I believe FB has made my account more open and public. I think the reason is that the race now is after the real time search and indexing. Since, Google et al. have started to put some real time search results from Twitter feed (I think FB also), FB esp. has aggressively started a campaign to make as much info on your wall, feeds, account public as possible.

This is what they have to say on FB Information about Your Recent Activity on your wall. (…and it sounds Satanic).

Also, when I tried to control my settings, to my surprise all of the options in sharing were checked. I, as a good user, chose the option they gave me: “Keep all the previous settings”, as I did not wish to change my privacy settings. So, you have to take a look at this screenshot to see what they did.

FB tells you to keep all the previous settings, but they do not keep their promise. Everything on the list is checked. Wow! Those were NOT my previous settings.

In other words, I am extremely angry and IMHO you should be too. Although, I was really disappointed by Facebook’s but then I logged on to Orkut.com and saw this:

Orkut is Google's never-ending joke.

Look at the pink circular-band. It looks like an AIDS or breast-cancer relief campaign more than a Social Network and it sucks.

The application is about Calling for help when you are walking through a dark or a possibly unsafe place. Hoping that you are getting phone signal, I have always wondered that instead of fidgeting with your phone to dial 911 and keeping your thumb on the “green call” button, why not have an application where there is a big fat button that when released calls 911. Thats what I have tried to do here in this application. A 200px button when pressed and held, does not do anything, but when released, dials 911. So, you can save yourself from a surprise event like someone attacking you from behind and leave the calling for the app to do.

Here is the .apk file of the application. I call it callHelp application. I think its a good idea to improve this application to include a setting where you can change the emergency number (I’d suggest keep 911). Right now this feature is not there because I am not even sure if this application works on a handset.

If you are interested in looking at the source code, you can do that here at Github. Source code at Github.

So, if someone out there tries it, please let me know how goes it! thanks.

Now, I do not know if there is a setting in these email clients that I am unaware of (I’d be glad if someone can point out). All I know is that its in the Gmail’s Web Interface, which is slick. It knows that you want to reply to the person you sent that last email to and not yourself.

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_zittrain_the_web_is_a_random_act_of_kindness.html

You’ve got to think about this very eloquent presentation by Jonathan Zittrain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Zittrain).

We met for lunch again where he mentioned how my chat lingo was not proper. “I am trying to maintain my English standards”, I mentioned affirmatively. He replied, “Well! you anyhow should not write “I am laughing so hard here that I am going to die, on chat”. And he starts to laugh.

In this work plus social setup, I try to be extra nice and show that I can take jokes on myself.

“LAWL”, I laughed with (said to) him.

(In case you are still clueless —- LAWL = lol!)

I will give you the list with URL’s here:

1. Winwood != Winwood on Twitter. A gentleman with name Wojtek, from Poland is a TV mecahnic.

2. Whitehouse != Whitehouse of Twitter. 75 followers. No Bio available.

3. Tweetbar != Tweetbar on Twitter. According to their website:  Tweetbar is a wicked cool Twitter sidebar for Firefox and Flock. Not compatible with FF 3.0 at the time of this writing but will be, soon.

4. Young != Young on Twitter. Someone of Asian origin. :)

5. Lisa487 != Lisa487 on Twitter. How do I know that? Well, actual Lisa487 updated her (only) tweet on Jan 6th. She says “going to work”.

6. Twitair01. No twitair01 account on twitter yet. But there is a twitair. 

7. EMT != EMT on Twitter. Someone called Jason Machael owns it. Twit-Squatting???

8. JPMorgan != JPMorgan on Twitter. Apparently, this is a gentleman named Josh Morgan (cool!) who owns the blog http://www.respondingtoopportunity.com/ and finds The_Real_Shaq the funniest person on Twitter.

Personally, I am interested in knowing about Whitehouse, myself.

Also, trying some stuff on Amazon’s service, I realized (I was a great fan of Cloud before) that there are a lot drawbacks and the biggest one being Dependency on a specific Cloud technology/company, that too for eons. Seriously, I do think that this type of architecture is so specific to a company implementing it that it is almost against the norms of what Web stands for - Universality.

I remember working with Axis2 (the Web Services SOAP engine). It didn’t feel sinful while writing a Web Service wrapper for an existing C function for local company and deploy it, which would be consumed by a PHP client. Why? Because I was actually taking a C function and making it universally (Web) accessible (or at least for that company). I felt that I was pushing the existing architecture towards web standards. Working with Amazon’s Cloud wasn’t such a feeling. It was like working with another Microsoft kind of a product. 

On the other hand you might argue with the example of data loss at Ma.gnolia. It wasn’t running on a Cloud architecture from some big firm like Amazon or Google (and it was bound to fail?) It was running on 4 Mac Mini’s. (I have been reading this and have not been able to get any citation for this but it was definitely not Cloud). I believe that Cloud computing has to emerge or evolve in itself and produce a standard. I think there has to be a conformity to certain architecture that each of these companies adhere to. Just like the idea it is based on: Grids. Otherwise, if I have to use their architecture for my new application, I would be scared of depending upon it and of course would think twice of migrating my current app to this architecture.

Meanwhile, I am happy working with the limited features my web hosting provides (for cheap) and forget about Fault Tolerance for the time being.

Here are a few of the PHP Frameworks (MVC) that I found to be good at least when I read about them online. 

1. Symfony: http://www.symfony-project.org/
2. Mojavi: http://www.mojavi.org/
3. CakePHP: http://cakephp.org/
4. PHPOnTrax: http://www.phpontrax.com/
5. Prado: http://www.xisc.com/
6. Studs: http://www.mojavelinux.com/projects/studs/

Majority of these ‘good’ frameworks are inspired by RoR. What do you all think about these frameworks and which one is good and which ones are bad and in what respect. Or just tell me your favorite (reasons would be appreciated).