My Google+ Wishlsit

Ok you might find 100 pages on google search containing g+ wish lists. But as a unique entity, I like to voice my opinion and add a tiny miny wish list to existing ones.

1. I hate animated gifs. There should be a way to block such posts. Mind it, the posts not the person. ;-)
2. There should be a way to connect my blogspot blog to G+ account. So I can share my feed on it automatically. And it should NOT be like Buzz, which copies whole post as a new entry. I hate such solutions, I want people on my blog not that they read all of it on their G+ stream.
3. There should be Applications. :-D Well, some might say it will add only crap as it does on Facebook. But it feels good to have Applications. You consider yourself having more liberty and choice. :-)
4. There should be a groups kind of thing. Or at leas they should integrate existing google groups in g+. I am afraid that won't be a good idea though. Google groups are not meant to be integrated, they are stand alone service.
5. There should be Professional Profiles or Pages. So the sites or brands can promote their business. But it looks like as Google's real name policy is kind of strict, its not gonna happen so easily.
6. I want Translation of Comments and Posts on the fly. I hate when my foreign friends write in their native tongues and that is shared on my stream. What the HELL, if I can't understand those posts why they appear in my stream (same with Facebook activity feed, but they are gonna add on the fly translation support for comments). Damn Google Translate is the best freely available translation software I've ever known. They can easily integrate G+ with Google Translate service.
7. A descent way to Send Messages. Yeah yeah I know that one can send your friends email based messages through their profiles, they'll appear in gmail as a profile message. I don't like half solutions. There should be a way to interact with someone who is not in your circles. You should be able to send him/ her a message, or at least ask him/her why s/he bothered to add you in his/her circles. That's not possible through gmail based service.

Ops lucky seven :-). I am unable to remember any further 'wish'. Well, technically it should be in G+ feedback. But just to change the way, let them search on Google what their users say about their + service ;-).

Enjoy Googling and Enjoy G+.

Mono Touch and Mono for Android

I am supposed to write something on Linguistics now, but my plans fail every time when I come to a topic which love somehow. Mono is a one of the topics I always love to explore and talk about. It is the only thing which links me to programming on Linux because I can use my limited C# programming skills in MonoDevelop using Mono. It is a great application, and despite criticism from certain open source 'lovers', the merger of original company to Novell and now separation as Xamarin, this project kept on going. I am in love of this project and C#.

Once upon a time Mono was considered a rival of Java and other Virtual Machine based programming languages in the open source world. It was debated, re-debated and criticized. I remember the time when Ubuntu was even criticized on including mono packages in default installation CD. But those were simpler times. There were no 'intruders' in Adam's Heaven, there were no Tablets and so called touch devices. There was no Android. There was no hype to buy iPads, ThinkPads, TouchPads and like. So, all that people talked about was how much C# has been implemented by Mono, how much is there chance of Microsoft suing Novell over its patents regarding C#, how MoonLight is gonna fail, what kind of new applications are built on Mono lately, and whether Linux distros should adopt F-Spot, Banshee etc etc. The life was simpler at that time.

And now, when market is flooded by touch devices and people are mad to have one. There are new platforms and new software development kits. iOS is providing and promoting Objective C on its own SDK, Android is promoting its own SDK. Although Windows Phone is out there, but its only on 1% devices still in US (as I was reading somewhere today). Its true as far as Windows Phone is alive C# is alive (somehow). The libraries may change, names may vary whether it is Windows Presentation Foundation or SilverLight but the underlying language syntax would remain same. But this is about Windows world. What about Mono and Linux? As far as I know, Mono could never be a main stream application development framework in Linux world. It was appreciated by many, it was used by many, it produced very good and popular applications e.g. Banshee (I really liked this elegant media player), but the fact is that (for desktop users at least) applications written in Python or other such languages keep on appearing more often as compared to Mono and C# based applications. So it was natural to move towards touch devices for Mono to create its existence in a wider space.

