Google wave - 1st impression

Today I got invite for Google wave in the morning and that reminded me of getting invite of Gmail in early 2004 :) and almost after a year this news inspired me to update my almost dead blog with another post. Anything for Google GOD :) I hope this will change the way people converse over net.

I started using Google Wave but realized I need users to test anything.. it was like just messaging and chatting with myself. So gave away 8 invites to facebook/twitter friends within 10 min. But they did not receive email that time (not up till right now when I am writing this blog). So had to wait untill I see anyone in my contact list.

Finally I saw couple of people online I did my testing...





My Definition : Google wave is advance group chat + offline chat (threaded email) function

Like:

• 1st look is like normal group chat but with lot more feature like edit and reply to any thing in on going conversation to make it better.
  
• Posting options - there are nice options like G+ where u can search and attach web result, image, video etc etc, attachment and gadget (youtube etc)
  
• Playback feature - like u can play timeline to see which message came and reply and edits and feel like actual conversation
• Reply to any message in between to avoid confusion due to multiple topic discussion
  
• Can really change the way people group chat and make plans. New idea and I really liked it.
  

Dislike:

• You can actually see what other person typing in real time (with irritating lag) including what he typed wrong and back spaced and retyped. Google should give option to disable it.
  
• Lack of embedded option but i think this is early beta version. They will include it soon.
  
• When more than 2 ppl in thread, things might get too confusing as anyone can edit anything and reply to any message in between so to track its difficult and confusing
• Long threaded conversation looks dirty when you see overall picture
  
• Little complicated for non techy person
• Everyone needs to understand what it is like chat or email then only useful
• Still needs to add lot more features (gadgets) like poll.
  

Final take : Great idea, I like it, but I don't know how public will adopt.

Topic is still open to discuss and I will keep adding points to this.

Split your Expenses

Sharing accomodations and expenses, is a way of living for most of the foreign students and legal workers from other countries in US. The trend is picking up in other countries as well. The worst part of staying in a group, is to maintain the bills and expenses. Usually each and everyone has turns to maintain bills and expenses. (Thanks to Microsoft Excel). The bills are given to the person who is handling the expenses and acts as the admin to maintain the same. The task is always hectic and being monetary many a times the admin comes into scrutiny for even small mistakes.

Now here is an automated Expense Management System Gyaati.com, which has been developed based on Web 2.0 concepts and open sourcing. The whole system is developed keeping in mind the needs of people who are sharing expenses aka accomodation but find it difficult to maintain and track the expenses. The system solely works on Social Networking (Or Can we term as Partner networking), where each and every user would register to the site and form a group (People who are sharing the expenses) in the same.

Any expenses by any one in the group, would be sent as a email notification to the other member of the group, for their approval. Once the Transaction is approved, the monetary transfer would be performed in person by the group members. Site provides the group members with tracking, based on approved, approval pending. And ofcourse a tab to Create aka logging in the expenses. One person, can be a part of many groups (One for accomodation sharing, One for Car pooling, one for Weekend Outings etc etc.). The expense sheets and data would be available only for the members of the group. Atmost care has been taken for even transaction types. Like equal splitting or different expense split among members. The second one usually comes in Hindu community when some members of the group have Non Vegeterian and some not.(Usual Problem I face :)) ). The other feature includes leaving messages for partners. Remember the stickies on the walls.

Source: Watblog

UPDATE : Recently I came across better and more sophisticated way of doing same thing on Bill Monk. Check out various options. I am sure you are going to love that site.

Website to watch : bug me not - Goowy

You're browsing the web and you click a link to an article on a site (let's say nytimes.com) but instead of getting the article you get a screen asking you to login or register. Infuriated at the idea of pointlessly registering for yet another site you turn to your good buddy bugmenot.com
I am sure you must be tired and came across many times like that where you have just register to get excess. Just visit www.bugmenot.com you will find login for most of the sites.
Bypass compulsory registration and save your time and annoying spam in your mailbox.

Another one I found something different style of email - a virtual desktop. Cool one. Check out www.goowy.com. it gives you everything you need in a fresh, simple package, including an instant messenger that lets you chat with your buddies from any network, powerful e-mail, contacts & calendar, customized news, rss, minis, file storage, sharing & finally some fun games when you just want to relax.
I feel its too cool. I guess google should look at that side and learn something or just buy that site or technology.

Enjoy those two sites. Enjoy. leave a comment about both.

Convert any file format to almost any other format

Forget about all those "Save As" feature (in Microsoft word/Google's Writely/Office 2007 etc..
A simple solution is handy.

Zamzar - a web-based file conversion application handles almost all sorts of file conversions.
For e.g.
Image conversion - bmp to jpeg/gif/tiff/ps and vice versa
Music formats - ac3 to aac/au/mp3/m4a/ogg/wav and vice versa
Video formats - avi to wav/mp3/gif/mpg and more..and of course vice versa
Document formats - doc to png/html/pdf/ps/txt and more..and more.

How does Zamzar works?

All you need to do is:

1. Upload the file
2. Select the conversion format,
   
3. and Enter your email id

The only issue with Zamzar is it's limitation on upload size - i.e. only 100MBs size is allowed, but I hope they will look into this in future.
Overall, a damn cool application

Source : Zamzar, Ashish Sinha Blog

Tired of spam in your mail box?

Maybe you want to sign up for a site which requires that you provide an e-mail address to send a validation e-mail to. And maybe you don't want to give up your real e-mail address and end up on a bunch of spam lists.

there is a tendency among web sites to ask for your e-mail in order to track you down somehow or keep statistics of their own. For example, want to download something? give us your e-mail! This doesn't seem so bad at first but wait a minute! Giving away your address lets them know where they can reach you. And unfortunately a great deal of them takes advantage of that. For starters they decide to subscribe you to their mailing list, sending your their daily or weekly newsletter. Others sell your address to marketing firms which in turn use it to promote their customers' products.

In the end you end up with a dozen or so e-mails a day in your Inbox that you don't care and never asked for. What can you do?

I came across two website which can help you and escape from such situation.

1. www.dodgeit.com This website gives you every email adress without saying you it is used by someone. When you are asked for your e-mail, give a random abc@dodgeit.com. No registration required! After that, visit dodgeit.com and check your e-mail (still without any registration or password). you just have to search it for abc or your expected email content.
2. www.10minutemail.com you will be given a temporary e-mail address. Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page. You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them. The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.

So difference between two sites will be

• Dodgeit will give u email ID with email ID of your choice and will be there on the server for 7 days and by searching anyone can see the information in the mail
• 10minutemail gives you a unique email ID but it will be deleted in 10 minutes.
  

So basically you will use this email IDs when you just require once to register with some site once and just click on the link to verify and to avoid spam in the future.

Enjoy. Happy Spam free mail now on.

Update : Other email sites I like from normal Yahoo or Gmail

Goowy
it gives you everything you need in a fresh, simple package, including an instant messenger that lets you chat with your buddies from any network, powerful e-mail, contacts & calendar, customized news, rss, minis, file storage, sharing & finally some fun games when you just want to relax.

Gabmail
Send video mail in 3 clicks. Worth checking out. no need of registration and very easy to use tool.

Pookmail
Pookmail is somewhat similar to dodgeit. if you are bored or want some advance option you can use pookmail

Tempmail
Another brother of that catagory temp mail.

Mailinator
Another option to avoide spam