Key Figures of this blog

Didn’t you think this one was coming? Of course, when reaching some important milestone, it is always satisfying to turn back and have a look at how we progressed and what we have come across.

Here are some key figures of this blog.

Blog Stats

Lifetime: Since July 25, 2006

Hits: 50020 as of yesterday

Posts: 133

Comments: 178

Top Post: Dell Inspiron 6400 – Part 4 – Installing Ubuntu 7.04

Most Active Post: Draw regular shapes using The GIMP

Other Stats:

Here are the stats about Operating Systems, Browsers and where my readers are located. These statistics have been taken from Sitemeter

1. Operating Systems: No surprises here. Win XP has a clear edge over others. The best part was the runner up. Linux at around 34 % just says a lot of people are currently using alternative operating systems. Have a look at how this graph looked was the last year. Readers using Linux have increased by 20%. Cool isn’t it? I am just curious what OS falls into the Unknown category.

2. Browsers: Again, Firefox is the clear leader. A vast majority still use IE too.

3. Reader Distribution: It is great to know that I have had atleast one reader from almost every continent on this planet. I am also more than eager to know what makes up “Unknown”. Antartica? Maybe. Maybe not.

Yet again, Thank you readers.

Graphs created using Zoho Sheet

RockYou

Today I had some free time on my hands and so thought let me have some fun. Well, this post is nothing about Linux, not even remotely technical or related to what has been going on in this blog for the past several months.

I had remembered this site called RockYou which I once used to create glitter text for one of my friend’s birthday wishes. I thought I would check out the other features and created this cool little slide show. The best part is I can post my slide show on a variety of social networking sites and blog platforms.

So here is my little slide show for all of you.

| View Show | Create Your Own

Firefox 3 Beta 1

As promised earlier, here is a quick review of Firefox 3 Beta aka Minefield. I am running the Linux version on Ubuntu 7.10 on a T5300 processor at 1.73 GHz and 1 GB RAM.

    The Beta did not find a suitable upgrade to a few themes and del.icio.us toolbar. But that     is not a major cocncern now since most of the developers would be working on it. At least I     hope they are on it

At first glance, the beta version is faster than the previous version. It also consumes less         memory. And the default theme integrates well into the desktop theme. Not only the toolbars and dialogs but also the buttons and text boxes on the web pages. Below are a few statistics.

Memory consumption on launching with a single blank tab – 23.7 MB of RAM

Launching Facebook on a single tab – 8% of CPU Max and 24 MB of RAM

Gmail on single tab – 24% of CPU Max and 40.6 MB of RAM

Ten tabs loaded with an assortment of Web 1.0 and 2.0 websites – 55 MB of RAM

There is a new Places folder which contains recently starred items, recently visited pages, recently visited starred pages, most visited pages and the like. This definitely helps in visiting pages that you are interested in. What remains to be seen is how differently can this be used when compared to Bookmarks.

A new website identification system is in place too. And this sits right where the favicon of websites appear. Clicking on it says if the site is secured or not.

And one more significant change is there is an Applications tab where one can customize which type of file should be opened using what application. I have been reading that the rendering is similar to Opera’s progressive rendering. But I still see that the entire page is rendered at one go.

So far everything looks good and it should only get better as we go through various betas and the release candidate.

1. Minefield

2.  Places

3. Preferences

Del.icio.us Preview

A while ago, I got a preview invite to the new and upcoming del.icio.us social bookmarking service by Yahoo!. But unfortunately neither do I have the time to go through it completely nor compare it with the existing service. If you have subscribed for an invite, keep an eye on the links for you section. You will get the preview link there. I am posting two screenshots for now. Hope that I would get a bit of time for a complete review next week.

1. Home Page

2. Bookmarks

Gmail – New Version

Two days back, I had a feeling that something had changed about the Gmail web interface. The More Actions drop down looked different, there was a message in red which claimed Gmail may not work well with the Firebug add-on and there were instructions to correct things, the page loaded quite slow, the mails loaded super quick, the loading box had turned yellow instead of red and appeared at the center of the page instead of the right top corner and there was a link at the top right corner which said Older Version.

I was using Mozilla Firefox 2.0.0.8 on Windows XP. Firefox crashed time and again when I closed the Gmail tab. After a bit of researching I realised that my account has been upgraded and what I was seeing was the new version of Gmail. For the purpose of this post let us call this new version Gmail 2.0 and the older version as Gmail 1.0.

What’s new?

The pop outs which are shown when the mouse is hovered on a contact name in the chat section has undergone a total overhaul.

The nick name or alias of the contact can be changed on the pop out

The contacts section has undergone a total change. Now I have a three column contact manager. The first column lists the groups with the most emailed group selected by default. The second column lists the contacts in the selected group and the third column will display the contact details if one is selected in the second column. I have one gripe there. Under the group called Most Contacted, there are people whom I have not emailed or chatted with in the past 8 months or so. I don’t get how Gmail figures out that I contact them the most.

