Orkut to Facebook Testimonials Migration! - Google Chrome Extension

Following the quite a good success of the Orkut to Facebook Photo Album migrator, I now introduce Orkut to Facebook Testimonials Migration as a Google Chrome Extension. Due to the technical limitations in the Orkut API, This is not available as a web application. Download this simple Google Chrome extension and migrate your Orkut testimonials to Facebook!

Many of our beautiful memories are left out as testimonials in Orkut! Its time to move them to facebook too! Download this Google Chrome Extension and start migrating your testimonials now! :-) 

Visit: http://orkutdejavu.foamsnet.com (or) http://orkut.foamsnet.com to see the Instructions

Visit: Click here to download the Extension!

Please post your bug reports/suggestions to: vign...@gmail.com (click to expand)

-Vignesh

The Social Network - Build it Google, We will Come!

I recently read an article about Larry Page taking over as the CEO of Google and sending an internal memo to googlers about 25% cut in their bonuses if Google didn’t do well in social arena this year. I was disturbed a lot ever since I read that and wanted to pour out my thoughts about a dream social network from Google. Yes, I frankly think Google can still do much better than Facebook.

A headnote, this article is totally how i view a Google social network shall be made possible. I have tried to think of it as practically as possible. Some of it may sound silly/stupid for expert readers, so kindly bear with me.

Orkut was the trend setter! - What went wrong?

Orkut was the first and most famous "social network" of all time. It came during the period where the term "social network" was not really defined. Orkut gave that term a definition. And it was doing really well especially in places like India and Brazil. Ever since Facebook came in, Orkut started to lose.

I, personally, would say that the reason why Orkut never caught on was because Google tried to remain professional. They probably wanted to stick to the Google style of doing things and in the process forgot that people just wanted to have fun and party on in the social network unlike other Google services where professionalism kept people happy. The best example i would like to quote is, Orkut did not have scrap threading for a long time and that was available even for SMS by the time Orkut added that. Naturally, we don’t want to roam around in a blazer/suit 365x24x7. Facebook realized it and they just let people do whatever they wanted to do, literally no restrictions whatsoever.

Sign of Innovation - Google Wave

Google then launched wave and claimed that "it is simply going to change the way people communicate". Well, we know how true it is from the fact that wave has been axed by Google few months back and is now residing in its open source home of Apache.



Again, the problem with Google Wave has been that it was difficult for a layman to understand and use it on a day-to-day basis. Even when wave was axed, not a single layman cared about it, only computer professionals cared since the underlying technology and protocols were really well built. Yet again, Google had failed to capitalize the wonderful technology they built by coping it up to what everyone actually wanted. In short, Google tried to remain professional with wave too.

Sign of Desperation - Google Buzz

Then came Google Buzz, supposedly the "Twitter killer". One major factor that i feel Google doesn’t realize when building social products is that, You cannot force people down their throats to go Social. Yes, I love Twitter and can’t live without it but at the same time I don’t want to read my tweets in my Gmail inbox.



Similarly, Google Reader is one of the most wonderful software ever built. But with literally no connection whatsoever, Google decided to tie Buzz with Reader. This tie up lead to nothing but junk in both Reader and Buzz. And when people wanted to opt out of Buzz, it resulted in loss all their Reader follow list too. Making it opt-in is a really good vision by Google and at the same time they should also make sure that the opt-out is cleanly done.

What next? Social + Google = ??

So can Google ever surpass the mountain, that is Facebook, and succeed in social like they did in search? My answer is, yes they surely can. Sure Facebook has some 600 million users but Google is no poor lad when it comes to userbase too. Infact, Google is still a more prominent part of our life than Facebook is. Conduct a poll asking "Which of the following can’t we live without - Facebook or Google?" and i bet the winner will be Google.

Imagine a social network that revolves around all of Google’s services. Imagine a service that aggregates all of gmail, youtube, reader, maps, picasa, talk, news, voice and even orkut. Google, if you can build a rock solid service that does this and add your typical magical touch to it, then definitely you can climb the mount everest that is Facebook. Add to this the crazy, yet possible, thought of Google acquiring Twitter and integrating Buzz with it seamlessly. By recitifying all the mistakes that it did in the social arena in the past and building such a clean and fun service, it can surely overpower Facebook.

