The NAvAP

Pico Jumps

Pico Jumps, originally uploaded by mylerdude.

What an amazing shot!

Example of a web mashup at work

A web Mashup is essentially a way of taking data from one web service or application and then using another web service or application to either add to, modify, or display the data in a unique way.

Ran across an excellent blog posting that demonstrated this.

… So to recap, we have scraped some data from a wikipedia page into a Google spreadsheet using the =importHTML formula, published a handful of rows from the table as CSV, consumed the CSV in a Yahoo pipe and created a geocoded KML feed from it, and then displayed it in a Google map.
-Data Scraping Wikipedia with Google Spreadsheets

The resulting KML file can viewed in Google Maps here.

Opera 9.6

Boy time flies, whether you’re having fun or not.

It’s already been just over a month since Google Chrome came out, and I guess it shows how much of a Google fan boy I am because I’m still using it. I’ve completely switched from Opera and while there have been little annoyances about Chrome once in a while, I understand it is a ‘true’ beta product.

Opera 9.6 introduces a new feature that seems promising, the “Scroll Marker”:

The new Opera Scroll Marker makes it easier to continue reading when you scroll through a Web page. At the end of the page it will indicate the previous position of the bottom of the screen so you can easily see where to continue reading.
-Opera 9.6 Change log

Its very unobtrusive and sleek, but I’m finding it doesn’t always show up whenever I scroll, and having an inconsistent helper, I find, is worse then having none at all.

Opera has also launched an online tutorial which helps get someone up to speed with the browsers features, it’s quite newb friendly ;)

Now I guess time will tell whether I switch back to Opera, or continue going through the occasional sufferance with Chrome.

The Google OS is here

No really, it is!

Well kind of, It’s probably just not what you had in mind.

First of all, what could one consider a “Google OS” to be?
One could reply that its an OS designed to integrate Google’s web based application line, with traditional desktop applications with focus on search, ease of use, and stability.
Fine maybe thats just my take on it, but its not a bad take..

So then what kind of applications does an OS need?
Well there’s a need for productivity software (Mail, Calendar, Document control). Communication (IM, Social Networking, Online discussion).
Media (Images, Video).

Anyone can see where I’m going with this, so if Google already has so many desktop applications being ported to the web then why does it need to create a whole OS to interact with them?

They don’t.

Introducing: Google Chrome, must-read overview here.

Why do I call it the Google OS, well think about it; The real “Google OS” is actually all in cyberspace. So all one needs to do is use a browser to access it.

But By creating a browser that will run on Windows/Mac/Linux, Google has created a universally stable “OS” that will be able to handle all Google Apps effectively.

foobar2000

Of late I’ve been keeping busy experimenting with foobar2000, an extremely functional music player for Windows. In the process of converting over to foobar from Windows Media Player I also ended up doing a little of re-structuring my music collection.

In the past I had all my music sorted via:

Music \ [Artist] \ [Album] \ [## Track Name.mp3]

But since I decided to finally incorporate all the Hindi music I have with the English music I realized I had to change things a little. Doing so meant I could also include all the music that I’ve collected as single songs, and not part of an album. In addition to what I already had I also developed an ear for classical music around the time I started using foobar, so I ended up with a structure inside my Music folder like so:

[Folder] \ [Artist] \ [Year] [Album] \ [## Track Name.mp3]

Where “Folder” is one of the following six folders, and “##” is the track number.

\Artists

All my english music that I have in complete albums falls into this category except for soundtrack releases.

\Classical

The Beethoven’s, and Tchaikovsky’s of this world rest within.

\Hindi

All my Hindi music, even though the majority of it is all movie soundtracks.

\Playlists

Foobar has built in dynamic playlist support, but occasionally it is useful to save a hard (soft?) copy of a playlist.

\Single Tracks

All the singles of my youth, I’ve had some of these files for 5 or so years.

\Soundtracks

Black Hawk Down, Mary Poppins, Metal Gear Solid, Pirates of the Caribbean, Phantom of the Opera…the list goes on and on.

One of the many things that make me “as happy as a pig in shit”, is the ability to browse my library via “facets”, a dynamic list that sorts using AND and/or OR logic in a hierarchal manner. It’s one of those times when a picture does indeed say a thousand words.

Thanks to Frank Bicking for his work developing the Facets component.

I’m sure I’ll write more on foobar in the future.

New theme

In all fairness to me, it has been quite a few months since I last changed themes not quite a year, but decently close.

I’ve also added a “lifestream”, a collection of my social feeds all in one place. Probably more useful to me then to anyone else as I can use it to prove to myself that I actually did something on any given day.

Still have plenty to iron out, I manually added Gravatar support, still need to add a mini bio in the footer. I also need to figure out what I’m doing with categories vs tags.

iPhone new pricing from Fido

Well, after a bit of trouble in connecting to Fido’s 1800 number, I got through and spoke to someone about switching my current contract with them to an iPhone.

Turns out that because I’m still in my 3 year contract, I’m not elligble to upgrade to the iPhone, but I should call them back after July 24, as they are trying to work out a solution.

Well of course they are, they can’t resist having so many customers up their monthly fees.

But as where pricing is concerned, it’s become much better, where before $80/month would get you:

1. 150 Weekday minutes
2. Free evenings from 5PM
3. 10,000 text messages
4. Call Display
5. Voicemail
6. 400MB Data

The same $80 will now up the data to 6GB, making it a very competitive pricing scheme.

Now if only they can get some sort of solution up in place for existing customers like myself.