FullTextRssFeed is back . Again.

 

Today morning when I opened my RSS feed reader, I was intrigued by the higher number of articles to read. Then I noticed the new entries were coming from the dead feeds from FullTextRssFeed.com. Its  a free service which converts short summary RSS feeds to fulltext feeds, so you can read entire articles without visiting the feed site. This is specially useful to me, as I frequently try to read these from my company network, where my employer has blocked many good sites under other asuumptions.

Fulltextrssfeed feeds were not working for a very long time now, but its good to know they are back, and I can go back to my reading.

VLC’s Plugins

 

VLC, the favourite media player of Tech enthusiasts (geeks), has an awesome plugin feature. Yep, that’s right. And people have been contributing plugins to the movement. And one of the most useful ones of those plugins is the vlcsub plugin, which downloads subtitles for whatever video you are watching direclty from opensubtitles.org, automatically.

First, go get the plugin from here. Follow the instructions to install .

 

When you are watching a video, check the under the ‘View’ menu to see the VLSub option in the end.

 

Clicking on it opens up the subtitle finder window. You can either search by hash, or search by video name. The hash feature is simply awesome. It very accurately finds the righ set of subtitles for your video and populates the window.

And now you can simply click on one of that enty ,and click the Download button on the bottom row.

 

 

Presto ! The subtitle is downloaded and begins playing automatically. The subtitle is saved on your system with the same name as the video you are watching, but with an .srt extension. So it will be loaded automatically whenever you play the video again.

 

 

Ain’t that awesome ?

Myntra’s App-only U- Turn

 

Big Tech news today is Myntra’s decision to relaunch its desktop web site, reverting their decision to have only a mobile app as an interface. Looks like they maybe losing a lot of business with their app only strategy, and this u-turn is to make up for lost business.

 

 

 

 

Media is celebrating this as a victory, for the decision to go App only was received at that time as ridiculous, and customer unfriendly. It was surprising that parent company Flipkart would try to enforce their viewpoint on millions of reluctant customers, just to maybe speeden up development on their UX side. Personally I have never liked the mobile form factor for online browsing of products. The space and layout of the vertical larger desktop screen provided more options and flexibility. Neither the company nor the customers were ready for it.

So anyway, its good to know that inspite of smartphone penetration, the importance of desktop systems cannot yet be written off.

Undigital India: new way to impose curfews

 

Looks like the Indian Government has found the easiest way to impose curfews, disable mobile internet services. Interestingly, the actual mobile voice services remain active.

The internet has turned out to be the single most powerful tool in the hands of the modern protestor. The Middle Eeastern ‘Spring’ movements had proven this a few years ago. Any protest, anyone angry or unhappy, directly ‘posts’ their frustation on social media, and watch as the world spreads faster at the speed of light. Everyone on twitter seems angry, and its relatively mellow on facebook. But the truth is out, internet is the fastest way to spread word, any word. Which is why it is the first thing to be disabled in any region which goes through a turmoil. A few days ago, mobile internet was cut by the government in Kashmir during the Handwara unrest.

 

And its the same story today, in Gujarat, another state of India.

I guess the idea here to prevent spread of rumours and calls for agitations by protestors. But it paints a sorry picture, and is a kind of censoring as well.

Moto X Force - launch delayed

 

Was just watching the online launch of Motorola’s new phone with shatter proof glass. Its been delayed by more than an  hour..