Nomad at the desk!

After web-publishing the drupal how to at Drupal Nepal, FOSS Nepal and around a dozen Drupal related sites I had no idea that it’ll be reviewed like below by CMSwire.com that provides news, reviews and resources on Content Management System (CMS). It has been downloaded 300 times in two weeks time and if you want to learn Drupal then this may be the best thing to download at under 6 MB but above 90 Pages.

The reviews by : John Conroy at cmswire.com

It goes like this:

Now there’s a headline you never thought you’d see. Young Innovations, a Drupal development firm from the mystical land of Nepal, has released a beginners guide, in English, for the Drupal open source web content management system. Drupal how to For Beginners was developed by Young Innovations in conjunction with SAP, and is freely available under a Creative Commons license.

Running to 94 pages and with screenshots-aplenty, the guide is comprehensive. The scope is similarly broad – beginning with an explanation of what a CMS is (as if anybody knows anymore…), and continues through installation, management, customization, and adding modules.

One small gripe — the sages behind this tome are rather more at home wrestling with LAMP configs and pimping add-on modules than with the deployment of English grammar.

Witness this affront to Wordsworth and Byron:

“The primary target audience of this how-to or manual are people with some knowledge of web programming language and database more specifically people who know PHP and MySQL will be benefited to know and use such a world class product that also for free.”

Tut tut. Let me get my red pen.

But to be fair, we’re not marking these guys on syntax and grammar. You just want to know whether this “how-to” is worth downloading as an aid to getting your Drupal website up and running.

The answer is yes, and in fact it’s quite a bit more. Young Innovations should have called this ‘Goldilocks Teaches Drupal’, because everything is just about right.

Right length, right level of complexity, right amount of ‘dumbing down’ for less technical folk — within their stated audience of semi-HTML proficient persons, right balance between explanation and overt instruction.

Despite the aforementioned length, most of the bulk is taken up with screenshots and you can skim it in half an hour and still learn plenty. The primary function it performs, even more important to my mind than being an installation/beginners guide, is that it gives an excellent overview of exactly what Drupal is all about.

And that, I’m sure you’ll agree, is a worthwhile result.

Download the guide as a PDF here, and if you want to have a look at Young Innovations’ playground, visit them here. While you’re at it, why not go here to have a look at Nepal’s burgeoning Drupal community. Call it a cultural exchange.

In related news, influential Drupal consulting firm, Lullabot, has released a podcast citing “50 Drupal Tips and Tricks”. It’s already garnered 400 Diggs in just a couple of weeks, so tips like “Turn any CCK type with an imagefield into a photocast with ConTemplate” are evidently not the gibberish it appears to this non-Drupalist.

The cult of Lullabot has now racked up 50 such podcasts, and you can of course check them all out at lullabot.com.

In related Drupal news, the latest (beta) version has just hit the street. See Drupal Drops 6.0 Beta 3; Sports OpenID and Fancy Installer for the details.

Read it all it sounds cool.

YIPL Rocks.

आजकाल मलाई FOSS को भुत चढेको छ । माईक्रोसफ्टको एक्लौटी अधिकार देखेर दिक्क लागेको छ । डर लाग्छ भोली यस्तो एकाधिकारले बिश्वोलाई नै असर पार्ने काम त हुने होइन । माईक्रोसफ्ट मात्र होइन बजारमा एक्लौटि अधिकार राख्न्ने कम्पनिहरु धेरै छन् । यस्ता कम्पनिहरु प्राय गरि स्वामित्तमा बिश्वास राखछन् । कुनै कम्पनिको बजारमा एकाधिकार भए मलाई के त भन्ने प्रश्न पनि आउन सक्छ । यस्को सिधा उत्तर हो, बजारमा एकधिकार भएपछि ग्राहकहरु सबै भन्दा मारमा पर्छन् । अब नेपालमै हेर्नुस् – मेरो मोबाइल र UTL आउनुअघि नेपाल टेलिकमको ताल अनि निजि टेलिभिजनहरु आउनु अघि नेपाल टेलिभिजनको ताल । बजारमा कुनै पनि सँस्था या सामानको एकाधिकार बढेपछि जे गरे नि हुन्छ भन्ने सोच बढ्छ र यस्ले हामिजस्ता ग्राहकलाई नै मार पर्छ । र यस्को राम्रो बिकल्पको रुपमा आएको छ एउटा आन्दोलन जस्लाई FOSS भनिन्छ । FOSS भन्नाले Free and Open Source Software अर्थात नेपालिमा स्वतन्त्र तथा खुल्ला स्रोत सफ्टवेर भन्ने बुझिन्छ ।

