insideout

In the name of Allah

“In the name of Allah, the most beneficent and most merciful “.

This is the literal meaning of the prayer most Muslims start their important tasks with. Sadly now, this prayer has become synonymous with the terrorists and their terror emails which they keep sending before every blast operation they perform. I couldn’t understand how, Allah, the most beneficent and most merciful, would support killing innocent people? Islam doesn’t permit such killings under any circumstances. Rather it’s strictly forbidden to kill another human, unless their crime is proved lawfully. If they call themselves Muslims, I doubt if they have ever read the holy Quran or ever tried looking into what Islam actually preaches.

Right now, when another blast happened in the capital city, it’s the auspicious month of Ramadan. It’s believed that in this auspicious month the almighty opens up the gates of heaven and forgive people for their sins. People observe stringent fasts to try and break off from the material world to look inside themselves for what they have been doing and seek forgiveness for all the bad they have done. Forget about killing someone, no true Muslim can dare think about harming someone or even utter a bad word during this auspicious period. If they are true Muslims, as they claim to be, they should have been working for the welfare of human kind.

They might believe or claim that they are doing this for the benefit of Muslims, but the fact is, due to these activities, the common Muslim is getting penalized heavily. All Muslims have to pay for what a bunch of stupid fanatics do. People start getting suspicious as soon as they realize that the person is a Muslim, they face problems with their day to day life, they go through more stringent check at airports, people refuse to give flats on rent to a Muslim, people do not indulge in social activities with Muslims anymore and it wouldn’t be long before IT companies or other employers would start rejecting Muslim candidates. Well done guys, this is how you secure the progress and benefits of your people.

I don’t know what they are fighting for and what they gain out of this… but I just want to say, if you really want to do something for Muslims… Please stop this nuisance, stop killing people, stop this hatred, and in the name of Allah… Please stop abusing Islam.

Tags: blast, India, Islam, Life

Google Chrome launched

Google Chrome is a web browser by Google. It generated a lot of hype when a comic book representation of its features was leaked yesterday. Google held a press conference to announce the launch of Chrome and it was officially launched today.

So whats new?  Well, quite a lot. Google has brought the best of all the existing browsers under one hood and in turn have come up with a browser who is kick ass in terms of speed and has a pretty low memory usage as compared to the other browsers including the new IE8. Chrome is based on an earlier version of WebKit framework (which is also used in Safari) for rendering the pages. A new process is invoked for each tab and all the tabs work independent to each other resulting in more efficient memory usage and fast processing. Javascript processing has been significantly, contributing to the added speed.

Innovative UI is another plus for the browser, the common bar for address/search/history, tabs on top, no title bar, no status bar, bigger screen space makes it look slick. The download manager looks neat too, however it doesnt seem to support broken downloads yet. The speed dial as default page is a great tool too.

It also sports the “incognito” mode which is similar to private browsing mode in Safari. With this mode on, no info from your browsing session is saved on the machine. The Crash control feature prevent the application from crashing, in case one of the apps in a tab goes bad. Its just the tab which closes, not the whole application.  There is also a javascript debugger, Javascript console and Tab Manager to help the developers.

With all the good points there are bound to be negatives too, and yes there are. Its only been a few hours since the browser has been launched and a few security concerns have popped up. There has been some criticism about it being available only for Windows platform, ignoring Mac and Linux users. The browser is called an open source browser but there are speculations about its openness too. It posses a good threat to IE even in this beta stage, but may not be a full replacement for the firefox users yet. Most FF users are in a habit of using the different plugins it supports, Chrome still has a long way to go before it get similar ones.

All said and done, for me the browser seems to be pretty cool and have worked with almost all the sites I have visited on it. So if you are planning to download it click here and check out the easter eggs by typing “about:stats” and “about:internets” in the address bar.

Tags: Browser, Chrome, Google, Web

PMOG – online gaming redefined

Passively Multiplayer Online Gaming (PMOG), as the name suggests is a new form of online multiplayer gaming which is creating a buzz among casual gamers and IT professionals alike.  As its a passive game form, the players do not have to download any application or even be on a specific website to play it. The most interesting aspect of the game is that you can play it while carrying out your day to day work at the office, without getting noticed by any one.

To play the game, one has to install a plugin to their firefox browser, create an account on pmog.com and thats it. This plugin would install a new toolbar at the bottom of your firefox window, which can be hidden with a single click. Like any other MMORPG, this game prompts a player to increase their levels and choose one of the types of the characters, based on the activities they perform. The currency with this game is DPs (Data Points). You earn 2 DPs for each top level domain visited. As you keep visiting websites, your DPs increase. These DPs can also be used to buy different tools which can be used to either help other players gain DPs or to make them loose their earned DPs. The different characters are based on the same premise. There are 6 character types in all, three of them are there to help players and create order and the other three are the trouble makers, who create chaos.

Using the tools, one can drop ‘land mines’ on webpages, if any other player visits that page, they get tripped off the mine and loose their earned DPs. To protect yourself from such mines, you can wear an ‘armour’ or if you want to take a revenge, you can attach ‘St. Nicks’ to the player to diffuse their next 5 attempts to drop land mines on other pages. Players can create ‘missions’, which are nothing but guided tours, prepared using ‘lightposts’ or bookmarks on different websites. Takeing a missions will award 10 DPs to the player. One can rate the missions and can post comments about them too. The other tools include ‘Portals’ which transport you to a different web page and ‘Crates’ which are goody bags stashed on different sites by other helpful players. Crates can contain DPs or other tools inside, the player who discovers the Crate would get all its contents. Based on the usage of these diffrent tools, you are associated with different character types. Going with the game flow, you can create Allies and Rivals with other members too.

The founder of this new game concept is Justin Hall, who is also referred to as the ‘father of blogging’. This was a part of his master thesis in the Interactive Media Division program in 2007. Over a period, the concept has evolved in a full fledged game and with user inputs new features are being added every now and then.

All in all its an interesting concept, which makes browsing the web a lot more fun. Its fast catching up in India too and my guess is that it would be hugely popular among the IT professionals who spend hours surfing the web.

Along with gaming, this concept has opened a whole new array of opportunities in terms of online marketing, advertising and improving SE rankings. More about all this in another post. Keep reading.

Tags: gaming, pmog, Web