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Friday, October 19, 2007

Ron Paul : Got me thinking

Here is my story. As an active young blogger I follow politics but recently
few events hapened that got me really interested about the Presidential Race.
One of my good friends recently quit is Job and traveled cross country from
Los Angeles to New Hampshire to Support and participate in the Ron Paul campaign.
Crazy and foolish act I thought.

I later talked to my friend and he provided his reasoning.I was more surprised
that he was not alone and more of his friends had joined him in the campaign.

This got me thinking.Who is Ron Paul? and what is this all about.
So as usual I followed main stream media like CNN,FOX,MSNBC etc and it looks like this guy does not have a chance. But Wait lets check out the internet and see if this
story has a buzz and here you some of the numbers from different sites.

You Tube (Around 41,500 results)
Digg ( Has more than 10,000 diggs for some posts)
Technorati Ron Paul is one of the most searched for items

Google Trends
http://www.google.com/trends?q=ron+paul

Notice I am not comparing Ron Paul to other candidates. That is not the point
I am making. The point is that there seems to be more buzz,interest about him
on the internet than on traditional media.

I discussed this with my friends and there were different reasonings provided.

Some of the common one's

A media conspiracy.
A political conspiracy.
He has a bunch of bloggers working for him.
Young people like him.
People Hate Him.

As a practical personal I debated about this. One thing that occurred through this
process is that it got me more interested in the presidential race.

It also got me thinking more about traditional media versus the internet.
People kept mentioning that it is easier to game the system on the internet
than on traditional media channels.

I cannot concur to this idea simply based on the fact that the internet is all about
me and you. The people. How can we say that few people know better than the masses
on the internet. The internet also lends itself to self regulation.

Still unanswered questions. Do comment on this topic.
I would love to hear your reactions and wouldn't mind if you hate this piece

I have always received passionate responses on this topic.

Signing Off
Ravi



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Thursday, October 18, 2007

Pausing Google Web History

One of the things that I noticed is that when I am signed onto one of Google's services like gmail,orkut,blogger,etc and perform web searches on Google. Google collects my web history, the web history is the record of searches that you performed on Google.

My friend Rahul was freaking out that Google was collecting all this information and
he didnot want them too. Google does have a simple way to pause it from collecting
your web history, when this feature is enabled I believe all your searches are not
recorded.

Here are the instructions on how to pause your web history on google

1) Log On to Google Web History by clicking on the option Google Web History

2) You can delete all items from your webhistory using the clear webhistory button.

3) When this is done it will also pause your webhistory. Alternatively you can click
on the pause button to prevent your searches from being recorded.

4) Help section for the google web history feature


Help for Google Web History


It is nice to know that the Opt Out feature from Google is Simple.
As always there is debate on whether people should Opt In to such features or
Opt Out as shown above.

So If you want to pause your web history on Google, Go Ahead.

Am I paranoid or is this is something that people want :)

Ravi



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Wednesday, October 17, 2007

Yahoo Pipes:Having Fun

I started playing around with Yahoo Pipes.
For information about Yahoo Pipes.

Yahoo Pipes


Yahoo Pipes is a powerful framework for mashups, working with RSS,Feeds
and also data integration.

Some of the pipes that I Created.


Search for apartments on craigslist.



Flickr+Delicious.


I can see this as a useful tool and it is hosted by Yahoo.

Got to Go, Have Fun



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