Yahoomail now offers 100 MB of email space.

by

Starting today (6/15) Yahoo is offering 100 mb space for email. Yahoo has made the move mainly to counter Google’s Gmail which offers 1000 MB of email space. Just checked my Yahoo account and yes the space has increased to 100 MB and also it is sporting a new look. Also, Yahoo Mail Plus (the paid version)offers 2 GB of space!!!
Also, it seems millions of dormant email addresses will now be available again for registration.
Articles:
– Wired.com

Meet Joe Blog

by

From the Jun 21 2004 Issue of TIME magazine:

“What makes blogs so effective? They’re free. They catch people at work, at their desks, when they’re alert and thinking and making decisions. Blogs are fresh and often seem to be miles ahead of the mainstream news. Bloggers put up new stuff every day, all day, and there are thousands of them. How are you going to keep anything secret from a thousand Russ Kicks? Blogs have voice and personality. They’re human. They come to us not from some mediagenic anchorbot on an air-conditioned sound stage, but from an individual. They represent

Hum Tum; Mangoes !!!

by

Hum Tum
Watched “Hum Tum” today. The movie was pretty good except that I felt that it got a bit boring in the middle. The music was really good. But overall, a great movie. Nice acting by Saif and Rani. I used to hate Saif before but now he seems to be maturing into a really good actor.
Reviews:
– IndiaFM
– Rediff
Mangoes!!!
Also, had mangoes today!!! I think it must have been more than 2 years since I last ate a real nice and juicy Indian mango! Also had chicken. The chicken was just great! Thanks to Anuj for all three (Hum Tum, mangoes and the chicken!) 😉

Got my Gmail account!

by

Had been reading about Gmail for some days. A few days back, one of my friends got an account. That was the first time I saw how the interface looked like. After that I read about it a bit on the web and I found out that sometimes. select users get an offer of 3 Gmail accounts to give to their friends. My friend turned out to be one of those lucky few and he gave referred one of his accounts to me!
Have not tested all the features yet. Here is a screenshot:
Gmail screenshot
click to enlarge (57 kb)
p.s. For the uninitiated, Gmail offers 1000 MB of email space!
Update (6/12/2004 2:08 AM): Was checking out Gmail invite auctions on E-Bay. The lowest Buy it Now price is $12.50 and the highest price is $100,000 !!!

SpaceForHost.com Webhosting Review

by

Webhosting Review – SpaceForHost.com
Website: www.spaceforhost.com
Pros:
– Server speed and uptime is excellent (when accessed from the US)
– Really reasonably priced (starts at $8 per year!)
Cons:
– Customer support is almost NIL
– Support tickets are never looked into
– Only way to get in contact with them is via Yahoo messenger
Review:
I have been wanting to write this review for quite some time. But I did not want to write as long our domain was under their control. I have recently managed to transfer the domain name to GoDaddy and so with a sigh of relief, I am writing this review.
The Timeline is given below:
– Feb 2002: Bought SpaceForHost 10mb Windows 2000 webspace ($8) + domain name ($7)
– Feb 2002 to Dec 2002: Site is running great.
– Dec 2002: Site becomes unavailable for about 10 days. No response to my emails to customer support. An email is received a couple of days later with username and password on the new server. The old data is completely gone! It seems they changed their reseller hosting provider. But they did not inform us at all. Luckily I had backed up all the website data a couple of days back.
– Dec 2003: I should have realized by now that it was going to happen again. They have shifted their servers again and this time I had not backed up the data for the past one month :(. Our’s is an alumni database website and so users update frequently. Lost about 15 days of data. Also, I had backed up the database but not the code for the website 🙁 :(. The code I could find right then was about 6 months old. Had a tough time searching my backup CDs for the more recent code.
– Jan 2004: Realized that on the last renewal, they had renewed the domain name but had changed the domain registrant information to theirs!!! Even the admin email was changed to theirs. So I could not transfer the domain even if I wished to!
– Jan 2004 to April 2004: Sent them almost 20 emails, created at least 10 support tickets but absolutely NO response from them. I am not even sure if they check their email properly or not.
– April 2004: Decided to contact them via Yahoo Messenger. This time they responded. But it took about 15 chats (over a period of two and a half months) to get things corrected.
– June 2004: Whois records updated. The first thing I did after that was to transfer the domain from Directi to GoDaddy. Took some time since the domain was a .org one.
Bottom Line:
– The best approach is to register the domain with a registrar (recommended: GoDaddy in USA or Net4Domains in India) and then host with SpaceForHost.
– Back up your entire website at least once every month. SpaceForHost has a bad habit of shifting their servers without moving the data and without informing the customer in advance! Happened to us twice – once in Dec 2002 and again in Dec 2003.
– Don’t expect much customer support from them.

