Google Trends prediction,No future for KDE

Snapshot of Google Trends obtained today showing no future trends for KDE

A few days ago i checked out Google Trends for the first time. I wanted to checkout this tool first hand because everyone on the internet seems to talking about it these days about how good it is. It looks looks like any other graph. It is rumoured to be a very powerful tool and is supposed to accurately show various search trends over the years for various search terms. As such the tool is very easy to use you. I could  add a maximum of five search terms on the left hand side. As soon as i enter the search terms on the left hand side of the tool it seemed to tell me how often people around the world have been searching for various terms since 2004. I can imagine Google Trends to be a very basic form of data warehousing and data mining front end tool.

 While i was messing around with the tool i noticed two check boxes at the top right hand side. One is labelled "New Headlines"  and other "Forecast". The Headlines check box is turned ON by default and the tool seems to try and correlate news headlines with search trends. I at once thought that this feature has a lot of hidden potential. I noticed that when i turn ON the other check box the graph extrapolates into the future along x axis(years) probably based on past data of searches made in Google search engine. Future trends are plotted in dotted lines whereas past data is in the form of a contiguous line.

 Now comes the interesting part. I tried to check out the search / popularity trends for the various desktop environments available for Linux namely GNOME, KDE, XFCE, LXDE. As expected KDE started out with higher search numbers (2004) and somewhere around 2005 GNOME surpassed KDE . Then was was revenge of sorts when KDE surpassed its rival GNOME in the beginning of 2008. But GNOME snatched the lead again around second quarter of 2008 and maintains a thin lead over KDE till date. XFCE started with good stats in 2004 but couldn't keep pace with its siblings KDE and GNOME and is now seems to be fighting for a niche market share with its main competitor LXDE which emerged on scene around first quarter of 2008.

 All was well and good until i turned ON the dreaded "forecast" check box to check future trends of the desktop environments. Google seems to be adamant and denies that KDE will exist in near future. I couldn't find an dotted extension for the green line in the above snapshot. It does show a descending curve for GNOME and a stable unwavering lines for XFCE and LXDE. At first when i noticed this a few days ago i thought that it was an anomaly in the tool and decided to checkout the tool later. Bit when i checked it out again today i can confirm that dotted line for KDE is till missing.

Why is the dotted line for KDE missing?

• Is it because "Canonical pulled the plug on Kubuntu" ?
• Is it because Google doesn't have enough search data about KDE that it is not able to show future trends ?
• Is it a prophecy of some sort from Google that KDE would cease to exist ?
• Or is there a bug in Google Trends ?

I guess, only time will provide answers to all these questions. Signing off after attaching a live gadget from google trends.

Update(24 NOV2012 10:25 GMT)

 Did somebody knock on Google's doors and inform them about the bug. KDE does have a future now :-) It is weird that this bug was there for over one week and after writing this article it disappears. Thank you Google for the quick fix. I have to admit that future is not too rosy though.

KDE has future now :-)

Reflecting on 2011

Reflecting on 2011 / The year that  2011 was...

 Phew it is that of the year already ,the time all the news channels ,websites and newspapers / magazines put up articles saying "best of year" blah blah blah. Time sure flies fast.The year seemed to have just started,but we are at the threshold of another "new year". This year (2011) is memorable in many ways.There were a lot of things happening!!!! through out the world as well as in India.The most prominent feature of the year  was the unabated rise in price of petrol.This post is essentially about 2011 seen through my sewed eyes :-D.2011 as with each new year , began with a lot of promises / new year resolutions , but it unfolded as follows:-

January , 2011
==>The Arab world literally boiled over and  many countries  in Arab world namely  Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Bahrain faced social unrest. Some governments like the ones in Egypt and Libya even got overthrown in the ensuing protests over the course of the year.Tahrir Square became popular of all over the world.Sounds similar to Tienanmen square in china.Guess all town squares starting with letter "T" are political hotspots.
==>At that point of time before GOVT restored the Tamil New Year Day to the traditional date of April later in the year , Tamils  celebrated Tamil New year on Pongal day ,atleast officially :-).

February , 2011
The country was reeling under the shame of Common Wealth games expose when on  February 2, 2011, Union minister Raja  was arrested and put behind bars.This really opened the flood gates and made way for many other politicians and company CEOS to be arrested under 2G scam.

March , 2011
The year began with a devastating earthquake and ensuing Tsunami which steam rolled many cities on Japan's east coast.The worst affected was Fukushima.The nuclear reactors in the town / city Dai ichi and Dai Ni were breached by the monstrous waves.This event shook the entire world.The insights it brought are:-
==>Japan makes most of the paint pigments for automotive industry and any major event in one part of the world affects the world economy in a big way.
==>Most of coastal cities around the world including Chennai are sitting on a ticking time bomb(ref:-Tsunami) which are just waiting for the right time to go kaboom!!!
==>The inherent danger and threat that nuclear reactors pose to all the countries of the world.Not only are they costly but they are very vulnerable to natural calamities.

