DotGyan - There’s more to selected text than cut/copy & paste

I have been working on this idea of “There’s more to selected text than cut/copy & paste” for past few weekends.
What do we do when you come across a word whose meaning you don’t know or a term you want to know more about while reading a Charles Dicken’s or Shakespeare’s work or may be just a newspaper?
Most of us simply ignore it or think “I’ll lookup in a dictionary when I get up” and we never do that. There are a very chosen few of us who purposely keep a dictionary with us while reading.
Consider this scenario while reading on the web. It’s lot easier, right? just select the term, right click, copy, open a new window, open google, paste and then wait for result. Fast enough but also irritating enough to break your concentration.
I came up with a widget to try to solve this problem. As of now I call it “DotGyan”. It allows you to search a word/term there and then with least interference in your reading pleasure.

It works like this…
1. You see a word like lagniappe whose meaning you don’t know. The word can be there any where on the blog or webpage.
2. Select the word as you would do for cut/copy & paste.
3. You see a dot at the end of your selection.
4. Click this dot.
5. You get the options (on what I call a “GyanBox”) to search the term in Google, Wikipedia or Wiktionary.
6. Click on one of the three options.
7. Rest you will get it yourself.

TRY THIS OUT, RIGHT HERE ON BINARYDAY !

What if I don’t want to search the selected term? Simple, just ignore the dot. It will go away in 3 seconds.
What if I want to edit the selected text before searching? Well, just edit it in the text box you see on the GyanBox.

Some may argue that we already have such softwares. True but almost all of them are available as browser plugins and how many of us actually know about such plugins and even if we know how many of us install them? Also plugins are browser dependent. DotGyan is browser independent and it shifts the installation trouble from user to web-master.

I have installed DotGyan on BinaryDay. Go ahead, Try it out Please! (Just select any word or phrase and click the dot)
DotGyan is right now in a very initial phase. Please give your valuable comments and suggestions as comments to this post or mail me at vineet7kumar@gmail.com.
Your comments and suggestions can pertain to anything from looks & colors to any new feature you would like to have. Also suggest some good names for the widget.

Team BinaryDay will be more than happy to hear from you

PS: If you are a blogger or a webmaster and would like to install DotGyan on your blog or page please drop me a mail at vineet7kumar@gmail.com … I will love to have DotGyan on your Blog or page.

PS: Currently safari browser and Internet explorer less that IE7 are not supported.

Topics: Internet, Plugin, Softwares, Tools, Uncategorized

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One Red Paperclip … Kyle MacDonald

This one is not actually related to technology but about the skills of marketing.
Kyle MacDonald began with one red paper clip on March 28, 2005. By July 5, 2006, a chain of bartering had ultimately led to trading a movie role for a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Saskatchewan….
Read on more here on wikipedia how a series of barters converted a paper clip to a farm house.
Mind blowing, Right?

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Cool Acronyms for Chat and sms messages

Some Really Cool Acronyms that you can use in chat and sms

AAMOF As A Matter Of Fact
AFAIK as far as I know
AFK away from keyboard
ASAP as soon as possible
B4N bye for now
BBL be back later
BBS be back soon
BEG big evil grin
BFN bye for now
BG big grin
BRB be right back
BTA but then again
BTDT been there done that
BTW bythe way
CU see you
CUL see you later
DBA doing business as
DQMOT don’t quote me on this
EG evil grin
EOM end of message
F2F face to face
FAQ frequently asked questions
FWIW for what it’s worth
FYI for your information
G grin
GA go ahead
GD&R grinning, ducking and running
GL good luck
GMTA great minds think alike
HT hi there
HTH hope this helps
IAC / IAE in any case / in any event
IANAL I am not a lawyer
IHU I hear you
IIRC if I recall / remember / recollect correctly
IMHO in my humble opinion
IMO in my opinion
IMS I am sorry
IOW in other words
JK just kidding
JMO just my opinion
JTLYK just to let you know
KISS keep it simple
LOL laughing out loud
NP no problem
NRN no response necessary
OIC oh, I see
OTOH on the other hand
PM private message
ROTFL rolling on the floor laughing
RT real time
SYS see you soon
TA thanks again
TAFN that’s all for now
TIA thanks in advance
TPTB the powers that be
TTYL talk to you later
TU thank you
UW you are welcome
VBG very big grin
WB welcome back
WFM works for me
WTG way to go
WU? what’s up?
YBS you’ll be sorry
YMMV your mileage may vary
YW you are welcome

More cool acronyms : Coming soon

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Yahoo using google adsense

I just found an advertisement by yahoo mail on binaryday. Found it really interesting that yahoo is using google for advertising its product. Speaks volume about the state of yahoo.

