Twitter for emergencies

The newly unveiled beta product of Microsoft, named Vine^tm is believed to be a twitter during emergencies. Vine is designed to keep family and friends in touch when other communication methods are either broken or not particularly efficient. The whole new idea came from the GM Public Safety initiatives Tammy Savage, four years ago during the Hurricane Katrina.

It gathers information such as warning and reports, from national news sources and also from the
NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration).
It also give status updates from Facebook and other social networking sites, to update everyone in the network, such as family and friends.

The official Beta site is at http://vine.net/ , where an invitation request can be made.
If you make an invitation request they will email you when a new beta is available.
I made a request as soon as I got to know about it, and I will stay in touch with my whole family when I get it.

My view towards Vine is that it can be enabled to rural India, through making it available on mobile. It would be a perfect solution for those poor villagers on the coast line, where frequent floods occur.

A screen shot of Vine.

Samuel Morse's B'day!

Samuel Morse, who was a painter and inventor was born on 27 th of April, which is the grand day today.
He is commonly known for his invention of the telegraph, Morse processor and the Morse Code.
The Morse code is a code built of '-' and '.'. Today the commonly used Morse code is called International Morse Code.

Today, Google celebrated Morse Day, by adding a translation of the Google logo in Morse code, to
their logo collection.
Of course! It can be seen on the Google homepage.

Here's My version of Morse Day:


That's my name is International Morse Code!

Cross browser!

These days there are a numerous number of dynamic and elegantly designed applications on the web. They run on various platforms, some on newly introduced ones like Silverlight, and others on the most commonly used Flash. These applications could be dynamic and highly user-friendly, but they may cause a difficulty to users with older versions of browsers, slow internet connections and limited connectivity. The plugins required to be installed on the browser sometimes could be of large size and could take time to install. They may require a considerable amount of time to load the application data, making the user interface slow for users with slow internet connections. Some plugins do not work on all platforms, for example Silverlight does not work on linux and unix platfroms. Older versions of the browser may not support some plugins,
making it tough time for the user.

Thus, if applications running on different platfroms are placed on a website, they must be provided with an alternative for low priviledged users. This can be done through modern
methods, like the usage of Ajax to speed up requests, and DHTML and javascript tricks for an elegant style of the application. If an aplication is purely made of any of the above then it can function on any modern browser i.e Firefox 2.0+, IE 5.0+, NS 4.0 +, Opera 7 + , Google Chrome.

If the alternative is provided, then the area of access to users can be increased at a high rate!

The Impossible is on the web!

Previews of places directly with 100 - 1000s of photos taken!
The amazing application, can intelligently recognize photos with similar environments
and put them together to give the user a preview of the object or item from almost all angles.
This amazing application, which came out of Microsoft Live Labs recently is called PhotoSynth^tm

It brings photos to reality, by creating heart-breaking interactivity with the user.
That too it is all online. Can You beleive it!
The user just need to download a small plugin for his browser and soon he is also ready to experience the magic live on the web.

There are many pre - made "Synths" on the home page: http://photosynth.net/,
out of which some are made by users. Everyone is free to publish their own Synths.

The Synth which catches me the most is the Pyramid of Gaza, which I never visited before.
It was like I was actually touring to Eygypt and standing infront of the great Pyramid.

In the future maybe we could virtually walk into places, through technologies like PhotoSynth!

Bumping with BumpTop

After a wait of 2 weeks or so, I finally got a beta invite from BumpTop! They gave me a link
to the download and also a guide video.
I was so excited even when the download was progressing, I couldn't stay in my seat!

The Download was done! I was ready to setup Bump Top!
The setup process went all well! I clicked the Bump top icon created on my desktop!
The magic showed off.
I saw a whole new elegant theme, with all my original desktop icons organized in a
beautiful mess!

My Bump Top!



Whatever Anand Agarwala had demoed at TED was true. The compact software,
was full of jaw-dropping and breath-taking features, with a very eye candy user interface.

You could bump files on to others and trow them at walls. You could clip the files or widgets on
the walls.
It had the lasso tool for selection and the Pie menu for right-click!

The replacement of the folder with piles was the best idea. It made the user experience more realistic!

The best part was it was all messy! Not organized! It may look quite different and
irregular, as people have got used to their old boring organized desktops over the years.
It resembled my Work Desk, which is always messed up!


It even gives you the option of being organized, by allowing grid views.

I see Bump Top as revolution to the common desktop today!
It could make our interaction with the computer more realistic!
And bring back to use of old paper and pen, on to today's technology!