Worst tech predictions ever

Predictions can never shape the future. They can either be right or wrong.

And these worst predictions of all time will testify this fact. Go ahead and be surprised.

1) "Everything that can be invented has been invented." 

       Charles H. Duel - Head of the US patent Office in 1899

2)  "Television won't be able to hold onto any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."
        Daryl F. Zanuck  -worked for motion pictures

3) " There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home"

      Ken Olsen, founder of mainframe-producer Digital Equipment Corp., 1977.

4)   "Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."

        Sir Alan Sugar- 2005

5) “Computers in the future may weigh no more than  1.5 tons.”

      Popular Mechanics  in 1949

6)  "Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

      H.M.Warner- Co founder of Warner brothers

7)  "No one will need more than 637KB of memory for a personal computer."

       Bill Gates in 1981

8) "There is no need for any individual to have a computer in their home."

      Ken Olson (1977) - President of Digital Equipment Corp

9) "It would appear we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology."

     John von Neumann (1949) - Computer Scientist 

10) "Spam will be dead in 24 months"

      Bill Gates - 2004

11) "We will never make a 32-bit operating system,"

      Bill Gates at  launch of MSX in 1983

12) "0x2026Apple is already dead." 

          Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft

13) "I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

      Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

 

Keep laughing to yourself! Happy reading!!

      

Top 7 Google Doodles for 2011

Heya guys! Before the year 2011 ends, i thought about giving you a look at the best Doodles for this year.
These are some excellent animated doodles that can really blow your mind.
Check them out!


Spot 7


Martha Graham doodle was presented 11th May on the eve of 117th birthday of this American modern dancer and choreographer. 

See this doodle here


Spot 6


Arthur "Art" Clokey was a pioneer in the popularization of stop motion clay animation and google made this special interactive doodle for his 90th birthday.

Play it here

Spot 5

A small doodle cum game which you can play celebrating the 60th anniversary of the publication of first book by Stanisław Lem.

                                                

Check it here

Spot 4

Lunar eclipse doodle came out on 15th june 2011 when the world witnessed a rare 100 minute lunar eclipse. 

Check out the google version of this eclipse

Spot 3

Google celebrated the 65th birthday of Freddie Mercury's on 5th September with this awesome animation. "The development of this 90 second tribute took about 4 months-- most of which went into planning the visual style of the doodle". Freddie was called "Britain's first asian rockstar.

                               

Link to Freddie Mercury Doodle


Spot 2


Everybody's favourite Charlie Chaplin was the man of the day with this Google Doodle for his 122nd birthday on April 16. Undoubtedly one of the finest doodles ever.

See it here


Spot 1


And finally the doodle that made the world crazy this year came up on 9th of june in honour of 96th birthday of Les Paul - a pioneer in the development of solid body electric guitar. He was also a jazz and country guitarist, songwriter and inventor.

Rock it here


Have a great year ahead. Happy reading!!!


Check out more Google Stuff here.

What does "Search" means for Google

"Google Search" is probably the most popular thing by google. And well , now there's a whole empire build around this "Search Engine" company.

And now i am here to share two interesting things about what really Search means for Google.

First one is Google SMS Search. In order to expand the usability of the search engine, Google SMS search is probably a very handy stuff. All you have to do is write a query and SMS to 977-33-00000 and google will send you the result by SMS.

As this is a service for India (Mumbai), hence there are only nominal SMS charges. You can check the weather, hotels, multiplexes and the most importantly you can check the Railway PNR status by sending the PNR number. Cool , isn't it?

Now the second aspect of Google "Search". This one is funnier than the earlier one.
Just go to "Google.com" (read Google.com) and type the word "Search" and hit "i'm feeling lucky" and you will be surprised to see the result.

Happy reading!!!

How to create a folder with no name, no visibility

Follow the simple steps .

1) Go to RUN

2) Search for Character Map and hit enter

3) Now select the blank space. Click SELECT and then click COPY.

Now we have a blank text copied.

4) Now create a new folder and rename it by just pressing Ctrl+v and blank name will be given to it.

5) Now go to Folder properties by right click -> Customize and change icon. There are some blank spaces. 

    Select one of them and your folder becomes invisible.

And the output is a folder with no name, no icon.This will be visible only once you hover on the folder. Just save this folder at one corner of desktop and keep using it without anyone letting it know :)

Happy reading!!

A functional website as Wallpaper

I found this trick really impressive. And i also realized that thousands of options are there on our computers that we don't explore and in some cases, don't even know they exist.


So here's the trick to have a functional website as your wallpaper.


For Windows XP:

Just follow these simple steps.

1. Right Click on Desktop.
2. Go to Properties.
3. Click on Desktop tab. Select Customize Desktop.
4. Under the Web tab, click New.
5. In the URL tab , type the URL including "http://"
6. Click OK, OK and OK again to apply the changes.

Go ahead and explore if you find similar thing in other windows flavors. And don't forget to impress your friends. :)

Happy reading!

Watch StarWars in ASCII - on your PC

The third highest grossing movie series- after Harry Potter and James Bond- is STARWARS. 
Wikipedia defines it as " American epic space opera film series".


