AltaVista- You would be missed!

Talking of Internet, what is the first name that comes in your mind?

 “Have a query, want to search something? Google it! “

With development in every field there are things that can never be forgotten like your old pair of jeans, memories of your school, your first pay check. In the same manner, those people who used to work on the Internet in mid 1990’s would certainly remember AltaVista.

Believe it or not before this rage of Google came, there was another search engine which held the supremacy over the Internet. If we are talking about July and loss, then one word comes to our mind- AltaVista. People from this generation probably won’t even remember or recognise it. Launched in December 1995, AltaVista was a decent search engine of that time.

Yahoo! announced AltaVista's fate on its Tumblr page late last month. Search industry expert Danny Sullivan gave a eulogy to AltaVista, depicting it as a bright child neglected by its parents.

The bang came to it in 2001, when Google hit it quite hard and surpassed in terms of searches performed. Although the later story is very familiar to us, still it depicts that AltaVista was the Google of its time.

On July 8^th, 2013, Yahoo! bid farewell to this search engine by permanently shutting it down after acquiring it in 2003. All the hits to this are getting redirected to the Yahoo! search engine now.

Sold five times from Digital to Compaq to CMGI to Overture service, Inc. and then to Yahoo!, this marked as the major reason for its decline. When you try to integrate everything in one, the basic functionality loses its essence. That is what happened to it in its course. In 1999, it was designed to be a web portal having features of email and Internet shopping, which was an unsuccessful operation. The time when it started to gain control over its features- it was too late. A new hero had already captured the market.

A very simple question still lingers- Would it be remembered and if yes then why?

Few reasons are as follows:

 It was one of the best of its time- Today, obviously when we have technology at our disposal, the pages get indexed in billions. But the scene was totally different in 1995. When Alta vista came in the market with indexing 20 million pages, this made the news. The search engines of that time like InfoSeek, Excite and OpenText, they stood staring at this craze.

Provided free services- Speaking of free services like now we have Google translate, there was Babel Fish, which could translate texts and web page is different languages. This service was the most popular of all, this embarked the reign of AltaVista from 1995 to 1998 precisely.

Services exclusive to AltaVista- When we used to type a word to be searched, the website listings with relevant information was displayed to us. In addition to that, on the very left corner, there used to be related searches that may give better result than what we actually typed.

On the whole, this marked as a great loss to us. But with an end a new beginning always sprouts. Salute to AltaVista for its services.

(Article for buyt.in)

NOKIA LUMIA 610-wanna buy it?

This is the time of technology more than anything and we are crazy about it, whether it is an  ipad, laptops, tabs or cell phones, right?

A 12^th class student enters a college, he wants a new phone. Whether it’s a new college to show some tashhan or its a new job to boast in front of others, even some people like to change their cell phone after sometime.

I come in the last category of people. Since I joined my post graduation, there was a plan of me buying it. This birthday my parents gifted me NOKIA LUMIA 610.

As i have some experience about this product so this post is regarding its positive and negative aspects. So if you are planning to buy it or just curious about it, read on.

Price-Rs 12,300 (buy from flipkart, they give best of deals)

Memory- 8 GB, 256 MB RAM

First the positive things:

1. Display- I am an avid reader and wanted a device that would ease my reading spur of PDF. It clearly scores a point in that. I tried sony tipo too, it was too small for my choice.

2. Cool interface- many of have seen windows 8 interface, it is quite similar to it, but it’s based windows 7.5(upgrade on its way).

3. Memory- if comparison is done with Lumia 510, obviously the more memory the merrier.

4. camera- its 5 megapixel camera is much better and come with flash too.

5. Multitasking- yes it came as a surprise to me too.

6. Great battery life- I just charge it for half an hour and literally its battery support is awesome. There is a facility of battery saver options too.

7. Value for money- strong build, Smartphone at this price. All an all a great offer

Now the negative point

1.     

 No Bluetooth usage- I was shocked when I bought this and i got to know its Bluetooth is used for next to nothing. No sending or receiving files anything. You can just transfer contacts using this. I read somewhere in next update may be January they are going to fix this (hoping for it literally).

2.     

 Using skydrive every time- transferring files is one of the tiresome work as first internet connection is needed in the phone for this. The time is wasted first in uploading it then downloading.

 

Zune as a pc suite- remember your last Nokia, how easy it was to connect it and transfer everything. With this new suite it is not.

  

 Can’t mark multiple contacts- if there is a message to be sent to your friends either make a group for them or select them individually.

