Expressions – Bhagwad Jal Park

Jump straight to the Extension!

Yesterday, I wrote my first Google Chrome extension. The feature that was really keeping me on Firefox all this while was the Ubiquity add on, and though it still works, Mozilla has decided to put a hold on Ubiquity’s development.

Without Ubiquity to hold me back, I succumbed to Google Chrome’s seductive minimalistic interface, blistering speed and overall smoothness. And since the Chrome Extension gallery didn’t have an extension to count the words and characters in a selection, I decided to write one myself since it’s absolutely essential to me as a writer.

This is the first time I’m writing an extension for a browser (I don’t count Ubiquity commands as extensions as such), and the results are pretty neat. It took me well over a day to figure out exactly what the architecture of an extension is and I almost lost my head trying to implement things like message passing, but I finally came through with the goods

This is what the extension I wrote looks like – Word and Character Count:

Google Chrome Extension - Word and Character Count

I’m not much of a designer, so the logo for my extension is just a big blue “W” and the output simply gives the number of words and characters – good enough for my needs. Initially it was just a word count extension and then two people were kind enough to use it and suggest that I include a character counter too – which I did promptly.

So if you’re a writer using Google Chrome, be sure to install my humble contribution to the Google Chrome universe

Similar Posts:

• Firefox Ubiquity – Character Count Command – July 21, 2009
• Ubiquity Commands updated for Ubiquity 0.5 – July 10, 2009
• Number of Google search results – Ubiquity Firefox extension – April 6, 2009
• Ubiquity Torrent Search – MiniNova, IsoHunt, PirateBay, btjunkie – April 5, 2009
• Check PageRank with Ubiquity Extension: page-rank – April 3, 2009

My dream has finally come true! Well, in all truth, it’s been true now for over a month, but it’s only now that I really have the leisure to write about it. Yes, I have a lovely new Kindle from Amazon and have been immersing myself in the glories of the E-Ink technology!

Those who know me are aware that I’ve switched to ebooks since 2004 with a variety of Devices starting with my Tungsten T, then my O2 and finally the iPod Touch. I’ve read hundreds of books on smartphone like devices, never bothering about the small screens (after all, it’s the font size that matters) and the less than stellar battery life. They still outdid physical books by a very long shot. Here were the reasons for switching to ebooks:

1. Don’t need to carry around trunks of books
2. Don’t need to maintain them
3. Can carry thousands of books in my pocket

Till now however, devices like the Kindle were too expensive for a cheapo like me. Though I salivated over the latest Kindle from Amazon and the Sony Ereader, I simply couldn’t bring myself to purchase a device when my needs were already so well met by the iPod Touch.

My Gorgeous new Kindle!

But then came along a contest organized by the freelancing website where I work,  oDesk.com which offered a Kindle as the first prize for a Haiku writing contest! I couldn’t resist and greedily submitted my Haikus which I was sure would win the prize. I looked forward to the day the results would be announced – so sure was I that mine would be the winning entry. Alas, when the day arrived I found to my consternation that I had come second and that my only prize was a T-shirt

I thought I’d lost the opportunity forever. Anupa (my wife) however, thought this the perfect time to surprise me with a new year’s gift. She thought my Haiku was better than the winning entry (and I secretly agreed with her ), and decided that I deserved one of the few things in life that I actually wanted. So it arrived the next day, all wrapped up and beauuuuutiful!

Sexy Kindle cover

Since then I’ve transferred my reading exclusively to the Kindle when I’m at home which I almost always am. My job as a freelancer doesn’t require me to travel out of the house and in these circumstances, the Kindle is perfect. On the rare occasions when I do leave the house for some reason, I still carry the iPod Touch with me for a quick mobile read. So why did I give up the iPod Touch for the Kindle? These were the main reasons:

1. E-Ink technology allows me to read in full light without a glare
2. The battery life is around 8,000 page turns! Around 2.5 books – perfect for a long flight
3. Larger screen means more text on the page and fewer page turns

So far, it’s been an absolute ball reading on it. I’ve already polished off seven books or so with this neat device. Anupa even bundled a beautiful case for it. It now looks just like a regular thin book and only I know that it’s a one stop shop for all my reading needs. It basically saved my life on the 25-30 hr flight from Chicago to Frankfurt to Mumbai and finally to Chennai.

