Monday, October 26, 2009

Domain Names to be Non-English Soon

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — the non-profit group that oversees domain names — is holding a meeting this week in Seoul. Domain names are the monikers behind every website, e-mail address and Twitter post, such as ".com" and other suffixes.

One of the key issues to be taken up by ICANN's board at this week's gathering is whether to allow for the first time entire internet addresses to be in scripts that are not based on Latin letters.

That could potentially open up the web to more people around the world as addresses could be in characters as diverse as Arabic, Korean, Japanese, Greek, Hindi and Cyrillic — in which Russian is written.

"This is the biggest change technically to the internet since it was invented 40 years ago," Mr Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of the ICANN board, told reporters, calling it a "fantastically complicated technical feature."

He said he expects the board to grant approval on Friday, the conference's final day.
The internet's roots are traced to experiments at a US university in 1969 but it wasn't until the early 1990s that its use began expanding beyond academia and research institutions to the public.

Source: Deccan Chronicle

Saturday, October 24, 2009

Engineering College Aims To Donate INR 10 Million for Kurnool Flood Relief

G. Pulla Reddy Engineering College, Kurnool, AP in India is the college where I completed my engineering. This is the college which broomed not only me but may such people to build their career. I owe the college, my teachers and staff a lot - because of them I am at this point of career.

Last month the town, Kurnool was submerged in water. The college alongwith the ex-students is co-ordinating to collect donations and extend the help to the needy in Kurnool and the near by towns and villages. The college aims to donate ten million rupees towards the relief for the flood victims of Kurnool and adjacent towns. The college popularly known as GPREC among the students and alumnae has launched a new website www.savekurnool.org to coordinate the donations.

More than 300 people died in the southern states of Andhra Pradesh and North Karnataka after the worst floods in years. Livestock and crops have been lost as well as numerous homes destroyed, leaving more than 200,000 people homeless and vulnerable to hunger and disease.
The move to have a website for the cause is to generate funds from the former students of the college who are residing outside India. This will help the NRIs to extend their bit for the cause.

The G. Pulla Reddy Trust has already donated one million hundred thousand rupees and the college management and staff have coordinated and donated five hundred eighty six thousands rupees towards the cause.

I request each one of you to extend their bit for this project to help the society. It is the time to give back to the society.

Friday, October 09, 2009

At Last Twitter is Making Money

Google and Microsoft are in talks with Twitter separately to strike a deal to include the tweets in the search results in real-time. Both the search engine rivals are engaged in separate talks with Twitter according to a report from Wall Street Journal’s website, AllThingsD. It also reports that numbers of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.

"This could be a way for Twitter to make some money, and maybe more than just a little money. It finally means a business model for Twitter, or at least the beginnings of one. And, of course, it means real revenue, which is very important. Not just in licensing revenue from Google or Microsoft, but also in potentially getting a piece of the action on an ongoing basis. So there could be considerable upside here for Twitter," said Dan Olds, an Analyst with The Gabriel Consulting.
This is good for the search giants and Twitter. For us we get the search results as a mix of web results and personal messaging. But…
  • will this not spam Twitter with all the tweets of the folks who want their website on the top of the search results?
  • how well these tweets can will be segregated as natural or real tweet to a spam one?
  • what will be the criteria or filter used to get the tweet included in the search results?
  • how can retweets be managed in the search results? Will they also appear?

The bottom line is if the deal (or deals) is (or are) through then Twitter will have a business plan.

Related post: What Can Be The Search Algorithm for Twitter Search?

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Inside Adwords: Stay Connected With Google Industry Team on Twitter

Apart from Google on Twitter, the Google’s Industry teams too are on Twitter. Now, follow the industry you are interested in to get regular updates (through the Tweets) related to the industry – latest trends, additional info, special insights, news updates…

To follow, please click the industry of your interest: Auto, Media and Entertainment, Financial Services, Retail, Tech, and Travel

And on top of that Google has about 56 accounts in Twitter. It is good to see the way Google is leveraging Twitter to reach out to its customers. Does this indicate something? I am just trying to read between the lines to know if Google is taking Twitter more seriously.

Related post: Google Signs Up on Twitter

Sunday, October 04, 2009

Courier Companies Opt For Digital Signatures

Do not get surprised, if next time you are asked by a courier company to sign on a digital scanner. Courier companies are now opting for digital signatures to deliver important consignments like credit cards or a passport. The customer needs to sign on a digtal scanner which is carried by the delivery personnel. Once the receiver of the consignment signs on the scanner using the stylus, the data is automatically updated on the company's central server. A photograph may also be taken by the persoannel for added security to know to whom the consignment was actually delivered.

Nice to see the move which is in sync with the latest technology. Banks like HDFC, ABN Amro, Citibank... are already using digital signatures for sending account and other statements through e-mails. This not only saves paper and cost but, helps them to deliver the documents to the right person.

If you look at the statements that come from these banks, at the bottom right corner of the document will be a signature with a thumb impression. That’s a digital signature which adds authenticity to e-document received for the customer to establish trust with the sender. If anybody changes the signature or successfully tampers with it, the signature will change indicating wrong doings. “For messages sent through an insecure channel, a properly implemented digital signature gives the receiver reason to believe the message was sent by the claimed sender. Digital signatures are equivalent to traditional handwritten signatures in many respects; properly implemented digital signatures are more difficult to forge than the handwritten type,’’ said B Robert Raja, CMD, Odyssey Technologies, which focuses on information security software.

But, can anything be done to avoid phishing? I guess we need to be careful to identify such emails and report the same.

Source: Times Of India

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Effective Twitter Backgrounds: Examples and Current Practices

Your profile page is on Twitter is not just to showcase your profile but can also provide an opportunity to showcase your visual brand and possibly communicate additional information that can last longer than a tweet. Know how you can customize your profile page by changing background image, text and link colors. It’s as simple as changing the skin, but ability to change background image has allowed designers to create really unique profile pages.

Smashing Magazines is one of the blog I follow. Not only the blog but I also follow them on Twitter @smashingmag. This particular is post is really awesome and provides good examples and ideas to make the look and feel of your Twitter page. I bet you will really love it. Check it out here.