There were other reasons as well. Mono always tried to target those developers who had C# skills and now wanted to create enterprise or other applications on other platforms e.g. Mac, Linux. Mono promised to provide support for porting existing .Net applications, to develop new ones, and to provide commercial support for Suse Linux Enterprise. The same theme was carried forward when Mono moved to Mono Touch. The idea is fairly simple, as the website also states that "use existing skills to create native iOS applications". They had good experience in joining C code of GTK with C# code of Mono to create GTK#, and joining other Gnome APIs to C# Mono framework. They've used the expertise to link Objective-C to existing Mono framework. You write in C# but the code generation would be in Objective-C. That's very cool idea, you do not have to re-learn Objective-C and a hell lot of APIs specific to iOS platform. Simply use Monodevelop to create an App and deploy it on the App Store.

Same is the case with Mono for Android. A few years back there were efforts to convert Java code to C#, and vice versa using IKVM and this was used on Mono also. Developers might be still using this technology to call Java APIs through Mono on a C# application. But the point here to mention was that Mono is trying to do something similar regarding Mono for Android. Most of the code for Android is in Java, so the Apps require Java and Google's platform specific APIs for Android. Mono for Android provides same thing here as well, as it does for iOS. It translates the code written in C# to one that is acceptable by Android.

This way, Mono is being alive and going forward. I have my best wishes that this platform should keep going on this way on new platforms. Thus the original i.e. Mono for PCs can be guaranteed, because no one will develop Mono if there is no money. So best of luck Mono. I love you ;-)

Making Money Online in Pakistan

In this post I am not concerned with how they do things in other countries to make money online. I want to discuss a few trends of online money making in Pakistan. And most of them I would rather avoid to use personally (or simple words I don't much like them).

The first way of making money is the so-called online money making companies one can see in every city. I've never worked for them, but from the rumors and second third source opinions I've made a picture. They provide several kind of jobs e.g. Form Filling, Typing, Article Writing (wrote to build links for SEO, in other words creating meaningless junk to promote your website), Adsense Click. First two ones can be justified somehow, but they require a lot of time and effort for very little money. Article writing for SEO as I mentioned, its just creating junk to promote a website on internet. The intention is not to promote knowledge, but to create formula articles, so people do it very efficiently. The last one is that you make a website, place adds on it and ask your users to click on adds once or twice per day. The clicks yield money for your website and you in turn pay them in rupees. I hate this method of earning. This is unlawful.

People start websites. They are link building directories, article submission sites etc. That's a good idea to promote websites, because link building is a significant part of SEO. But frankly speaking, I always have a stingy and smelly feeling of these websites. They have nothing but links, and copy pasted introductions of websites. And upon all this junk you've placed the adds from Google. It reminds me of a trash yard which is fully decorated with multicolour banners as if it were a cricket stadium before a match. Forgive my imagination, I just wrote how do I feel about these so-called link building directories. And let me explain one thing, some of them are doing great job, the older ones actually. They are descent and have a simple, clean, elegant GUI to categories websites. My 'negative' feelings were evoked by a recent such 'creation', clearly in the wake of making money online, but with least experience. The site seemed to say I AM CREATED TO MAKE MONEY. I am not providing site link, you may find such site around you while walking on facebook, google+ etc, just keep your eyes open.

People start article submitting directories in hope to make money. As you can see the effort is from Pakistan, they try to target Pakistani writers/ bloggers to write articles for them. And again they place adds on it. They have no guidelines or rules, just write something and dump into the hell yard they've created to make money. Sometimes these 'directories' look like an empty showcase with just banners of adds and nothing to view upon. I hate such newly and inefficiently created money making machine sites which are created because there are 'other' out there making money same way. I know there are some good examples of article submitting directories, but my experience have been quite unpleasant with them. Sometime back google could be easily deceived by such formula articles and they appeared on first page. I do not feel good about such things since then. Although search engines have now got the ability to bypass such material and provide quality material. But me is me... me still feels taste of a bitter almond whenever comes across an article directory, and it worsens when a newly created article directory is seen from Pakistan screaming with its full strength of lungs CLICK HERE SUBMIT HERE WE SELL LINK BACKS WE SELL LINKS BACKS.