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The Graveyard of Freindship

Abhishek raises a very important and relevant point about freinds cheating him for a MLM profit. Basically his very good freinds made false claims about making lot of money from a particular pogramme and lured him into joining the programme. After making a payment of 32k and joining the programme, he realized that all that was told to him as false. To make money he will have to tell the same damn lie to his freinds. Abhishek refused to do and hence lost 32k.

While he talks about questnet in particular, I think the problem is more wide spread than that. I am sure at one point of time or other someone you know quite well has tried to force you to join some similar programme including questnet, amway and several other programmes. I know that not all of these are fraud schemes. Even if it is not a fraud scheme, you may losse some really good freinds to these schemes.

The issue is when you somehow convince someone to join a programme without doing a proper analysis of his own skills . It may be asking an introvert to join a marketing scheme or asking someone averse to regular desciplined work to join blogging. You manage to convince him that he can make money from the programme. However when he tries to get things done himself, he fails to do so and looses money. The way human psychology works (I am no expert), people do not want to accept that they made a wrong choice. Rather they try to find someone else to blame. In this case they blame you because you asked them to join the programme in the first place.

Does it mean that you should never ask a freind to a money making scheme? You must let your freinds know about any genuine scheme. However first try to imagine if the person is likely to succeed in the scheme. So if I know an outgoing, natural salesman type person, I will recommend MLM to him and if I know a well read person I will ask him to blog and earn through adsense. Secondly I shall give him a realistic picture of amount of work invloved and chances of failure. If required I will err on the side of pessimism.

Everything said and done do remember that good freinds are really important in life. Hence be cautious while you are mixing freindship and business. To abhishek, 32k is a really small amount to pay to learn about 3 people that you considered freinds are not your freinds. So be happy that the incident happened. And thanks for making all of us aware about a fraud programme.

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GParted — ultimate HDD partitioning utility

Do you want to resize your hard disk partitions without removing your current installed operating system? Do you want to create new partitions again without destroying your current operating system?
Do you want to install a second operating system? Or you computer refuses to boot and gives messages like “NTLDR missing” or “no bootable media found” (not exactly same messages…I don’t remember the exact ones )…
Well there’s a nice solution to all these...GParted (GNOME partition editor) .
It has three versions… installable, liveCD and liveUSB. I found the liveCD really good because using it you boot your system from the CD and not from the HDD so even if your OS gets corrupted you can use it . Also it has a very simple to use and intuitive GUI.
You can read more about GParted, Download it, check its screenshots here at its home-page.

Topics: Open Source, Resources, Softwares, Tools, Uncategorized

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Not So Good Friday For Goldman and Lehman

What if the other shoe drops but no one hears?

Standard & Poor’s analysts tested the tree-falling-in-an-empty-forest scenario, as it lowered the outlooks for Goldman Sachs and Lehman Brothers to negative while markets were closed.

Standard & Poor’s analysts Scott Sprinzen and Diane Hinton affirmed their AA-/A-1+ rating for Goldman Sachs Group (nyse: GS - news - people ) and A+/A-1 rating for Lehman Brothers Holdings (nyse: LEH - news - people ), pointing to strong underlying businesses and acceptable first-quarter earnings. But S&P also lowered the companies’ outlooks to “negative” from “stable” on expectations of 20%-to-30% drops in net sales after write-downs going forward.

The analysts also revised their outlook for the U.S. securities industry at large to “negative,” meaning there is a one-in-three chance that there will be a rating change in the next two years.

Goldman shares closed Thursday ahead by $13.14, or 7.9% , to $179.63 and Lehman stock added $6.42, or 15.2%, at $48.65.

Analysts, while acknowledging the Federal Reserve’s support for U.S. broker-dealers boosts confidence in capital markets, said negative outlooks for independent securities firms are appropriate since the potential for decreased profitability is still substantial.

The slashed outlook may be especially difficult for Lehman Brothers to stomach. The financial services firm, whose business mix most closely resembles that of virtually collapsed Bear Stearns (nyse: BSC - news - people ), has dismissed recent rumors that it’s headed down the same ditch as Bear (See: Financials Fall Into Bear Pit). Analyst Sprinzen says Lehman has done a better job managing its liquidity than Bear. As of Feb. 29, the firm’s excess liquidity structure was $34 billion.