UT DSL changes to DHCP

by

UT DSL changed to DHCP from static IP allocation today. The change came into effect at 8 AM and for some time the DHCP system was not working properly. Called help desk but did not get a lot of useful info. At around 9:30 AM, the dynamic IPs got allocated properly and the connection was fine after that. It however took some time to register myself on UTK Netreg and install the service packs for Windows Xp. Configuring the router took another one and a half hour or so. My router (Dlink 614+) currently clones the MAC address of my PC’s ethernet card. That way, the UT DSL network thinks that my computer is connected to it when in reality the router is the one connected to it.
Later I found that I could also connect to the network using the MAC address of the inbuilt ethernet card of the router. But that would mean that I would have to change the setup all over again.
My IP currently is: 160.36.225.152 and the hostname is: maisnam.dsl.utk.edu .One nice thing about having a constant hostname is that I do not have to worry about the dynamically allocated IPs. I use the maisnam.dsl.utk.edu hostname as the CNAME for my us.maisnam.com subdomain. I did register a DynDns hostname (maisnam.dyndns.org) but I don’t think that I will be using it at all. I am keeping the dyndns.org hostname as a backup – just in case.

Became an uncle today!

by

Tamo (Riten – my eldest brother) and Iteima (sis-in-law) Remika’s first child was born today at around 1:45 PM Indian Standard Time (4:15 AM US Eastern Time). It’s a baby boy! Weight is 3.5 kgs. Name not yet decided. Other details awaited.
The baby boy is the first grandchild of my parents. He is also the first child in our family after a long period of time (25+ years). My monopoly as the last child of the family is finally broken!!!

Webcams at UTK (UT Knoxville)

by

Update (1/17/2020): The following webcams appear to be active:
tiny.utk.edu/gateway (alternate link: https://app.oxblue.com/open/utk/newenginneringcomplex)
Windy UT Knoxville Tickle College of Engineering Webcam (alternate link: https://lookr.com/1349883020)
https://www.utonline.tennessee.edu/about/webcams.php (Note: UT Martin, not UT Knoxville)

Knoxville: University of

Update (1/31/2017): The following webcams appear to be active:
http://conezone.utk.edu/stream-south/ (needs Flash)
http://conezone.utk.edu/stream-north/ (needs Flash)

Update (3:57 PM 4/10/2005) For a more complete and up-to-date list of webcams at UT Knoxville, please see: http://bookstore.asa.utk.edu/uccs/webcam/camsoncampus.html. (Thanks to Charity Beals for the link)

Original Post (5/20/2004):
Here is a list of online webcams at the Univ of Tennessee, Knoxville. I intend to keep adding to the list as I come to know about more webcams on campus.
Note from OIT: “These streaming videos take up a lot of bandwidth. You will probably not want to view these on a modem connection or leave them running for long periods of time.”
[1] Hodges Library, Room G20
The above link has 3 webcam feeds. Just scroll down to see the other two.
Individual Webcam feeds:
Camera 1
Camera 2
Camera 3
Camera 4
Camera 5
Camera 6
Camera 7
Camera 8
[2] Presidential Court, Room 113A
[3] View of Melrose Avenue from Melrose Hall
[4] International House
[5] University Center (UC)
[6] UC Bookstore
If you come across more webcams on the UT campus, please feel free to email me the URL (weblink) so that I can add it to the list.
Last updated: 3:57 PM 4/10/2005