OpenID - Moving On....

Finally Google took the first step towards OpenID. Now, bloggers can post their authenticated comments using any OpenID enabled service. Its been a long wait to see Google enter the OpenID field. What we still have to see is Google acting as an OpenID provider. As Google has a large number of users and they have the same id for most of their own applications, shifting to OpenID will presumably be the most convenient to internet users. And now, we see the first step towards it - Support of OpenID for bloggers.....

Fedora Core 7 on Dell Inspiron 1520

Last night when I was trying to install Fedora Core 7 on a Dell Inspiron 1520, annoyingly I was stuck up at the Linux installation startup. The installation procedure had not even reached running anaconda. Instead it stuck up saying it did not recognized the DVD/CD drive and needs a device driver for the same. Here's the quick solution I adopted to resolve this. It might be helpful in for some other models of Dell too.

Create an iso of the FC7 Linux DVD. Copy the iso in a FAT32 partition on your hard disk. This needs to be done as it does not picks up the iso from ntfs drives. Now, when you start installing Fedora Core 7, it will again ask for the DVD/CD device driver. Instead select the source of your Linux as the partition having the iso image of the DVD. And it moves on to anaconda. :-)

Although after installation Linux was still not able to recognize DVD drive, the device driver can be downloaded and installed now as you have a working Linux ready. :-)

Google Knol

Finally an official report came for Udi Manber, VP Engineering of Google of the Google Knol. The definition and overview of Knol clearly reveals that it will be a major competitor of Wikipedia. So Google is now on a clear cut war with Wikipedia.

Google's statement about a knol is
"A knol on a particular topic is meant to be the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read. The goal is for knols to cover all topics, from scientific concepts, to medical information, from geographical and historical, to entertainment, from product information, to how-to-fix-it instructions."

This is in no way different from a Wikipedia article. A Wikipedia article on a particular topic is the first thing someone who searches for this topic for the first time will want to read.

Even if Google does really want to come in this field, it should provide something which is different from wikipedia. There is simply no need of creating a parallel of Wikipedia with users getting confused where to look for the correct information.

But Google thinks it in a different way. As always, they have indicated it even in the official report.
"Competition of ideas is a good thing"
And sure it is... ;)

Missing features in Google and Yahoo that I would love to have!!!!

The web world has been moving very fast to the Web2.0 with more standardized protocols and specifications. Some very recent features and protocols includes these:

1. OpenID - For user authentication.
2. oauth - For API authentication (still in draft)
3. RSS - Syndication
4. APML (Attention Profiling Mark-up Language) - For capturing a person's interests and dislikes.
5. Yadis - URL based identification
6. OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language) - The standard for outlines.
7. hcard - Microformat business cards.
8. XFN (XHTML Friends Network) - Microformat to represent human relationships using links.
9. i-names - Human-friendly XRIs.

These are a few most talked about protocols and specifications on the web for the past few days. Still, biggies like Google and Yahoo are not involved fully on these. RSS is the only one which has been fully adopted by everyone. Though, Yahoo uses the hcard microformat, Google is still to support it. OpenID is also not yet supported by any of them.Owing to the popularity OpenID is getting, it is one of the hottest features to be adopted by them. Amongst these web 2.0 protocols, oauth seems to have a better future as it is a mix of all the current API standards and companies would be opting for it to increase their presence. APML would help a person save a lot of time online.Considering the amount of time a user spends on the network of Google and Yahoo, APML can be used to capture the interests of users and then provide service to the user based on his likes and dislikes. The social networking websites can effectively use the XFN. I see the way companies can improve their market share using these. But the question is, do they see it?

OpenID

OpenID is a decentralized system that reduces the number of username and password combinations you have to remember for each and every web site that demands them. Most sites today have their own process of Signing Up. They ask the user to sign up and register if the user does not have an existing account and to identify themselves or to sign up with an existing account on the server.

