The other day I came across this blog post “That Dirty (Sri Lankan) Mind“. The first thing I got in mind: “Seriously, WTF?”.

I’m not quite sure whether google place suggestions according to the relevance. But seems like it is.

Today I found these two screenshots, google suggestions for sara and rajap on my friend @laktek’s Tweet. And felt like looking for more.

So I looked for ‘how to’. See the results for yourself.

Seriously? How to get Pregnant? Oh c’mon Sri Lankans.
I don’t know why I felt like checking out Google.in for same thing. (Maybe I was looking for a way outta this shame ;) ).

See? We are not screwed. Yet. Apparently India screws up suggestions for us (It’s good to have a great neighbor :P ).

I checked the Google trends for “How to get pregnant” to be sure.

So it’s time to remove some bras.

Google Sri Lanka suggestions for “removing”

Google india Suggestions for “removing”

And now let’s see who really don’t know how to remove a bra.

Now that’s a big relief :D. Eff you Goog. We know how to remove bras, eyes wide shut :P

The privacy is again in hot zone of topics in communities I follow. The reason is @ericschmidt, Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

The register reports, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place,” under the heading “Google chief: Only miscreants worry about net privacy”. That’s how journalists do it. Let’s have a better perspective on the subject.

“Judgment matters… If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place… If you really need that kind of privacy, the reality is that search engines – including Google – do retain this information for some time and it’s important, for example, that we are all subject in the United States to the Patriot Act and it is possible that all that information could be made available to the authorities.”

Quoted from Eric Schmidt on CNBC video found here (some interesting stuff about Schmidt too ;) ).

Doesn’t really sound as bad as The Register report, but still it’s bad.

Google has to obey the laws, I agree, and the laws are not perfect. Anyway laws and regulations is not the only reason they track and log certain information. It’s a part of their business model.

Google offers simply awesome services and I find it really difficult to stay away from all that awesomeness thinking of privacy issues that doesn’t seem to be hrmful for the time being. Hope it’s the case for you too.

It’s not only Google that we should be alarmed of. Recently Yahoo said something similar to “Our Spy Capabilities Would ‘Shock’, Consumers“. Is that sound frightening?

So I think it’s the time to at least stay concious about these issues, if not to stay away. I would rather ask Google than a friend, of a private and sensitive question, thinking my secret is also gone with the closed search page. But it’s not the case anymore. Unfortunately.

Note: Find some interesting ideas about privacy, on secutiry guru Bruce Schneiers blog

My tweet you just read says the long story short. In case you didn’t come across, Google made DNS a buzzing topic again with Google Public DNS. So I felt like trying a dns cache again. The logic is “If a better DNS server makes things better, DNS cache makes it even better.”

This is more of a note to self than a HOWTO. If your use case atches with mine, feel free to use this.

My use case: I use an HSDPA, mobile broadband connection on Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope.

Install pdnsd with,

$sudo apt-get install pdnsd

Now launch the text editor you hate and add following to /etc/pdnsd.conf

(By default all the parts are commented so just adding this was fine enough for me)

server {
ip=208.67.222.222 , 8.8.8.8;
timeout=5;
interval=30;
uptest=ping;
ping_timeout=50;
purge_cache=off;
}

global {
 perm_cache=5120;
 cache_dir="/var/cache/pdnsd";
 min_ttl=15m;       // Retain cached entries at least 15 minutes.
 max_ttl=1w;        // One week.
 timeout=10;        // Global timeout option (10 seconds).
}

I copied this piece from here and edited ;). Added the global field because defaults were not cool enough for me. And in ip field I’ve put respectively OpenDNS and Google DNS addresses. You can just add one address there. ‘man pdnsd.conf’ will teach you more about the content in the file.

Once you are done editing the configuration file restart pdnsd with

$sudo /etc/init.d/pdnsd restart

Now you should tell the network manager to look for pdnsd for it’s DNS needs.

Right click network manager icon and then follow Edit Connections > Mobile Broadband and choose to edit your preferred network connection.

In Editing <Your Network Connection> dialog box,
[1] Choose IPv4 Settings tab
[2] Choose Automatic Addresses (ppp) Only in Methods Dropdown box.
[3] Set DNS Servers field to 127.0.0.1 (which refers to pdnsd in our case)

And obviously, Apply Changes :P .

