I got admitted into Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology and would be studying Computer Science. I would be busy over the next few months and need time to settle in. Unfortunately this means I won’t be able to blog during next two to three months.
Recently Anand tagged me in the “8 Random facts about me” post. So here it goes :

i) I am big fan of US Television shows. Some of my favourite shows are - FRIENDS, LOST, Prison Break, House, Heroes.
ii) I am a horrendous gamer. I had trouble even completing Far Cry tutorial.
iii) I am Hindu by birth. However I believe in Agnosticism.
iv) I hate rap and hip-hop music. I like listening to pop music. Check out my last.fm profile.
v) I am a Harry Potter fan. The ending was beautiful and satisfying but its sad that Harry Potter is over - there are no HP books to look forward to.
vi) I hate strawberries and anything with strawberry flavour in it.
vii) I love surfing to Wikipedia and reading random articles. Wikipedia is one of my favourite boredom killers.
viii) I love sleeping.

Friends I am tagging are - Shahab, Anand, Neha, Mohammed, Harsh.

Goodbye for now. I would be back with lot more in a couple of months.

I got tagged by Daniel Goldman in his Blog tag: 5 things I’d like to see in Opera post. It’s a very nice initiative undertaken to gather feedback from Opera users.

Here is how it will work:

Once you’ve been tagged by someone, share your list (on your blog) of 5 things you’d like to see in Opera, and then tag up to 5 other people who will then post their own lists and tag up to 5 more people.
Feel free to list the things you’d like to see in Opera on the desktop, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile, and/or Opera on the Nintendo Wii.

I have articulated my expectations from Opera in the past. Not so long ago I wrote Ten Things I Want to See in Opera 10. Here, I present to you a pruned down list of things I want to see in Opera.
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Post Like a Pirate is a web-service that allows you to post messages using pirate speek (duh!).The Pirate Translator translates your messages into pirate-speek as you type. You can also email your friends and post messages to twitter directly in pirate text using this service. The website itself is far from being hip and cool. It doesnt funtion properly in Firefox, Opera and Safari which is disappointing. However, Post Like a Pirate does what it is supposed to fairly well. Obviously this kind of service has no utility and is just meant for some fun between friends.

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Blog Project Three by ‘Daily Blog Tips‘ was a huge success. As many as hundred and fifteen blogs participated in the project. The full list of participants is available here. You can read my submission here. After going through the rest of the entries I have finally come up with my Top 5 list. Here is goes (in alphabetical order) -

Three essential steps to great blog posts by Corner Scribe : A comprehensive checklist by Corner Scribe that will help you in coming up with quality blog posts.

3 Ways to Track Your Comments by David : David reviewed three services that will allow you to track all of your blog-comments - co.mments, Commentful and coComment.

What “The 3 Little Pigs” Can Teach You About Blogging by Jan : I wish I could come up with posts like this! Not only is this post informative its also imaginative and interesting. Well done!

Make your WordPress blog more Search Engine friendly by Shankar : Another great post from my friend Shankar. Three simple yet often overlooked steps to make your blog more Search Engine Friendly.

3 reasons why comment relish is not good for your blog by Vijay : I have always hated Comment Relish. It’s just another useless email that I have to delete, because it’s a valueless auto-generated by a script. Unfortunately, I have seen many popular bloggers using this plugin (and even recommending it). Hopefully Vijay’s article would make them change their opinion.

Nothing annoys a visitor more than a slow loading website. With the proliferation of broadband, most of us have become used to websites loading within a few seconds. Many webmasters spend hours trying to optimize their website for search engines but forget to optimize their website for human beings. In this article I would touch upon three (plus one) basic steps involved in making your website load faster. I have not discussed solutions that involve installing new software on your webserver or making other modifications to the system.

This is the simplest yet often overlooked step. Proper compression can often reduce file size by 50% or even more without any perceptible quality loss. I use Irfanview (Freeware) for this purpose. I had covered this topic in one of my previous articles (Ten Things You Can Do With IrfanView). Here is a short guide to compressing images in IrfanView :
JPEG/GIF Images : Open the Image and press “S” (or select “Save as” from File menu) to bring up the Save as dialogue box. Check the “Show Options Dialogue” check box. Set the appropriate quality level and save the image. A value between 65 and 70 generally does a job.
PNG Images : Once again while saving bring up the “Options dialog”. Tick the option to “Use PNGOUT Plugin”. The default settings work quite well, however it can be time consuming. If you are in a hurry limit the maximum number of passes.

The biggest advantage of Irfanview is that it supports batch operations, so you can compress hundreds of files at a go. Although IrfanView works well with normal images it doesn’t work with animated GIF files. For animated GIF files you can use Spinwave GIF Cruncher. However you will not be able to download the most optimized versions of your images unless you are a Spinwave member. Alternatively you can give GifWorks a try . The “Reduce Colors” option reduces the colour palette thereby reducing the image size.

Selecting the right image format also helps. JPEG works better with photographs and images without text. In such cases using PNG is recommended. Use GIF when you need transparent background or animation. GIF and PNG are also recommended for simple diagrams.
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Time for another edition of Tiny Utilities. I have three more nifty software in store for you.

Just as the name suggests, this utility displays live statistics about your internet connection. NSL allows you to monitor your internet connection’s status on the fly. This works much better than most web based internet speed checking services. Not only does it display the download and upload speed it also displays the amount of data downloaded and uploaded. Besides that it can also show statistics like CPU usage your system and average ping time and number of hops of a remote machine.

Screenshot

Download NetStat Live (257 KB)
Platforms Supported : All Versions of Windows
Version Reviewed : 2.11

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Pownce is Kevin Rose’s (of Digg.com fame) latest venture. Its pretty much Scrapping meets Mini-Blogging meets File Sharing. Personally, I am not a fan of Twitter and similar services. I am not interested in knowing if my friend is taking a bath or eating breakfast or is getting a massage. In spite of that I see definite potential in Pownce. There are two things that makes it stand out.
Ability to send files to a single person, to a group or to everyone in my buddy list.
Similarly you can send messages, links and event updates to a single person, to a group or to everyone.

Pownce is mainly web based however a light-weight desktop module based on Adobe’s Apollo (AIR) is also available.
I am not going to review it in detail but if you are interested you should check out Mashable and Webware’s coverage.

Pownce is still very young and I expect a lot more from it in the future. If you want to try it, just leave a comment here requesting an invitation. Make sure that you provide your proper email address, Pownce doesn’t like temporary email providers. I have six invites left.

P.S. : Thanks to The Witness Exchange for inviting me to Pownce.