The only disappointment so far is that the famous “Whispernet” technology doesn’t work in Chennai though it’s supposed to. In Chicago, I was even able to browse the Internet at no charge and I’m supposed to be able to do the same in Chennai as well since Amazon claims coverage here too. It’ll be really cool if that works and would make it a killer device. It comes with a built in dictionary which is damn neat as well. The cursor allows you to navigate to difficult words and the definition automatically pops up. And the extra space at the bottom allows me to get a nice solid grip on it.

Another convenience is the fact that the “Next page” buttons are located on both the left as well as on the right. So if my right hand is busy, I can still turn the pages. Perfect for eating and reading at the same time . Okkkk, I just realized that sounds really perverted, but the sentence stands!

Of course, I’m hardly a model customer for Amazon who expects me to log into their website from the Kindle and purchase books from them. No siree. Instead I download books onto my PC and use the super duper open source program Calibre to transfer the books onto the Kindle. I’m now reading “Of Human Bondage” by Somerset Maugham and have Isaac Asimov’s entire Foundation Series lined up for my reading pleasure! Going by all this, it’s not surprising that I’m a very happy man

For those of us living in India, you can order the Kindle from Amazon for an equivalent for Rs. 16,000 or so. The US price of $250 is increased by the customs duty in India. Still, not too bad I would say all things considered. I suppose we should be glad they’re shipping it at all. But if you can get a friend of yours to pick it up in the US and simply give it to you when he or she lands, that would save you some Rs. 4,000 . May or may not be worth it for you. If you do decide to order it from India itself, keep an eye out for unscrupulous delivery men who will try and take money from you just as they deliver it claiming import fees. Take the Kindle away from them first (by pretending to agree) and then ask them for a receipt and a bill. And then call their delivery company and report them.

I’m sure in a few years, ereaders will come out in full force into the Indian market. I’m looking forward to improvements and innovations, and most importantly, cheaper prices as well!

Similar Posts:

• Google Books allows eBooks download via the ePub format! – September 2, 2009
• Insert a Link from History with Preview using Ubiquity – October 20, 2009
• Giving away Green technologies – way to go! – November 14, 2009
• iPod Touch now has Walking Directions and Public Transport with OS 3.0! – June 17, 2009
• The sad state of eBook Formats – February 28, 2009

If there’s one thing that really pisses me off about the traditional capitalistic system, it’s the fact that people feel they have a right to patent ideas and technology in perpetuity. This is one reason why climate change prevention is being held up. Rich countries who want places like India to urgently reduce emissions, refuse to subsidize green technology that will help developing countries do just that. Instead, they want to be paid expensive license fees. Kind of like having your cake and eating it.

So it makes me happy when I see a company in India showing how things should be done. Ahmed Khan’s company in Bangalore is using discarded plastic to make roads which last longer – removing the need for the plastic to enter landfills. And it seems to be a success in Bangalore which already has around 1200 km built using this technology.

Image Credit: Himalayan Trails

Green Roads Reducing waste

Here’s my favorite part though: “The Khans’ business spread to other cities and states, and although they patented the plasticized pavement in India, other companies are copying the technology. The Khans said they had decided not to object”

Don’t you just love that? Inventions like this help the entire country and can speed up the process of making our living space a bit cleaner. Now with competition, prices can be cut and made more affordable. If this was a traditional western company, they would not only have not allowed anyone else to use it, they would also have charged triple the price of a regular road to maximize their profit and milk their monopoly.

Incidentally this highlights the difference between a professional corporate company and a smaller personal firm. The former doesn’t belong to any one person and has no morals other than profit. A smaller firm on the other hand is linked to a person and can behave ethically as well as make a profit. Can you for example imagine a corporate like AT&T giving away a technology to other people because it’ll be good for the country? Never! Till a few years back, I used to dislike smaller businesses, but now I understand why they’re better than large faceless organizations.