Hopefully you are not bored with my jealous talk, because I cannot create such things so I prefer to 'hate' them. :-D Well there is an other thing, and that's to start writing on technology, and keep on writing, citing everything that appears on internet, writing about anything and managing to create relevance out of anything irrelevant. I have an eye to recognize such 'formula' blogs which are solely created for money making. And I (sorry again) feel rather unsatisfied from such 'things'. I cannot write on technology alone (perhaps cannot write on anything consistently, built in fault ;-) ), I cannot start a blog which announces on first arrival that its made for money making (forgive me, perhaps its my perception that there is a difference between money making and non money making blog, but that's how I feel). For me, blogging is to write your own feelings, blog is personal expression and you can add a touch of technology, your own professional experiences and tales, thus making your blog more live. On this blog, I try to to the same. I do not (actually cannot) write solely on linguistics. Because there are lots of topics at a given time T (lets make it a bit mathematical), which keep on dancing in upper portion of my body in the number N. So I select from the total of T*N to write on my blog each day. ;-)

Ok, expressed my hatred for every professional who is trying to make money, what's next? Well there is nothing more. I just wanted to say that make money but don't label on your website that you are here to make money only. Make it a bit descent, or become a high level professional e.g. start writing a blog on Ubuntu or any other very specialised area. This way the content wouldn't be available readily on internet, you'll have to create e.g. tutorials, analyses. Simply mentioning news reports from primary sources is not a challenging thing, at least for me, to earn money (I've a subscription of top technology magazines online as well in my google reader, and I usually know what has happened today on internet because I happen to check it several times a day). My apologies if you think my words are inappropriate, that's what I thought about it and I wrote. Perhaps a very big reason of this, is my background, when it comes to writing I like to sit down, take a while to think on the topic, add my feelings to it, try to make it lively and then write it down. Its not just reporting something from a primary source. That's why I could not continue this formula blog. Even if I see it today, it was a good effort and if I had continued since then, it could have yielded me lots of dollars from Google. But I couldn't, there were other reasons obviously, time, interest etc but one of the reasons was that I couldn't simply report from other sources, I couldn't add content for the sake of content to make money.

So folks, make money but do not write for money making only, write for both i.e. your personal pleasure and expression of thought and money would be there as well. After all this is English, the elite language, you can make money even by coughing in English :-D.

Sho Sweet Ooo Google Goochi Gooochi Goooo

I don't know whether my parents had a similar joy when I had first step of my life. ;-)
But I really love this moment. As if there is an unexpected rain in a desert, or a cool breeze in mid June. I wasn't expecting this, so soon.

I can't express how happy I am :-D. Perhaps someone just clicked, as a buck up :-/. But I like it, really like it.
What do you think how does it feels when you start yielding something from your Adsense?

SEO or Spam Generation?

I've never been able to agree with SEO strategies the 'experts' use to promote websites. Perhaps I am not even a person who can talk about it due to lack on knowledge. But in last 5 years, being online I've heard, read and seen a few things about it. You have to build links and back links. You do it by providing your link to website directories, forums, by commenting on different blogs etc. You write articles about something and publish them in article directories with carefully adding you own website link as well. And what does people do? They go to a blog, "its very good" paste their link and run away. I hate such comments. They write rubbish content, non standard language in the name of article writing, insert a link and put in an article directory which is already full of such crap. When a user will go to Google to search a query, he will come across such directory articles on the topic he was searching. But what is the worth of such topic? Same things said in a different way, to avoid search engine plagiarism detection, sub standard language and content which is produced by someone at $1 per article, what can someone expect from it? So the user disappoints because the article is not helpful, rather it embraces him. I always hated such search results who come to my screen while searching useful content. The webmasters are creating spam, loading internet with tonnes of unnecessary, crap, spam data and there are websites who are happy to store it, show it in their showcase, and there are search engines who are happy to dive again and again in this pool of stenchy water to pull out this crap again and again. What are we collecting in the name of information? How much of today's Tera Byte data is useful and not the regeneration of same old crap, repetition of same thoughts again and again, a mixture of 10 similar articles in 1? I really wonder.