What’s Good?

Mails load on the click since they are pre-fetched

If I am in All Mail and refresh my browser tab, I am retained in All Mail and not taken to Inbox.

The email ID is shown on the browser title bar which helps users with multiple accounts to know which account they are logged into.

The new interface for contacts is a definite plus.

What’s Bad?

Firefox 2.0.0.8 on Windows XP crashed everytime I tried to close the Gmail tab without logging out. Well, no one else uses my computer so there are no issues with security. No problem with Firfox 2.0.0.8 on Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.

If I open Gmail and Google Reader, Firefox crashed.

The entire web interface seems to be unresponsive. Even scrolling seems to be slow compared to the older version.

Conclusion

The new interface was a good move. But as always there will be bugs with new software which I hope will be fixed in the days to come. In the meanwhile I am sticking to the older version when I need to get things done on Windows and use Evolution with POP3 on Linux.

Update: Nov 13, 2007: I noticed a couple of other things too.

• When I login to Gmail using Firefox (Windows Vista) I am taken to the newer version by default even if I chose to use the older version when I logged in previously
• When I login using Internet Explorer 7 on Windows Vista, I don’t even get to know that there is a newer version available. Am I the only one sensing something here?

If you find anything peculiar please let me know.

I got IMAP on Gmail

With all the buzz surrounding the IMAP feature added to Gmail, I wanted to check if my account created almost three years ago made it to the list. Yes it did. Well, everyone seems to be posting a screen shot. So here is mine

I am sticking to POP3 for now using Evolution mail client. I archive the mail I download via POP3 and its always available to me under the All Mail link on the web interface. So there is no real problem that I see.

Whats happening to Zooomr (again)?

Well, even fully knowing what was going on with Zooomr a couple of months back, i signed up for the service yesterday.  My experience was not all that cool.

First, I tried to upload photos from my Ubuntu box and failed miserably. I tried both Firefox and Opera. No luck. I then read the zooomr blog and understood that there was a problem.I would like to note one thing. The blog they have linked to says Flickr uses a similar tool for upload and faces similar problems. if Flickr faces similar problems, then it does not imply that Zooomr should face the same issues too.

Ok, the purpose of my post is this. While I uploaded a few photos using my Windows box, I notice a general latency using the site. While I was able to switch between blog view, detail view and square view, I was not able to select an individual photo and delete. I need to delete some of the photos I have uploaded and I have been trying to get this done for two days. The response I get from the server is Zero Sized Reply

Can someone tell me how I can delete the photos?

One other thing. After I logoff and try to login from that screen, I keep getting the message Logout  Successful. Guys, I am trying to log in and not out. Providing unlimited space is one thing, providing a usable service is another. I prefer the latter.

I know there are a few of you who would tell me to use other services, fine. But, please fix your site since it gives new users like me a bad idea of what you are doing.

Closing accounts on other platforms, sites

For the past two or three months, I have been doing something very important. Closing accounts on various websites that I test. I had closed my wetpaint wiki, livejournal and tagged accounts.

While it is fun to go through each site and see what they offer,  I just dont want to have so many things and finally get into a real mess. In a short while I am planning to close Vox too and stick to WordPress. Well, Vox looks tempting but does not provide nearly as many features or the addictive stats. Sorry Vox.

Trying out Zoho Polls

Its been a while since I tried a product from Zoho. Today I got the time to do it. Zoho Polls helps creates online polls / ratings in well under a minute. Here is what I created. Let me see if it comes up. I tried to add this to the sidebar but unfortunately the poll was not displayed. So I made a post. I already have 4 votes since I created the poll.

Strangely, I was not able to post this entry from Firefox. May be one of my extensions did not like the iframe tag.

Update 1: Looks like something is wrong. The iframe did not come up even on IE. Any ideas, anyone?

Update 2: I was able to post the iframe code on Blogger. So I guess it is WordPress which eats the code. My last try. Let me save directly from the Code tab without going to the Visual tab

Update 3: No luck. Guess what, I had already received a few votes favoring WordPress 3/4. Ironically I am not able to get the poll on WordPress.

Update 4: Ok. I managed to get it online here.

about:mozilla

I am not sure if others know of this already but typing about:mozilla in the address bar of firefox gave me this screen. Could not resist posting it. It reads
And so at last the beast fell and the unbelievers rejoiced.
But all was not lost, for from the ash rose a great bird.
The bird gazed down upon the unbelievers and cast fire
and thunder upon them. For the beast had been
reborn with its strength renewed, and the
followers of Mammon cowered in horror.

from The Book of Mozilla, 7:15 

Check it out. Click for a larger image