all you touch and all you see

The Sapir Whorf hypothesis is a very interesting thing. As defined by Wikipedia ;

The hypothesis postulates that a particular language’s nature influences the habitual thought of its speakers: that different language patterns yield different patterns of thought. This idea challenges the possibility of perfectly representing the world with language, because it implies that the mechanisms of any language condition the thoughts of its speaker community. The hypothesis emerges in strong and weak formulations.

Following on that, a person is affected by what she has seen, read, heard, experienced.  This type of information is perfect for building a dating network. Matching people’s tastes will most likely bring like minded people together, and something will spark.

This can form some kind of start page as well, something like a profile on existing social networks. It is far more easier to judge a person based on what they have done… and yes, social networks can build up favorably like this as well; and this is just not static communities that you have to join, but a full fledged recommendation engine.

Downloader via Email

Going forward from the previous post, we can write a simple script that will download files based on inputs from an email, and send a mail back to you with the download as an attachment. This script may be useful in situations like :

• When your organization does not allow you to download stuff but you really need that file on the web, and there is no one to help you right now
• When your mail comes from within the organization network (where they prefetch the mail for you). This way, you can keep your web downloads within limits (at least to the admins).
• When you need a backup of something on the web in the mail.

This script uses php, curl and phpmailer to function. It could have been done without any additional libraries, but then this makes life easier. The source code is self explanatory.

Source code is available at http://www.aniketh.info/downloads/download.zip. In case you need to test it, you can send a mail to download@wageslaves.in

Feature enhancements :

• Adding password support on a per email address basis, just so that someone does not abuse your web server and get you banned.
• Better download paths. Right now, everything is just overwriting files if they already exist.
• Deleting files, timeouts, download limits, the works

Mail Forwarder to a Script

Few people realize that a script can be activated via a mail on the server. This is not something like a cron running on the server and processing data every few minutes; but a script which gets activated immediately, and has the contents of the mail at its disposal. Basically, it is forwarding to a script.

If you need to enable it, here is what you need to do (using cPanel)

In older versions of cPanel, you add a forwarder, and set the recipient to “|/home/domain/scripts/process.php” (or something similar, without the quotes). Of course, your script will have to be executable for this to work.

The email contents will be available as STDIN. This can then be processed as needed.

Just a few reminders :

• The entire mail alongwith the headers are available
• If you output even a byte of data, the sender will receive a mail delivery failure
• PHP as a cgi echoes the content type, and x-powered-by headers by default. This can be disabled by invoking php with the -q option

Coming up is an example of how this script may be used. Stay tuned.

A better search engine (at least for me)

Most of my searches can be broadly classified into two major types :

1. when I am really looking for more information on a subject (a general search)
2. when I just want one page results (i’m feeling lucky)

Now, for the general search, I want the best of all worlds. Google, Yahoo, Ask, and Live. This does not help a lot, but it helps me get what I want faster with effective ranking. Maybe searching different search engines will give me better results. These type of mashups already exist.

For the second scenario, a page containing all the information would be best. Something like a Wikipedia article page. In this case, the following search queries will product the results as :

• If the search is a song, then most likely results would be the lyrics, video, guitar tabs and probably an excerpt of wikipedia for band and song information.
• if the search is for a musical artist, then the results would be band information, discography, most popular songs, and the wikipedia page excerpt
• if a movie title was searched, then an imdb page with rating, plot, quotes (one page output), probably movie reviews at rotten tomatoes or other trusted sites, and if running; show times.
• Probably the links for the first scenario can be made more interactive after deciding the weight of the quality. Maybe thumbnails from alexa.

Of course, you must be thinking, this is what Cuil wanted to do in the first place. But then cuil never really gave good results. This would be something like 4hoursearch, but even better. Something like an executive summary, so that precious time and clicks are not wasted.

Super Pricey IPhone reaches India

Image via CrunchBase, source unknown

The Iphone is finally going to be launched in India tomorrow after the long wait. Its going to be available via Vodafone, and Bharti (Airtel), and is being priced at Rs. 31000 for the 8GB version. Thats US $715.

And that, like everything else in India, is super over priced. It retails for $199 in the US and UK. Thats more than triple the price in India. I’m sure people will still buy it. If newspapers are to be trusted (and I really mean that), it was previously retailing at Rs 75000 when the Iphone just launched, and is now at Rs 45000. What I wonder is, who buys it at such high costs? Don’t they know there are better products in the market for a smaller price? Lets not forget that India is still not 3G capable, and the providers themselves state that all features will not work (although they neglect to mention which).

The people in Canada are protesting against high Iphone prices . The ruined iphone site, is something that people in India should follow. The thing is, we are used to getting everything at a high price. The grey market is thriving pretty well because of that. Doesn’t the government realize?

Related articles

• iPhone 3G starting at $700 in India, lines to be nonexistent
• India’s Airtel to launch 3G iPhone August 22
• iPhone 3G Voice and Data Plans from Vodafone India

on happiness and information reuse

Book cover via Amazon

I came across Seth Godin’s blog the other day, one post really stood out. He states :

What you have doesn’t make you unhappy. What you want does.

Which is really interesting, it coming from a marketer and all. But what is really sounds is something that Chuck Palahniuk would say. Take for example, from Fight Club :

The things you own end up owning you

Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who’ve ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.

So there you have it. The same information in a different way, from a different person, with a little spin put on it; and you have a totally new post. And maybe the people agreeing with this will find people agreeing with the first one disagreeable. Hooray!

all the good ones are taken

I couldn’t find a better name for this blog. I know, I am not very creative; but even vague stuff that came to my mind was unavailable.

We are running out of IP v4 addresses. IP v6 is available, but no-one is using it. We are running out of domain names. Almost all useful words, their stems and everything else is taken in the main TLDs. Country codes are also not spared. The email address list is also gone. Now companies advertise “get yourname@service.com”. So now you have “firstname.lastname@service.com”, unless you were the first few people, and trust me, that list gets over fast.

And so here it is, another random blog. Adding to the only thing in abundance now on the Internet: information, or rather; noise

Related articles

• Widening the Web
• 33M Internet domain names added in 2007, VeriSign says
• Numbers game