They are following me everywhere. Yes, I admit I’ve been there. But that’s not a crime!

What is more surprising than you find internet marketing ads are following you? I visited Dominio.com and NetowrkSolutions.com yesterday, and today found them following me wherever I go. On totally different content, repeatedly and on multiple sites. Here are screen-shots.

I know the only way to get rid is to clear browser cookies. I did and they went away!

[Note: Typically I use AdBlockPlus, but these days I am trying to understand how AdWords works.]

- Ankit

Now read original one:
Jena is a semantic web framework implemented in Java. It allows you to store/query/inference RDF/RDSF/OWL triples. In Jena a set of triples (in RDF) are called Model or stored within Model object. By default Jena creates in-memory models, but this is not suitable if you have pretty large set of triples to process. Here comes SDB to rescue you. It’s a component of Jena that allows you to store these models in relational databases like MySQL, MSSQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, etc; This post describes my experience while setting up SDB on Ubuntu.

and what’s the title of my blog?
तु मेरी जिंदगी है!

lol…

Where did this come from?
Google अनुवाद

Well, it’s not that bad. For Hindi translation simply converting words and reordering subject/verb/object is not enough. Where does the semantic/context go?

[ What is Google Maps?
Google Maps is a web mapping service application and technology provided by Google. It offers street maps, a route planner for traveling by foot, bicycle, car, or public transport and an urban business locator for numerous countries around the world. It also can help find the location of businesses.

I want to be there, but how?
All you need is to contribute via Google Mapmaker. Start tagging places/buildings for the areas you know or lived. And one day you will be listed on Google Maps . It took me a week for ~100 edits.
]

[ Update 2009-07-13: My edits are now visible on Google Maps.. Hurray !!

Update 2009-08-03: Now in search results too. Check D-cabin, Ahmedabad
]

- ankit

1. Created a reply mail (in Gmail).
2. Attached two files. One of them was malicious ‘installed.php’. The attachment was successful.
3. Saved draft.
4. Clicked ‘Send‘ button, and got confirmation about successful send.
5. Now when I clicked ‘Your message have been sent. View message.‘, voila! nothing happen and it didn’t even showed me my mail.
6. Later after few hour I realized that mail has not been sent and still there as draft!

That’s why they call it beta!

[ Note: Ideally a message with viruses should not circulated. My concern in this post is the invalid message/alert displayed to user! ]

- ankit

I have verified and this trick works!!! Once your account is hacked, even changing the password has no effect either.

Few months back I have written a post about our online privacy. And this is an example of how worse it can happen to you. Your views are welcomed.

Note: Recently one bug in Google Search caused all results to be flagged as malware.

- ankit

1. Did you ever wish to run two instances for GTalk? This is possible and plain simple. Navigate to the shortcut that launches Google Talk (if not available, right click on C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe and select Create Shortcut). Open properties. Add /nomutex in the target textbox.
2. To keep GoogleTalk always on top: Go to the registry entry HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Google\Google Talk\Options, create a new DWORD show_pin and set its value to 1. Restart GTalk and you will see a pin near the minimize button.
3. To bring all GTalk windows in front press [Win] + [Esc] keys on keyboard.
4. To write in bold use *this text is bold* and for italic _this is italic_.
5. Coping someone’s avatar: Navigate to %userprofile%\AppData\Local\Google\google talk\avatars\. This directory contains all avatars cached in PNG format (rename them). Search by email in avatar.txt to find your friends avatar.

- ankit

Tiles: The very first observation is – not whole map is fetched at once. Instead the entire map is divided into tiles and a series of Ajax requests are fired to retrieve some part of the actually map. As soon as a tile is fetched it is displayed at its position. Their position is well calculated no matter user drags the maps while requests are on the way. The benefit here is, the user interface remains responsive and it makes user eager to analyze an area of map as soon as it’s available.

Overlaying: The tiles can be considered basic unit of mapping applications. They are atomic and have minimal required information. The DHTML allows overlapping one tile (image) over another and makes development easier. Here is how.

