Tools on Shivanand Velmurugan — Product leader. Systems thinker.

Blogsy - a ray of hope

Sat, 23 Apr 2011 00:00:00 +0000

This is a test post from blogsy, an iPad blogging tool.

The interface design looks thoughtful – drag & drop of images from flickr and picasa, videos from YouTube, a built it google search and browser to get at other content. Although there is a bit of a learning curve, it makes the iPad a true content generation device.

Maybe this will keep me blogging this time around. On that note, here’s a cutie pie to bring a smile to you, today.

OPML Editor as a wordpress editor

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000

This is a test post to see if Dave Winer’s OPML editor works with a self-hosted wordpress blog. There is something geeky about seeing crappy fonts on a screen, that makes one want to use a tool more.

I’ve known of the OPML editor for a few years now, and have tried several times to find a neat use-case for it in my workflow, and it never had a compelling enough reason for me to stick with it. I’m hoping that this new wordpress editor tool will make me want to use this more.

Proposed GUI for C++ based twitter client

Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I got really sick of using Adobe AIR apps that take up more and more of system memory for an app that does twitter.

I’ve decided to put my “coding for myself” hat on and write a QT based C++ application (that should be cross-platform). No name as yet, but I will find something soon. QtTwitter is taken. Mebbe, once I have a working version, I can get ownership of the project on google code.

A web based writer for writing to a blog?!

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

WriteToMyBlog.com, is a web-based editor (with a lot of formatting options), that allows you to write to your blog (from another website?!).

First thoughts go like,

“wtf?!”, … “hmmm.. interesting”… “I am a web 2.0 junkie?!

The likes

1. Simplicity of the UI interface - neat, allows lots of space for text

2. Integration of Flickr and Youtube (although I would love to see more such services)

3. Zero account creation overhead. (I wrote this post, before I created the account to publish it, and is a 1-click process.)

Jott - a voice-based blog client!

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Well, this is a first post to my blog using Jott, which is a very cool service. It allows you to call a number and talk what you want to post, and post it to your blog. I think it’s one of the new tools that really enable blogging. I’m just going to try it and see how it works out. listen

Issue with Twitbin, Jing the next-gen screen capture

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Twitbin has been my favourite client for twitter. the key thing that attracted me to it, was that I can use twitter, along side my browsing, and that makes life much simpler. Also, it have a very simple interface, to track your friends and their messages.

I realized how much it mean to my twittering experience, when it went down sometime last week. I presumed, it was due to the upgrades that the twitter team was planning, and want to see if the problem persists. Well, looks like twitter is working fine now, through the web-interface, and I guess twitbin should be operational now, but.. well NO.. I still have to use the web interface and it suck big time.

The zen of Photo Management

Thu, 08 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I have been rambling for the last month or so, about the need for better photo management. Having acquired a N730 recently, I have started shooting more and more pictures, and the chore of organising them, and sharing them has been such a bore, that I haven’t uploaded a single picture.

Well, to change that I launched into building one myself to suit my own needs, only to discover that someone has already thought of most of it and has built a product and a service around it.

Website clean up

Wed, 07 Mar 2007 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been hosting this site for over 2 years now. Nothing much has come of it, except satisfying my own ever-growing obsession with all things that are related to “The Web”.

Over time, I have managed to accumalate a lot of unwanted scripts, html files, tools and code snippets, that I have randomly uploaded to my website. It is a junkyard of sorts, and several attempts at clean it up has ended in adding more crud.

XML Validator

Thu, 08 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

It is quite surprising that there are hardly any open-source to validate XML out there. I had the need to validate a auto-generated XML output against a valid xsd, to see if the code that I wrote to generate XML was producing not only syntactically correct XML, but also XML that was data-valid. XML Validator, provides an UI that allows you to check the validity of any XML, in with reference to its xsd. It is free for Personal and Commercial use without any warranties. So don’t come to me if it makes your dog barks all night, or if your computer commits suicide.

Nexo - The tool you'll remember for a while

Tue, 06 Feb 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Firstly, thanks Scoble.. I think I’ll stop reading other gadget/tech sites .. you are my new feed filter.

Secondly, I got a whiff of yet another web 2.0 (does that even mean anything these days!) application site. Nexo is a wonderful wonderful site. just as Scoble says “It’s Yahoo Groups done right”.

It took me the whole of 1 min to create my account, invite a few friends and setup my own group. Oh yeah, it also provides me with web-space to put my photos etc.

Common Access Portal

Sat, 20 Jan 2007 00:00:00 +0000

With advent of web 2.0, and some habits cultivated over the last decade, I have a certain list of tasks that I do everyday. I current visit a bunch of websites more than once a day, and an integrated interface would do me so much good.

mail, a whole set of accounts, gmail, yahoo, etc
feed readers
blog editor
orkut
del.icio
google notebook

What is lacking, is the ability to have a single sign-on/account mgmt capability, a common dashboard, ability to cross-launch/cross-post content.

Windows Live writer - Growing pains

Tue, 26 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

I just downloaded Windows Live Writer

At first look, it looks good! I haven’t been able to say that about most Microsoft products off late. The last product that was awe-inspiring was perhaps VC++ 6.0 (such wide range of features), IE 6.0 (it was big deal when it came into the market) and maybe, to some extent Office 2003 (a lot less buggy and smaller file sizes than previous releases).

Firefox upgrade!

Sun, 24 Dec 2006 00:00:00 +0000

It is not just M$ that struggles with frequent patches for its products. Mozilla just released a whole host of bug fixes in a new release 2.0.0.1. You can download it here or use the direct links below.

Http Direct Links to Oregon State University’s Open Source Lab
Windows
Linux
Mac

Ftp mirror: ftp.osuosl.org
Firefox 2.0.0.1 home dir: /pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/2.0.0.1/

windows: $home/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 2.0.0.1.exe
linux: $home/linux-i686/en-US/firefox-2.0.0.1.tar.gz
mac: $home/mac/en-US/Firefox 2.0.0.1.dmg

There are some issues upon upgrading. Some plugins have trouble working, notably Google Accelerator. You might want to disable that for a while and wait around for an upgrade.

Fastr

Fri, 17 Feb 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Thanks to kottke.org, I found a very engaging game, to keep my busy during the long hours of installing applications at work!
Check out Fastr. Oh Yeah, btw, it uses AJAX to update the scores. Welcome to Web 2.0

Opera for free! Yipeee!

Wed, 21 Sep 2005 00:00:00 +0000

There was once a wondeful browser called “Opera”. The lucid interface, the smal memory footprint - it was simply browsing heaven.

Then came the version loaded with ads, heavy, sluggish UI and a hug memory footprint in the name of new improved UI. The ads loaded version of opera turned out to nag-ware and I totally detested it and moved to other browsers (read Firefox). Get online and check websites out became “swimming” and not “surfing”

Google Talk

Wed, 24 Aug 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Another wonderful tool and a new area that Google has strolled into and stormed!
Check out the new IM from Google.. neat sparse interface as usual. Extremely intuitive and very light on system resources. I’m lovin’ it!

Download Google Talk

The new face of google

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Check out the future of google here

Google Suggest is in BETA testing (as all other kewl features of google ;) ). Just go to the link above and search for your favourite search text and wait for a second before pressing “Enter” and voila!

Firetune - speed up your firefox

Thu, 07 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

I just found this link on an orkut forum … yeah , I’m part of orkut too!!
Check out Firetune. It is supposed to make Firefox quicker.

I’m testing it as of now.. and will post some results