If everything went fine, you are now ready to enjoy DNS cache goodness with pdnsd.

You can check how good is it with dig command.

ex:
$dig yahoo.com

run this command twice and compare Query time field.

Note: If you followed all the steps but still it doesn’t work, try restarting pdnsd. If you get following error refer this page

/etc/resolv.conf must be a symlink

Update: Added the global settings for config file.

It’s over. The fight against the dynamic DNS is over for me now. It took me so long to figure this simple thing out. But I don’t worry, even the big bro Goog couldn’t come up with a satisfying straight answer for my problem. So I myself searched under the mattress & found the pea which took my good night sleep (I’m neither a princess nor prince ;) ).

Sometimes back I had to come up with a pretty shitty solution for a shitty problem. No I didn’t won’t to show how bad my thinking or coding is. But wanted to show how shitty is the service of my ISP. But however the right way to fix all those are here with me. And I’m gonna share it with you.

If you use wvdial to dial up (Ok, now only seven people at most will continue reading this) for your internet connection, and you hate the DNS servers come your way automagically, here’s what to do.

Open /etc/ppp/peers/wvdial with your favorite text editor & comment the line usepeerdns. I mean make it look like #usepeerdns. Now wvdial won’t ask pppd to fetch those crappy DNS addresses again.

So go and edit your /etc/resolv.conf file and add you favorite DNS servers there. Mine looks like following.

nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220

Wonder why I use 127.0.0.1 there? That’s because I’m a happy user of dnsmasq (I recommend you to use it). I used this simple HOWTO to install it on Ubuntu. There should be other guides & HOWTOs which might match you (In case that one doesn’t fit). Just ask big bro Goog.

And other nameservers are of the nice free DNS service OpenDNS.

Hope everyone knows that something went wrong with Google for some time. 6:30 a.m. PST and 7:25 a.m on 1/31/2009 as Google says. They marked all their search results as harmful sites. Here’s photo proof from dave winer (I didn’t witeness the error. Unfortunately :) ).

Google made a statement on the incident on their official blog. At first they were trying to ( may be not intentionally) put the blame on stopbadware.com . Here’s what stopbadware people have to say.

Things are all fine by now (at least it seems to be). But what about those people who found your site on Google at the time the error occurred? Ok count the geeks, nerds, web junkies, net savvy people & people with better IQ out (Since they notice it’s an error). But still there’s a huge portion of surfers who really don’t know that what happened was an error. So what should Google do? Apologize on their homepage and/or search result pages ? What do you think.

Twitter is becoming a way of life. So it has it’s own culture grown around it. Many bloggers have written so many articles about this very fact. Specially people were worrying about Twitter etiquette or we can call it twittiquette :D. I don’t know if you should follow any rules in tweeting but I have my own set of… well I’ll call them habits. I don’t call them rules because I don’t necessarily so strictly follow them. But I always be careful to continue with these habits. Some of them are self defined while some are learnt from web and also other tweople.

So here goes my twitter habits list.

• I try to post something useful to everyone.

I do this most the time I tweet. Sharing knowledge, news or fun stuff are the best things we can do with Twitter. Those are the main reasons why I use twitter. And that’s why Twitter is so popular.

• I do not post too much of personal things.

Twitter asking “What are you doing?”. But things are changed, or more precisely “evolved”. So I don’t post so much personal stuff unless it’s cool, or useful to someone else or *Very* *Very* important to myself.

• I do not chat on Twitter.

I know very well that Twitter is not an IM client :P . And I know really well that I hate when I see 3-4 replies to same twitter name in a line.

• I do not post welcome messages to followers.

I think this is an annoyance for current followera. This is a good way to show that you are caring. But there are better ways doing that retweet, being in conversation (replying to tweets) are two of them. Or else there’s something called Direct Messages :P

• I send a short description with the links I post.

I’ve seen automagic link posts saying currently browsing ‘link’. No on will click those links unless they are there to just waste time (or atleast I won’t click such links unless I’m killing time). So I try to give a little idea on the content of the link.

• I retweet cool stuff.