For each type of data there exists an independent tile. The Ajax application retrieves these tiles and overlaps one above another. For example – the user requests to see map and satellite image together, and here is how the rendered image is showed.

	+
||

Tiles are Independent: Each tile is an independent unit and its request can be customized from client browser itself. For example making a request of http://kh2.google.com/kh?n=415&v=22&hl=en&t=trtssqrtqsqqtqq returns -

This is a newer image. While the request for http://kh2.google.com/kh?n=415&v=21&hl=en&t=trtssqrtqsqqtqq yields and older image for the same area.

Here the difference in the requests is of a single parameter ‘v’ and as per my guess its ‘version’. The next parameter ‘t’ seems a combination of zoom index, and the corner coordinates. For tiles of type map having some text, their language can be controlled using ‘hl=en’. Try using ‘hl=ru’ and you can see difference. So, the JavaScript executing in the client’s browser has complete control over what to display.

Ajax: Probably this needs to be the first point I should discuss. Google Maps does not use XMLHttpRequest for making Ajax calls. Instead, they have used I-FRAME (iFrame) for preloading images. When you use Firebug you won’t be also to trace any XMLHttpRequest calls. I think the reason for this would be the difficulty in using and image/jpeg response from XMLHttpRequest as an image object and display it in browser.

- ankit

I’m {PREF=”ID=cfd6bd57439bc4a9:TM=1205732323:LM=1205732323:S=tT1f1NaLxjumQJbv”}. I’m a regular Internet surfer. On an average I’m online for more than 8 hours a day and that makes me to think of a new phrase – ‘my online presence’, and somewhere it may hurt my privacy.

In Web 2.0 big companies are competing to gain as much as information about Internet users that they can show targeted contents especially ads.

The game players have already begun their game. They know about what web pages I visit, they know my friends, they know what I prefer to buy online, then know which newspaper I read frequently, which mail account I use frequently, what do I search every day, what videos I watch online, where do I live, how much time I spend on Internet, what types of ads made me to click. They have my all photographs, my daily calendar/schedule, my mails (may be your credit card statements in form of emails), and all my chat conversations. They even know what music I listen, my attitude, my behavior, and even what I’m doing currently.

They say it’s all automatic, machines (computers) read and process information giving you personalized service and there is no human interference. But reality may be different. Is all that these sufficient to protect your privacy?

Here is a bigger fear, giving all of your information in the hands on one single body! A single mistake in handling such massive information can lead to world’s biggest controversy in user’s privacy.

In short, I don’t want anybody to know the fact that the wristwatch I have given to my girl-friend for her last birthday was of just 100 bucks!

- ankit

• Is that to make money to run this website through ads?
• Making an identity on Internet?
• Being on the top of Google?
• Sharing my knowledge?
• Having a platform to write and publish what I think and what I like?

It means all for me , and that’s why I write blog. I remember the day when Dad subscribed for an ISP, and I touched Internet first time (1999). Those were the days of Netscape Navigator v4.5 and Yahoo rocking all around. Netscape had a build-in HTML editor, that attracted me right away and I started playing with those tags without any book/reference. It was not just an attraction, it was more than a passion which led me to Computer Science engineering and being an IT professional.

I have been in this business since college days, when we friends (Vinod, Saurabh, … ) just fought to build a better and informative website using free hosting packages. We always kept track of new web-based-services. Even though we encouraged students by organizing Best Web Programmer contest – not only building a website but also publishing it. The fight continued and we need something to update that HTML content regularly. Actually, we were looking for something that allows us to modify HTML pages without any hassle and publish right away from anywhere. Here we encountered the term “dynamic website”, and started looking for open source forums/blogs/journals. That fever continued and compelled me to buy a domain and host my blog.

Hmm, so that’s now called blogging fever….
we discuss about blogs, ask people to visit ours, keenly wait for comments!

That’s how I started !!!

~ Ankit

Blogs around me:Chirag, Mohit, Harsha, Kiran & more…