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Monthly Archives: May 2008

Sony MDR-XD200 Stereo Headphones

I bought Sony MDR-XD200 Stereo Headphones yesterday from Virgin stores. The sound quality is really good and it is loud and good to hear trance. It comes with 10 meters cord 😉

“The Sony MDR-XD200 Stereo Headphones are a great pair of headphones that deliver high-quality sound at an affordable price. With 40 millimeter diameter, dome-type driver units and long-stroke diaphragms, your music will sound great. The MDR-XD200 driver units reproduce surprisingly-clear sounds at a wide frequency range (10-22,000 Hz). These substantial headphones feature neodymium magnets for greater power handling and higher frequencies. Five times more powerful than standard earphone ferrite magnets of the same size, neodymium magnets mean that the Sony MDR-XD200 Stereo Headphones maximize energy, while keeping size to a minimum. With these advanced technological features, the MDR-XD200 provides great sound without placing too much strain on your pocketbook.

With the MDR-XD200 Sony has taken special care to please both the audiophile and cinema-geek. The MDR-XD200 features a sound mode switch (music or movie) to more adequately match the sound source. With a simple flip of a switch, you can focus the headphones’ frequency range to make your music come to life or bring you that much closer to your favorite film star. Of course, Sony has not scrimped on comfort. The Sony MDR-XD200 Stereo Headphones feature an ear-conscious design with soft earpads for your long-lasting listening comfort. ” – From Amazon

The cost of the headphone is around 30$ (AED 109).

i2blog.com working again

Long long ago I had this crazy Idea of building a bloggers directory. Then I started project i2blog.com with my brother Ravoof and friend Yogi. The idea of the project was to unite all bloggers by thier country, interest and zodiac. Which you might think really funny now since blogging and web has changed a lot in past few years.

The project first came live at 9th of April 2005. I was updating the website till I came to Dubai. After I moved to Dubai I migrated all my site from a hosting company to another one. During the migration some files got currupted and I was not able to restore the functionality of the site. Today I finally forced myself to update the site and to make it work.

I still have some crazy ideas to work on the site but the time is only factor. May be I should organize myself to get more time. I don’t want to stop working on this as it as good search ranking and it is already listed in dmoz directory.

Some screen shot of the website.

If you are blogger please register on this site and help it grow 🙂

More salik toll gates in Dubai this september

Two more Salik toll gates will be installed in Dubai – one each on Al Maktoum Bridge and between the First and the Second Interchanges on Shaikh Zayed Road. This was announced by the Dubai Roads and Transport Authority (RTA).

“The installation of the new toll gates comes as part of the second phase of the Salik system to regulate traffic on Dubai Roads,” said Mattar Al Tayer, Chairman of the Board and Executive Director of the RTA. The new toll gates will start working from September 9.

Recently Dubai RTA opened the new Al Garhoud Bridge with 14 lanes 7 on each side of the road. Al Garhoud Bridge will have a capacity for 16,000 vehicles per hour. This is such a great bridge. But the sad thing was no one was using it as it was having a salik gate in front of it. Everyone was using Al Maktoum Bridge. There is big traffic congestion on this side. Once the if the put this Salik gate if people wants to goto Shaikh Zayed Road they have to pay Salik.

Lot of discussion is happening everywhere that Dubai is taxing the people. I strongly believe that they are trying to make lot of people life’s better. This toll system is there in lot of major cities in the world where they want to control the traffic flow. Dubai is not the first in this. We should be happy that they are not up to the biggest toll gate or most no of toll gates in the world is in Dubai 😀

Does Google knows me better than myself ????

I have a strong feeling that Google knows me better than what I know about myself. I am saying strongly because I live my life on Internet. I use internet a lot and I have been using lot of service what is offered by Google. All of the service is so interlinked and they record every thing what I do. These are the following service I am using.

1. Google Email – I have been using Google Gmail from the day it was rolled out to public user by invitation. This is my personal email and I have all my friends family mailing me here. From this they know what emails and what kind of emails I get from everyone.

2. Google search – I am sure 90% of internet users from small kid to grown up is using Google search. I Google a lot in fact I Google to correct my spelling which I am really bad at. Now they have integrated with Gmail and they track every search what I am doing online. In fact they have even started to personalize the search based on the what kind of Search I have been doing in past years. From this tracking they what I am searching for and from that they can find out what kind person I am and what kind of work I do and what I am looking or what are my interest in life.

3. Orkut – Here in middle east facebook is mostly used. But back in India more than facebook orkut is being used for social networking. From this service they know who are my friends and what kind of friend I have and what are interest in social life.

4. Google Talk – I am using Gtalk to chat with my friends. Using this service they know who are the friends I am close with. What I am chat or what I exchange with my friends.

5. Google reader – I read RSS more than newspaper. I have subscribed to more that 30 or 40 feeds from which I get my daily updates from other website I read a lot. Google can easily find out my interest and area of expertise from the RSS I read, bookmark, and share with my friends.

6. Google analytic – I have my own personal blog. I track all my visitors using analytic and Google knows what kind of visitor I get.

7. Google adsense – I have place adsense and I get my payout check and I deposit in my account. So they know what bank I use.

8. Youtube – They know what kind of video I search on youtube and I watch

9. Google checkout – I use paypal and Google checkout to shop online. From this they know my online shopping trends and my credit card details.

10. Google adwords – Everyone clicks on ads placed on other websites 😀

Wow that is big huge list. Above is the most used service from Google. If you see they track and save information of what I do everyday on internet. Can you realize how much data Google has about me. It is all part of pieces of data about me and what I do everyday. Now I can summarize somewhat what Google know about me

  • Kind of person
  • My profession
  • My hobbies
  • My favorite TV show
  • My favorite food
  • My favorite recipes
  • My Friends
  • My Social life
  • My traveling interest
  • My favorite products
  • List of software I use, etc etc

Soon I will forget what I like and Google will know better and they will introduce a new service. Where I can get suggestion or recommendation what is best for me. To an extend they are already doing this in search and product search. My only question is Can I trust Google? Anyways I am taking my chances as I don’t have any other better service which can compete Google 😀

Redesigned my blog template

It has been really long time since I worked on my blog to improve the look and feel. I keep doing this once in while since I usually get annoyed at look at the blog with same template. This time I was fascinated with the template from YG Desire. I downloaded the theme and made the customization what I had done in my old theme. Once I have completed I decided to drop my old light box code and I moved to jquery light box.

One thing I hated the most in light box is to edit each link for the image and update with class and rel code. Based on the new theme I wrote a small snippet which will insert the needed class and other attributes for the light box to work.

[code language=’javascript’] $(document).ready(function(){
$(‘div.entry img’).each(function(){
if($(this).parent().is(‘a’)){
$(this).parent().attr(‘rel’,$(this).parents(‘div.entry’).attr(‘id’));
$(this).parent().attr(‘class’,’jqueryLightbox’);
}
});
});
[/code]

Demo :

The above code will search for all images in my post div and if the parent is a link it will add the needed attributes to the link. Well it is working fine if the link is an image. Have to add a check and lazy to do it 😀

My sidebar is always big and I am greedy to show lot of links like archives, tags, pages etc. The template I selected looked well for accordion style listing. So I made the sidebar into an accordion panel.

I removed old  highlight plugin and I changed the same with syntax highlight wordpress plugin. Well my blog looks very cool with new code hightlight feature. Here after sharing code snippet will not be a problem.

Phew that is a lot of work I have done the whole day. I started simple and got involved and worked the whole day on this. Now my blog looks great with new features 😉

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