Google’s userbase is much more loyal when compared to that of Facebook. Google, as a company, with its policies is much closer to our hearts than Facebook is. Identify Facebook’s problems and fix it. Facebook’s main concerns today are spam and privacy. I can’t think of a product other than Gmail that can handle spam so near to perfection. Also, Google Talk has been an integral part of Gmail and Orkut for so many years now and not once we have seen any spam in it that can even be compared with the Facebook chat spam we have these days. Though Google have had their own share of controversies regarding privacy, they have somehow held on and been in the good books of their users when it came to privacy.




Of course all this is not going to be an overnight affair, it is going to take lots of effort and time. Given that Google is investing so keenly on getting that top spot in the social arena, proper focus, being unprofessional and learning from the past are the key factors that will decide the fate of Google in the social arena. They can’t afford to flop anymore. This may be Google’s last chance to make an impact. By heart, i sincerely hope that Google can just snatch that number one spot in the social arena!

So, my message is short and simple: "Build it Google - We will come!".

-Vignesh

Scripting vs Programming - Mastering the art of arts!

Why this post?

The line of difference between a script and a program has become very blurry these days to the extent that these terms are used interchangeably. Though there is no hard and tight way to theoretically define what a script is and say how it is different from a program, if you have done a lot of programming and if you are a person who loves to automate things, then you can definitely realize the clear line of difference between scripting and programming. In this article, I try to give my views on what scripting is, how it differs from programming, etc. (Whole of this article just represents my view and there is a good chance that some of it may be wrong).

What is a script?

A script is just a small piece of code, usually written in a non-traditional programming language (like bash or perl) that is used to get a job done. Well, sure you can’t see much of how it differs from the definition of a "program". That is what i try to explain on the due course of this article.

How does it differ from a program?
As i said earlier, there is no concrete set of rules to distinguish a script and a program. The main deciding factors are:

• the purpose with which its developed
• the design mechanism underwent on due course of development, and
• the person who uses it

Scripts are generally very specific to their task. They just do what is to be done, nothing more or nothing less. Whereas programs generally have a broad scope. They are more sophisticated and usually do much more than what they are supposed to do. This is the difference with respect to the first point.

Scripts generally don’t follow any design. Scripts are usually just written, with no design in mind whatsoever. Even if they are complex, they aren’t designed with care and concern. Whereas programs on the other hand are designed to work with a proper flow and fault tolerance. Scripts are usually used by programmers themselves internally, whereas programs are full fledged tools that are used by everyone from geeks to laymen. To state an example, Facebook is a "program" and if you build something that will scrape data off facebook in the format you want, then that could be a "script".

Scripting is usually considered as programming as a part of developing an actual program. For example, the recent android patent issue says Google used a "script" to clean up all the comments and other stuff from the kernel header files. So, scripts can be generally categorized as utility functions that helps you making your "program" development easier.

What’s a scripting language?

Again, a scripting language is a programming language that is generally non-traditional. Scripting language usually provides constructs for doing things in the quickest way possible rather than in the most efficient way possible (For e.g. most of the scripting languages usually have a sort() function to sort the data. Though they may not be the most efficient implementation of sorting data, it gets the job done without fuss). Another aspect is that scripting languages are usually interpreted and not compiled. This gives the assurance that the script dies if anything goes wrong, the script starts over all again, taking advantage of the fact that scripts need not provide any atomicity over what they do.

Uses of scripting

I love automating things i do and hence scripting is a very essential part of my online life. Scripts can help your online life get much easier and better. For example, i have various little chrome content scripts (google chrome’s equivalent of greasemonkey scripts) that helps me make my day-to-day browsing easier and more productive. Also, i extensively use sed and awk scripts to browse through log files generated by the programs i develop. I even have scripts that help me check if there are new episodes of my favorite TV Serials (BBT, HIMYM) available for download and alert me.

