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Apr
9
Last weekend, I was watching an online video, when my custom-built desktop machine suddenly shut down. I attempted to boot it up, and it shut down within 5 seconds. It was apparent that it was a hardware problem. The lack of POST beep pretty much confirmed this.
A lot of forum-surfing led me to believe that one or both of my RAM sticks were fried. I unseated both RAM sticks and booted the machine. There was a lot of beeping (expected due to missing RAM), but it shut down within a few seconds. RAM wasn’t the issue.
Other suggestions on the forum were related to the power supply (PSU), graphics card and CPU. The fact that I had a display meant that the nVidia 8800 GTS graphics card was just fine. I also have a 520W PSU which is more than enough. Moreover, this machine ran fine for over a year and a half.
The next time I booted the machine, I had just enough time to get into the BIOS Health Status page – CPU was at 50C and rising … and then the machine shut down. Further inspection revealed that the CPU fan had become a little loose from the motherboard. I reseated the CPU fan (after ensuring that the silica gel silicon paste (thermal paste) [thanks Amit for pointing out the error] layer was fine), and rebooted the machine. CPU temperature was under control and there are no more issues!
Dec
31
Wikipedia Almost Reaches $6 Million Target – Just Add Ads Already!
Filed Under Web sites | 25 Comments
Interesting Wikipedia stat: 98.3% of registered Wikipedia users are inactive.
While researching for a topic, I was led to Wikipedia. I noticed that they had almost reached the $6,000,000 figure they were targeting for donations. ($5,775,345 at the time of writing this).
Just before this round of appeals, there was an earlier donation appeal (and I think, one earlier as well). Given the track record, and current state of the economy, I doubt this will be the last of donation appeals.
Why does the Wikimedia foundation (who run Wikipedia) not want to place any ads on Wikipedia? If Wikipedia places a simple text link ad (Adsense?) on their pages, they can earn millions every month.
Wikipedia receives over 10 billion page views a month. For the sake of calculation, I will consider 10 billion page views exactly. Typical Adsense CPM for big sites is $5-$10 (not a proven stat – this is just the consensus). That translates to $50-100 million a month! Even consider a 10% fraction (a very unrealistic $0.50 CPM) and it is still $5-10 million a month.
Is the Wikimedia foundation afraid to take on that much money? Are they afraid that they will be served with all sorts of lawsuits (copyright, defamation, piracy, etc…) when they see some green? Isn’t that what happened with YouTube when Google bought them? No one wanted to sue a small YouTube company, with no money. Once Viacom & co. saw the money in Google’s kitty, they attacked!
Here are some options for Wikimedia to earn just enough ad money:
- Show ads at random intervals of time.
- Show ads at the beginning of the month and stop when the monthly goal is reached.
- Only select important pages to show ads.
- Provide affiliate links to Amazon (or similar companies) for books, CDs, videos, etc… and venture other affiliate opportunities.
Or why don’t they just share money with contributors? One of the main reasons (if not the main reason) that people stop contributing is the lack of financial reward. Editing a wiki is exciting at first, but the amount of time that has to be invested, especially in this kind of economy, is not appealing to many people. The sheer statistics are overwhelming. There are a little over 8.5 million registered Wikipedia users and just under 150,000 active users (users who have a logged action in the past 30 days). In other words, 98.3% of users have become inactive. Why? 98.3% …. that is staggering. TANSTAAFL – the acronym for the popular, and very true adage “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch”.
Wikimedia Foundation – it is time you start making money and rewarding people, starting with your employees.
To close, here is a tid-bit from the archives (March 2002) where Jimmy Wales talks about advertising:
Therefore, all plans to put advertising of any kind on the wikipedia is called off for now. We will move forward with plans for a nonprofit foundation to own wikipedia, and possibly to solicit donations and grants to help us carry out our mission. (Ironically, I think that grant money would come with many annoying strings attached, which we could not accept, comparted to advertising money, which is virtually 100% string-free.) [Source]
Sep
20
10 Reasons Why HTML 5 Will Change The Web (And 1 Why It Won’t)
Filed Under Browsers, Internet | 4 Comments
HTML5 is currently in the draft stage, and the latest specification is available at the W3C web site. User experience on the Internet will change for sure, and here’s why:
1. Persistent Local Storage: Two different mechanisms are introduced for local storage, not including cookies. Name/Value pairs can be stored easily. But, more significantly, the introduction of a local database that supports SQL makes life a lot easier for web developers. However, this opens up a whole new world of security risks.
2. APIs: A bunch of APIs have been introduced that support local database interaction (mentioned above), dynamic bitmap drawing, interaction with multimedia content, drag-n-drop, network interaction and cross-document messaging.
3. <audio> and <video> tags: In HTML 4, audio and video content had to be embedded using the <embed> tab. This grouped multimedia content with plug-in content. By having their own tags, a lot of flexibility can be offered – including their own APIs.
===>> Click Here to Read More
Sep
20
Slashdot :: Yahoo! Opens Its Website To Third-Party Developers
Filed Under Internet | Leave a Comment
Yahoo! aims to have a more social web page. This is a desperate attempt by Yahoo! to get back into the portal business. Some of the business decisions by Yang & Co. have come under fire in the last few months.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Sep
17
In today’s day and age, when Apple is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is usually between iPod, iPhone and Steve Jobs. Despite this, Apple has now risen to the 6th largest PC manufacturer in the world, and 3rd largest in the United States, behind Dell and HP, according to Gartner’s latest report on the topic. In the United States, Apple recorded a staggering 38% growth between 2Q07 and 2Q08.
In late 2004, Gartner predicted that 30% of the top PC manufacturers will not survive. In other words, 3 of the top 10 will not survive by 2007-08. Back then, the top 10 was Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu, Fujitsu-Siemens, Toshiba, NEC, Apple, Lenovo and Gateway. That prediction was quite accurate. IBM sold their desktop and laptop division to Lenovo. NEC is struggling. So is Fujitsu-Siemens.
Apple may well be on their way to #2. But, to overtake Dell is a tall order. Apple has to do more – especially in the pricing department. Dell’s aggressive pricing is probably the largest contribution towards their #1 position. But, do they want to be that big? At present, it is cool to own an Apple computer. If it become ubiquitous, will it retain the coolness factor? Isn’t that what it’s all about?
Sep
14
iTunes to sell 1 billion Apps faster than songs : TechCrunch
Filed Under Cell phones | Leave a Comment
According to Don Reisinger at TechCrunch, Apple is projected to sell 1 billion Apps quicker than 1 billion songs.
Steve Jobs recently indicated that over 100 million downloads of apps have already been recorded, with 70 million in August. At this rate, 1 billion will occur sometime in 2009, within a year of the app store opening. Songs reached that landmark in its second year of existence.
Why are apps more popular? Aren’t there more iPods and other portable MP3 players out there? Songs can be played on PCs and Macs too. With the hundreds of millions of computers and portable media players owned by people of the planet, why are apps, which are restricted to the iPhone and iPod touch (the number of these sold are a mere fraction of computers and media players) more popular?
===>> Click Here to Read More
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