Winning Plus grows and loosing Buzz dies at Google

Google has decided to shutdown Buzz in few weeks raising the closed product count to around 20. With the growing popularity of GMail, Google introduced Buzz in February 2010 as an integrated product to GMail which could easily attract users into Google's Social Networking product.

However Buzz failed to attract much users; may be because it was something in between a Twitter and a Facebook. At the early stages, Buzz faced a privacy issue causing user's to think twice because using it. Though Google resolved the privacy issues, it was too late. According to our experiences this is an expected news which Google postponed till a better replacement is found. Both Google Plus and Buzz are catering the same requirement for Google; creating a Social Networking product into Google product base.

As Google mentioned;

"We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+".

As a proof of above statement, Google Plus considered Privacy as the main concern and came up with a feature named Circle. Google Plus web interface made it simple to understand how this new privacy feature functions. Another good restriction is the age limit; only users over 18+ are allowed to create Plus accounts as Google is still working on proper safety additions.

According to early analysis, Plus is definitely growing well unlike Buzz. However Google has a long way to go, as the required user base is huge. According to social networking giant Facebook's statistics, it has 800 million user base while Google has around 40 million (within 3 months). According to statistics, 800 million is still bigger compared to Google's GMail user base; but let's wait and see.

Related: Google redirect to incorrect country domain: Fix on Firefox

Subversion 1.7 Released - Under Apache Software Foundation

Subversion 1.7, first feature release after moving to Apache Software Foundation is announced. Starting from this, Subversion will be released under Apache License, version 2 instead of the modified Apache license used by Tigris.

Interesting features

One single .svn folder

This is the most interesting feature for us. In Subversion 1.7 meta data will be stored into a single location at the root directory. As you are aware, currently there are .svn folders inside each and every folder of the working copy of your project. Instead of that there will be just one .svn directory in the root of the working copy.

New Command: svn patch

In Subversion 1.7 a new sub command is introduced named "patch" (i.e: svn patch) which can be used to apply patch files to a working copy. This command supports newly created files as well as deleted files.

Compatibility with 1.6

Older clients and servers will work fine with 1.7 even though new features will not be functional.

Download distributions

Distributions can be downloaded from following locations.

• subversion-1.7.0.zip
• subversion-1.7.0.tar.gz
• subversion-1.7.0.tar.bz2

Related Articles

• Attempted to lock an already-locked dir: Subversion issue
• svnadmin create a new empty project repository in subversion (svn) in Linux

Are You Leaving Office On Time or Late Continuously?

Before reading further; just try and answer the question "Are you leaving the office on-time or late continuously?" and keep the answer to yourself. Most of the employees in an organization have to follow a plan, stick to a schedule. Also there are estimates for the tasks that are pending completion. As an employee in an organization, if you are not leaving the office on time as planned, you must be spoiling the working culture of your organization. Others may feel fear to leave the office on time even if their tasks are completed. We are not discussing about getting late very rarely, but about getting late each and every day continuously.

There may be many excuses for getting late continuously. May be the estimates and schedules are not realistic, so you simply have to spend extra time to complete. May be you are not competent enough to complete those in given time frame. You may be working late to cover tasks of others since you are keen in completing the work according to the schedule. May be your house or compartment is not comfortable enough compared to the office, so you do not wish to leave soon. Or in worst case; may be you have a belief that if you leave early, the risk of getting you fired from the organization is higher.

Reasons to leave on time

Whatever excuses you make, you are harming yourself quite a lot than how much you help the organization to grow. We received a set of points regarding this from an anonymous, which is published below in blue color; with our comments in black color. Let us know if you know the author of this list so that we can give credit.

