TechMein Quotient

Two stories that were interesting today. Amit Agarwal points out to a website called KissYouTube. This is by far the easiest way anyone can use to download an YouTube video. Just prefix 'kiss' over the youtube.com URL for the video and there you go!
(via)

Meanwhile Mumbai police have entered into an agreement with orkut over sharing of information. Hereon, each time someone creates a controversial community like the anti-Shivaji or anti-India ones, orkut shall confide the data about who posted it which will help Mumbai police to nab the cyber criminals.
(via)

Labels: ContentSutra, DI

QuickOnlineTips informs that Digg, the social news site has recently crossed the one million user mark. That calls for a celebration among diggers. Personally, I have not been a great fan of digg. It follows what is deemed 'sarkari' in the Indian circles. Like in a sarkari set up, where you need contacts to move ahead, Digg too requires you to be a popular digger (one with a good number of friends) for your stories to come atop. This is no matter how good stories you submit.

And this one thing defeats the purpose of the site.

Via

Labels: QuickOnlineTips

Thilak from Tech Buzz points out to a new GreaseMonkey script that enables you to use Digg more comfortably. The original problem was that the digg links used to open in new windows to 'help' diggers go through the link and also not forget to digg the link in case they liked it. But since pages opening in a new page are sometimes not preferred diggers switched off that option.

This script provides a 'digg it' link on a new bar that appears atop each of the digg articles. This would mean that the users can click to open digg articles in the same page and also digg them without reverting back to the digg page.

Thilak argues why Digg did not provide it themselves. The simple reason could be that such a bar might lead users to never return back to the Digg page. They might follow navigations on the landing page to move ahead! Possible.

Via

Labels: TechBuzz

Embedding a YouTube video on a blogger page is as easy as 1-2-3. But things are not as easy when you are creating a HTML page.

Amit Agarwal from Digital Inspiration recently wrote about how to go about doing it. Though the procedure is not as easy as what you do while blogging on Blogspot, it is still easy if you go through the steps.

Via

Labels: DI

ContentSutra reports that BSNL is all set to launch IPTV in Pune and Bangalore this month. The article also opines that IPTV shall not be successful unless a telecommunication heavy weight like Reliance or Airtel launch their own.

IPTV has already had its launching delayed. In my opinion, it will go on to become big because the rates offered by BSNL shall be very much reasonable and affordable. But the question that remains to be answered is what is the size of population that BSNL is looking at. Broadband has still not taken off highly in India, and IPTV is the next level from here.

Via

Labels: ContentSutra

Ajay Sanghani, the CEO of ITVidya has put in quite a few words of advice for entrepreneurs making a start in Small Businesses. He says that one of the core issues with startups comes with cash management. Poor cash management can creep in negativity with employees unsure about their getting paid, and the company taking payment from client as a higher priority over delivery spoiling future relationships.

He further says that it should be accepted that in the initial days of starting up, money flow is going to be small. Even those companies that have had good funding should invest on capital goods (read employee resources) rather than office supplies. Be as frugal as possible.

This might apply as well to any of the Small businesses, but I feel with the number of technology startups growing by the day, it becomes imperative to get advices on these fronts.

Via

Labels: ITVidya

Webyantra, regarded the TechCrunch of India has recently profiled a Hyderabad based company called Zolved. Zolved is basically a web 2.0 social network for tech support. The support extends to a range of products like Mobile phones, digital music players, broadband modems, wi-fi systems, browsers, VOIP software, and email clients.

What entralls me is that this is going to further the scope of the Indian techies who at present only cater to their local audience. A large number of tech support people here are going to be Indians who can now benefit their increased target base. Same thing goes for others who make use of the service as well.

But this is only if the website offers to pay those offering tech support incentives for doing so. Building a database of tech support info is not going to come easy without this.

Via

Labels: Webyantra

JohnTP reports that the WordPress version 2.1.1 has a security exploit added by a cracker. To overcome this risk, John suggests you to upgrade as soon as possible to WordPress 2.1.2

Read the blog post for more info and comments.

Labels: JohnTP

Abhijit Nadgouda points out to an article by David Muir on the bad concept that patenting really is. According to him, patents hinder human progress by imposing restrictions on taking things forward.

The crux of the article can be summarized with just these lines quoted from the blog:

The businesses should earn more money by making lives of the customers better, not by locking other businesses. Locking works against perfect competition, and at the end of the day the customer is at a loss because of it.

The Indian Tech Blog ticker is still on. Catch it here.

Via

Labels: ifacethoughts