Author: Aditya

Amit Agarwal's account of how to get back your gmail/google account if it's hacked

So it was a poor choice of words after all. The marketing guys are in hot water all right –

Extracts photos based on the words typed in to form a photo story. Does give some interesting results.

So now we have landmarks featuring in the directions to make life easier.

Virus models made out of glass & more

Courseware from Harvard, MIT & other top universities. Interestingly, the material seems to be Creative Commons licensed.

Wonder whether we should have (or already have) something for the IITs?

Replaces the static icon in Windows 7 with the animated one like in Windows Vista & below. Funny thing that this was an area where Windows got downgraded.

So far so good, but will they be singing the same tune if Chrome gets a major piece of the browser pie?

Create an manga avatar for yourself

$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected

Combining multiple photos

A handy tool from Google to check out how much of a site different visitors can see. Not too useful for centred pages though.

A compilation of some of Paul Samuelson's big ideas in economics that have shaped many an economic theory.

Interesting way to run a store & survive at that
'The shop's front door was shut tight. The little "Will Return At" sign that was attached to it was of no help — its clocklike hands were conspicuously missing.
It was another business day at the Never Open Store.
At a time when vacant storefronts and "For Lease" signs dot Melrose Avenue, Stephanie Mata's tiny shop is doing just fine, thank you.
The Never Open Store is open only when Mata feels like unlocking it and allowing shoppers inside.
Those who do get in are intrigued by the merchandise that fills every cranny of the 245-square-foot shop.'

Pathological leaders & their problems

Very pretty. Gives you a feeling of standing all alone in a vast environment at times.

Right from Obi Wan & Yoda to Transformers, the geekiness universe visualized.

The current leader will always try to control growth, and thus slit its own throat. Call that Gates' Law, because he both discovered it (as it applied to IBM) and fell victim to it (in his struggle to control the web).

'Using a male pseudonym when you're a woman isn't anything new. Writers have been doing it for centuries. George Eliot, George Sand, Isak Dinesen. Even the Brontë sisters, championed today, wrote as Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell back in their time.
Why did they do it? To have their work accepted, because women weren't supposed to be writers. Their work had a much better chance if their audience didn't have to get over initial skepticism that a woman could write at all, much less do it well.'

Text of a speech Bill Watterson gave at Kenyon College, Gambier Ohio, to the 1990 graduating class. Includes his experiences like painting a copy of Michelangelo's "Creation of Adam" from the Sistine Chapel on the ceiling of the dorm room.

Now you know what to do & how to do it. Wonder whether they'll come out with the perfect automated pizza cutter next…

Leveraging word of mouth & an incentive driven system to maximize impact

'Rainmeter is a desktop customization platform. Through Rainmeter, you can enhance your Windows computer at home or work with skins: handy, compact applets which float freely on your desktop, much like Windows Sidebar gagdgets, or dashboard widgets for the Mac.'

A very handy list of freeware tools, including Win 7 shortcuts, virus scanners, Firefox, Thunderbird etc

A handy way to run Ubuntu Linux within Windows, especially to run Linux only Apps. Should also run off a USB drive.

Very handy utility to enable the Windows 7 shortcuts like dock window to the left/right, show desktop etc, for Windows XP & Vista

A bunch of windows recovery tools

'Twoddler is a prototype that has been created as part of a course on mobile and pervasive computing at Hasselt University, and was designed and implemented for the Innovative and Creative Applications (INCA) 2009 awards.'

Very interesting setups

Multivac the great…
Let there be light…

She has certainly been around for a long long time

Another Foodie Mathematician

Food loving Mathematicians anyone?

Thank goodness it's just an art piece & not a real baby carriage armed with guns.

Using a gun to create art. A variety of animal images by firing guns into aluminium sheets.
via http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/12/the-gunshot-art-of-walt-creel/

'Well, here's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further "smoking gun" claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story.
And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job.'

Brain wiring problem it seems, or just lack of practice?

The world is probably too cynical…

The article in which the term AJAX was coined.

'A Googlewhack is a Google search query consisting of two words that return a single result. A Googlewhack must consist of two actual words found in a dictionary.'

What do job interviews really tell us?
The prelude to Blink!

Including the classic 25/5=14

Interesting presentation format – kinda like tree rings. Resembles the Firefox logo though.

A simple script to access Wave in a tab in Thunderbird.

Handy instructions

The whole story behind United breaking the guitar. Two songs down & one to go. Companies better beware of the power of the web & social media.

Minority Report & MAtrix, here we come…
'THE retail giant Westfield is considering introducing controversial face recognition technology at its Penrith shopping centre in Sydney's west.'

Strange case of Northern lights it seems. Interesting phenomenon nonetheless. A few photographs & videos accompany the post.

Interesting list covering a gamut of villains like Skeletor, Shredder & Bluto. Mostly old cartoons though.

Something doesn't seem right here, especially if this was supposed to have been a co-branding exercise:
"So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

Not exactly a work of perfection. A really long list. Not to mention the ability of people to distinguish between a sheep & goat's bleat – 'Audio/visual unsynchronized: When the goat is offered to the T-Rex, you hear the bleating sound of a sheep as opposed to a goat's bleating sound.'

Who said subway stations have to be boring. Some of the most architecturally interesting subway stations in the world.
via http://www.neatorama.com/2009/12/08/the-most-beautiful-subway-stations-in-the-world/

So twitter does help in selling after all.

It's not so bad. I'm actually trying to get my grandfather on facebook 🙂

So much for fingerprints being one of the ultimate proofs of one's identity. Also, MIB & Mission Impossible seem much closer to reality now.
'A Chinese woman managed to enter Japan illegally by having plastic surgery to alter her fingerprints, thus fooling immigration controls, police claim.'

Interesting list – includes Wave, Bing, Twitter among others