no need to memorize…

Almost one year ago, with 3 friends from school; we were trying to find a promising project which can be our first startup project. We’ve checked many projects than decided on RealmCrash, which is an MMO gaming framework that is fully customizable with a simple game creator that can be used by anyone who can fill web forms. We implemented the project successfully, won the METU Computer Eng. Dept. Grad. Projects Competition 2009. But we could not continue it since we could not find a venture for it.

On those days, when we were discussing the possible projects, one of my colleagues, Atasay, suggested a project, a real time question ask & answer service. We did not think on it much concluding that this kind of problems have already been solved by offline versions like Yahoo Answers.

But a few days ago via a Techcrunch RSS feed, I’ve been introduced to Aardvark; which is a service that let’s you ask questions that will be answered asap by other online service users. When we thought about this project a year ago, we were thinking of a desktop application but Aardvark has already solved this problem with an awesome tool: IM !. So you can contact Aardvark via msn messenger, gtalk and some other popular instant messengers. Are you away from computer? Don’t worry, Aardvark has a clean and nice iPhone application.

Today I was looking for a new book to read, I’ve asked for a suggestion via Aardvark and within a few minutes, I’ve received two usable answers. This is what I call “good service”.

I think, as the user base grows, Aardvark will be an indispensable tool for our life.

Great job Aardvark team. I want to add some suggestions for the service:

* A public API. I believe this is what they MUST add to their service. For example, web developers may create a site specific Aardvark where users can ask and answer questions about their site and they can query them, display via web etc. I believe there will be many other uses of an API like this.

* A desktop AIR Application (so it can run in any computer). IM is good, but for example I generally keep my IM closed whereas a hidden desktop app may increase the usage of the service. If they provide an API, I can code the AIR app

* A popularity ranking among users. A usage similar to Yahoo Answers. Basically, question owners should be able to rate answers.

* An interface to query old answers. (it’s better if automatic answers come as I ask the question but I guess it will need a lot of scientific work)

Any other suggestion is welcome in the comments. Btw, I’m not working for Aardvark nor know anyone from the company.

I just liked the implementation of the idea !

Keep working Aardvark Team!

Update:

A post @ techcrunch about a similar service:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/24/fluther-raises-600k-from-top-valley-investors-for-crowd-sourced-answers/

Sorry, but this post is not available in English

Today, I’ve found sth really nice, called Personas.

You give it your name (or any name of course), it searches the web using sophisticated natural language processing, groups the result data with some clever logic and gives you your online portrait.

It’s built by Aaron Zinman @ MIT Media Lab.

Go try yours: http://personas.media.mit.edu/personasWeb.html

And here is mine:

Today, I was trying to optimize some mysql query in our experiment framework.I came across to two query explains that I cannot understand.

Here are the two queries:

explain select * from TABLE_NAME where created > ‘2009-08-09 19:10:44′

explain select * from TABLE_NAME where created > ‘2009-08-09 20:10:44

′and here are the explain results:

mysql> explain select * from TABLE_NAME where created > ‘2009-08-09 19:10:44′;

+—-+————-+——————+——+—————+——+———+——+———+————-+

| id | select_type | table            | type | possible_keys | key  | key_len | ref  | rows    | Extra       |+—-+————-+——————+——+—————+——+———+——+———+————-+

|  1 | SIMPLE      | TABLE_NAME | ALL  | ou_created    | NULL | NULL    | NULL | 1226122 | Using where

|+—-+————-+——————+——+—————+——+———+——+———+————-+

1 row in set (0.00 sec)

mysql>explain select * from TABLE_NAME where created > ‘2009-08-09 20:10:44′;

+—-+————-+——————+——-+—————+————+———+——+——–+————-+

| id | select_type | table            | type  | possible_keys | key        | key_len | ref  | rows   | Extra       |+—-+————-+——————+——-+—————+————+———+——+——–+————-+

|  1 | SIMPLE      | TABLE_NAME | range | ou_created    | ou_created | 4       | NULL | 206400 | Using where |

+—-+————-+——————+——-+—————+————+———+——+——–+————-+

1 row in set (0.00 sec)when you change the parameter you search, mysql changes query plan in a wrong way,interesting, isn’t it ? (fyi, my mysql version is: 5.0.51a)

