Rohit Nair’s Blog

Now that I’ve entered Mac Land, I thought i’d list out my top apps that I use almost regularly. All freeware of course.

1. Quicksilver : Trust Quicksilver to be the first app to be listed on ANY such list. It just is the most useful and amazing app on a Mac. Basically a keyboard app launcher, its has a lot more features that can be customized using some of the many plugins that are available for it.
2. Adium : Adium is the most popular multi protocol chat client on Macs. It supports AIM, Jabber, Yahoo, MSN (in case somebody still uses it) and everything else that you can think of. You can also set the current track playing on iTunes as your status message.
3. iTerm : The terminal on OS X Tiger is pretty basic. Therefore iTerm is not an option, its a must! It has support for tabbed terminals and everything else that you would be familiar with on a normal Linux terminal. If you are a vi/vim user there is this issue of the arrow keys not working for navigation. You could always go back to the original HJKL navigation keys but if not, this is what i did to fix it.
4. VirtueDesktops : Virtual desktops is another feature Tiger does not natively support. Worry not as VirtueDesktops fits the bill perfectly, with Compiz/Beryl like desktop transitions as well.
5. Growl : Growl is a system notifier, and it’s highly customizable. You can set which apps should notify you and when they should do so.
6. SizzlingKeys : This gives you the power to control iTunes without leaving your current app. Plus it notifies and gives details when a new track starts. (Keyboard shortcuts to control iTunes can be set using the iTunes plugin in Quicksilver as well, just make sure you don’t enable both together, especially with the same shortcuts! )
7. Azureus : This not an obvious choice, but in the end i use Azureus because its highly customizable thanks to plugins. SpeedScheduler is one cool plugin with which you can schedule your downloads without staying awake waiting for those unlimited download time slots(BSNL broadband users will love this) It is resource heavy and has a lot of useless and unnecessary stuff in it though.

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I’m talking about the much awaited release of GTA IV of course.The game is finally out and the critics are already raving about it. Just to give you an idea,check out the ratings given by some of the mainstream game reviewers
- IGN : 10/10 overall plus 10/10 in each of the categories,the first time they’ve given a perfect score since ’99!
- Gamespot.com : 10/10, first game since 2001 to get that rating
- Official Xbox 360 Magazine : 10/10
- Official PS3 Magazine : 10/10
- Xbox World 360 – 98%,their highest rating for a game yet
The list goes on and on,and obviously the hype surrounding the game was worth it. This is what NY times had to say about the game “violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun”. I think that just sums up the GTA series as a whole,and GTA IV seems to have touched perfection. I just CANNOT wait to get my hands on it. Sadly, there is no PC version and there may never be one(i even found an online petition asking them to launch it soon,lol). The only way I could play it would be on the PS3 in office! Need to convince the necessary people to get a copy somehow!!

Edit : My wish has come true! Thanks a ton to Ankit for getting it from US. PS3, a huge Plasma TV with HDMI cable and GTA IV, what more could you ask for!

Finally got a laptop for work, and man,the wait was surely worth it! A MacBook Pro! With a 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB ram, a 256 MB Nvidia 8600 card, 200 GB hard disk, DVD Writer and so on, the MBP is a beast of a laptop, easily one of the fastest ones around.
Sadly, IT supports only Tiger and thus there’s no multi-touch support, no Spaces, no Boot Camp (Come on!I need Windows to play games and exploit that Nvidia card! Plus to run that useless but indispensable app called Internet Explorer) It’s a bit weird to have just one mouse button but hopefully will get used to that. And although OS X is based on Unix, certain updates do require system restarts.

If you are eager to lay your hands on the new beta version of Firefox 3 but don’t want it to erase your existing installation of Firefox (which has all those extensions and saved passwords and bookmarks that you painstakingly installed and saved up),well worry not! The guys at PortableApps have come up with a portable edition that installs itself without affecting the existing one. You can get the latest beta here. As expected,a lot of extensions and themes are not yet supported. And for those who can’t live without Firebug, there’s a beta version of it that works with Firefox 3 as well. Firefox 3 by the way, looks neater and does have an evident performance improvement. One new feature that you notice straight away is the auto completion when you type in a URL which searches even from your bookmarks. Some sites do crash the browser though, Yahoo! Mail being one of them. Hopefully all the bugs will be ironed out once the stable version is released.