Profit isn’t the sole motive of innovation and human kind has adapted and succeeded in the world only because people copy others and when one person discovers something, the entire group shares the benefits. Here’s hoping that more of common sense prevails!

Similar Posts:

• How Patents stifle and go against Human nature – September 21, 2009
• Patents standing in the way of Combating Climate Change – September 16, 2009
• The Real cost of Natural Resources – September 11, 2009
• Poor people must die first – so says an Economist – November 18, 2009
• Enjoying my new Kindle in Chennai, India! – January 21, 2010

This command should have already been written by someone. Unfortunately all the versions I’ve seen till now either don’t work or are not compatible with Ubiquity 0.5 . So I wrote one on my own. I had to modify the awesomebar noun type for this so that you could see the title of the page as well as the URL link that is going to be inserted. If you’re using Ubiquity with Firefox, the command should have popped up by now for you to subscribe to it.

Here’s a screenshot (click to enlarge):

Insert a link from your history using Ubiquity

When you call the command, simply type in part of the Title or the URL of the page, select your choice from the list and hit Enter. The command will insert the URL at the cursor point. I’ve also noticed some odd behavior in some cases where the suggestion list changes without warning displaying a completely different command after you type in a few characters. This must be due to some optimization problems with Ubiquity’s Parser 2. I’m not sure why it happens.

Other than that, this command should work just fine. Hope you enjoy it!

Similar Posts:

• Inserting HTML tags using Firefox Ubiquity – October 5, 2009
• Host your Firefox Ubiquity Commands for free – August 2, 2009
• Number of Google search results – Ubiquity Firefox extension – April 6, 2009
• Ubiquity Torrent Search – MiniNova, IsoHunt, PirateBay, btjunkie – April 5, 2009
• Check PageRank with Ubiquity Extension: page-rank – April 3, 2009

Google’s Sidewiki is a pretty nifty tool. But many people including myself don’t want to install the whole toolbar just for this one feature. There are some sad little bookmarklet implementations out there that show you an unformatted Sidewiki page where you can’t add anything – and that’s just missing the whole point of this feature.

While I haven’t found a way to completely do away with the toolbar, I have found a way to remove it’s presence in Firefox and have just the Sidewiki icon sitting innocuously next to the top menu next to the “Help” menu. Here’s what it looks like (Click to enlarge):

As you can see, the entire toolbar has gone, and I haven’t replaced my regular Firefox search box either (I used Experimental keyboard shortcuts and I don’t like it changed). Just a little Sidewiki icon that doesn’t harm anyone! Of course, the Toolbar is still installed – and I haven’t found a way to do away with that yet. So here’s how I did it:

1. Install the Google Toolbar – leave the default settings
2. Go to View -> Toolbars -> Customize
3. You’ll have a palette of icons now. Reach over with your mouse cursor, and grab the Sidewiki Icon from the Google Toolbar. Drag the icon next to the “Help” menu (or any other place you want it to be)
4. Click Done.
5. Again go to View -> Toolbars, and uncheck the Google Toolbar option

You’re through! You should get the result in the screenshot above. No Google Toolbar with full Sidewiki functionality in an unobtrusive place. It’s a good enough workaround for me right now until someone comes up with a good bookmarklet that completely replicates the functionality of the Toolbar icon. That may not even be possible though. Till then, I’m happy

Similar Posts:

• Converting Wordpress Tags into Categories – September 20, 2009
• Insert a Link from History with Preview using Ubiquity – October 20, 2009
• Word and Character Count – Google Chrome Extension – February 20, 2010
• Number of Google search results – Ubiquity Firefox extension – April 6, 2009
• Check PageRank with Ubiquity Extension: page-rank – April 3, 2009

Have you ever gotten frustrated by the tedious process of wrapping HTML tags around plain text? I certainly have. So I wrote a Ubiquity command to do this. If you’re using Ubiquity, the “Subscribe” bar should have popped up by now. Subscribe to the command, and here’s how to use it.