Besiktas JK’s supporter group (carşı) has done yet another awesome thing.After the death of Michael Jackson, they’ve prepared a banner written that:”God forgive MJ’s soul who is a great Besiktas supporter and lived half of his life black and the other half white.”
Btw, this banner has no racist content, it’s just for fun, and really fun for a turkish person.
Fyi, the colors of Besiktas are black and white

a gallows humor about Turkey’s current media… Sorry, in turkish…

Last thursday, I had the last mid-term exam of my undergrad life, and first time in my life I decided to read the course book. I eventually caused my failure from the exam since reading 260 pages in 2 days was impossible. And see what I’ve focused in the book Here are some interesting foot-prints from the history of computer networks:cell phone networks

Finding locations high in the air to place base station antennas is a major issue. This problem has led some telecommunication carriers to forge alliances with the Roman Catholic Church, since the latter owns asubstantial number of exalted potential antenna sites worldwide, all conveniently under a single management

Invention of automatic switch:

In the early days of the telephone, the connection was made by the operator plugging a jumper cable into the input and output sockets. In fact, a surprising little story is associated with the invention of automatic circuit switching equipment. It was invented by a 19th century Missouri undertaker named Almon B. Strowger. Shortly after the telephone was invented, when someone died, one of the survivors would call the town operator and say ’Please connect me to an undertaker.” Unfortunately for Mr. Strowger, there were two undertakers in his town, and the other one’s wife was the town telephone operator. He quickly saw that either he was going to have to invent automatic telephone switching equipment or he was going to go out of business. He chose the first option.For nearly 100 years, the circuit-switching equipment used worldwide was known as Strowger gear. (History does not record whether the now-unemployed switchboard operator got a job as an information operator,answering questions such as ”What is the phone number of an undertaker?”)

Value of copper:

At one time, 80 percent of AT&T’s capital value was the copper in the local loops. AT&T was then, in effect, the world’s largest copper mine. Fortunately, this fact was not widely known in the investment community. Had it been known, some corporate raider might have bought AT&T, terminated all telephone service in the United States, ripped out all the wire, and sold the wire to a copper refiner to get a quick

payback.

Cadillacs going crazy

Sometimes omnidirectional radio is good, but sometimes it is bad. In the 1970s, General Motors decided to equip all its new Cadillacs with computer-controlled antilock brakes. When the driver stepped on the brake pedal, the computer pulsed the brakes on and off instead of locking them on hard. One fine day an Ohio Highway Patrolman began using his new mobile radio to call headquarters, and suddenly the Cadillac next to him began behaving like a bucking bronco. When the officer pulled the car over, the driver claimed that he had done nothing and that the car had gone crazy. For sure nobody believes him but in that year, it becomes a usual event in Ohio Highway. Later GM engineers realize that the wireless system that Ohio Highway Patrol use affects Cadillac’s computer controlled break system.

Were the king blessed by god?

A case could be made for redefining the foot as the distance light travels in a vacuum in 1 nsec rather than basing it on the shoe size of some long-dead king.

Does humankind have to solve any problem that he faces with an invention?

It is noteworthy that modern wireless digital communication began in the Hawaiian Islands, where large chunks of Pacific Ocean separated the users and the telephone system was inadequate.

Today, while working, I had to take “diff” of each folder and found the following command. Works perfectly on macOSx shell, should work in linux shell too.

diff -qr dirA dirB | grep -v -e ‘DS_Store’ -e ‘Thumbs’ | sort

here, DS_Store and Thumbs are two folders you want to exclude. The output looks like:

Files ./dirA/File1 and ./dirB/File1 differ
Files ./dirA/File2 and ./dirB/File2 differ
…

While surfing on facebook, I found a cool website where you can very quickly put yourself in cool photos.

FACEinHole.com

it’s easy, you choose a photo where the face is blank, than upload your own photo or have a webcam shot. then you become a new person

nice and cool website to have fun, it is really easy to use which made me write this post,

good job faceInhole !

here what they do:

Once one of my friends sent a link of a poem, then there was more of him on the website, and the first one I clicked was this awesome poem, there must be sth that made me click that link.

It is cool because it  defines one night stands in a nice way:

Half an hour

I never had you, nor will I ever have you
I suppose. A few words, an approach
as in the bar yesterday, and nothing more.
It is, undeniably, a pity. But we who serve Art
sometimes with intensity of mind, and of course only
for a short while, we create pleasure
which almost seems real.
So in the bar the day before yesterday — the merciful alcohol
was also helping much –
I had a perfectly erotic half-hour.
And it seems to me that you understood,
and stayed somewhat longer on purpose.
This was very necessary. Because
for all the imagination and the wizard alcohol,
I needed to see your lips as well,
I needed to have your body close.

Constantine P. Cavafy (1917)

taken from : http://users.hol.gr/~barbanis/cavafy/halfhour.html