When it comes to automating day to day online tasks, scripting is your swiss army knife. You can accomplish things quickly and in the way you want them to be.

Scripting as an art

We all know that programming is more of an art than a science. Developing a perfect program is close to impossible. But scripting too is an art that can aid you in making your programming life much better. Learning a scripting language at the beginning may seem weird, but once you get used to the constructs, it will really be a cake walk and you will find it a lot useful to have it as one of your assets.

To sum up..

Scripting and programming always go together. Scripting aids in automating things that will make a program better than what it is now. Though only a beginner, my humble piece of advice to every programmer out there is "Never hesitate to automate things. You learn a lot while automating silly things! So next time when you come across a silly problem in your work or in your project, try to tackle it with a quick utility script rather trying to fix it manually!"

-Vignesh

Introducing Orkut Déjà Vu! - Orkut to Facebook Photo Album Migrator!

As we all know, Orkut was the trend setter of the modern "Social Networks". Few years back, Facebook took over that top spot in social networks from Orkut. Yet we all have lots of sweet memories stuck with Orkut in the form of Scraps, Photo Albums, Testimonials, etc. This website helps you pull out your old memories from Orkut and make them brand new by moving them over to Facebook!



This is just a night time project that i have been working on for almost a month now!

I don't want to bore you with stories. Try out the app straight away here: http://orkut.foamsnet.com or http://orkutdejavu.foamsnet.com

I am sure there are plenty of bugs. Please email me at vig..@gmail.com(click to expand) for any comments/feedbacks!

-Vignesh

Celebrating women’s day!

No crackers explode, No fireworks lighten up the sky, but year after year we celebrate womanhood with simplicity and i would like to take this time off to wish all the women i know in my life a very happy women’s day.



A woman is always special for a man. Though the fights and arguments about male chauvinism may exist on the lower layer of the society, i have always felt that the population belonging to our generation always treated women as equally as men. Not to stir any discussions about it, i just want to say thanks to every single woman (or girl probably) who has helped me over various points of my life.

Adage goes that, “Behind every man’s success lies a silent woman” and i couldn’t find a better quote to describe this wonderful day where we celebrate womanhood. Be it your better half, your sister, your mom, or any other friend, they always make you feel special and always show you rays of happiness.

Happy woman’s day everyone!

-Vignesh

Why Plagiarism Hurts?

I recently attended a so called "online programming contest" of one of the premier institutions in the state (not mentioning the name to not stir any arguments over it - I tweeted it here and here though). I have been attending this contest since the past 3 years and was highly disappointed about this year's event.

The reason is, as the title suggests, it was nothing but a blatant ramp of plagiarism. There were totally 8 questions to be solved out of which 4 questions were mere "copy-paste" jobs from spoj. Such events need not be perfect, but when you conduct an event of such stature you are atleast expected to make sure that google doesn’t give an exact match for the questions you give. As i mentioned in the tweet, the other 4 questions were very poorly worded and more or less dumb. Anyways, i am not going to ramble about the contest in this post. But it got me thinking, plagiarism can really hurt. It can hurt both the ends of users badly.

First things first, what is plagiarism? Sounding like a fancy GRE word, it has a simple meaning: Copying someone else’s content without their consent. I know spoj doesn’t mind if their questions are being copied, but it should either be altered so that it doesn’t look like the original question or (even and) spoj should have been properly cited.

When someone writes something on the internet these days, it has become like they have lost complete ownership over it. Plagiarism is a very big problem these days. It exists on all levels. Starting from a simple online programming contest to industry definers like Microsoft. Google even launched an algorithm change to their core search engine algorithm this week that ranks plagiarised pages lower than pages with original content.

My point is, when you plagiarise something without consent and citations, its not just a matter of two keystrokes in your computer. You hurt people’s feelings. And you will never understand those feelings unless you start writing something on your own and someone else copies and pastes it without your consent. It takes very little effort to cite the original source of any content you use, but that gesture will make your users respect you more than they did before.

