Some free software tools (mostly OS X) I have been using with some success to reduce distractions and stress while working on my computer. Timeout – This application reminds me to take breaks while working on my computer. I can set how frequently I want to take a break and how long I want to [...]
Categories: Technology
This is my literature review of a paper by G. Hertel et al. titled – “Motivation of software developers in Open Source projects: an Internet-based survey of contributors to the Linux kernel”. Based on discussions in the mailing list, the two motivations for contributing to Linux kernel were identified: “fun to program” and to compete [...]
Categories: People
Random numbers are an important part of the digital world. Computer security relies on prime numbers and random numbers to secure communication channels. And we rely on physical devices to provide us with a random number. Humans are hopeless in coming up with a random number. Ironically, it is because we try to avoid any [...]
Categories: Technology
A while back I read the book Sustainable Fashion: Why Now? – a book on technologies, methodologies and practices to developing a sustainable clothing. I can’t use word industry because the book advocates abandoning the contemporary industry’s producer-consumer approach to solve problems. It was interesting to learn about the clothing and fashion before the advent of [...]
Categories: People,Technology
I’m reading Sketching User Experience by Bill Buxton. It is a interesting book, just the title convinced me to read the book. In a chapter the author refers to the prototyping of the bifocal display (YouTube Video of the original prototype) which displays receding text above and below the user’s field of vision. This allows [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
I came across an interesting service Tipjoy. to simplify the hard problem of co-ordinating a monetary transaction. Exchanging money is a very strong social signal. When we communicate with others we are exchanging only attention, other costs associated with communicating are almost zero. Internet and mobile technologies have made attention very scarce resource. I would [...]
Categories: Uncategorized
Tagged: money "social transation"
I got a Dell Mini 9 netbook. One of friends bought a Dell Studio 15, along with it the Mini 9 was offered for $100. So I lapped it from him It was a pretty good deal. It is base model Mini 9 – with 512 MB RAM, 5GB SSD and Ubuntu 8.04. It has [...]
Categories: Technology
Tagged: review netbook
As a fun project, I’m working on the actors social network in Bollywood; in this network the nodes represent Bollywood actors and actresses, an edge connects actors who starred in a movie together. Hollywood actor networks have been studies for a long time. It would be interesting to compare Bollywood and Hollywood actors network, to [...]
Categories: India
In a recent submit, the CEO of Rediff.com a popular Indian Internet portal said that Indian Internet users don’t want content in their native language. His supporting evidence is Rediff provides email services in 11 languages, but only 1% of users use the non-english version. Indians learn English before completing higher education, he added. His [...]
Categories: India
I was getting a weird error whenever I invovked Ruby interpreter. Like ruby script\server or ruby script\console. The error message ended with “no such file to load — digest.so”. I reinstalled Ruby, but the error came back. I learned from a Google groups message that the error was due to AVG quarantining the digest.so file. [...]
Categories: Misc.