Euphoria @ Wall Street...!

Today while exploring features of Google Finance, I saw under Tope news section about the good news for Wall Street enthusiasts; For the first time in history today the Dow Jones Industrial average crossed the 13k Mark. Basically solid earnings reports for last quarter and strong economic data help ed propel the Dow over the 13,000 mark. Now, this indeed is a good news for it does tell that US economy is doing well and Corporate Earnings are progressively increasing with companies posting higher profits and growth QoQ. To reaffirm the above fact, many (besides me) are looking forward to checking the GDP Report due out on coming Friday.
Lets hope for the best !

What amazed me today was this cool promo video on Reuters (World's Leading News Company) & Second Life (a 3D Online Digital World).

The Era Of Innovation...!

I was recently gathering informartion about new Software Startups trying to find how the dynamics of "entrepreneurship" works in IT Industry.To my utter surprise - I learnt that most of 'em prefer to operate under "stealth mode" for quite some time before going out there in open & making big news.Upon exploring for some more time - I found David Beisel's blog wherein he discusses the logic behind "stealth mode" of operation of startups - very convincing indeed !

In addition to what Davis days - operating in stealth mode gives one more time for testing the site. Afterall you can never know in reality which day of the week, a font or a theme change on your site can affect your conversions. Well then that’s what Beta Testing aims at then !!
Anyways for now I am keeping my eyes set for 3rd quarter of this year when an unknown Swedish firm plans to release a new, free operating system that might radically alter the economics of software development. For the past five years, Xcerion has been working on an XML-based Internet operating system (XIOS) that runs inside a Web browser. In a way, XIOS is an abstraction layer that sits on a true operating system like Mac OS X, or Windows or even Linux. Interestingly,XIOS aims to focus on two very basic yet indispensible entities in the world of internet - security & user experience.

While no computer system is completely secure, XIOS should be immune to most of the malware today because it runs in a sandbox, a virtual environment where code can be executed without risk to computing resources on the outside. Also, since XIOS is based on XML, the operating system, the integrated development environment (IDE), the applications, and data files are extremely portable and compatible. Applications can be easily tied to back-end XML Web services created with .Net, Java, or other Web technology. Because XIOS was built from the ground up, it includes an answer to two of the most vexing computing issues today: collaboration and keeping files backed up and synchronized across multiple machines and operating systems. All this 'n' much more for free. So keep a watch in Q3 this year for XIOS and its promising cloud based computing.

The Invisible Web...!

While going for stroll this evening, I was wondering as to how huge would Google's Index size be? 2 billion / 3 billion web pages or even more? Quickly, I searched and found that as per last official figures released by Google, it seems to have over 8 billion web pages indexed. Isn't that a LOT of information...I bet it is indeed !

Google/Yahoo or for that matter any Search Engine hasn't indexed yet. Now, isn't that interesting? Upon spending a little more time trying to demystify about such hidden information, to my utter surprise I found that there is indeed sites and pages that methodical search engines crawlers haven't crawled yet. Such Web pages are part of what's called the Dark, Deep, Hidden or Invisible Web.

Interestingly the ever smart Googlers have already filed a patent for their invention aimed at
Searching through web content accessible through web-based forms. But what if one wants to search the hidden collection of documents and a multidimensional repository for sounds, images, audio, and other formats now??

I found a few Deep Web Search Tools - hope you like them:

• CompletePlanet.com - Specialty search engine
• Directory of Open Access Journals
• Super Searchers Web Page
• Librarians Index to the Internet
• GPO Access
• The Virtual Library
• Web Lens
• Clusty- my personal favorite

Hope you enjoy searching about obscure topics. Till my next post - good bye!!

Time for Resolutions...!

New Year's is traditionally a time of resolutions. Upon returning from Winter vacations, my mind was pacing rapidly as to what ideally be this year's resolutions I might want to undertake - I decided I should better be at a place that has remained a source of hundreds of ideas in the year past by. Upon finsihing two lengths in the pool, I was wondering about what I perceive to be the most challenging part in IT Industry - is it Installing software on OS, Applying patches, writing some good code or venturing out all by ourselves (You Tube, Writely).

Hmmm...venturing out all alone seems pretty interesting ;) Lets c....!
For now, here's what I would want to look forward to in 2007:

• Try replacing at least one commercial product I use with a free alternative once a month;
• Make an informed decision when I do cosmetic changes on my blog;
• Help spread the word about Google products as part of our symbiotic relationship with Google;
• Contribute to atleast one free software project and learn more about the command-line interface
• Share my views and experiences in using Linux thru' my Blog
• Publish my Sketches on www and Innovate.
• Slow down 'n' Play ;) & yes participation in iWatch for sure.

I hereby toss off my old calendar & say good-bye to 2006 officially now all set to take control of 2007 and the world ;)