How to Add Google Authorship Markup in Blogger Posts

Noumaan shared a good information about blog authorship and all the stuff behind it. According to google's Webmaster Central Blog, they are going to add this link relation to Blogger and Youtube content in future automatically. Until then, instead of waiting do this simple tweak and you are on your posts with your google plus profile link as author link.
1. Copy this link to Notepad

<a href="https://plus.google.com/107301882632607014913/about" rel="author">Muhammad Shakir Aziz</a>

2. Replace the name with your name, and link with your G+ profile link.
3. Go to you Layout tab of Blogger.
4. Go to address bar. Replace blogger.g? part of the link with html?. Refresh the page, you are at html edit tab of old Blogger interface.
5. Check Expand Widgets check box.
6. Search for this line <span class='post-timestamp'>
7. Add the hyperlink for author created by you after this line. You can add "Posted by" before the link as well, without quotes.
8. And to make it perfect go to Page Elements tab, click Edit on Post Widget and uncheck "Posted by" check box.
9. You should be able to see you Google+ profile link instead of blogger profile link as your authorship link.
Enjoy until Google adds automatic linking to your G+ profile.

Google Acquires Motrola: Whats Next?

Well the news is pretty much old now that Google is acquiring Motorola. Big deal, yeah that's a big deal. But it was expected. 

Since the arrival of rivals like Facebook, the search giant is expanding its business horizon to other fields. It has been a long time when Google introduced Android, the once very celebrated 'open source' mobile operating system. I wondered at the time, how Google is going to monetize Android. Then we saw things like Android Market and other products based on Android which are money making machines for Google (not to mention mobile adds from Google on Android based gadgets).

But Android was not going well. Microsoft as always, jumped in the way and they started to ask the mobile phone manufacturers to pay on each sold device as they thought Android was infringing their copy rights and patents. This was not the case only. Apparently Apple, MS and other big dudes tried to undercut Google by buying patents from other companies. As Google accused them of being unfair. Well, this is a long story as MS clarified the statement and bla bla bla. The point here to mention is that Google was not having a solid ground regarding Android. The hardware manufacturers i.e. the smart phone makers were having trouble with legal status of Android, they had to pay MS etc on each device they sold and Google was unable to help them in this regard. Google was lacking mobile patents to support its claims in mobile market. And the biggest dispute was Oracle sued Google over Android. Folks can you imagine what a mess was created around Google and Android? And to add to the fire even Motorola was going to start war with other Android phone manufacturers over patent issues, see yourself.

So you can see the idea was good: create a mobile OS and promote it, earn money through selling Apps, Games, Adds, Services. But the mess which was created as a bi-product was creating serious hindrances for the search giant. And now the answer comes. Google is now acquiring Motorola. Possible outcomes? Well it is too early to say rather speculate about this but this is for sure that

• Android is going to be an official OS with a phone manufacturer behind it.
• Android is going to have patent support owned by Motorola.
• Apple and Microsoft are not going to like it.
• Google is going to have more focus on Tablets which will not be liked by Apple, HP and other Tab makers.
• Microsoft Windows Phone 7 is going to have tough time. Perhaps they will try to acquire already troubled old mobile maker Nokia, who is in deal with them to make Windows Phone 7 based smart phones.
• And last but not the least, the game is on. Other rivals will not sit calmly and watch Google grow. Its going to be hot out their folks, Wait and watch the battle of giants.