“Lehman is among the largest proportionately of the U.S. broker-dealers, and its sources-to-uses ratio is the strongest of the five,” Sprinzen said, adding that earnings have held up and Lehman’s fixed income business remains profitable despite being directly affected by the economic slowdown and problematic asset-related write-downs.

Sprinzen called Goldman Sachs’ leftover mortgage and leveraged finance-related commitments “manageable” and praised the strength of its liquidity position.

“However … the firm’s emphasis on trading activities and its aggressive risk appetite leave it open to the possibility that major missteps could ultimately occur, leading to a change in investor sentiments,” Sprinzen said.

Although Goldman is the most profitable U.S. broker-dealer, Sprizen said last quarter’s profits were weak, with sales off 35% from the previous year.

Documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday March 20 show that Goldman’s President and Co-Chief Operating Officer Jon Winkelried sold some 30,000 shares at about $173.85 each, totaling approximately $5.2 million, from Wednesday to Thursday. Vice Chairman Michael Sherwood unloaded some 7300 shares at a per share price of about $174.85, totaling close to $1.3 million Wednesday. Goldman could not be reached for comment

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Citigroup Laying Off 2,000 More

Citigroup Inc. plans to lay off an additional 2,000 employees from its markets and banking unit, and in this latest round of job cuts, senior investment-banking officials won’t be spared, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.

The latest round of job cuts at the New York-based bank brings its layoffs since the mortgage crisis began to more than 6,000, or about …

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Happy Holi !!!

Holi is one of the biggest festivals in India. It is not a festival of a religion or a caste . Infact on the contrary it celebrates the spirit of unity and oneness. It is a festival of colors…A celebration of all the beauties of Nature and Human Race.
So get off your seats, go out and ENJOY !!!

HOLI HAiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii………..

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US bars multiple H-1B applications for same employee

Amidst demands for raising the cap on H-1B visas for skilled professional, authorities have issued a new rule prohibiting employers from filing more than one petition for a single employee in a fiscal year. The change is intended to promote a fair and systematic process for H-1B petitioners, the US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said on Wednesday while announcing the new rule.

This rule ensures that companies filing H-1B petitions will have an equal chance to receive consideration for an H-1B worker. The current cap on new H-1B visas is 65,000 per fiscal year with a few exceptions. US businesses utilise the H-1B programme to employ foreign workers in fields that require theoretical and practical expertise in specialised occupations requiring a bachelor’s degree or higher (or its equivalent), such as scientists, engineers or computer programmers.

The first 20,000 H-1B petitions filed on behalf of foreigners with US-earned masters’ or higher degrees are exempt from the H-1B cap of 65,000. The USCIS administers a separate “20,000 cap” for such exempt petitions.

The USCIS said it would use a random selection process for all the master’s degree or higher cap-exempt cases received on the first five business days available for filing H-1B petitions for a given fiscal year, if necessary. If the US master’s exemption limit is reached on the first five business days, the USCIS will first conduct the random selection process for such petitions before it begins random selection for petitions to be counted towards the 65,000 cap.

Petitions eligible for the US master’s degree or higher exemption that are not selected to receive an H-1B visa number from the 20,000 cap will be considered with the other H-1B petitions in the random selection for the 65,000 cap filed on the first five business days, the announcement said.

The USCIS further said petitions for new H-1B employment are exempt from the cap if the foreigners will work at the defined institutions of higher education or a related or affiliated non-profit entities, or at non-profit research organisations or governmental research organisations. Thus, employers may continue to file petitions for these exempt H-1B categories regardless of H-1B visa number availability.

The USCIS said it will start receiving H-1B petitions from April 1 for FY09 beginning October 1. When it is determined that the caps have been reached, the USCIS will employ a random selection process to choose among the petitions received on the “final receipt date”.

Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, among others, has repeatedly urged the US Congress to let more foreign engineers, including Indians, to work in the US as immigration restrictions were forcing US high-tech firms to outsource jobs overseas.
The current cap of 65,000 H-1B visas aimed at highly skilled professionals “is arbitrarily set and bears no relation to the US economy’s demand for skilled professionals”, he told a Congressional panel recently. “If we increase the number of H-1B visas that are available to US companies, employment of US nationals is also likely to grow as well.”

A recent study by the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP), in fact, shows that American businesses are finding it hard to fill skilled positions even as H-1B visas that bring foreign professionals, including a large number from India, are creating jobs in the US. Confirming Gates’ contention that an arbitrary cap on H-1B visas is forcing high tech firms to outsource jobs, the study found major US technology companies today average more than 470 job openings for skilled positions in the US while defence companies have more than 1,265 each.

