Monday, April 25, 2005

Going beyond Fermat's last theorem

An Indian mathematician makes an astounding advance in number theory

Education Joogali

A site which looks like Wikipedia and based on mediawiki software.

Saturday, April 23, 2005

Google - search smartly

§ Phrase your question in the form of an answer. So instead of typing, "What is the average rainfall in the Amazon basin?", you might get better results by typing "The average rainfall in the Amazon basin is."
§ This is an old one, but very important: Put quotes around phrases that must be searched together. If you put quotes around "electric curtains," Google won't waste your time finding one set of Web pages containing the word "electric" and another set containing the word "curtains."
§ Similarly, put a hyphen right before any word you want screened out. If you're looking up dolphins, for example, you'll have to wade through a million Miami Dolphins pages unless you search for "dolphins -Miami."
§ Google is a global White Pages and Yellow Pages. Search for "phonebook:home depot norwalk, ct," Google instantly produces the address and phone number of the Norwalk Home Depot. This works with names ("phonebook:robert jones las vegas, NV") as well as businesses.
§ Don't put any space after "phonebook." And in all of the following examples, don't type the quotes I'm showing you here.
§ Google is a package tracker. Type a FedEx or UPS package number (just the digits); when you click Search, Google offers a link to its tracking information.
§ Google is a calculator. Type in an equation ("32+2345*3-234=").
§ Google is a units-of-measurement converter. Type "teaspoons in a gallon," for example, or "centimeters in a foot."
§ Google is a stock ticker. Type in AAPL or MSFT, for example, to see a link to the current Apple or Microsoft stock price, graphs, financial news and so on.
§ Google is an atlas. Type in an area code, like 212, to see a Mapquest map of the area.
§ Google is Wal-Mart's computer. Type in a UPC bar code number, such as "036000250015," to see the description of the product you've just "scanned in." (Thanks to the Google Blog, http://google.blogspace.com, for this tip and the next couple.)
§ Google is an aviation buff. Type in a flight number like "United 22" for a link to a map of that flight's progress in the air. Or type in the tail number you see on an airplane for the full registration form for that plane.
§ Google is the Department of Motor Vehicles. Type in a VIN (vehicle identification number, which is etched onto a plate, usually on the door frame, of every car), like "JH4NA1157MT001832," to find out the car's year, make and model.
§ For hours of rainy-day entertainment, visit http://labs.google.com. Here, you'll find links to new, half-finished Google experiments-like Google Voice, in which you call (650) 623-6706, speak the words you want to search for and then open your browser to view the results. Disclaimer: It wasn't working when I tried it. (Ditto a lot of these experiments.)

Friday, April 22, 2005

Blogs will change your business

A BusinessWeek article

'Infomania' worse than Marijuana

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4471607.stm

Sunday, April 17, 2005

Understand and reading a blog (for beginners)

Understanding and reading a blog

Google sightseeing

Famous landmarks in the USA as seen from space

Viewing from outer space

Degrees' worth

Friday, April 15, 2005

Explanation about Unicode

The Absolute Minimum Every Software Developer Absolutely, Positively Must Know About Unicode and Character Sets (No Excuses!)

Monday, April 11, 2005

Dot-com ads make a comeback

San Francisco Chronicle

Sunday, April 10, 2005

Damaged past the point of educability

Most people involved in educational reform are speaking of curricular
programs when the truth of the matter is the children they are
dealing with now are, by and large, damaged past the point of
educability in any real sense. The public has yet to recognize this
is so. The clearest indications of such damage recently came out of
Tunbingen University in Germany with a twenty year study of four
thousand people. It shows three significant findings as a result of
the failure to furnish appropriate sensory stimulation for growth.

First, there has been an average of one percent per year reduction in
the sensory sensitivity of the human system and the ability to bring
in information from the outside world. Compared to children twenty
years age, the children we are looking at now are comprehending or
registering information from their environment at eighty percent,
which simply means they are twenty percent less consciously aware of
where they are and what is happening around them.

Secondly, the kind of stimulus that does break through the reticular
activating system in the ancient reptilian brain, the brain stem, is
only highly concentrated bursts of over-stimulation. That is, the
only signals they're really bringing in from their environment are
those bursts of stimuli which are highly charged. If it's sound, it
must be a loud sound. If it's touch, it must be an impact. If it's
visual, it must be intense. Subtleties cannot catch their attention
because they are not sensitive to their environment. One comparison
is that twenty years ago a child or young person was able to
differentiate 360 shades of red, and today are down to something like
130 shades, which means the subtleties are lost to the pure, heavy
impact of red now necessary to penetrate the reticular system. Once
we look into the whole developmental system, the implications are
profound.