Urdu in Google Translate

Urdu started flourishing on the internet after 2003. Initially there was a single website bbcurdu.com which was known by Urdu lovers as being a "true" Urdu website, true in the sense that it was a text based website which was built on brand new unicode UTF8 standard and which was very quick to load. After 2005 there was a boost in Urdu web publishing and we saw forums as well as blogs created in unicode Urdu. And then the trends started changing from purely inpage generated .gif images to simple but elegant text based websites which were quicker to load and which were searchable by search engines. Forums like urduweb.org/mehfil emerged which were totally in Urdu, a strange phenomenon in those days. Now a days websites like urdupoint.com use a blend of pictures and text based Urdu, where default and front page matter is in unicode while poetry and other stuff is still generated through inpage in the form of gif images.
The trends to use Unicode Standard are accelerating now and it is being enhanced by various factors. Lots of people know how to write Urdu even in notepad, how to build your personal blog in Urdu (thanks to Urduweb.org/mehfil a great Urdu Forum and mother of most Urdu Blogs), of course the spread of internet, and the factor that Urdu can be machine translated now. Paktranslations.com is online for a year or so, they are working and providing good machine translations between English and Urdu but they can never meet the experience and resources the giant of search Google has. And now google has added support of Urdu in its translate.google.com service. It is still in alpha stage but very much usable and acceptable.
Urdu is now among the 56 or so languages which are supported by Google Translate. Hindi, a step sister of Urdu, was already supported and so the case was with Arabic etc. I was just watching the progress of translate.bing.com, the Microsoft's reply to google translate. It just supports 30 or so languages yet, lagging behind a lot. Bing will have to add support for Hindi, Urdu also to prove itself. Long live Urdu, we'll see more advances in just a short span of time.
Update: Bing has an Indic Transliteration Tool also, similar to Google Transliterate. But it is still behind because it does not support Urdu as well as it does not have an API to add its support to other applications, which google transliterate services has.

HP Buys Palm

Ohh, my goodness HP Buys Palm. Ohh, what a hot topic it is. The whole world is going mad to tweat it, share it and talk about it, HP just announced to acquire Palm for 1.2 billion dollars. That's great man, really great. But let me ask one thing, DO YOU KNOW WHAT IS PALM?
Ops, if you don't know let us try to know what is Palm, or more specifically Palm OS :-).
Palm OS is a mobile operating system which was introduced in mid 90s and since then it is being used on mobile and hand held devices like PDAs. Palm was sold and purchased by several other companies in the past also. Palm Inc. was suffering these days so HP came to rescue them. Now they would be a sub part of HP and a new addition to HP's product line.
What next? Well next would be a new player in the smart phone market. As Nokia enhancing its business capabilities buy acquiring various software and hardware related companies, Google has entered into the market by introducing Android and NexusOne, Apple is a big stack holder as an iPhone producer, Microsoft is already producing Windows Mobile OS so why not HP? HP will enter into the market with the experience and goodwill of Palm and its products and both will get benefits. You may hear in a few days that Palm OS or its products are open sourced, HP is going to introduce a new smartphone and things like that. So next days are going to be really interesting regarding the smarphone market.

The Rise of Android against iPhone: Google, Apple and Adobe

Apple Mac is too much conservative regarding iPhone. There are pretty much sufficient restrictions on the development process of iPhone applications. And recently Apple has announced to restrict the developmental platform should base on Objective-C, C++, C and Java Script. This step blocked the development of other third party tools which several companies were offering to develop applications for iPhone in different languages and frameworks.
One of the third party frameworks was Adobe's development tools for iPhone, which were used to develop flash applications for iPhone. But after this move Adobe stops the development of these tools although the previous version would be shipped with Adobe CS5. A similar framework is Mono which provides a compact framework for iPhone named Mono Touch. It is very interesting to see that Mono Touch applications wont affect very much as this link says. I was expecting the same for Mono Touch also, but it looks that Mono is more integrated into the native APIs of Mac and iPhone that's why they will take the advantage of being on the platform.
This was the move from Apple, what from Adobe? This is the move from Adobe. Adobe and Google partner to bring Flash and AIR technology to Android. Android as you know is the famous and creating its market quickly, new smart phone OS which is based on Linux and Java. While iPhone OS is proving itself too much conservative, Android is proving its flexibility. The other advantage is that it is installed on multiple phones, devices while iPhone OS is used on iPhone only. Adobe and Google's partnership is not ignorable in the present scenario when Apple just has banned somehow the entrance of flash on iPhone. Although they have (at last) provided a framework for flash on Mac OS X.
The scenario is going to be very interesting in the coming days. Flash is something which was always a powerful RIA framework and multimedia format. Microsoft Silver Light is lacking behind somehow now and Java Flex is still in coma. We do not hear what is going on under the cover in Flex. So lets wait and watch, what's gonna happen.