Create your own IM Bot

In my last post, I mentioned about providing web services through Internet Messengers.

I searched online for a service which could provide a API or some other tool to create a bot. The one that I recommend is www.imfied.com.

How to make a IM Bot:

Step1: Go to imfied.com and register for a account.

Step2: You will get a validation key in your email address. Validate your account.

Step3: Login to your account and create a bot under applications tab. You will have to give URL of your script which will be hosted on your hosting space.

I used post by Amit to go through the steps required for creating the bot. Although, people at imfied.com have done some minor changes to the steps mentioned by him.

Because of traffic and infrastructure reasons, your bot may take a couple of days to get live.

Also, the bot id will be @bot.im. It would have been great if it could have been @yourdomainname.com

Web Service from chat

There are many people on the internet, who live and breath web-messengers and emails, especially Gmail.

Recently, I have come across some web-services which actually depict the true meaning of WWW - Whatever, Wherever, and Whenever!

Carpool

Carpooling is a private agreement between several people to go regularly to a similar destination. A typical example would be that several workers from the same company who live in the same suburb take turns in driving to work.

The major challenge of carpooling actually is that there has to be a very strong geographic and time overlap. In my opinion, only a web service with a large local user community will be able to achieve success because poor results due to fewer users can de-motivate potential users very quickly.

It is quite surprising to me that Google India, having a very big user base through its social networking application - orkut; is not taking any initiative in this context.

How Green Is My Orange?

How much does your morning glass of orange juice contribute to global warming?

PepsiCo, which owns the Tropicana brand, decided to try to answer that question. It figured that as public concern grows about the fate of the planet, companies will find themselves under pressure to perform such calculations. Orange juice seemed like a good case study.

PepsiCo hired experts to do the math, measuring the emissions from such energy-intensive tasks as running a factory and transporting heavy juice cartons. But it turned out that the biggest single source of emissions was simply growing oranges. Citrus groves use a lot of nitrogen fertilizer, which requires natural gas to make and can turn into a potent greenhouse gas when it is spread on fields.

PepsiCo finally came up with a number: the equivalent of 3.75 pounds of carbon dioxide are emitted to the atmosphere for each half-gallon carton of orange juice.

PepsiCo is among the first that will provide consumers with an absolute number for a product’s carbon footprint, which many expect to be a trend. The information will be posted on Tropicana’s Web site. The company has not yet decided if it will eventually put it on the package.

While carbon reduction efforts are generally welcomed by environmentalists, some complain that the marketing claims are backed by fuzzy numbers and dubious assumptions.

Bryan Lembke, a PepsiCo manager on the project said, "If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it."

Read the complete story here.

Ponting repeats history at SCG

I think ICC should add some new rules to cricket after this:

McDonald to Kallis, OUT, oh well held, McDonald .. or not? Pitches it up down the stumps, Kallis goes back and starts to turn it to the on side, but the ball takes a leading edge and balloons back up in the air towards the bowler, who flings himself to his right in his follow through and looks like he's taken a stunner ... his team-mates converge but Kallis asks for confirmation, and McDonald admits he's not sure. To the naked eye it looked like he took it, Ponting sticks up a finger even before the umpires are consulted, and after numerous analysis Kallis is adjudged out. Thats a very, very tough call. One angle indicates he took it, the straight view says something else. I'm not convinced he took it.
(Source: Cricinfo)

Last year, during 2nd Test match between India and Australia, Ganguly was given OUT by Ponting:

Lee to Ganguly, OUT, huge appeals as Clarke is adamant he caught the ball low in front of him at second slip. Ganguly stands his ground, disgusted, and finally walks off. Replays suggest there is some doubt about whether it carried or not. The zoom in replays have showed that the ball may have bounced before Clarke took it. Close call but there was doubt. Benson seemed to ask someone and then gave it out, replays show Ponting indicating that the catch was taken. Ganguly, after he nicked that stood long and hard, not convinced that Clarke had caught it, the Australians had no doubt it was out. Replays showing that Clarke may have grounded the ball as he rolled over after taking the catch.