And i never ever imagined that i could watch it anytime on my PC- but in ASCII format. Yes, you heard me right. You can watch this movie right there in your system anytime with bits of black and white moving around i.e. ASCII format.


Now some of you might still be wondering-" StarWars in ASCII .....means......".

This is made possible with the help of Telnet which provides text-oriented communication facility using a virtual terminal connection.


Windows XP users:


Go to RUN and type "towel.blinkenlights.nl" and tell me if you believe your eyes.


Windows 7/Vista user:


For you guys, Telnet is not directly active. So you have to make little more effort.
To enable Telnet, go to Control Panel › Programs › Turn Windows Feature On or Off 


Now tick both the Telnet checkboxes and Telnet is enabled.


Now go to Start> Search > Telnet, you will get Telnet.exe , then hit enter.
On the Prompt that follows, type "o" and hit enter.
Then type "towel.blinkenlights.nl" and hit enter. And you guys also tell me if you ever expected this.


Obviously, it's not easy to watch the full version in ASCII as you cannot fast forward or so.


So you can also see this version on http://www.asciimation.co.nz whose name is also mentioned in the credits of the ASCII'ed movie.

See you in next post! Happy reading!

How to make your PC welcome you

Well! This is the script which stands lowest in "Effort Quotient" but definitely very high in "Awesomeness Quotient". 


You must have seen in hollywood movies how the computer welcomes the user by calling out their name. That truly sounds uber cool. And well its a nice suave way to impress others as when you switch on your system, your windows based computer say "Welcome cool guy". Let's check this out!


Copy the following code in notepad

                Dim speaks, speech
       speaks="Welcome to your PC, Cool Guy"
       Set speech=CreateObject("sapi.spvoice")
       speech.Speak speaks

You can replace the custom message. And save this file as ".vbs".


For Windows XP:
                     Copy this file to C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Start Menu\Programs \ Startup


For Windows 7/Vista:
                     Copy this file to C:\Users\ User-Name\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu \    
                      Programs\Startup


And now whenever you restart your PC, the windows lady will welcome you.


If you like this, remember there is a comment box and a "+1" button below this.. :)


Have Fun! Stay technically Cool!

Why is facebook blue in colour?

Facebook has definitely gone through a large number of makeovers to be what it is today.
But one thing that never changed is its "Blue" theme. Ever since the time it used to thefacebook.com, the Blue theme has been the same. And let me tell you why.

The reason is that our own Mr. Mark Zuckerberg is red-green colorblind. A mammoth part of the people suffering from color blindness are actually suffering from red-green color blindness and Mark is one of them.


And for such people, blue is the best color to see. Leaving aside this medical condition, even then Blue is the most popular color online as the brain perceives it as a transparent background to the rest of the content a user is reading on the webpage.


And even the Facebook co-founder himself said in an interview that
 
            "blue is the richest color for me - I can see all of blue"

Notepad tricks

Notepad- the most plain looking application in your system. But even that can perform tricks.
Let me show how.



1) Infinite Notepad Trick
    
    All people with interest in computer programming know about infinite loop. And that's what we gonna use   
    here.


   echo off
   :hahaha
   start notepad.exe
    goto hahaha


   And save it as a .bat file. Best way to fool people is to change the icon to some other 
   application like internet explorer that no one will doubt before clicking.
   This can be stopeed once you restart your system. You can even try giving the path of any other .exe.

2) Disco Light Trick
    Copy the following code in notepad
     
     Set wshShell =wscript.CreateObject("WScript.Shell")
     do
     wscript.sleep 300
     wshshell.sendkeys "{CAPSLOCK}"
     wscript.sleep 100
     wshshell.sendkeys "{NUMLOCK}"
     wscript.sleep 100
     wshshell.sendkeys "{SCROLLLOCK}"
     wscript.sleep 100
     loop


  Save as a .vbs file. Then run it to see the caps lock,num lock and scroll lock lights flashing.
  You can set the sleep time as per your wish.




3) Eject Disk Drive
   
    Use the following code.
    Set oWMP = CreateObject("WMPlayer.OCX.7")
    Set colCDROMs = oWMP.cdromCollection
    do
    if colCDROMs.Count >= 1 then
    For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1
    colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
    Next
    For i = 0 to colCDROMs.Count - 1
    colCDROMs.Item(i).Eject
    Next
    End If
    wscript.sleep 5000
    loop


    Save this as .vbs .


4) Fatal System Error
  
     Now this can really scare the fledgelings.
     
     x=msgbox ("You windows is corrupt" ,16, "Fatal System Error")
     
     Again save as .vbs.
     You can choose some other dialog box by changing the numbers.
      16 - critical message icon
      32 - warning icon
      48 - warning message
      64 - info message


All this stuff is harmless for your system and none of this is a virus. :) Enjoy!

How to lock a folder without any tool

I have lot many personal things in my laptop. And i guess,everybody has. And time and again, i need to hide it from others. But just hiding the folder does not work as everybody knows how to reveal it. 
So i am here with a cool hack for this. Try it out!


1) Make a folder , say personal as C:\personal.


2) Go to command prompt and type "attrib +s +h C:\personal' and hit enter.


