techiris_

Author: Akshay Tyagi

  • Torrent sites go down in India. Anonymous takes government sites down, in revenge. [ updated twice ]

    If you try to access thepiratebay.se from India today, you might be greeted with the message Access to this site has been blocked as per Court Orders. I say “might” because at least my ISP ( MTNL ) is very inefficient at blocking sites. It is blocked some times, and then a minute later, it starts working…

  • Ads in my Facebook news feed!

    These sponsored stories, of who likes what, are super annoying. Letting advertises game the feed is a bad idea. Don’t they earn enough with ads already. YouTube and Twitter have also done this, but it’s specifically annoying on Facebook, just because my feed is supposed to be about what people in my friend list are…

  • Facebook, Google and Apple are in a mobile platform war

    Facebook recently expressed their feelings about Apple and Google‘s HTML5 efforts, blaming them for not making their mobile browsers better at rendering HTML5 websites. Facebook says that the mobile Facebook site has twice as many users as on native Facebook apps on iOS and Android, combined. While this may seem like an inefficiency on Apple…

  • Online shopping : the good, the bad and the ugly.

    This is part of our monthly ‘The Good the Bad and the Ugly‘ series. While ( in most cases ) nothing beats the experience of getting to feel a product physically before buying it, nothing sucks more than missing the first 15 minutes of Battleship ( it’s a movie with that guy from Fast and Furious who…

  • Is an open web all that Sergey Brin wants?

    Sergey Brin recently blamed Facebook and Apple, among others ( including China / Hollywood ) for restricting the internet, and make their own empires within it. Regarding Apple app store, he said – For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it. He also showed concern over…

  • Google+ redesign : Did Google just hire an awesome UX/UI designer?

    In case you didn’t know , Google+ got a massive face lift today. ( yes, you are right, there is no reason you should have known this. ) Though some of the designs borrow from Facebook ( did I actually write about how social networks should differentiate? I don’t know what I was on when I said that.…

  • World Internet Usage [ Infographic ]

    World Internet Usage [ Infographic ]

    This is a cool infographic by Pando Networks, that shows what countries get the lowest and highest internet speeds. India is on neither of those lists, so it’s safe to say that we have an ‘average’ internet connection. It’s also safe to say that our internet connections suck. It’s safer to say that our mobile…

  • Facebook buys Instagram for 1 Billion Dollars!

    Instagram, the photo sharing app/social-network, which finally launched its Android app last week, has been purchased for a total of 1 billion dollars, including cash, and shares of Facebook. The best part is, Facebook is not evil like Google [ which caused the death of many good products such as picnik.com and Kevin Rose’ Oink…

  • Slacktivism [ Infographic ]

    I had previously ranted on why slacktivism is awesome, but this infographic does an equally good job of bringing the point home.     Infographic by Sortable.

  • Higgs Boson found! Finally.

    This is incredible news, European Scientists have confirmed that the Higgs Boson has been proven to exist. The scientists were working on the LHC [ Large Hadron Collider ] just smashing particles together, when the unbelievable happened. Scientists have been looking for the Higgs Boson, as it is the final piece of the puzzle in the standard model of Physics. In…

  • Slactivism is awesome.

    The viral ‘KONY 2012’ campaign has been all over the Internet, and with it, questions about the authenticity/effectiveness of the charity Invisible Children. Well, I am not here to say whether Invisible children is the best choice to give your money to or not, what I am here to say is that Slacktivism, in general, is…

  • Google’s privacy policy changes today. Yawn!

    Google finally made me read their new privacy policy. I had to. They have been shouting about it for more than a month now. Their new policy comes into effect today. The most important thing I noticed is that it is small. Like really small. About a page. A few years ago, on one fine day, I…