There are even licensing policies that helps you prevent plagiarism and at the same time lets you use others content (one such license is Creative Commons License).Always place appropriate citations. If an author is writing content on the internet, then he’d sure respond to you via email/twitter if you want to use pieces from his article. Be gentle and place the credit to the work where the credit actually belongs to rather than stealing it. You will definitely be insulted when the plagiarism is spotted. So why not place credit and not screw up your reputation? You may have loads of original content. But even a small piece of plagiarised content is capable of bringing you under the spotlight (the recent Ankit Fadia scam for example - Fadia may have saved a war or billions of rupees for the indian government, but now he’s been registered in my mind as the guy who copied a book in the name of authoring it).

To sum up things, The world has evolved, Internet has become commonplace but what will always remain is the human values that we possess. If you copy content without consent, you are violating the human values that morally governs the internet.

Take a stand, Say no to plagiarism, Innovate the planet together!

-Vignesh

IPv4 is dead!

IPv4 is dead.

What this means is that, no more IPv4 addresses are remaining to be alotted to systems that will be connected to the internet. This marks the end of the protocol that has been running the internet since 1981. This is similar to how IRCTC recently moved to a 5 digit train number, as there have been too many trains to be numbered with 4 digits and the existing conventions (2 prefix for superfast and such). So IRCTC moved to a 5 digit train numbers (mostly adding 1 prefix in front of all major trains).

The same story holds on when they say "IPv4 has been exhausted". All the computers in the internet are uniquely identified by so-called IP Addresses (Internet Protocol addresses). When you want to communicate with other systems on the internet, you make use of IP Addresses to accomplish that. Now that the internet has had too many systems, the IPv4 scheme of numbering is no more sufficient. IPv4 used 32-bit addresses (yeah computers talk in bits). So, a typical IPv4 address would look something like 208.43.209.220 (with each number between the dots represented as an 8 bit integer).

Ok, now what? How do new systems get added to the internet if there are no more addresses left? In comes one of the major changes that is going to be incorporated into the internet in the near future, IPv6. It might sound as simple as adding a 1 prefix like IRCTC did. But it runs the entire internet, so its a bit more complicated than that. Of course IPv6 addresses are longer than the v4 counterparts in that they consist of 128-bits (an example of an IPv6 address is fe03:ff34:ab34:1235:2932:6bdf:22af:23aa). As you can see, these are hexadecimal represented numbers. Each part consists of 4 hexadecimal digits amounting to 16 bits and there are 8 such parts, totalling to 128 bits.

IPv6 is not just IPv4 where you have longer addresses. Since this is going to be a major change that requires modifications in working of almost all the devices connected to the internet, the developers of IPv6 decided to do try and clean up all the drawbacks that were incurred by IPv4 (mandation of IpSec, elimination of need for NAT to name a few). Things would be much simpler if IPv6 had just been interoperable with IPv4. Unfortunately, it is not so and hence the transition phase is not going to be very easy.

However, there have been software level solutions to make it look as if IPv6 is interoperable with IPv4. Yeah, you guessed it right, Tunneling! Imagine you have a shipping company that allows only red colored boxes to be shipped. What will you do if you need to ship a blue color box? Simple isn't it? Just wrap the blue colored box into another red colored box and ship it and make sure that the recipient throws away the red box when he receives it. This is called tunneling. Our shipping company is nothing but the backbone network of the internet (majority of which consists of IPv4 only devices), red box is analogous to IPv4 and the blue box is analogous to IPv6. So the internet is going to rely on tunnelling for majority of its functioning until IPv6 gets well established among the devices in the internet.

So, lets all take a second to thank IPv4 that has been making our lives easier for almost the past three decades. Also, major software giants are joining hands to celebrate World IPv6 Day on June 8, 2011.

P.S.: I conclude with the hope that the IPv4 to IPv6 transition among Indian ISP's will not be as un-smooth and scandal-driven as the 2G to 3G transition.

P.P.S.: This post was drafted during my college lab hour and posted using lynx. :-)

-Vignesh