The third finding of the German study is that the brain is
maladapting on a level which seems almost genetically impossible.
That is, the brains of these young people are not cross-indexing the
sensory systems, so there is no synthesis taking place in the brain.
Sight is simply a radical series of brilliant impressions which do
not cross index with touch, sound, smell and so forth. There is no
context created for sensory input, each is an independent, isolated
event. It explains why so many kids get intensely bored unless they
are subject to intense input.


http://www.ratical.org/many_worlds/JCP98.html

Friday, April 08, 2005

Current issues in Web Usability

ALERTBOX

Anonymous Blogging


http://www.eff.org/Privacy/Anonymity/blog-anonymously.php

Site on Mathematical Equations

A website which provides extensive information on the solutions of differential equations.
http://eqworld.ipmnet.ru/eqworld/

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

techno's scratchpad and Linux help

Techno's Scratch Pad
http://technopark02.blogspot.com/

Linux Help and Mirch Masala
http://vikra007.blogspot.com/

The GUI

Just reading this concise article on the history of the Graphical User Interface (GUI)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_graphical_user_interface


Linux GUI development with QT
http://www.linux-mag.com/archive/2001-12/qt_01.html

Mathematical Logic around the World


http://www.uni-bonn.de/logic/world.html

Model Theory

Reading the basics , before engaging oneself with Huth, to get a more physical idea of the concepts.
The topic seems to be highly related to Philosophy.


http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/model-theory/

Tuesday, April 05, 2005

Science Forum

Just registered in this science forum...

http://www.groupsrv.com/science/index.php


...which i found while searching for a good logic forum..


http://www.groupsrv.com/science/forum-17.html


Models in logic...a concept based on predicate logic is what I need to get more familiar with in the next few hrs.

YaGooHoo!gle - Yahoo + Google

http://www.yagoohoogle.com/

Google adds satellite map

http://maps.google.com

The Associated Press
Updated: 3:48 p.m. ET April 5, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO - Online search engine leader Google has unveiled a new feature that will enable its users to zoom in on homes and businesses using satellite images, an advance that may raise privacy concerns as well as intensify the competitive pressures on its rivals

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7394347/

Google to experiment with video blogging

Google To Host Home-Video Uploads


http://www.advancedippipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160403707



Yet-unnamed service that will allow users to upload video to Google's site to debut later this week, according to company founders.



SAN FRANCISCO -- Move over blogging -- here comes Internet-based home video, to a Google server near you.

While there's no formal announcement yet, Google co-founder Larry Page said Monday that the well-known search engine concern would soon let the general public upload self-produced videos to Google's servers, partly in an effort to learn more about how to more efficiently search and display information about video-based data.

"It's an experiment we want to run," said Page of the video-uploading service, which he said the company will formally announce "in the next few days." Page made the non-announcement announcement during Monday's opening panel discussion at the National Cable & Telecommunications Show here, upstaging his luminary fellow panelists John Chambers of Cisco, Brian Roberts of Comcast, Jon Miller of AOL and Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dreamworks.

The news did fit into the main theme of the panel's discussion, which was how video-enabled material will change the face of communications, sooner rather than later. Cisco's Chambers said just video's data needs will require new kinds of network thinking, since "one half hour of video [traffic] is equal to a half a year of email."

But Google's video-upload plans were clearly the buzz of the morning, and in typical Google spirit of launching things in beta form, the idea seems to not be fully baked. Page even said Google wasn't sure what types of material Google would receive, which drew a quick rejoinder from Katzenberg, who said, "I can tell you what you're going to get," drawing laughter from the audience.

Other panelists confirmed that interest in the ability to search for video data wasn't Google's alone. According to Roberts, Comcast customers placed 80 million orders for video on demand services in January, up from 20 million VOD orders in January 2004. Comcast, he said, has also delivered more than 40 million short-form video clips to users of the company's Web site. Being able to search for programming, he said, is driving Comcast to develop user interfaces "with the simplicity of Google."

Google, which already offers the Picasa service for storing and sharing digital photos and the Blogger service for blogs, wants to learn how to better sort and search video to improve the user interface for finding video data, Page said.

"It's still a long way [today] from an ideal experience," he said.

Page said Google is also "working hard" with service providers and other content owners to provide legal ways for users to share, buy and download video data. While the Internet has "done a great job letting anyone be a publisher," Page noted that video is harder to produce and distribute as cheaply as text or photos.

"There are a lot of things we can do [on the server end] to help that," Page said.

Page also said he wasn't overly concerned about what might happen if Katzenberg's quip came true, and users uploaded objectionable or pornographic material to the video service.

"There's lots of technology you can use to deal with those issues," Page said. "There might be an adult section, or something like that. I don't think that is going to be a big issue."

Saturday, April 02, 2005

Maths Awareness Month - April 2005

This month's theme : 'Mathematics and the Cosmos'

http://www.mathaware.org