Wisetechie Blog : Ctrl your Tech Life

It was being touted as a Wikipedia Killer, but “Knol - a unit of knowledge”  seems to have died a painful death so to say. No one uses knol, i didn’t ever remember whether the URL was google.com/knol or knol.google.com , They both redirect to the subdomain though.

Knol was supposed to be the first place one would go while searching for a particular topic, but i am unimpressed. I searched for computer graphics and got pages about women in the computer industry and computer buses , ports etc. If you cant find a topic in Knol, then knol isnt so great, is it ?

Wikipedia had welcomed the entry of Knol into the online knowledge sector, it had said the more the free content, the better. However it seems that Knol seriously lacks on content and content quality. Also the images on Knol did not have separate pages like Wikipedia and had no individual licensing information.

There was also criticism to the Knol from other quarters, people had said that Google might try to fudge rankings to ensure that Knol ranks higher up in the search rankings. Google however dismissed all such allegations.

Knol also scared the media industry, a lot of people in the industry said that Google is slowing switching over , first it was a data searching company, then it became a data organising company, and now its a data generation company seriously threatening a lot of media houses.

For the time being though it seems like knol isn’t used by all

The HTC Dream which will be manufactured by High Tech Computer Corporation is going to be the first Android phone to be marketed and released. Android as some of you may be knowing is Google’s mobile platform. The Dream will cost $179 when purchased along with a T-Mobile plan. The good news is that HTC has a very strong base in India and might launch the phone pretty early in India at a very competitive price.

The Android platform is designed to take on the likes of Windows Mobile, Symbian and other generic and specific mobile phone OS manufacturers. However this particular phone is intended to compete head on with the Apple Iphone. The Apple Iphone has been a moderate success in the US and a complete failure in India.

The HTC Dream features a capacitive touchscreen interface, GPs, 3.1 MP camera, Accelerometer and a Qualcomm 528MHz processor. Its interesting to note we dont even know the processor used by Apple.

On the software front too, the phone is pretty good. As you can see in the video, it has built in Gmail, Youtube player. It features multiple desktops like most Linux systems and allows drag and drop for icons (How cool is that). The menu is brought up with swipes.

It also has a full QWERTY keyboard, gotta say looks pretty promising.

We keep you updated on the new Iphone 3G, and as things would have it a lot of companies are making software exclusively for the Iphone 3G, many of them like Ebay, and certain GPS GIS companies are innovating hard. So what do you expect from google ?

A supercool version of Gtalk which perhaps shows your GPS location and allows you to talk with crystal clear voice clarity. Well sorry, but thats not gonna happen. The Gtalk for Iphone will only be a text chatting service, disappointed ? So are they just porting Jabber for the Iphone in fancy Google colours ?

The Indian Iphone users will also be disappointed, but dont be. Skype will answer your Iphone needs

Your friendly Iphone 3G reminder for Indians looking to buy the new Iphone

Remember when the Iphone 3G launches in India, it will only be available from Airtel and Vodafone and will probably be locked and come with a hefty plan and high termination fee. Your best bet is still to get the old Iphone for a bargain and get it unlocked, that baby still turns heads. Also other market players like HTC Diamond, Cruise etc. and Asus P320 phones may be given a thought. Personally i am addicted to Windows Mobile these days.

I have a few songs bookmarked on Youtube, which i usually listen to when i am feeling bored.

But WTH ! , Youtube seems to be blocking content on the basis of country now which is totally outrageous. Also i noticed there is no email contact to send a query to youtube, only a snail mail address. Pathetic from them ! I was able to see this video before the Youtube India site was launched.

We had all these interviews from Youtube India’s new boss in the newspapers telling how Youtube India will be great, but i am terribly disappointed.

Anyone else too got the “this video is not available in your country” message from Youtube ?

While checking my GMail storage quota, I was surprised to see my limit increased to 3.5GB yesterday. Even stranger was the discovery that today it is 3796 MB at the time of writing this post.

To add more the storage limit of my Google Apps account is even greater at 3864 MB!

Seems like Google is true to its word.

Furthermore, we shall keep giving you more space as we are able to.

Now we know that the Googlians at Hyderabad and Bangalore are working on new things too, say hello to Google India Labs.

Two of the featured products for Beta testing include ::

An on screen keyboard for Indian Languages

Other projects include Google Code Search, Google Music Trends and Google’s Picasa for Linux.

I was being told by my friends that Orkut has gone into the tricolor colours to celebrate India’s 60th Independence Day. They were happy that the world would know this, but would they ??

We decided to see if this India Stunt was truly global or just a localised gimmick. And as expected, it was a special thing only for traffic originating from India, with a view to attain Good PR from Indians ? Its a localised doodle to put it straight. As you can see when we accessed Orkut from a non-Indian IP, it showed us the normal page like it does to the Rest of the World.

Its true folks, Blogger.com now allows you to shift all your RSS feed traffic to a Feedburner feed or to any other URL. So if you shifted your blog to Wordpress, or to another domain, you can easily point to it. With google having bought Feedburner, this was always in the pipeline. Wordpress always had a plugin to shift traffic to Feedburner, now Blogger.com allows it too. Just goto settings of your Blogspot blog and enter the URL as shown :

Really Simple Syndication ! , and see the HUGE spurt my formula one site got when i forwarded its earlier subscribers to the new feed. This is what i call a Feedburner Feed Count Spurt (Elusive).

Schools, Offices and Governments alike like to put curbs on your freedom. For example a search on Google china would reveal considerably censored and doctored results to suit the Chinese government. Schools ban sites so that students are less distracted and use the internet for useful things. Offices ban sites to increase productivity.
So is orkut banned at your workplace or School ? , if yes we have got the perfect solution for you. We always do articles on opera Mini, thats because Opera Mini was the very first cool software me and my brother installed on our mobile phones. So how can Opera Mini help you access blocked and banned sites ?

It works like any other proxy, for people who dont know, proxies are web servers who fetch the page for you. For example, you cant go to the market, you tell your maid to get the stuff and give it to you. In the same way, when your computer is banned from accessing Orkut, you can ask another computer (a proxy) to get Orkut.com for your computer.

You may also log onto http://www.operamini.com/beta/simulator/ and browse to the site of your choice , as the simulator uses a proxy based in Norway, your sites open as though you are not sitting in your school or office, but in Norway in Europe. And here is proof that Orkut works in Opera Mini simulator even if its banned.

To our friends in UAE : We are looking for more such proxies which will allow you to access Orkut.com easily , the current thing we have discovered to access banned Orkut does not allow posting scraps till now, but be aware, we are working on finding new stuff to help you get over the BAN on Orkut placed by your governments.

Orkutproxy.in also looks good, but always think twice before using your username and password on proxies !!!

As anger mounted on the Iphones activation fiasco, Apple should see what the people are facing

When you search for “My Iphone got activated” , Google corrects you , it tells you to search for “my Iphone not activated”