If I find something cool on twitter I can just say ‘@dude cool!’. But this will be just garbage to people who follow me but do not follow dude. If I can Retweet (RT) AND say cool, That’s the best thing I can do to show my love. But I carefully decide when/how to do this.

Update 24/4/09 : Now You can thank on Twitter with Twollars.

• I haven’t set any automattic updates on my Twitter.

Yes I know I can set certain stuff to be automatically dumped in to my twitter timeline. But I don’t like it. I wanna keep things real, when I can. I don’t autopost, at least my blog content.

• I read most of tweets on my timeline.

This helps being in conversation. there’s no point of being on twitter if I don’t read the tweets of tweople I follow. But most probably,  won’t read any @ replies going to people who I don’t know unless.. as always.. it’s important to me (I have good scanning capabilities built-in :) . so I scan through my timeline so effectively) .

• I don’t like to post 10-15 messages in a line.

I hate when I see my timeline flooded by a bunch of messages from a single tweeter (Unless there is something very interesting). So I try to avoid me doing it.

• I follow people who follow me & reply me.

I do this because I feel that they are really in conversation with me & so I should follow them.

• I’m friendly. I just be selective when I chose whom to follow.

I can’t explain this :) .

• I very very very very rarely post good mornings or good nights.

I don’t think it’s necessary unless it can add more spice to the moment or you have a new cool way to say it. IRC do not want away messages, Twitter do not want good mornings.

• If I unfollow I give a reason.

This will help her to know if somethings wrong & perhaps give reasons (and eventually stay friends forever :) ). If I just want to unfollow or I think you are a spam bot I won’t bother to give any reasons though.

Can’t call these habits, but I do these too…

• Having a profile image & a bio.

I check for these when I’m gonna follow some one. A good/creative bio would impress me. So I hope I can impress others with mine. I kept a link to my blogs about page in my twitter bio. But learned it’s not nice & wrote a bio inspired by the bio of my friend @seejay (I changed it :D ).

• A unique and/or clear theme for twitter page.

By the word ‘theme’, I mean ‘background & colors’. I created my Twitter background even before I see anyone else’s custom background. I just used my Twitter background to show my love to some things I really love. The theme is a good way to stand out. And keeping it simple & clear helps your followers reading your tweets without problems. Yes I always check Twitter pages of people I follow time to time even though I use a twitter client do most twitter activities.

I never ever say that ‘you should’, or at least ‘you better’ follow these habits. These are just personal opinions of me. If you too feel anyone or other is good, you can follow them. Just help to make a better twitterverse, the way you can. Anything to add (or remove)?, place your thoughts in comments. And if these habits make you feel that I’m worth a follow Here is my Twitter :)

May be you’ve got it right. I meant Digg gossip. This is something I heard..well..read somewhere on Freenode. It’s all about how few geeks think about Digg. All nicks are replaced with x,y,z since I don’t have any right to publish them.

17:55 < yyyyyyyyyy> xxxxxx: my favorite is definitely hacker news http://news.ycombinator.com/

18:01 <@xxxxxx> yyyyyyyyyy: looks a lot like reddit
18:01 <@xxxxxx> UI wise
18:02 < yyyyyyyyyy> ya i’m thinking thats so the actual page can be an rss
18:03 < yyyyyyyyyy> digg lost its tech focus so i also decided to switch
18:04 <@xxxxxx> well digg sold out
18:05 <@xxxxxx> the founders are now very rich people
18:05 <@xxxxxx> they probably don’t give a shit about the site any more, and read whatever they want
18:05 <@xxxxxx> laughing all the way to the bank
18:05 < yyyyyyyyyy> a la kevin rose heh
18:05 <@xxxxxx> ..like kevin rose

18:07 < yyyyyyyyyy> the idea of the new engine that a diverse set of people need to digg something is dumb imo and i think ruined the site
18:08 < yyyyyyyyyy> you end up with all funny/bash articles

18:09 < chanux_> keep digg.txt
18:10 < zzzzzzz> u still have slashdot imo
18:10 < chanux_> sorry :P

Here I’ve mistakenly typed in “keep digg.txt”. /keep is the alias for dumping the chatlog in to a file ;)

Finally I have managed to come to an end of the loooong expedition. The expedition insearch of an RSS reader. A good one. One that fits Chanux’ needs. One like Google reader. Oops… I said that.