  

 No expandable memory- it is just you and your 8 GB. Use it wisely.

  

  It Hangs- I encountered this problem just few days back, while playing a game.

  Less number of applications- there are many games that can’t work on it, for that it need at least Lumia 710. And as compare to android, many games are not free.

But after a whole month, i somehow started getting used to it. So, It is all dependents on the person, what he wants, what all specification he needs. For me, at first switching from android to it was very difficult, but now you can say I am adapted to it. It is a  good buy on the whole.

website developing tools

To develop website. There are several tools/softwares that can be used. Some of them are as follows:

IrfanView- this is one of the most simple and easy tool of all. It comes with the features that a person can use with ease.  The features like resizing the image, by percentage is one of the key feature of it.

Serif WebPlus- if you want templates and want to work on that, then this is the answer to it. it is having media utilities like for youtube , flash etc. There is nothing like only “technical people” can work on it because there is no technical wording used in this.

TopStyle- this one is for the person or professional, who have knowledge about html, or css. If you have an old html page or website and want to change it, this software will help you. 

ImageLab from Sausage Software- there are numerous of images available to the users. This is used by non-designers who want ease in their job. It is one of the best alternative to modify the clipboard images.

Blocking Social networking at work- right or wrong?

Every eight out of ten person is on social networking media, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter or any other sites. Even CEO’s, MD, managers and higher officials can be found on those media. So, if it is called as “bad” then why are they there?

The question which still prevails in most of the organizations is– should these sites be banned for employees or college students?

There are different opinions of different people. So what should be the real solution to this?

According to the Nucleus Research survey, employers are losing 1.5 workers per 100 in employee productivity to the supposed time-wasting activity known as "Facebooking." 

Even students lose their concentration while studying or while working in lab. Their mind wanders near these sites only as many of us are now addicted to it.

It is to say when given a chance, a person logs in minimum ten times in his spare time, just to see if there have been any comments on his status, or like on his picture or any updates. It can be summarized as “human behaviour”- we if given a choice would definitely divert from our work at some point of time.

As every coin have two faces so there is a second opinion on this concept too.

We all need small breaks from our work every now and then as we are humans not machines. Even if social networking is banned, it doesn’t mean employee won’t find any other means of deflecting himself from the job if he wants to.  

Same can be said for students too. There are researches which states people who took small breaks between tasks were 9% more productive than others who did not. "It gives them a chance to reset their concentration”. 

This issue is again not a scenario which can be defined as pure white or pure black. There are some gray regions in this, which needs to be addressed. On the whole, we must leave it to an individual. Let him/her decide on whether they want to waste time on such stuffs or they want to make use of it. If they don’t perform, then organization can take measures to talk to that person.

The question which now arises is how many of us would not touch social networking sites as a matter of personal discipline? 

 

And this can be answered by individuals only as they are the one who have choice to balance their job as well as their pass time. If they prefer to waste their time- then they will find other ways other than these sites. On the whole it can be productive as well as non productive, which totally depends on individual’s perceptions. Banning sites is never a solution, if they want to stimulate their productivity or educational values, may be disciplining those who don’t work as they are expected to, can be one of the solutions.

Creating website- PHP or ASP.NET or JSP

We have created a banner and logo which was a basic requirement for a website. Now we need a platform-One needs to know in which platform he/she should make a website.

The most popular is PHP and the simplest of all is ASP.NET.

One of my friends prefers JSP over these.

The key points are:

PHP

-download WAMP, LAMP, and XAMP for windows, Linux or both respectively

-install it; make sure all the “services” are online.

-this package have APACHE server needed for the PHP code to run. MYSQL is also there, we can make our databases in it.

-make your PHP files in notepad and save it as *.php

-Or we can use DREAMWEAVER

ASP.NET and JSP(java server pages)

-these both are not open source like PHP. But ASP has easier options like. Drag and drop “textbox” on your webpage directly, working with VB or C# in background.

-ASP run on IIS or PWS server (built in these days), JSP runs on Apache tomcat server.

-JSP supports real java codes and like java its platform independent

-ASP.NET can be made in DREAMWEAVER or within .NET framework.

-for database connectivity in JSP, it only needs driver of that database and it will connect to it.

So this was the basic information about the three platforms. Pick one, read online tutorial and start coding.

If you don’t want a website with backend option, then wix.com also provides great deal of website, edit it and upload it.

At first, it may be a challenge but slowly it would become more interesting day by day.