Edit: Beta 5 is out. Yahoo! Mail doesn’t seem to crash the browser anymore.

Microsoft announces games for the Zune, can be developed by XNA Studio developers and probably will support wireless multiplayer gaming. Woohoo! Although the multiplayer feature isn’t going to help me much, as there are hardly any Zunes around here.

Got my 2nd generation 80GB Zune last weekend, thanks a ton to Sony for getting it from the US. A few people have been asking me, why the Zune? Why not the iPod? Which company makes Zunes?

Most people here haven’t heard about the Zune mainly because its sold only in the US and since recently in Canada, unlike the iPod which is more of a global product. And the 2nd generation was released in October of 2007, so its quite a new product. Unlike the first generation, which became the butt of all mp3 player jokes, this one has been received well by most critics, some even stating it to be better than the iPod.

The main features I was looking for were
- Minimum 80GB
- Would be used to play videos as well
- Radio would be a plus,though not a necessity
- Should handle a decent number of file types
- Value for money

Had to do some research to narrow down on my selection. Wikipedia has a comparison chart that can be a great starting point. In the end, some of the options I had were the iPod( Touch and Classic), Zune, Archos 605 and a couple of others like the Cowon A3. The iPod touch has only 16GB and is way expensive, although it is a much more capable device. Between the Zune and the iPod, the Zune costs almost the same, has an FM tuner and has a 3.2″ screen compared to a 2.5″ for the iPod. The Archos 605 seems to be the favourite for many reviewers, but it costs 100$ more, is quite bulky and you need to pay extra for each plugin, even the web browser. But again, its almost in a different class of device, more closer to the iPod Touch. Plus I had read a lot of negative feedback about the Archos player especially regarding their customer care. Surely, an MS or Apple product would be more reliable and will have better support than say an Archos or a Cowon device. In the end, the cost plus the big screen made me select the Zune.

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Yahoo! India News has undergone a revamp and the new beta version went live this Wednesday. As its still in beta, there might be a few bugs that have been overlooked. Technically,its the first project I’ve worked on here at Yahoo! And I haven’t really done anything of note. I had to work late for a grand total of two days though,so I’d by lying if I said I’ve done absolutely nothing.

A recent study shows that close to 95% of all mail sent over the internet was spam! Phew,thats just an awfully large percentage. But, I’m not really surprised either. One of my projects was a spam filter and I know how easy it is to send spam. All you need is a mail server setup in your system(most linux distros come with postfix pre-installed) There are ones available for Windows as well, I used one called Postcast server.
Configuring them hardly takes minutes and you can send a mail that claims its coming from foo@bar.com or any ID for that matter,even your own! Most e-mail providers are doing their best to stop spam but spammers find ways to pass even the strictest spam filters. I remember the Gmail server blocking my IP because a lot of spam was originating from it. You can easily overcome this, thanks to dynamic IP addressing.
Anyways,lets hope spam filters get better and we have a spam-less internet.

PS: You can read all the findings from the study here.

Here’s a license with a difference, with an objective to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of all things! WordWeb ( a common English dictionary program) allows you to use the program free of charge beyond the 30 day trial period ONLY if

• You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
• AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).

You can read the full license here , at the risk of feeling guilty of software theft of course.

Searched for more such interesting licenses. Here are a few

1. The relatively more famous WTFPL : As the name suggests it allows you to do WTF you want to.
2. Something that calls itself  “Shoneware” : This radical new concept in software distribution is in the support of the Shonen Knife, world famous, female power-trio of musicians from Osaka, Japan.
3. Sisterware : You can use the program free of cost as long as you send the author information about your sister. And hes actually got 255 messages. You can read them here. Good to know honest people still exist in this world.

Dunno if this is a new feature, i noticed it just now. I’m currently using the AJAX version of mail ( which is out of beta unlike a certain competitor). Searched for a particular keyword and got the results in a new tab. Nothing new about that. But thats when i noticed that the sidebar on the right (where the ads are usually displayed) had a “Narrow Results” column with some options. It actually sorts the results on various parameters like sender, folder, date, type of attachment and message status (with the number of search results for each). Of course you could do most of this in Gmail as well, using the advanced search feature and typing all the parameters manually. Yahoo! Mail does it automatically. Pretty neat.