3) And whoop!! the folder is gone. It can't even be seen if you show the hidden folders.


4) To get back the folder, just type "attrib -s -h C:\personal" and its back.


You can try it on any location. In case your folder does not disappear, do refresh your window.


Enjoy! Happy reading!

A world without facebook

Facebook is massive. And the following infographic testifies it.

How to create custom RUN commands

I am very "keyboard" friendly. Given an option to do a task using keyboard or a mouse, i'll prefer the former.
And that is why, this post happened. I found a very nice and clean way to create my own custom RUN commands.


Few handy Run commands that i assume will be known to all of you are notepad,mspaint,winword,powerpnt or opening your drive using C: or D: etc in the RUN box.


But what if i want to define my own command. Here is a way to do this!


1) Right click on the desktop and create a new shortcut. The following window will appear.



2) Browse for the .exe file that you want to create the shortcut for. I created shortcut for photoshop by 

    selecting "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4\Photoshop.exe"

3) Click next and it will prompt you to enter shortcut name. I typed "ps" for photoshop and clicked finish.

4) A shortcut will be created right there on your desktop . Now copy the shortcut file to C:\Windows .

    You can remove the shortcut on the desktop.

5) Now all you have to do is go to Run and type "ps" and Photoshop is all yours.

Happy reading!

     

The "Crazy" Browser

Gotcha! I guess most of you guys love reading about useless (read "funny") stuff over informative things.

So i am sharing my favorite javascript tricks for browsers (works perfect in IE and FF). Just open any website and copy the following js copy in the address bar an hit enter.

Some of these may not work in tabs. So its better to open a new window.

1) The "Shaky" Browser

                This script makes the browser dance to the tunes.

                javascript:function Shw(n) {if (self.moveBy) {for (i = 35; i > 0; i--) {for (j = n; j > 0; j--)  

                {self.moveBy(1,i);self.moveBy(i,0);self.moveBy(0,-i);self.moveBy(-i,0); } } }} Shw(6)

2) The "Flying" Browser

                Make the site images move in a loop. Best to use this script after google image search.

                javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; 

                y5=200; DI=document.getElementsByTagName("img"); DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-

                DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=           

                (Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5)+"px"; DIS.top=

                (Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5)+"px"}R++}setInterval('A()',50); void(0);

3) The "Gaming" Browser                                    

                Play live game on any website by pasting this code. Move the triangle gun using W,A and D or 

                arrow keys and fire using Space.This one is ultimate!

                javascript:var%20s%20=%20document.createElement('script');s.type='text/javascript';

                document.body.appendChild(s);s.src='http://erkie.github.com/asteroids.min.js';void(0);

4) The "Foggy" Browser

                javascript:(function(){ae=document.getElementsByTagName("*");for(var i=0,el;el=ae[i];i++)

               {el.style.opacity="0.85";el.style.filter="alpha(opacity=80)"}})()

5) The "Sneezing" Browser

                javascript:(function(){ae=document.getElementsByTagName("*");for(var i=0,el;el=ae[i];i++)

                {el.style.textDecoration="blink"}})()

6) The "Revealing" Browser

                Open a website say gmail or FB and fill in your username and password and then paste this code in 

                address bar and hit enter.

                javascript:(function(){var s,F,j,f,i; s = ""; F = document.forms; for(j=0; j<F.length; ++j) { f = F[j]; 

                for (i=0; i<f.length; ++i) { if (f[i].type.toLowerCase() == "password") s += f[i].value + "\n"; } } if 

                (s) alert("Passwords in forms on this page:\n\n" + s); else alert("There are no passwords in forms 

                on this page.");})();

Have fun and would appreciate your appreciation. :)

See you in next post!!

Google Failures- Once upon a Time on the Web

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

                                                                                                                     -Henry Ford

Google has made such an enormous reputation in this internet world that it won't be wrong to say that whatever google touches turns into gold. Be it the search engine itself, or the mobile OS Android, Picasa and online video store Youtube, Google has proved to be the best. But there is other side of the coin which is unknown to many of us. Even i dint know about some of the Google's Biggest Failures for i was not an avid internet user at the time when these apps existed. Here have a look!



Some that i myself knew existed in Google family were-

Google Answers(2002-2006)- A place where you ask questions and bid for a price you are willing to pay($2 to $200) for a well researched answer. No points for guessing why it failed. Why would anyone pay for it when its available for free at the shop next door Yahoo! Answers. And when you open Google answers page at http://answers.google.com/answers/ , there is a polite apology saying "We're sorry, but Google Answers has been retired, and is no longer accepting new questions." :)

Google SearchWiki(2008-2010)- What if you could move the google search results up and down as per your choice or taste but once tailored, there was no way to opt out of the changes made.

Google Orkut- Though this cannot be termed as a total failure but it was popular only in India and brazil whereas the U.S. audience was already lured to MySpace and Facebook. And now finally, Facebook is the zenith of social networking.The failure can be attributed to the invite-only format plus stupid captcha even on sending scraps to friends, to name a few reasons. Maybe Google+ should also try to be bit more open in case of new user signup rather than joining only on invitation.

Happy Reading!!