OK let’s face it. The best RSS reading experience I ever had was with Google reader (GR). I really like all the control I get over my subscriptions, through Google reader. But I wanted to switch. Yes I have reasons.

** Google Readers bandwidth usage is pretty high.
This maybe a myth. But I believe that I experienced it at the last time I used it. And my Internet connection has a bandwidth limit.

** I want to get rid of cloud madness. I’m afraid of cloud.

** I want my RSS subscription to be with me even when I’m out of internet. (now I have my HP mini with me all the time :D )

Because of those reasons I wanted an alternative & was googling for Good, great, nice, Google reader like RSS readers all the time. I found a lot of RSS readers & actually tried following readers. All I have to say is here in the shortest way I can express.

Mozilla Thunderbird. (Mozillas email/news reader : seejay suggested)

• I didn’t like the overall experience at all. (Only RSS experience. It’s my primary mail client).
• It downloads the RSS headings & then fetch the page itself when requested. I don’t like that.

Snownews. (Command Line Interface tool : found when googling)

• Since this is a CLI tool I really liked it.

• But had problems importing my GR feeds list (you have to convert xml to snownews format). Too lazy to ‘investigate’.

Snowl. (Firefox extension : found when googling)

• The interface was not compelling.
• I didn’t like the user experience.
• Less control over feed etching (or I didn’t find proper controls ).
• Annoying bandwidth overhead.

Brief. (Firefox extension : found on mozilla site)

• Great/cool user Interface.
• Usability, control over feed fetching is great.
• Almost GR like navigation with “Headline View”.

• Author of the software says that he doesn’t have plans to implement synchronization with GR. (Well I still want my RSS be synced with GR).

Akregator. (I knew that : seejay was using)

• Good interface.
• It’s KDE software (I <3 KDE) .
• Easy navigation with widescreen view (for me).
• Sync with GR is somewhere in the air :D .

• (my) processor cries in compact view.
• Couldn’t find syncing anywhere other than developer chit chat.

Conclusion:
Akregator & Brief will saty here with me. But I’ll choose one as my primary RSS reader soon. Most the time it’ll be akregator because hopefully it’ll sync with GR. Yes GR sync definitely makes akregator win over Brief even though Briefs’ User Interface is GREAT.

Note: AFAIK snownews & akreagtor do not have Windows versions. Thunderbird, snowl & Brief are available for win. For a long list of RSS tools check this great post. But Please choose free & open source software.

At the moment I post this, mumbai is still on fire & Twitterverse is hot.

The fear & disgust of mumbai terrorist activities are still haunting in minds of people who were interested. Terrorism should be kicked out of this universe. I said that just to keep the tradition. Terrorism is here to stay, forever. Just because world is never gonna stop producing idiots. period.

Why I blog on this topic? Because I also ‘engaged’ in conversation. And also I had a chance to involve in, react to & communicate with the rest of the world who were busy with making things a liiitle bit better using IT. And I’m going to key in my experiences, ideas on mumbai incident.

First of all I should thank Twitter for being the *BEST* news provider of Mumbai incident. Yes it’s all done by users but being the platform is more than great. People asked for help, gave help, arranged things, shared ideas, gathered info using twitter. Twitter search channel for #mumbai hashtag was really busy. I was refreshing the twitter search page for a long time trieng to give my 2 cents for the effort of making things a bit better. I found this site through #mumbai twitter channel which helped me to stay updated so easily.

By the time I joined the channel, I found lots of people posting useful helpline numbers on the channel. Many were asking for the numbers too. When watching things go..err…fly I got this idea, getting all the numbers in one list. Yes was too lazy to collect those and put together. Instead I did this. Created a Twitter search URL which would list all help line numbers people posted on twitter. (I didn’t like people posting same thing again & again & stuffing the list).

Later people came up with several other sites/blogs which provided help line numbers & other help details in one place. There was a wiki page also. It was really nice to see people gather & do stuff online to help people in need. mumbaihelp is one blog & helpmumbai is another. I’m happy that even I could help in those efforts in some way. I tweeted with @dina & @shonali while things go on.