1. Work is a never ending process. You can never finish the work.
• True; however you must quantify the amount of work that has to be completed on a given time frame. However make sure that you complete what is agreed on time; if you do it, then you can consider that you have satisfied the expectations.
2. Interest of a client is not more important than your family.
• Completely agree, you should not consider the client as more important than your family at any instance. But you must know that a company must exist for you to work, and a company needs clients. So completing the promised tasks on time to keep the client's expectation is quite important; so do not let the client's expectations go down.
3. If you fail in life your boss or client will not be the person to offer a helping hand but your family and friends.
• Must be correct in many situations and organizations. However I have witnessed some organizations taking so many steps to help the employees as well as their families in need at the required moments. Your clients may not be there to help, but the organization will. Sadly if you are not in such a good organization, either try and get your organization to that state or just think a bit... there are plenty of organizations that require your service.
4. Life does not mean coming to office, going home and sleeping. There is more to a life. You need time to socialize, entertainment, exercise and relaxation. Don't make your life meaningless.
• It is better if you can read it few times and memorize. It covers almost all activities that most of you do not have time to complete. You are neglecting exercises since you do not have time; think about 24 hours of your day and see whether there is any task that you can compromise for exercising for 30 minutes.
5. A person who sits in office still late is not a hardworking person. He is a fool who does not know how to manage work within the stipulated time. Besides, he is a loser in life who does not have personal or social life.
• Staying late in office does not mean that you are a hard working person, but this statement may be false for few managers as they believe much in working late. If you have such a manager, may be it is the time to consider a switch (either the manager or the organization itself). Always keep in mind that productivity goes down dramatically when you work late.
6. You did not study hard and struggle in life to be a machine and live a meaningless life.
• An important point, if your life is like a machine where you do not have time for anything else other than your job; it is better to consider about changing the way you spend your time.
7. If your boss forces you to work late, just forward him this article. He will try to make his life meaningful too.
• Another good point, if your boss does not believe in leaving on time, it will not be easy for you to leave early. So first try to let him know the importance of leaving on time which will reflect soon on to the working culture. So consider sharing it with your co-workers including the boss.

What can you do to leave on time?

If you are in the habit of working late continuously, consider changing it by considering the above facts as reasons. Read Seven ways to leave the office earlier as a guide line in accomplishing this.

As the first step, set a reminder 30 minutes before the office leaving time, so by 5:30pm you will be automatically notified if you are set to leave at 6:00pm. After that reminder, you can consider winding up the task you are in and plan tasks for next day.

Most importantly, make sure to keep office tasks out of your head when you leave the office since you are leaving the office on time to gain time for you to socialize, entertain, exercise and relax.

Firefox Address (Location) Bar Hidden or Missing

Firefox Address bar (or Location bar) is not visible suddenly and browser looks some what similar to the image shown here. Though Navigation bar is visible; there is no space to enter a URL? Sometimes users face this issue though it is not that common. This article shows how to resolve the issue; considering the user is not an expert in configuring Firefox.

Steps:

1. Right click on area marked as "1".
2. Select Customize... (marked as "2").
3. Select the "Location" item from the pop up "Customize Toolbar" dialog box.
4. Drag and drop "Location" item to the area marked as "3".
5. Firefox itself will place the location bar correctly as earlier.

If you wish to restore all defaults items on the Firefox browser, use the "Restore Default Set" button in "Customize Toolbar" dialog box.

Related: Google redirect to incorrect country domain: Fix on Firefox

Steve Jobs - Most innovative genius is no more

October 5th is going to be a sad day to technology lovers. As you all are aware; Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc. has passed away at the age of 56 on 5th October 2011. As common to everybody, he also did not have a smooth flow of nicely organized stages in his life; but Steve was praising that as the most important part that created the path to his innovations. One such example is the tragedy of getting fired from the Apple company which he co-founded. You already know this fact, but how would you have responded?

You will survive if you are fired from the company that you work for!! right? But what if you are fired from the company that you built from the scratch; and interestingly by the CEO recruited by yourself? Do you have the strengths to survive which Steve had?

Steve explained this situation later as;

"The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life."

Many people would explain this as "by the sadness of being a looser", but Steve said "lightness of being a beginner again".

Young Steve Jobs introducing the Macintosh

After getting fired from Apple, he founded NeXT Computer Inc. which Apple Inc. happened to buy after another 11 years because NeXT was doing so good; and Steve became the head again. At NeXT so many innovations came out; like an email where images and videos can be shared, a web framework called WebObjects which was later used in Apple applications like Apple Store. Most importantly NeXT's NeXTSTEP evolved as Mac OS X.
Under Jobs guidance, Apple created so many attractive items like iMac, iPod, iTunes Store. The revolutionary invention of multi-touch display iPhone changed the mobile phone industry dramatically.

Does "i" stand for Innovation?

According to Apple, "i" was initially used in iMac which stands for Internet. Later Apple used it for branding all consumer machines. However I prefer to consider this "i" to stand for "Innovative"; where iPhone would mean Innovative phone.
With the death of Jobs, people has started using "i" in front of the word sad (as iSad), does it make scene?

Stanford Commencement - The great speech

Let me finish this tribute with a quote from the Stanford Commencement Speech.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

Since this genius is a Buddhist, may Steve attain Nibbana.