Say you have a sentence which you want to wrap in “em” tags. Select the sentence, call up the “HTML Insert” command and simply use “em” as the argument. Press enter and viola! Your sentence is now wrapped up in neat “<em></em>” tags Here’s a screenshot:

HTML Tag Insert

Another feature recently added is that if you want to insert a link with the <a> tag, you can do so by typing “HTML Tag a with URL” after selecting the anchor text. On execution, the selected text will be wrapped so: <a href=”URL“>selected text</a> .

That’s all there is to it. Enjoy!

Similar Posts:

• Insert a Link from History with Preview using Ubiquity – October 20, 2009
• Host your Firefox Ubiquity Commands for free – August 2, 2009
• Number of Google search results – Ubiquity Firefox extension – April 6, 2009
• Ubiquity Torrent Search – MiniNova, IsoHunt, PirateBay, btjunkie – April 5, 2009
• Check PageRank with Ubiquity Extension: page-rank – April 3, 2009

It makes sense. The database with half a billion genuine subscribers to mobile phones in India can be used as a starting point for allocating the Unique Identity numbers for a billion Indians. We already know that Nandan Nilekani doesn’t currently plan to include personal details in the National Database. But it looks like your cellphone number is going to be part of it.

While it seems like a good start, one wonders if the Unique ID is properly targeted here. According to all sources, it’s the poor and underprivileged who need it most. Maybe such people will not have cell phones (700 million of them). In which case, we’re starting out by giving UIDs to those whom it’s not meant to benefit. But it’s still a start and we have to start somewhere. Since each person’s biometrics will be associated, this should remove the problems with duplicate IDs. But it’s going to mean a huge task of gathering data.

Image Credit: Vinay Joshi/Reuters

Indian National ID set to use Mobile Subscriber Base

Of course since the government isn’t going to blindly copy the telephone subscriber data, how many people are going to willingly verify their numbers for the UID scheme and hand over their fingerprints? Will there be any incentive for them? In the long run, I’m sure that this project can cover almost all the country. What we’re still waiting to see is whether or not the UID will be used for other sinister purposes – even though Nilekani says that there’s no “card” as such and that it’ll be voluntary (initially at least).

India’s large and undisciplined population might be a strength here. After all, for people to keep, maintain and carry a UID requires discipline. You can’t force people to remember to carry it with them. And it’s not like a driving license where if you don’t have it, you’re putting people in danger cause you may not be qualified to drive. After all, there’s nothing wrong in going for an impromptu stroll is there?

I’m watching the situation with – as Blackadder put it in Season 4 – “with a due sense of dread.” To keep upto date with the Unique Identity Card issue in India, subscribe to its RSS feed.

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Similar Posts:

• Indian Unique National ID will not include Personal Details – September 10, 2009
• It’s started – UID used for tagging and tracking – October 4, 2009
• Getting your fingerprints by hook or crook for the UID – October 16, 2009
• Trying to make the UID palatable to the common man – November 6, 2009
• Nilekani admits that UID will be used for tracking people – December 9, 2009

Coming to the US has introduced me full force to the Patent system prevalent in the country. “Intellectual Property” as it is called rules large aspects of America’s legal system. Almost anything can be patented – right from software, to hairstyles (as my wife told me), to business practices. Coming from a country where such things don’t enter most people’s minds, I’ve been able to observe it from outside, and have realized that it’s contrary to the very thing that makes humans special.

It’s a travesty and an insult to the natural behavior of humans and goes against the very impulse that has propelled humanity to the top of the food chain. Don’t believe me? Read on!

Read more…

Similar Posts:

• The Environment? It’s not just us! – September 23, 2009
• Patents standing in the way of Combating Climate Change – September 16, 2009
• Giving away Green technologies – way to go! – November 14, 2009
• Climate Change – I’ve given up and lost hope – January 8, 2010
• US Businesses Challenge Global Warming in Court! – August 28, 2009

It took me a little while to figure out how to convert tags into categories in my Wordpress blog, and here’s hoping that someone else doesn’t need to search as much.