@vinu is known to be the one with most mumbai incident photos on flickr. And those photos were reported to be posted somewhere else without authors permission.

Amongst different news, there were tweets saying that Indian govt. demanding #mumbai channel to be closed, because there was the possibility for terrorists picking clues through tweets.

What happened was really unpleasant. But It was really a good experience collaborating online, in order to do some good in a very bad situation.

I wish fast recovery to mumbai & everyone hurt, Peace to the world…someday.

Side Talk…

I don’t know if there is a debate on whether Twitter can make money. But however I found following Tweet by @ev which makes me think so.

Email: “Your domain name (twitter.com) has been found online. Please let us know your price.” (And people say we can’t make money!) [Original Tweet]

And also I found this article by @davewiner which implies Twitter is not making much money yet. And more here.

And to add some more details, check Twitter about page. Following is an excerpt from money section of twitter about page

While our business model is in a research phase, we spend more money than we make.

Hmm.. I went so far away from the topic. But later on you’ll realize that it’s “not that far away” :) .

cheers!

On Topic

From the day I realized that the ‘following’ list of a Twitter page lists users in order of joining, I wanted to find who is the first user. I was checking the very first users listed on following lists of famous tweeple. Finally I found the way in to Twitter employees’ Twitter pages. Namely I checked twitter pages of @jack , @biz & @ev . Finally I realized that I can’t find any one before @jack (jack dorsey). And by the time I was messing up with twitter API and I could collect following details.

$curl http://twitter.com/users/show/<user_name>.xml

@jack
<user>
<id>12</id>
<name>Jack Dorsey</name>
<screen_name>jack</screen_name>
<location>SF</location>
<description>A sailor, a tailor.</description>

@biz
<user>
<id>13</id>
<name>Biz Stone</name>
<screen_name>biz</screen_name>
<location>Berkeley, CA</location>
<description>Co-founder of Twitter</description>

@crystal
<user>
<id>15</id>
<name>crystal</name>
<screen_name>crystal</screen_name>
<location>San Francisco</location>
<description>Twitter Support</description>

@jeremy
<user>
<id>16</id>
<name>Jeremy</name>
<screen_name>jeremy</screen_name>
<location>San Francisco</location>

If I try to retrieve time line of the user number one I get following result.
You can see that the message is created in 2006 & whoever created message has used twttr, the name used to twitter at first.

$ curl http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/1.xml
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<statuses type=”array”>
<status>
<created_at>Mon Jul 10 14:21:11 +0000 2006</created_at>
<id>9267</id>
<text>just setting up my twttr</text>
<source>&lt;a href=&quot;http://help.twitter.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&amp;id=75&quot;&gt;txt&lt;/a&gt;</source>

However This doesn’t belong to the user number 1. There’s a user named 1 @1 :D & this belongs to him. And he has 73 followers :D . I hope this is the first twitter account. The only update of @1 is done via text. Maybe that’s done for testing update from text. By the way it’s Twitter ID 436.

Again went off on a tangent. Yes we’re going insearch of the Twitter user number one.

Following is the result I get when I try to retrieve friends list for user number 1. Request for friend list can be done by user number. That’s why I use this.

$ curl  http://twitter.com/stasuses/friends/1.json

<html><body>You are being <a href=”http://twitter.com/login”>redirected</a>.</body></html>

Yes as you can see I’m being redirected. If you closely check the user details I mentioned before you’ll realize that user number 14 is also missing.

So finally I come to this conclusion. Twitter user number 1-11 are still there wasted. And the practical first Twitter user is @jack. And I want you to jump back to the first portion of this article. Remember we were talking about making money?

This money making idea is not originally mine. My best bud @seejay came up with this idea when I talked to him about very topic.

On IM seejay said :

“It means Twitter can make money selling those IDs on ebay?”

Hell yeah. They can make money (If they like).

I think it’s possible for Twitter guys to get those accounts back & I hope there will be people to buy those accounts for unbelievable prices. I say that because this actually happened :D .

Get some money and improve our loving Twitter dear Twitter guys. Give me few bucks if you like. well…forget seejay in this case ;) .