Online Observations » Interesting Links

A great place online for all your tools and utilities needs

The Observer — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:00:00 +0000

If you are a person who has to provide IT support to your friends and family, then I have found just the thing for you, but before that, answer this question – how many times have you asked a family member to go download AVG and have them come back to you asking where to download it from? Yes, I though so. Well the person who has put together this site (hang on, I will reveal the name in a second) has had an even worse experience. His family member accidentally downloaded spyware when he asked her to AVG from FileHippo.

So, he decided that he had had enough, and he put together a site where he will start storing all utilities that you would ever need, so that he can provide safe links to his family and friends for downloading software. And he made it public so that others can benefit from this store as well. Allow me to introduce MSunderground – an add free repository of useful tools and utilities (and here’s the link to the incident with his family member).

This is the “promise” of the site: We want to provide the easiest means possible for people to get the software they need. Without ads, flashy banners, and built in adware.

And he intends to be free forever for this service. But if it becomes popular, all these files have to be stored somewhere, and all the bandwidth has to be paid for, and so he has a link where if you like, you can donate to the cause. I hope many people donate to him so that he can meet the cost of hosting and bandwidth for this great site.

And I wish that this site becomes larger than all those stupid money-grubbing download sites.

Shooting mosquitoes with lasers

The Observer — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:35:30 +0000

While this is old news, I don’t think many people have heard of this project. Intellectual Ventures (which is an inventions company) is working on ways to fight malaria. While they have plenty of things going on, the one that I find the coolest is a Sci-fi style laser system which can kill mosquitoes (which are malaria carriers).

Their lab is conducting experiments on identifying mosquitoes flying through the air and then guiding a laser through a computer to hit the mosquito and burn it to oblivion. They are backing up this research with a lot of other information on mosquitoes.

For example, their system differentiates between male and female mosquitoes since the females are the ones that bite humans and transmit malaria. So, the laser only knocks out the female blood suckers.

Malaria claims a lot of lives worldwide every year, and any idea that is working towards solving this problem, no matter how whacky, deserves support. The ultimate goal for this research is to be able to deploy these lasers as a photonic fence which can be used to surround habitations. These fences will be safe for anything other than a female mosquito to pass through.

To read more about the experiments on this topic by Intellectual Ventures, visit the following link: http://intellectualventureslab.com/?tag=malaria.

Interesting Links – May 24 08

The Observer — Fri, 23 May 2008 20:26:36 +0000

I have been away a lot and so the posts have been few lately. Here are a few quick links which I find to be very interesting:

Google Sites: A couple of days ago, Google opened Google Sites to everyone. Previously, this was only available to people with Google Apps accounts. What you get is essentially a website writing tool which is incredibly easy to use. You will get a Url of the form: http://sites.google.com/site/. So you better hurry and create your site(s) before that you would like to have is taken by someone else.
If you want an apple iPhone, get in line – And here we thought that the iPhone was old news already, but with the new 3G model coming up, people are getting in line with two weeks to go for the supposed launch.
Play games to make computers smarter – This site had a bunch of games which have been scientifically designed to gather data about items such as images. While the games are designed to be scientific, they are quite a lot of fun and so most players won’t care about the good they are doing while playing and having fun.

That’s all for the day folks.

Interesting Links – Apr 23 08

The Observer — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:06:12 +0000

Today’s links are really varied in terms of their subject topics. A lot has been happening around the Internet and I haven’t got a chance to blog too much in the past few days. Here are some of the more interesting amongst the ones I visited lately:

Using Laptops as Earthquake Sensors – This is an article on MIT Technology Review which talks about researchers using data collected for a network of laptops to predict earthquakes. This is possible because a lot of modern laptops have built-in movement sensors to protect hard disk damage.

What is Web 3.0? – a lot of us probably aren’t even aware of this question (much less know the answer). But this question has been around for a long time now (even though no one really knows what Web 2.0 is). However, Jonas Bolinder has put together an excellent post putting together the most plausible answers in one place.
Facebook launched chat and not everyone is happy – Facebook has finally made chatting available to all users from its website. Of course if you are touching close to 5000 friends then this might be a problem for you. Michael Arrington of TechCrunch found out the hard way.
Twitter with Ads – For all of you who follow Twitter or know what Twitter is, then here’s an update. Twitter just launched a Japanese version which has embedded ads. I guess that was long awaited (ad integration) as almost everyone wondered what their revenue model is.

That’s all for today folks.

Interesting Links – Apr 19 08

The Observer — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 18:06:10 +0000

Alright, as explained earlier, here’s a list of links that I have been wanting to write about, but haven’t got a chance to. So, read on.

Here are the links for this day:

Adding a safety switch to TinyUrl Urls – Digital Inspiration talks about the newest feature of TinyUrl (the popular Url shortening service) which allows you to set it up so that you preview the actual Url that the tinyUrl is pointing to.

Google Website Optimizer – Google website optimizer has launched as a public service (previously only available to AdWords users). This tool allows you to experiment with different versions/layouts of your website to see which one is getting you most goal conversions. It allows you to measure data against each layout to make informed decisions.
ERepublik – a new MMOPG game which allows you to be a part of an online world which represents the real world. You can create conglomerates, wage wars, or earn a humble living. It has a social networking aspect to it which allows you to see what your friends are doing in this world and interact with them (although, right now they are facing beta trouble, with bugs and performance issues). But, its a place worth visiting because they are in closed alpha right now and you will have to get in line to get an invitation. What better time to get in line right now.

These should suffice for now. I might still do a more detailed review of the ERepublik game (when the site becomes more stable).

Interesting Links – Introduction

The Observer — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 17:29:50 +0000

From today, I am going to start a series of postings called “Interesting Links”. I go through a lot of web sites on the Internet on a typical day and cannot write about all of them. So, for those that I cannot write about, I will start putting the links with short introductions as soon as I have 5-10 links collected.

These will typically be things which I would have liked to write about in detail if I had the time.