April , 2011

==>In a daring pre dawn raid on May 2, 2011Osama Bin Laden was killed. The commandos conducted operations fearlessly on foreign soil.This showed  that America is still a "super power".

==>Tamilnadu opted for change of power on 13 April 2011 in the sate elections.

==>India won the ICC,ODI world cup after 28 years.India won by 6 wickets (with 10 balls remaining) against srilanka

==>It was more than a year I switched to Linux
==>Kalmadi was put behind bars for involvement in CWG scam.

May , 2011
==>More shame was waiting for for the infamous UPA alliance when Kanimozhi was arrested in connection with involvement in 2G scam.She became the third Member Of Parliament of the current government after Raja and kalmadi.
==>On 16 May 2011 Jayalalitha was sworn in chief minister for a third term.
==>Mamata Banerjee in Bengal assumed power on 20 May 2011 after she successfully stopped the Left juggernaut after remaining unbeaten for 34 year.
==>Taliban & co exacted revenge by attacking Mehran base in Pakistan. The audacious attack is nicknamed Mehran attack.

The terrorist were very well trained and were equally well equipped with the latest gear. The amount of ammo that they carried with them was insane and they were using night vision goggles with other ultrasonic radio communication gear.Source:-Link

Terrorists and night vision goggles ? Even Indian army is still not equipped adequately for warfare at night
==>LHC reports creation of quark-gluon plasma.Densest Matter Created in Big-Bang Machine.There has been rising fears that very Large particle accelerators like Hadron Collider could be creating Black Holes within them and that these had the ability to destroy the world.Read more - here

June ,2011
==>Festivities arrived rather early at Ramlila ,Delhi this year. Ramdev showed how the Indian government is ill equipped to handle any kind challenge / emergency .On 27 February 2011 Baba Ramdev held a large rally of over 1 lakh people at the Ramlila Maidan, New Delhi to protest against corruption.Then he started a mass movement called  Bhrashtachar Mitao Satyagrah 4 June 2011 at Ramlila Maidan and this led to "RamLilaBagh" event.The entire episode showed how immature our democracy was.Read more about the incident here:- Ramlila_Maidan_protests 
==>Anna Hazare's anti corruption movement gathers steam.He and other civil society members decided to boycott the meeting of the joint Lokpal Bill drafting committee scheduled on 6 June 2011 in protest against the forcible eviction of Swami Ramdev and his followers by the Delhi Police from Ramlila Maidan on 5 June 2011

July , 2011
India began their disastrous away cricket series against England with a solid drubbing at Lords(Mecca of cricket).In the England v India at Lord's, Jul 21-25, 2011 Pataudi Trophy, 1st Test England won by 196 runs.Many people wondered as to how India which won the world cup couple of months ago could even have receive such a severe drubbing in the Test and ODI series.

August , 2011
==>There was mini rebirth of this blog ;-)I started blogging regularly again.
==>Facebook Overtakes Orkut in India – Another Setback for Google
==>Hazare ended his fast on 28 August 2011,after  starting it on 16 August 2011 after the Indian Government had passed the resolution for the Lokpal Bill unanimously,
==>Thailand faced the worst  Floods in 70 Years 

September , 2011
September 8, 2011 was the 10th anniversary of the twin tower attacks

October , 2011
==>Libya's tyrannical dictator for more than a decade breathed his last on 20 October 2011
==>New Gundam series “Mobile Suit Gundam AGE”  begins airing on October 9, 2011

November , 2011
==> I joined "indiblogger" on 22nd Nov 2011 


December , 2011
==>On 16th I  got my first Indiblogger rank

==>kim Jong II ,the North Korean dictator breathes his last
==>US pulls out of Iraq .The last of the soldiers too have left the country

Create Label or Tag Cloud In a New Page In Blogger

How To Create a dynamic Label or Tag Cloud In a New Page In Blogger?

 In  some of our blogs there would be too many labels that it would be difficult to show all of them in main page of the blog.To solve this issue we can add the label cloud in a new page in our blog.This post aims to serve as a tutorial for doing this.

The following screenshot shows the appearance of the  Labels page or tag cloud page for your blog:-

Step1:-
Step one is to create a new page and name it "labels" .For accomplishing that this you need to
==>Go into "Design Mode in blogger", henceforth will be referred to as "Design Mode" in rest of the post
==>Click on the "Posting" tab.
==>Under this "Posting" tab click on the "Edit Pages" tab.
==>Click on the "New page" button
==>Give a title for he page like "Labels"
==>and then click on "Publish Page" button

Step2:-
   Ensure that in the "design view" of blogger ,otherwise click on the "Pages" gadget and rearrange so that "Pages" gadget appears below the header gadget.Ensure that "Save" the design after editing.

