but in its last desperate attempt to attract users, AOL is all set to offer 5GB of free storage space to its users from this september.

So will that matter much? Yeah it might considering what AOL has got next to offer. AOL will offer 50GB of storage space to its loyal customers who stick with its $26 per month dial-up connection!! Now that certainly is some space!!

So will that fly now?? Many others have failed to stir up attention by offering more space after the initial bubble floated by Gmail burst, but still, AOL has hope, or so they think. We will just wait & watch!!

2 million Firefox2.0 downloads in 24 hrs

Firefox again in the news with its official released of its brand new web browser Firefox 2.0. And why shouldn’t it be, Mozzila’s new browser has clocked 2million downloads in its first 24 hours of its public availability .

Mozilla provided the following figures for its browser releases:

* Firefox 1.0: 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours.
* Firefox 1.5: 1.5 million downloads in the first 24 hours
* Firefox 2: 2 million (actually slightly more) people using Firefox 2 in the first 24 hours.

There is definitely increasing support for the browser and lot are anxious about how will Mozzila’s best will cope with Microsoft’s recently released Internet Explorer 7.The IE still has security issues in its browsers, Microsoft just can’t seem to make it bullet-proof. Now its just upto the extension/add-on community to quickly get up all extensions 2.x compatible.