Archive for July, 2008

Twitter should count out @replies and @user from status text

Thursday, July 17th, 2008

Twitter messages are limited to 140 bytes (not characters, if you are multi-byte speaker!). However, a lot of messages now carry the usernames, either for @replies or for simply refering to @user in the message. As the twitter userbase grows, people would start running out of shorter names like @t, @ev or @1ndus and eventually go the email route having_my_long_name@emailhost.com.

The day is not far when twitter screen names would @mylongname2008. This one takes 10% of the text from 140 available.

At the minimal twitter should count out the @replies and @user from the 140 characters and make that part of the meta-data. 

The API can handle this transparently, It just requires adding a new field called to-user-screen-name in the API.  The API already has all the information for the sender ids, sender screen names, reply-to-user-id, user-id, etc.

 

WordPress inching towards full CMS capabilities

Monday, July 14th, 2008

Matt announced WordPress 2.6. Features include:

  • Version Control: Wiki like tracking of edits
  • Google gears compatibility
  • Theme previews — was much needed for experimentation!
  • Plugin update notification bubble
  • SSL Support and other security enhancements
  • Word count
  • Easter egg (Matt has quashed the rumours)

 

Afghanistan’s hidden treasures

Saturday, July 5th, 2008

The “care takers” of Afghanistan’s precious antiquities from the ancient era concealed the treasures from Soviets, then taliban. These were feared to be lost; with the help National Geographic society along with Afghanisatan’s National Museum the unearthed trove reveals Afghanistan to be a metling pot and major trading hub where people from “east” brought muslin, spices, and ivory while the people from the west brought exotic minerals, gems, tools.

While reading the recent article on this discovery, I found a stunning picture of Ganga, the river goddess, carved out in ivory.

River goddess ganga

See the original photos and story at NGM. The treasure is going to be on display at Asian Art Museum of San Francisco in San Francisco, California between October 24, 2008, to January 25, 2009.