OpenID is a solution for creating accounts on various servers and identifying oneself. Create one OpenID and use it to login in various sites. Its simple, fast, easy and secure.

There are many sites which now support OpenID login. A list of this can be found here:
http://www.lifewiki.net/openid/OpenIDConsumers

However, these are not the only sites which support OpenID. And to add, new sites are integrating OpenID concept. I just hope players like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! join the OpenID community.

The list of OpenID providers:
http://openid.net/wiki/index.php/OpenIDServers

My last words for this article... Do give it a try...

How to get poor????

For some reason, people just don't get it...

Really!!!! Do have a look at this.

Silverlight vs Flash.... Who's gonna be the winner?

Its again going to be a tough battle between Microsoft and Adobe with the new product Silverlight in the lime light. As it has already been with .Net and Java and also with the PDF vs XPS competition, this one is again going to be a straight forward war with the Adobe's Flash player. And who knows with all the financial backups microsoft has, it may eventually be winning the race. However, the major drawback with the Siverlight package is - No Linux support. How could microsoft even think of launching a web based product without linux support and making it a big success. There's a considerable amount of flaw in this and this might be the advantage Adobe will have.

Beryl..... Really amazing!!!

Beryl is a window manager in Linux that has amazing features. With this window manager installed, there is simply no way you can give away with it. Have a look yourself of this awful window decorator. I bet it’s the best present till date.

Roll up your sleeves as you are definitely going to have this installed if you are a linux user. :)

The Obselete and interesting stuffs

My interests lead me to some obsolete techy stuffs. And my special desire of learning NLP routed me to some amazing and interesting stuffs. Let me come to them one by one.....

First, The Scigen paper generator, truly based on context free grammar and a sentence generator. It generates some fascinating computer papers, few of which have even been accepted in a few international conferences. Its a research on sentence generator by MIT. Try it out yourself. The link follows.....
http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/scigen/

Second, this is not a tool, not a collection, but quite interestingly, is a museum. The Retrocomputing Museum is the one which receives these appreciations. Most of the softwares it contains are now a living history - environments that were once important, but are now merely antiques. And when you really try to look back on them, they would show you the paths to this modern computing softwares age. Here lies the museum......
http://www.catb.org/retro/

Third, here lies the mailing group of a unique community of classic computers. They discuss, describe and work on computers that are legacy and classic piece of the technology now. You might not get a chance to work on these classic computers, but can be a part of this community and know the computers which have really become classic today. Here follows the Classic Computers Community Website......
http://www.classiccmp.org/

Time's out for me now. Will continue with these collections in my next blog...... Cheer up till then.... :)))

Installing WLan on Linux

I installed Fedora Core 7 few days back and got a problem with the Wireless LAN. When trying to activate the eth1 interface, received the following error (followed up with the command in bold):
$ifconfig eth1 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory

When trying out to find the error, i finally got to the conclusion that the firmware files were missing. It really took a lot of effort to find this out and to get to know what needs to be done. So, I am listing out the steps that needs to followed to overcome this problem.

Try out the following: (It works finally)

Download the firmware file from the following location:
bcm43xx-fwcutter-005-1.fc6.i386.rpm

and extract it on your system using the following command.
$rpm -ivh bcm43xx-fwcutter-005-1.fc6.i386.rpm

Next, download the Broadcom 802.11g driver. You can find it in the following link:
ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_3020/driver/

Unzip the package.
$unzip WLan\ Driver\ Broadcom\ 802.11g\ 3.100.46.0.zip

Give the folder an executable permission.
$chmod +x 80211g/

Next extract the firmware from the bcmwl5.sys file (from the directory where you saved it).
$/usr/bin/bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/ ./80211g/bcmwl5.sys

If the above steps completed succesfully, then you have almost finished up. Try out the following codes and you are ready to use the WLAN.

$su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on'

$su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on'

$su -c '/sbin/service NetworkManager start ; /sbin/service NetworkManagerDispatcher start'

This finishes the installation of WLAN on your linux system. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!