Niponwave

I am sure you are on twitter aren’t you? Well my friends and I are twitter regulars! Twitter can be good if you have some time to waste, that is! It is better suited to people like Chetan Bhagat with a wide audience. For lesser mortals, it can be useful if your peer group is also on twitter. Else it will feel very lonely out there in the twitter world you know. If you follow someone then you can see his/her posts (updates) in your timeline. Also other users can see your posts in their timeline if they follow you. The more followers you have the better. Updates are called tweets as you must be knowing already. If you seem to like someone’s tweet, you can re-tweet it! If the same tweet is re-tweeted over and over it becomes a popular tweet. Again, if the same topic (keyword) is appearing in tweets of many users then it becomes a trending topic on twitter. Jyoti Basu became a trending topic recently. The twitter web interface may seem bland and dull. Get the tweetdeck application to make your twitter life easier for you. Twitter is very much in nowadays. That is the exact reason why I got interested in it again. I joined it long time back and tweeted too for some time but then stopped. The recent hullaballoo about twitter in India (thanks to Chetan Bhagat and Shashi Tharoor) renewed my interest in it.

If you are on Twitter or planning to join after reading this, please follow me @wishnipon.

It has been a week I am back in hostel and the wards are in full swing. I am still relishing the great fun I had back in Sikkim where we - 2 friends and I - went on a group tour! Travelling with friends was real fun! I have started jotting down before the memory fades. Please read it http://www.bongbuzz.net/2010/01/22/sikkim-trip/

Hi folks its d NEW YEAR! Time 4 fun & frolic Dance & parties Cinemas & restaurants so ENJOY! HaPpY NeW YeAr 2010 NB: plz ignore ths if u r a medical student

The Prof. exams just have to be in this time of the year! A lackadaisical and irresponsible university on top of that, not even caring to notify of a drastic change in the question pattern! Is it just some friends or was there an earthquake in North Bengal yesterday afternoon? I was too busy giving exam to even feel it. I had CM pracs yesterday you see. It ran frm 8.30 to 5.30. Oh what an exam! As we have the family study thing, we were taken by a bus to this village early in the morning shivering and all. Glad it’s over now! Phew….. Now there is only the eye pracs ahead which is due tomorrow. To talk about earthquakes, a friend told me he has been feeling it for the past few days actually! Now all this sure sound ominous! 2012 ain’t far away. At least I’ll be a doc by then And yes, Happy New Year! Belated Christmas wishes too!

Happened to go to get a pre-viva haircut. Then thought against returning to hostel and went to play pool instead! For the first time ever. Offline, I mean, for I’ve played the Yahoo pool hundreds of times and happen to be the best player in my circle! The rules are the same. But had a tough time getting a grip on the game. Yet I won as Sourav Santra, my worthy opponent , did a fine job of pocketing the black ball midway in the game! We had another game but could not finish the board in time. Real life pool is tough it seems! Phew… :-O

Facebook supports high school, college and workplace networks. (Till recently, Facebook allowed regional networks too but has done away with the same as regional boundaries continue to get blurred in the realm of internet.) It’s not just a great way to network with your colleagues and classmates but the network gets added to your profile in the ‘Basic Info’ section as well! That looks über cool!

In case your college or workplace network doesn’t exist on Facebook, you can suggest the network to Facebook via these links:

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=add_work
http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=add_college

Note: You are required to have a company provided email address (on the company domain) to join your workplace network. For college/university networks however it’s not mandatory.

Soon you will get an automated response from FB with the instructions. You should supply the information sought in the mailer and mail it to
networkrequest@facebook.com

In the subject line, you may write Re: My College/University Network Doesn’t Exist on Facebook Yet. For company network suggestions, you must be mailing from your work email address.