Wordpress Tags to Categories

Basically I found that too many of my tags were long term “slots” and I wished that some were categories instead (poor planning I know). With so many posts, I wasn’t relishing the idea of changing each (even with the “Quick Edit” functionality.) After some searching, I finally found that it could be done using in-built Wordpress functionality! So here’s how to go about it:

1. In the Administration section, click “Posts”
2. Under Posts, click “Categories”
3. At the bottom of the page, click the “category to tag converter” – bear with me, I haven’t gotten mixed up
4. In the new screen, you should finally see a “Tag to Categories” button!
5. Here simply select which tags to convert into categories, and Wordpress will obligingly do it’s duty.

That’s it. No plug ins, no coding and no SQL. Simple, clean, and effective. Hope you found this useful!

Similar Posts:

• Sidewiki without the Google Toolbar in Firefox (almost!) – October 10, 2009
• Ubiquity Commands updated for Ubiquity 0.5 – July 10, 2009
• Number of Google search results – Ubiquity Firefox extension – April 6, 2009
• Check PageRank with Ubiquity Extension: page-rank – April 3, 2009
• Configure ALPS (Synaptics) touchpad in Ubuntu Karmic and Jaunty – April 25, 2009

As we approach the Copenhagen conference in December 2009, we’re finding a divide between developed countries like the US and developing countries like India and China. This is because rich nations want poorer countries to commit to drastic carbon emission cuts that the latter are unwilling to do without assistance.

Clean Technology and Intellectual Property (IP)

Given that it’s in everyone’s best interests to adopt clean energy technologies, it makes sense that developed countries should give poorer ones the means to do so. However, rich nations have issues like patents and intellectual property that they are unwilling to let go of. They want poor nations to pay the high prices for these technologies so that they can profit by selling them. It goes without saying that poor nations cannot afford these technologies as long as they’re sold by the rich countries. It’s no secret that big businesses are not happy with the whole climate change issue and are willing to sacrifice our planet at the altar of their profit.

Image Credit: Dominic’s pics

Opposing Clean Technology Transfer

Developed nations (especially the US) say that a “free market” ensures that lower prices will result over time. But this doesn’t wash. For one thing, the “patents” for clean technologies take several decades to expire before a free market can ensue. Valuable time that we can’t afford to waste. By all estimates, we have a maximum of 10-15 years to cut and stabilize carbon emissions and for that, we must start now.

Developing and Developed – Not on the same plane

The truth is that developed countries have become rich in the first place at the cost of disrupting our planet. Not to blame them as such, since they didn’t know. But it does shift the burden of fixing the problem onto them since they created it.

Secondly, cutting carbon emissions will hurt poorer countries much more than it will developed countries. One reason is that people in rich nations are already well off. On the other hand, there is widespread poverty, lack of electricity and clean drinking water in poorer nations. These people will be doomed to remain in that state if carbon emissions are to be reduced without clean technologies to offset the loss. This is grotesquely unfair since it means that poor nations will be doomed to forever remain poor if they commit to cutting carbon emissions by themselves.

Another reason is that rich countries possess the know how that will enable them to cut carbon emissions without compromising economic development. Poor nations on the other hand will have to stop growing to achieve the same cuts. Once again, this is preposterously imbalanced.

In a way, developing countries are being punished for being poor since by being poor, they will suffer more. This is completely unfair. Certainly, developing countries also have to try and keep emissions in check – and from what we hear, they’re making more grassroots efforts than people in developed countries.

When all the world leaders meet in Copenhagen, it must be understood that it’s not a trade conference. It is meant to protect our planet. Something that they must be willing to make sacrifices for. Developed nations, having caused the problem must by necessity sacrifice more. No one’s asking for direct monetary assistance. The least that can be done is by helping poor nations help themselves by releasing patents and intellectual property rights for solar, wind and other clean energy sources. Given the burden of historic responsibility for the current crisis, it’s the least that can be done.

Similar Posts:

• How Patents stifle and go against Human nature – September 21, 2009
• Poor people must die first – so says an Economist – November 18, 2009
• Giving away Green technologies – way to go! – November 14, 2009
• Americans don’t believe in Global Warming! – July 13, 2009
• Manually Removing Carbon Dioxide from the air – July 10, 2009