Google pages

I tried out googlepages today. My personal opinion : It is a good webpage creating tool for grandma at home. If grandma can do gmail, she can now create a webpage. That is how simple it is. Not sure if someone who has more tech skills would like it though. The AJAXy interface is good but too restrictive. I like to see my html tags. Well, one more positive in this whole thing is memory - they give you 100 Megs even for the free version - Geocities does not give you that much (but hey they let you even upload html created by you. So overall : + Phenomenally simple to create a webpage + No bandwidth restriction + Free version gets you 100 Megs (no one else gives you this) + No ads (like geocities forces on you) - but how long will this last ? - Restrictive - Cant see html tags - Cant create your own html and uploade - System was pretty unstable as of this morning and I see several bloggers complaining the same. Go check out my page though at http://gcmouli.googlepages.com/ TDavid from 'MakesYouGoHmm' blog also has a good analysis. [link] Update: Ok, I take back my words. You can upload your own html into googlepages. I just tried it and it works. I guess, I will have to agree that googlepages does seem viable now. Though, I am not sure if it is stable enough yet. My sister tried to create a page today morning and it did not allow her to do so. She got a message saying that, due to heavy system overload, they are not accepting any more invites.

One hour brainstorming session --> Heart behind the Digital Camera

Washington post has a beautiful article on how the heart behind the digital camera - the CCD (charge couple device) was born. Pretty interesting story. Two guys who were afraid that their funding might get cut - do a one hour brainstorming session and come up with the brilliant idea. [link]

He (boss) called every two or three days, and Boyle and collaborator George E. Smith soon got the idea that their funding might disappear unless they invented something in a hurry. So they did.In a one-hour brainstorming session in late 1969, Boyle and Smith drew up the basic design for a memory chip they called a "charge-coupled device," more familiarly known as a "CCD."

Something else that was very funny in the article.

In the late 1980s, Kodak developed the professional "Kodak Digital Camera System," which debuted -- with a 20-megabyte hard disk and a backpack to run the electronics -- at the 1991 Super Bowl.

Productive Meetings

Hm. No, it is not an oxymoron. You _can_ have productive meetings. Merlin Mann from 43folders lists out 9 tips for effective meetings. Very concisely put. A must read for people who chair meetings. [link]

List of awesome shareware

There is another looooong list forming at Listible - yes ! the same place where last week, we found a list of web2.0 apps. This list contains a large number of fully free software (free-ware). Some of them are common like firefox, notepad2, ad-aware etc. Some are neat apps - that are actually nice to have, but not mandatory for every user. Nonetheless, an excellent one place to look for freeware. [link]

Sleep on it ...

First of all, apologies for posting not-so-regularly. Unfortunately, work is taking the better of me these days. I would still update this blog on a semi-regular basis. Please do stay tuned. I am going to try and get the RSS feed of this blog up and running. So you guys can tune in to that too. As for the subject of this post, I just read an awesome article from New Scientist, which suggests you to sleep on big complex decisions. According to the article "the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions. Complex decisions should be left to the unconscious mind". I would love that. Read the full article here.

Steve Pavlina Reloaded

Sunday personal development madness. Here are three awesome articles from the personal development guru, Steve Pavlina. Very nicely written.

• How to have a more focussed day [link]

• Feeble excudes [link] : This article is awesome. Three of the most feeblest excuses - "I dont have time", "I dont know how", and "I dont have enough money for it"

• Time Management [link] : A slightly long article, but well written. It says that "using time management systems like GTD is only half the problem solved". You should follow the age old way of "plan it, do it".

Tommorrow ....... DIY Planner Ver 3.0

Everyone is eagerly waiting on the DIY Planner Ver3.0. Dougj and his team has been working feverishly for this to happen. Just a reminder everyone, peep into www.diyplanner.com tommorrow and check it out. If you like it, show some love towards dougj and his team. [diyplanner.com] [note] I know that this post is being posted one day late. Something goofed up in bloggers' mail-the-blog-post feature. It just put this guy in draft mode, and never published it. I am publishing this now anyway. But folks, go to diyplanner.com. Its got some awesome templates.

List of Web 2.0 resources

Listible (another Web 2.0 service) is listing out a set of Web 2.0 services out on the web. Wow. It is a cool list out there. Go check it out.
It is growing, the list is growing. It was 46 last night. 51 today morning.

[link]

mailBIGfile

Check out mailbigfile.com. We all have had situations when we needed to send someone a really big file, and hotmail or gmail stuck their tongue out at us. Now you have the answer. I am going to try this out today. If this work, I will add an update to this. Update: This thing works like a charm. Very very cool

No Credit Needed: List This

Amazingly productive sunday for none other than our own No-Credit-Needed. Very encouraging post. Check it out. No Credit Needed: List This

ATFs 24 days to better finance

The big man of PF blogs AllThingsFinancial has started an amazing 24 day tutorial on how to get your finances into order, and start saving/investing etc. These tutorials are a collection of good links from other PF blogs. So there is a lot of variety.

Today is the fourth day - basics of investing [link]

Catch Day1 - Day 3 here, here and here.

Kamasutra worm ... would hit on Feb 3

Dear readers:

Be careful while opening attachments (any attachments) on Feb 3. The now much acclaimed Kamasutra worm is said to hit on this day. It is said to have the dubious distinction of being the first virus/worm which "blogs". Everytime it infects a computer, it goes and accesses a webpage with a webcounter in it - thus marking one more success on its part.

For more info, read the yahoo news article here.

I want to retire early ... and then what ?

A very cool article on what to do after an early retirement. We say that we want to do a lot of things. But once after retirement, most folks just couch it up in front of the TV with a bag of chips. How not to do this .... .

The article says, that is based for people in the US, but on reading it, I think there are several nuggets of info that are common world over.

[link]