Step3:-
Add the labels gadget. To do that you need to:-
==>Click on "Add a Gadget" link and add a new gadget "Labels" which is available under "Basics" menu.
==>Drag the "Labels" Rearrange as required so that it appears just above "Blog Posts" gadget and below "Pages" gadget

Step 4:-
Edit the code so that the label code appears only in the "Labels page and not the main page of the blog"
==>Click on "Edit HTML" link in "Design Mode"
==>Click on check box "Expand Widget Templates"
==>Search and Locate  your label widget.It should look something like this
<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
==>Add the following "if condition" nestle it within   your gadget/widget tags so that the xml structure is well formed and then ensure that the ending if tag is added in the right place as shown below.You can then "Save Template"
 If your xml is not well formed then the page will display an error. My advise is to exit the "Design Mode" and repeat Step 4 otherwise it will mess up your blog.

<b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
<b:includable id='main'>

<b:if cond='data:blog.url == &quot;URLOFYOURLABLEPAGE&quot;'>

...
...

</b:if>
</b:includable>
</b:widget>

Finally you will have a beautiful tag cloud which you can use to browse your blog. Try out the label tab at the top of this blog to get a feel of it.

Famson (facebook) vs Googliath (google)

The latest internet rage is the fight between facebook and google
Its probably the third world war
The earlier world wars were fought for control of land and mining resources
The latest worldwar is for a piece of the internet traffic pie
The battle lines have been already drawn.
Pitched battle are being fought and here is the status of the war
==>Facebookland vs googleplus land has become a prime example of trench warfare
==>Google failed miserably in the "Buzz" land and the attempt fizzled out without a fuzz.
==>The Orkut fort lasted only till 2010 in india
==>Facebook has single handedly given death blows to all other competitors like hi5,myspace etc leaving only google in the fray
==>Facebok has made major gains in past few years of the war
==>Facebook alias samson(henceforth referred to as famson) is making huge headway against googliath bringing in more traffic to its site than google search site
==>To cover up early losses googliath has turned tide against famson by unearthing a major coup in the form of googleplusland
==>There also huge and large scale aerial bombing of ideas through "facebook like" and google "plus one"


One may join either of the forces in the below website.Happy browsing!!!!


http://likevsplus.thewebsys.com/

Google Browser?

Now that is something.We are all smitten by the google search.Many people don't even know that other search engines exist.Google is almost become synonymous with the search engine it owns.

Then google came out with google maps,online documents and now it is browser.I wold very much like to watch how it fares.

Here is the home page of the site from where one can download Google Chrome,well for the uninitiated that is the name of the google's search engine.

Click here to Download Google Chrome

It is rumored that it heavily borrows features from safari and firefox.Whatever might be the case , i would like to see how does it fare in the heavily competitive market of internet browsers.


Currently there are pretty good browsers out there like firefox and it versions like flock etc,seamonkey,Opera,Safari,netscape and lastly IE and browsers based on it like maxthon.

In my opinion it is very unlikely that it would be all of them in features , speed , security and reliability and usage value.

Not to forget and important aspect like addons for mozilla or rather gecko based browsers like seamonkey and firefox or widgets in case of Opera.Google new browser better be equipped to handle addons like these,otherwise it is highly unlikely that it would survive

For now let us wait and watch.

Are all you gmail messages safe ? Think again

Short excerpt of the article which claims that gmail messages are getting deletd from inbox :-

Disappearing Gmail messages baffle users
Juan Carlos Perez
November 15, 2007 (IDG News Service) When Jeneane Sessum logged into her Gmail account on the afternoon of Oct. 27, she was greeted with a horrifying sight: an empty inbox.


A Gmail user since 2004, Sessum, a social media consultant and writer in Atlanta, had thousands of messages there, enough to use up almost 30% of her allotted storage space.


Since Gmail is her primary work and personal e-mail service, Sessum lost many important messages, including some she needed at that moment for a project.


Days earlier in Chicago, Jessica Squazzo, a writer and editor, accessed Gmail and stared at her computer screen in disbelief: All messages from 2007 had disappeared from her inbox.

For more on this article ClickMe

Google's Obsession With White Colour

Well i think google as a company likes all its websites to feature a white background.To cite a few examples we have the search engine,gmail,google groups and picasa.The only popular site that was predominantly featuring a pinkish theme was orkut and hence the think tank at google got cranking and viola orkut changes theme based on white.People like me find the new theme not so appealing as the old one.I have been in orkut for over 6 months now and i feel the older theme was pleasant and strikes the right chord.