For college/university networks

1. Full name of your school - <full name of your college>
2. City - <city>
3. State, country - <state>, <country>
4. Your school’s website - <write if your school has one>
5. Whether your school provides email addresses to students (yes or no) - <yes/no>
6. Your graduation year - <200x>
7. Please also copy and paste this email  -<your FB login mail address>

For workplace networks

1. The name of your workplace - <full name of your workplace>
2. The official website of your workplace - <website>
3. Your official work email address - <company provided email address (mandatory)>
4. A copy of this email - <your FB login mail address>

Now wait for a few days till you get a mail from FB like this.

Hi Nipon,

This network has been added to the site, but may not appear for 24 hours. Once this network appears on the site, you will be able to join the network by selecting “Account Settings” from the Settings drop-down menu and going to the Networks tab. Let me know if you have any further questions.

I had suggested my college network few days back and it took about 10 days before I got the above reply. Once your network is created, go to the Networks tab in your Facebook account settings page. Start typing your college/workplace name, select it once it appears in the dropdown list and click the Join Network button.

Note: In high school networks, only existing students are allowed to join, not the alum. To be able to join your high school network, you must clearly type out your high school name in full and mention leaving year in your profile info. In the Networks tab in your Facebook account settings page, start typing your high school name, select it once it appears in the dropdown list and click the Join Network button, if you are still attending high school, that is.

Microsoft has just released their all new transliteration-capable Indic typing tool. The old input tool which came with Windows by default was sans la cutting edge and people were using existing programs like Baraha (Hindi), Avro (Bengali, Assamese), etc or relatively new web-based Google transliteration. The Microsoft Indic Typing Tool, released as a beta version, comes in both desktop and web-based variants and supports major Indian languages such as Bengali, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil and Telugu in the current version.

Download Microsoft Indic Typing Tool

Windows XP users: Refer to this Guide to make your computer ready for Indian languages.

After installing you are all set to start typing. You can start typing in the Indic language of your choice by selecting it from the Language bar which typically appears on the taskbar and can be accessed by right clicking on the taskbar and selecting it. Or you can switch to Indic language using the Alt + Left Shift key combination, the same key combination to switch back to English.

If for some reasons you can’t turn the Language bar on or the  Alt + Left Shift key combination isn’t working for you then refer to this Guide.

Folks continue to be baffled when they see leading newspapers like Anandabazar, Pratidin, Aajkaal are still using Bitstream on their websites. I discussed this on the Omicronlab forum sometime ago.

Well the reasons why Anandabazar continues to use Bitstream on their site are pretty lame. Here they go -

1. If they used Unicode many people would not be able to view the text. But that is a very lame reason I tell you. If it was 5-6 years ago, it would have made some sense. People who are using the internet and reading news online are tech-savvy enough. A few instructions for Windows 2000/XP users will be enough. (I dont see 98 anywhere these days).
2. They are ignorant. They don’t know Unicode is the universal way to display Bengali text. BBC Bengali (bbc.co.uk/bengali), Wikipedia (bn.wikipedia.org) are with the time and use Unicode on their site.
3. They are lazy. Even if they understand that bitstream (that requires an installation) is cumbersome and Unicode is the standard, they are lazy to shift. Lazy to convert their archive to unicode and lazy to get rid of their current software setup.
4. They are not serious. They are not taking the internet seriously. They are in no mood to spare a thought for website upgradation.

The Bitstream has many disadvantages, which I am sure the readers of these newspapers have faced.

1. Only Windows supported, not Linux or Mac.
2. Only Internet Explorer supported. Not Firefox, Chrome or Opera.
3. An installation is required by the user!
4. Obsolete technology.
5. The text is useless. You cant copy it.
6. The text can’t be indexed by search engines either.

It has one advantage though! For windows 98 users, this was a good way to see Bengali text on web. (Microsoft has phased out support for 98 long ago thereby sending it to the museum)

It is a pity that our leading newspapers are not using Unicode. But in the long run they will have to make the switch. Did I say long run? They must shift to Unicode immediately!