The very first funny Cat Video? (Video)

Just watched yet another funny cat video on Internet. I wonder when our fascination with funny cat videos began. It turns out that the earliest cat video dates back to the birth of motion pictures. Thomas Edison the consummate commercializer of his innovations made earliest movies to promote the motion picture camera "Kinetograph. After the initial popularity of these penny movies (penny was the cost of ticket) of humans moving, dancing and sneezing waned. He moved on to man's furry friends. In 1894 the boxing cats motion picture was hit among the audiences at the penny arcades.

Jeffrey Zeldman: 20 years of Web Design and Community (Video Documentary)

Who is Jeffrey Zeldman? The "Miles Davis of web design"? "Godfather of the web"? Or simply "your friend on the Internet"? For people who make websites, Zeldman is all of these and more. He's been a guiding voice in web design since the earliest days of the Internet, leading the charge in the fight for web standards. He's an educator whose businesses—A List Apart, An Event Apart, and A Book Apart—are extensions of his basic instinct to share his best ideas. He's also a community leader that other designers look to for inspiration. This film is an intimate portrait of a man who has helped shape the web but isn't recognized by most of the people who use it everyday. Learn how he evolved his influential mailing list, how he convinced Netscape and Internet Explorer to support HTML and CSS, and what he's doing to pass the torch to the next generation.

Watch more documentaries like this at lynda.com/vimeo.

Jeffrey Zeldman: 20 years of Web Design and Community from lynda.com on Vimeo

How to Download Your Photos From Facebook

Do you want to download all your photo's from Facebook?. Now you can using this step by step guide, you to downloading all your Facebook information quickly.

Log on to Facebook.com and go to your Account Settings page. Click on the Download a copy of your Facebook data link at the bottom of the page.

Facebook will now start backing up all your data. It may take some time to finish. You will receive an email with the link to the download file.

When you receive the email from Facebook with the subject 'Your Download is Ready'. Click on the link at the bottom of the email. Facebook should ask you to verify your account information. Please do verify that email indeed came from Facebook.

Click on the download button and the download will start.

You will have to use winzip or similar program to unzip the downloaded file.

PS: Beware, Don't fall prey to Phishing. Please verify that you are on facebook.com before you enter your password.

How to switch to OpenDNS in Ubuntu

I prefer using OpenDNS instead of local ISP DNS servers. OpenDNS is faster, better and totally free. Read the How to switch to OpenDNS in Ubuntu for faster browsing post on OMG Ubuntu to learn more.

What OpenDNS can do

OpenDNS is available to use for free and comes with plenty of features that make it a more desirable option over that of your ISP – not least of which is speeding up your browsing!

OpenDNS works anywhere in the world via a global network of servers that ensure all of your DNS requests automatically go to the OpenDNS server that’s physically closest to you.

“The result is an immediately-noticeable faster, more reliable Internet for everyone in your household.”

The service is so good it’s even used by many well-know brands all over the world, with customers ranging from Nvidia & BP to Lush! cosmetics and DC shoes.

Documentary on Rural Internet Kiosks in Africa

Few hours ago I heard that my friend Jawahar Patani finished the documentary about Rural Internet Kiosks(RIK) project. I have been helping this project for while now. I hope that this documentary would spread the word about this wonderful initiative.

Please visit www.ruralinternetkiosks.com to learn more about this project.

About the Documentary

This short documentary features ICT development in Africa with emphasis on how the Rural Internet Kiosk (RIK) is changing the way rural Africa communicates. The Rural Internet Kiosk is 100% solar powered and is connected to the Internet via Satellite using Astra2Connect VSAT technology.

You can watch the part 1 and part 2 of this documentary on youtube.

How to Bypass Internet Censorship :: Book Review

The book How to Bypass Internet Censorship using free software tools is now out. The book is distributed on Lulu.com. The interesting aspect about this book is that it is created using collaborative content development system over a period of (just) five days by various contributors.

In the past I had blogged about how to bypass the filtering systems using translation services like Babelfish, however I think the book would be more informative for all.

About The Book

Because of concerns about the effect of Internet blocking mechanisms, and the implications of censorship, many individuals and groups are working hard to ensure that the Internet, and the information on it, are freely available to everyone who wants it.

This book documents simple circumvention techniques such as a cached file or web proxy, and also describes more complex methods using Tor, which stands for The Onion Router, involving a sophisticated network of proxy servers.

FLOSS Manuals publications will always be available for free in HTML and PDF from the FLOSS Manuals Website. Each book sale generates $2.50 (USD). 100% of this income goes back into the development of more manuals about free software.

You can also order a dead tree version of this book or just download it.

Mapping The Internet

I watched the map of internet mentioned in the recent "Download: The True Story of the Internet " on Discovery Channel, it sounds like a great idea for a Information visualization project. Here is an old map that was published in December 1998 issue of Wired Magazine, Cool!.

The data is available and more information can be found on the Internet Mapping Project page.

Instant Messengers for Kiosk Linux

The ground floor of our campus library is lined with public access computers, anyone can surf the Internet, search library database and access the scholarly journals in digital form. These machines run one version of Microsoft Windows operating system or other, anti-virus and security updates are non-existent. The only kind of maintenance these machines see is when they crash and someone runs a re-install with a Windows boot CD.

It doesn't take much to migrate some of these machines to gnu/Linux (if you can cut the red tap) and provide a secure and safe browsing experience to the users. There are quite some documentation that help you turn a KDE desktop or the popular Ubuntu Linux to work as a public access kiosk machine. Its relatively easy to setup and makes economic sense too.

However there are still some (technical) problems that need to be addressed, the needs of the kiosk mode desktop environment are quite different. Instant messenger clients running on a Internet kiosk need interface that enable users to log on without storing the user name, password to a user account on the computer. I haven't yet come across any exist free software IM clients that have this kind of facility. You can use the web based IM clients but they aren't a very good alternative.

Pidgin (formerly gaim) is the most popular instant messenger client that comes with most gnu/Linux distributions, it can connect to multiple IM protocols including AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, XMPP, ICQ, IRC, SILC, SIP/SIMPLE, Novell GroupWise, Lotus Sametime, Bonjour, Zephyr, MySpaceIM, Gadu-Gadu, QQ ,Google's Gtalk and more. However pidgin logon interface to aimed users with personal accounts. Perhaps this is one of the issues that free software IM developer should remedy in near future.