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We have millions of websites in this Internet world. Each one uses a particular site and has a favorite of their own. If you ask me then I would say – My favorites are Google, Wikipedia, CodeProject, Computer World, PC World, and for entertainment it would be – YouTube, musicindiaonline and for mail services – Gmail and Yahoo, communities like orkut and various other sites for the Geek ofcourse how can I forget wordpress.
But, The Guardian Journalists have presents the Top 100 among the million websites available. They have categorized the websites and presented the top few in each category accounting it to 100. The Guardian itself has a website of its own having 9m users and 100m page impressions a month.
Activism
Art
Blogs
Buying and selling
www.joshrubin.com/coolhunting/
Community
Education
Gaming
Health
News
Search
Readers’ favourites
www.wikipedia.org www.cursor.org www.limmy.com www.yell.com www.musicplasma.com remogeneralstore.com www.moimoimoi.co.uk
And the list goes on here
Its really interesting to study the top 100 websites, but I feel each one of us will have our own top 100.. Well, Can I know whats ur top 5 at least.. 
One More search engine adds to the list. Will it be a rival for Google or Yahoo search engine? The new search engine will be a product from the founder of the very famous online encyclopedia Wikipedia. The name of the project being called as “Wikiasari” is also linked with amazon.com and is scheduled to be launched early next year. Wikipedia is a big online encyclopedia community which allows the users of the web named as wikipedians who write the articles and it also has the facility were any user can edit the article. Wiki provides articles in various domains. Users interested in their own domain write articles and publish and it is reviewed by the readers of the article. I really love this system and use wikipedia for reading most of the articles. Wikipedia already has a search for its own website where users of web can search the wikipedia for articles, but now it extends to the entire web.
According to Mr. Wales the founder of Wikipedia to Times:
Google has grown, obvious flaws in its search engine technology have become apparent.
“Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term ‘Tampa hotels’, for example, and you will not get any useful results,” he said.
Technically speaking this is what Mr. Wales had to say:
Google searches are conducted using an algorithm that calculates how many other websites are linked to a certain site, which in turn gives the material found by the search a ranking. Therefore, the first result in any Google search is the website that has the most links pointing to it.
Wikipedia is an encyclopaedia written by thousands of contributors from around the world, known as “Wikipedians”, using free open-source software.
Mr Wales aims to exploit the same network of followers and the same type of free software to create his search engine.
“Essentially, if you consider one of the basic tasks of a search engine, it is to make a decision: ‘this page is good, this page sucks’,” Mr Wales said. “Computers are notoriously bad at making such judgments, so algorithmic search has to go about it in a roundabout way.
“But we have a really great method for doing that ourselves,” he added. “We just look at the page. It usually only takes a second to figure out if the page is good, so the key here is building a community of trust that can do that.”
Mr Wales believes that the reputation already fostered by his Wikipedia community and the transparency of his technology will build sufficient trust in his search engine to bring in advertising revenue and make the Wikiasari venture profitable.
I am really looking forward for wikiasari
Are you worried about a system crash and worried about retrieving your system files and important data files? Here are some in-built backup stratergies that can be used and are available in Windows XP and 2000.. An article in Computer World gives five tips to take backups of the important files.. I knew about System Restores and Registry before i read the article, but 3 more tips were new to me..
So, here are the tips:
Option #1: Last Good Configuration: Every time you shut down your system, Windows makes a backup of certain Registry and driver settings (specifically, those in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet). If things go awry and you can’t start Windows (or you merely have second thoughts about a new graphics driver you’ve just installed), you can restore your machine to its previous state by pressing <F8> just before Windows starts. Use the arrow keys to select Last Known Good Configuration, and press <Enter>. (If you have already restarted Windows with hardware settings you don’t want, this technique won’t work because the system stored the info from those drivers in its backup when you most recently exited Windows.)
Option #2: Device Driver Rollback: Windows XP automatically backs up your old device drivers when you update them. You can restore a device to the way it was in happier times by reverting to this backup when a new driver causes problems. Choose Start, Run, type devmgmt.msc, and press <Enter> to open Device Manager. Double-click the device whose driver you want to restore to open its Properties dialog box. Click the Driver tab and select Roll Back Driver.
Option #3: System Restore: A good way to back up system settings, drivers, and critical system files in XP is by using System Restore, which can back up your configuration automatically on a defined schedule if you allocate sufficient storage to it. Use it to make backups (which it refers to as “restore points”) prior to making any system change (Windows creates a new restore point automatically whenever you install new software.) Choose Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools, System Restore. Then select Create a restore point and follow the prompts. System Restore doesn’t affect your data, nor does it work every time, so don’t count on it as your only protection.
Option #4: Hardware Profiles: You might find these useful when testing new hardware or device drivers. Choose Start, Run, type sysdm.cpl, and press <Enter>. Click the Hardware tab and then the Hardware Profiles button. Select your current profile—or the profile that you want to back up—from the list, and click Copy. Name it something like Test Profile and press <Enter>. Choose the startup settings you prefer under ‘Hardware profiles selection’, and click OK. When you restart your PC, choose Test Profile (or whatever you named the profile). If your experiments make Windows unusable, choose your original profile at the startup prompt; you may need to change your hardware back, too. If you like the new configuration, return to the Hardware Profiles dialog box and either delete the old default profile or make the new one your default.
