Just saw this website, offering email addresses at the domain taleban.org. WTH? They also ‘remove all doubts’ by telling you that this is done for fun. Some fun.

You want an email address? How about yourname@taleban.org? Sounds nice, no? I am sure you can have a lot of fun this way,

Hello friends, now you can contact me at friend@taleban.org

Or you can do a lot of business this way as well, especially with your western clients.

Hi, I am flaan-flaan and I do this-that, you can contact me at projects@taleban.org.

I’d be damned if people don’t flood your email with friend requests and business proposals. And no one would want to piss you off. And your lifetime guarantee would have a certain ring to it, wouldn’t it?

P.S. Apart from the fact that agencies from around the world would be on your case from day friggin’ one!

When something’s named Intrepid Ibex, it probably is interesting, y’know.

I am already pleasantly surprised; LUMS (Lahore, Pakistan) hosts a mirror site to download Ubuntu’s latest release (Intrepid Ibex).

I am downloading the OS. Wish me luck.

Why would you want to learn Linux?

What is Linux anyways? I am not going to get into a history lesson here, but Linux is an operating system, just like Windows is an operating system.

Windows is the world’s most popular operating system, ensuring that Microsoft and Bill Gates remain wealthy. Nothing wrong with that, of course. Linux on the other hand, is the eternal underdog. It is the fastest growing operating sytem in the world, and there is a reason for that; there are not many OS’s around to begin with.

But Linux has definitely come a long, hard way. And as I start to get comfortable in a call center that employs an opensource (I am a die-hard fan of opensource) solution that is invariably based on a Linux server, I have reconsidered some of my decisions. One of that was to ‘go easy on the tech bit’ for a while.

On Linux’s main website, it is stated that,

…Linux opens up a whole new world of computing. This means that a Linux user is not just a passive subject reacting to what the OS allows him/her to do but he/she is an active “developer” with complete control over the operating system.

I did not and do not want control when it comes to computers, I want consistency. That, ladies and gentlemen, is a business demand. But I will let myself loose so-to-speak, and explore. It is still not ‘control’ that I am interested in, it is more to do with, ‘what is so different about linux anyways?’ that I want an answer to. For myself.

It will be a sight to behold, I am told.

Chrome colored insects is not what this post is about.

Google, not so long ago, came out with their own version of the Internet browser, called Chrome. It made all the hype necessary with such a product from such a company.

I have covered my initial reaction to Google Chrome in the Chrome bug report. This is my follow up of sorts, not to report more on bugs, but to tell you why it is OK to have bugs.

First, I have not used Chrome for the last one week. I am online essentially through a browser, 4 hours a day on average. That browser is obviously Firefox. I first had Chrome on a smaller machine (128MB RAM), so I figured the slowness (my biggest gripe) was partly due to the smaller RAM (although Firefox was not having that ’slowness’). Then I tested used Google Chrome for more than a week or 10 days on a bigger machine (2GB RAM). The slowness was apparently not there. But there were other things…

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An inspiration for sure. A not-so-regular guy, still a teenager, is making more than you - you being anyone working for someone else. All of it through writing about what he likes. Welcome to blogging, friends. 

Check out the exceptionally simple, hence successful blog at http://sizlopedia.com/ 

If you are even remotely interested in the world of tech and the Internet, you will find the blog very useful.

Ok. This is wierd. Although it is late very late at night here in Lahore, but this all can not be just ‘that time of the night’. This is the Net. This is global stuff. Ok, here’s what I have seen in the last 10 minutes or so:

• A post on a new startup at TechCrunch caught my eye as odd, given that the startup was/is named Zong.
• Now, for the uninitiated, Zong to us Pakistanis is not what TechCrunch claimed it to be; a hot-shot mobile-payment-something-something.
• To us, Zong is the mobile company that spends a lot of money to occupy the airtime of the gazillion channels that invade our TVs everyday. Here in Pakistan, Zong is a mobile phone company selling sim cards and investing millions and millions on infrastrucutre. Zong is owned by CMPAK, a chinese company)
• Curious as to how the Zong.com domain was taken by this new startup as compared to the older Pakistani Zong, I clicked on the link for Zong at TechCrunch.
• And viola! The domain zong.com took me to none other than … drum roll please … The wikipedia entry on the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
• What the? I typed in the address this time. Again, Wiki page. Pakistan.
• I searched for zong on Google. The search results were as if nothing has happened. Zong.com was pointing to the mobile-payment-something-something. Clicking on it at the Google search results, I was taken again to Wiki’s Pakistan page.
• Google also told me that there is a blog for Zong.com (the startup) at http://blog.zong.com. That blog is up and running and reports nothing of this sort. (their latest entry is not even 24 hours old).
• So, recapping all that happened in less than 10 minutes, I say again, “What the?”

This seems, in all probabilities, a hijack of the domain zong.com. And the fact that it takes you to the Pakistan’s wiki page is all the more interesting, given that the other Zong is based firmly in Pakistan.

And no one has seemed to notice it. This has recently happened. Not more than a few hours ago. There is nothing on TechCrunch’s post about Zong. And there is nothing about this hijack at Zong’s blog’s latest post.

Folks, any clues?

The plot thickens: finding the Pakistani Zong’s website to be quite impressive, I tried to go to the website of the firm that made the website. eConception. At http://www.eConception.net. And it is a dead website. Searched for it on Google, with some interesting search results.

This post is about the new internet browser released by Google called Chrome.

Google Chrome is still in beta of course (another eternal beta like Gmail, perhaps?)

Here are the few good things that I have found about Google Chrome:

1. It is by Google
2. It is minimalist i.e. it does not come crammed with features that you hardly, if at all, use. (someone go and thank 37Signals for rightly starting this trend perhaps?)
3. It looks ‘light’, almost breezy, compared to when I fire up Firefox. (anyone here still firing up Internet Explorer should seriously consider getting Firefox. Chrome still is in its infancy, whereas Firefox is the cool, resourceful and intelligent fella’ you’d want to be friends with. Internet Explorer is the forgetful professor no doubt that not many people relate to anymore. Improve your browsing experience by downloading Firefox)
4. It is multi-threaded. Translated into English it would mean that it stands a chance of being much, much faster than any other browser, for the time being at least (it has the capacity to use your computer’s resources most efficiently).
5. Google Chrome is highly web-standard compliant. What this basically means is a well-rounded experience by all users of the Internet and a sigh of relief for web developers around the world. (more on Google Chrome’s standards compliance straight from CSS-horse’s mouth :P)

But Chrome is new. It is bound to have bugs. Internet Explorer is old and still has them. Google is known to produce products that are ‘out there’ when it comes to being bug-free, but a software is a software is a software.
Here are the bugs that I have found so far (I am not being technically correct here; by bugs I not only mean things that don’t act like they ought to act, but also some things that act in a way that I don’t like):
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I have just installed ScribeFire onto Firefox.
Two days ago, I downloaded and used Chrome (Google’s browser).

And now, I am going to try my hand at living again, God willing.

No zip files to download, straight up broadband required.

This post relates to one of my enterprises that offers getting-online solutions for  Small businesses worldwide.

Google is a remarkable company. When I decided to include Google Apps setup in the small business email package that I am in the process of selling, I had a few things in mind:

• remarkable companies do not only make great products. They also keep improving them.
• the improvements of remarkable products is based largly on user feedback. In fact, it is this user-centeredness that makes any product (or company) truly remarkable.
• the reason the product is put out in the marketplace is to make money, no doubt, but truly remarkable companies (and their products) tend to focus more on servicing their customers to the best of their understanding and ability. The profits are rightly considered to be a function of their service. The company does not service them to make a profit, it seems, but it makes a profit because it serves the market so bloody well.

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Google Apps happen to be one of the two main products that I intend to wrap into one online account, God be willing.

Here is a great primer for the Google Apps and a very brief introduction to the flexibility and convenience of using Google Apps, including the all-too-famous Gmail (on your domain name e.g. user@youdomain.com rather than user@gmail.com etc).

An Intro to Google Apps