Jalaj P. Jha Technical & Miscellaneous Ramblings

25May/100




Pacman Returns

Google recently posted an interactive Pacman Doodle on its Home page on the occasion of 30th anniversary of Pacman. Unlike other doodles this was kept online for 48 hours and a large number of searchers forgot their original intent and spent the rest of day playing the Pacman. This was the first doodle that they wished if it could stay forever. But after 48 hours it was removed... alas!!

Did you miss the opportunity to play that? Or are you missing if after being taken down? Here is the good news!!! Pacman is back on its own page at Google at google.com/pacman

Don't miss it!!!

22May/101




Chrome Web Store – What’s Google Up To?

Google just recently announced the Chrome Web Store which will open later this year. What are these apps, you may think!! Well if you don't already know, these are the web sites that are already existing or building up and you intend to visit these again and again.

Normally you will open up your browser and key-in the web address for the site and start using it, but it is not as easy as your Desktop applications which you can start by just clicking a shortcut placed on your desktop, or start menu or quick launch bar. What if you could just click on a similar shortcut and your website opens up in a web browser? You may think what's new in this, as it is something you have already been doing this by creating shortcuts in Windows OS that starts the default browser! Well then think again with these requirements - an independent browser window with no browser buttons and menus and other toolbars etc attached to your browsers. Well this is the Web app we are talking about and in fact they already exist if you use a Google Chrome browser. Just click on "Create application shortcuts..." menu item which become available when you click on the page icon besides the Google Chrome's address bar. You can choose to create shortcuts on Desktop, Start menu or Quick launch bar. Another specification suggest creating a special zip file containing static files as icons etc to make it load faster and make it downloadable.

If web apps already exists and so does ability to create application shortcuts, What is Chrome Web Store for, then? Well fact is, not many users use Google Chrome, and many of those using it are not aware of application shortcuts. When Chrome Web Store opens up most people would visit it, download Chrome the prime requirement and start using application shortcuts, and in turn increase the Google chrome's market share defeating the other browsers. This may be one of the plans behind Web store, to know about another read ahead.

Google is soon going to unveil the Google Chrome OS which will power netbooks. Since the Chrome OS will only run web apps on the browser which no doubt would be the chrome browser itself and no other desktop application would run, Google needs to enlist all applications so that user feel prompted to go for chrome Os powered netbook. After all it's the number of, and variety of applications available for a platform that decides on which OS you choose.

Overall if you expected the Chrome Web Apps to be something new, you would be disapointed. It's all only for Google to promote its browser and OS.

22May/100




Interactive Pacman Doodle at Google

On special occasions Google places, on its main page, a special Google logo for the occasion, clicking on which opens a result page with search query closely related to the occasion. Today when PacMan, a game that most of us have played many a times, celebrates it’s 30th anniversary, the logo is little different in that you can actually play Pacman by clicking on it.

image

So what are you waiting for? Open Google and relive your childhood. As soon as the Game is over, the result search page for query “PAC-Man 30th Anniversary” opens up. I am sure you are then going to press the “Back” button on your browser to start playing again!!

25Apr/100




Who Moved My Cheese?

imageI had heard a lot about this book “Who Moved My Cheese?” but never got to read it. Recently while going through all the books in the Library at work, I found this one unexpectedly. I was surprised by the size of the book. So the books, a lot talked about, had less than 100 pages!!! Out of the two books that I selected this one was the first that I decided to read and I think I finished within two hours! After all It’s a book that once someone starts to read cannot leave without completing it.

This book deals with how to deal with changes, changes in our professional life or in  personal life, a subject that many other books have covered with many taking up much more pages than this one. So, what makes this books so special? It’s just that this book doesn’t teach how to deal with changes, but just tells a story, a story that will make you smile, and laugh on how it in some parts relate to your own life. That’s it!!!

It’s a story of two mice ‘Sniff’ and ‘Scurry’ and two littleman, with size comparable to that of mice, named ‘Hem’ and ‘Haw’. At cheese station ‘C’ they get to eat all the cheese they can and thus life is running smoothly until one day when they find no cheese left at cheese station ‘C’. While the mice realizing that there is no cheese left move ahead to find cheese somewhere else, the littlemen, being man who can think, are more into discussing things and avoiding moving out. The rest of the story tells how they suffered, and how one of them finally moved out and succeeded and what lessons he learnt in his quest of New cheese.

While reading the book each reader can relate the characters and happenings with himself and thing happening around him. Say, for example even though the book was written in late nineties, one can feel the recent recession and slowdown in between, and how a person affected by it could think.

"Why should we change?" Hem asked. "We're littlepeople. We're special. This
sort of thing should not happen to us. Or if it does, we should at least get some benefits."
"Why should we get benefits?" Haw asked.
"Because we're entitled," Hem claimed.
"Entitled to what?" Haw wanted to know.
"We're entitled to our Cheese."
"Why?" Haw asked.
"Because, we didn't cause this problem," Hem said. "Somebody else did this and
we should get something out of it."

If I am not the last person to read this book, would recommend this book to everyone else!