Option #5: Windows’ Backup Utility: To back up your files manually in XP and 2000, choose Start, Programs (or All Programs), Accessories, System Tools, Backup. Users of XP Home Edition can install the program from the Windows CD: Look for it in the valueadd\msft\ntbackup folder, right-click the Ntbackup file, and choose Install. Be forewarned, however, that the utility’s Automated System Recovery feature doesn’t work in XP Home.
This is now a world full of Gadgets.. I cannot imagine a life without the Gadgets that I own.. PC World has given a list of Top 50 gadgets released in the past 50 years.. Here is the list
- Sony Walkman TPS-L2 (1979)
- Apple iPod (2001)
- (Tie) ReplayTV RTV2001 and TiVo HDR110 (1999)
- PalmPilot 1000 (1996)
- Sony CDP-101 (1982)
- Motorola StarTAC (1996)
- Atari Video Computer System (1977)
- Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera (1972)
- M-Systems DiskOnKey (2000)
- Regency TR-1 (1954)
- Sony PlayStation 2 (2000)
- Motorola Razr V3 (2004)
- Motorola PageWriter (1996)
- BlackBerry 850 Wireless Handheld (1998)
- Phonemate Model 400 (1971)
- Texas Instruments Speak & Spell (1978)
- Texas Instruments SR-10 (1973)
- Diamond Multimedia Rio PMP300 (1998)
- Sony Handycam DCR-VX1000 (1995)
- Handspring Treo 600 (2003)
- Zenith Space Command (1956)
- Hamilton Pulsar (1972)
- Kodak Instamatic 100 (1963)
- MITS Altair 8800 (1975)
- Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100 (1983)
- Nintendo Game Boy (1989)
- Commodore 64 (1982)
- Apple Newton MessagePad (1994)
- Sony Betamax (1975)
- Sanyo SCP-5300 (2002)
- iRobot Roomba Intelligent Floorvac (2002)
- Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer (1999)
- Franklin Rolodex Electronics REX PC Companion (1997)
- Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System 1.0 (1998)
- Motorola DynaTAC 8000X (1983)
- Iomega Zip Drive (1995)
- Magnavox Magnavision Model 8000 DiscoVision Videodisc Player (1978)
- Milton Bradley Simon (1978)
- Play, Inc. Snappy Video Snapshot (1996)
- Connectix QuickCam (1994)
- BellSouth/IBM Simon Personal Communicator (1993)
- Motorola Handie Talkie HT-220 Slimline (1969)
- Polaroid Swinger (1965)
- Sony Aibo ERS-110 (1999)
- Sony Mavica MVC-FD5 (1997)
- Learjet Stereo-8 (1965)
- Timex/Sinclair 1000 (1982)
- Sharp Wizard OZ-7000 (1989)
- Jakks Pacific TV Games (2002)
- Poqet PC Model PQ-0164 (1990)
So, how many of these do u own?
Few of them to this question may say its the most tough job but there are few like Keith who has shared his experience on managing the Project after reading which we may say yes its an easy task.. While reading few posts in soulsoup blogs, I found a very interesting article for which he had given a link.. Its on Project Management Made Easy by Keith Robinson. This is a must read articles for all the aspiring Project managers. So, I am posting the article here also..
Being read Software Engineering and Software Project Management books I thought Project Management is a very difficult job to handle.. Here are some easy tips given by Keith who is a Project Manager and claims that most of the Projects that he has Managed has left many Happy and Smilling.. So, what are the tips given by him?
He Sums Up the whole article in few points:
- Don’t make it harder than it is
- Kick off strong and with clear documentation
- Stick to the high-level
- Always make sure expectations are set and understood
- Trust people to do their jobs
- Be a great communicator at all times
- Have a solid yet flexible process
- Use tools that work for you, not the other way around
Do read this article.. He has given real useful tips for managing the Project in a very smooth manner..
Microsoft now enters into enterprise telephony by integrating the Call functionality with Office 2007. Now just a click on a friend’s name in the Word 2007 can initiate a call to the friend if he is available..
From itwire:
So far the product has been designed to interwork with IP PBXs from the likes of Cisco, Avaya, Nortel, Mitel, NEC etc but already Microsoft is suggesting that enterprise will be able to do away with desk phones, which account for a significant portion of revenue in IP telephony systems sales. “Customers will also able to leverage the softphone capabilities of Office Communicator to make and receive phone calls from their PCs, eliminating the need to purchase expensive IP-compatible phones.”
If you are new to what IT/PBX is then as per the Definition:
An IP PBX is a private branch exchange (telephone switching system within an enterprise) that switches calls between VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol or IP) users on local lines while allowing all users to share a certain number of external phone lines. The typical IP PBX can also switch calls between a VoIP user and a traditional telephone user, or between two traditional telephone users in the same way that a conventional PBX does. The abbreviation may appear in various texts as IP-PBX, IP/PBX, or IPPBX.