A second complementary study by NFAP found after examining H-1B filings and year-by-year job totals for the technology companies in the Standard & Poor (S&P) 500 that hiring skilled foreign nationals on H-1B visas is associated with increases in employment at US technology companies.

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Searchme … a new and nice search engine

Just happened to come across this new seach engine called searchme It’s a very new search engine with right now, just an index of 1 billion and is still in beta. But the best thing about it is its user interface and graphics. …yeah not just the graphics but the UI is also nice. Have you seen the cover-flow design on itunes? searchme uses the same beautiful cover-flow for its search results unlike the text only results in Google. (It has text only results also if you want that).
Searchme is backed by Sequoia capital.
As I said right now it’s in beta so u can’t use it directly . However you can register on it by giving your mail id . just visit http://searchme.com and you will know what to do.
Till then you can watch this demo.

Happy surfing

Topics: Futuristic, Internet, Uncategorized

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Firefox captures 20% of browser market share.

Here is some statistics based on internet usage data collected by w3counter. Looks like firefox is giving a serious challenge to internet explorer. Firefox 2.0 with 22.89% has already gone past i.e 7.0. i.e 6.0 and 7.0 together enjoy 62% market share though. The important question is when people decide to migrate from i.e 6 which browser will they choose. ie7 or firefox? what do you think?

Web Browsers
1 Internet Explorer 6.0 39.00%
2 Firefox 2.0 22.89%
3 Internet Explorer 7.0 22.67%
4 Firefox 1.5 4.63%

Data from http://w3counter.com/globalstats.php.

How does the number look for binaryday? Well it differs a lot. while w3counter number shows a negligible % user for mozilla, for binaryday mozilla forms the 2nd post popular browser. Here is data from my awstat for march.

Browsers Percent
MS Internet Explorer 46.5 %
Mozilla 18.4 %
Unknown 16.2 %
Firefox 15.1 %
Opera 1.4 %
Safari 1.4 %
Wget 0.2 %
Netscape 0.2 %
Epiphany 0.1 %
Firebird (Old Firefox) 0 %
Others 0 %

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add-on to the last post

Not only we can use a ‘+’ to make more mail ids but also a ‘.’ (dot). Say if you have a id like myid@gmail.com then any mail send to my.id@gmail.com or my.id+andromeda@gmail.com will also go to myid@gmail.com.

But what’s the use of this?
Well if someone asks you for your mail id and you don’t trust him, you can give a modified mail id to him. He can only send you mails but won’t be able to crack in or misuse your account that easily.

Why does this happen?
Simply because gmail ignores any dots in the mail id and possibly anything between a ‘+’ and ‘@’ .

Technology is really magic … isn’t it?

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Your gmail addresses that you do not know!!!

if you have 1 gmail id then you have an infinite amount of gmail ids and there is a good chance that you do not know about all these different email ids. If you email address is abc@gmail.com then try sending a mail to abc@googlemail.com. Send another mail to abc+test@gmail.com. Now check your mail box. You will find both the mails in your mailbox. Surpised?? Well I know magic

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Wanna switch to Linux? … Few tips

Three years ago when I switched to Linux, I didn’t even know that there is even a wallpaper on Linux! , moreover all the books that I got in Library had only CUI stuff and hyper geeky stuff .(I did not have a usable net connection that time) Luckily I got a new book called “Fedora Core 3 Bible” by Cristopher Negus which explained things in a very easy to use manner and how to do all the stuff in GUI rather than CUI (For all those who don’t know yet, yes there is a GUI for Linux and even better than Windows vista!).
The major problem that I can figure out during the seminars that I take at college is that students don’t switch to Linux not because they don’t want to or not because Linux is hard to use but because they don’t know that Linux is so user friendly and easy to use and nice to look at. Then they think that they can’t listen to music or watch movies or play games on Linux… Again they don’t know that sound and video quality in Linux is much better than Windows on same machine (try comparing it if you haven’t done yet).
Now the main reason for the ignorance is that the books available in the college libraries are mostly quite old and the teachers are more of technical and it has been long time since they studied all this stuff (No offence but there is something called generation gap ).
So what to do?
First of all try getting a new book, (even Fedora Core 3 is very old now)…Just go to the bookstore, browse few Linux books and you will know what to get … The money you spend on a new book will be worth it.
Talk to your friends … learn in groups.
Get help from your college seniors.
Best is to put your queries on forums like Linuxquestions.org. Don’t hesitate in asking even a question as simple as “where’s the start button in Linux?”. Newbies are always helped on these forums.

Start off with Linux as soon as possible and I am sure within few months you will become a die hard Linux user.

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