हुन त माइक्रोसफ्ट जस्ता स्वामित्तमा विस्वास राख्ने कम्पनीहरुको सफ्टवेर र FOSS Software मा के फरक छ भनेर सोध्नुहोला । फरक भनेको माइक्रोसफ्ट जस्ता संस्थाले आफ्ना उत्पादनहरुको सर्वाधिकार आफैसँग राख्छन् र सफ्टवेर कोड अर्थात सफ्टवेर कसरी बनाइयो भन्ने जानकारीको स्रोत खुल्ला गर्दैनन् । यसले गर्दा अरु मानिसहरुले त्यस्ता उत्पादनको प्रकाशन गर्ने, प्रतिलिपी गर्ने, अदलबदल गर्ने र वितरण गर्न पाउँदैनन्। तर FOSS Software मा चाहि यो छुट हुन्छ।

तर एउटा महत्वपुर्ण प्रश्न तपाईलाई लाग्न सक्छ, यसले के फाइदा भयो त ?
यस्ता छुटले कुनै पनि सफ्टवेयरहरु स्थानिय भाषामा समुदाय या क्षेत्रलाई सजिलो हुने गरी सजिलै पुननिर्माण गर्न सकिन्छ जसले गर्दा सफ्टवेर चलाउनको लागि नै अरु धेरै कुराहरु जस्तै भाषा सिक्नुपर्दैन । त्यसैगरी FOSS को प्रयोगले खर्च घटाउँछ। यस्ता सफ्टवेयरहरु वितरण गर्ने र पुननिर्माण गर्ने छुट भएकोले यसले खर्च कम गर्न सहयोग गर्दछ । FOSS विकासकर्ता र समर्थकहरु व्यवसायिक उद्धेश्यबाट भन्दा पनि सामाजिक, आर्थिक र राजनीतिक कारणबाट प्रेरित हुन्छन् । यसले गर्दा सन्चार र ज्ञानको प्रवाहमा प्रबर्धन हुन्छ । यस्ता उत्पादनहरु सार्वजनिक सम्पतीको रुपमा हेरिन्छ । अझ सबभन्दा महत्वपुर्ण कुरा त हाम्रो जस्तो विकासोमुन्ख राष्ट्रहरुमा माइक्रोसफ्ट जस्ता कम्पनीहरुको सफ्टवेयरहरु गैरकानुनी रुपमा अनधिकृत तरिकाले प्रयोग गरिन्छ । तर FOSS का उत्पादहरु कानुनी रुपमा पनि प्रयोग गर्न सकिने हुन्छन् ।

चलाउन पनि रमाइलो, धेरै सुविधायुत्त, भाइरस पनि नलाग्ने र कानुनी मान्यता पनि भएकोले आजकाल म विस्तारै FOSS तिर सर्दैछु । Microsoft Office को सट्टा Open Office राखेको छु, त्यसैगरी Internet Explorer को सट्टा आजकाल म Firefox को प्रयोग गर्छु । चाँडै नै Windows को सट्टा Linux राख्ने विचारमा पनि छु । तपाई चाहि एकचोटी चलाएर किन हेर्नुहुन्न त ??

Few FOSS Softwares:
Open Office (openoffice.org) – An alternative to Microsoft Office
Mozilla Firefox (mozilla.com) – An alternative to Microsoft Internet Explorer
Mozilla Thunderbird (mozilla.com) – An alternative to Outlook Express
Pidgin (pidgin.im) – An alternative to Instant Messenger
OpenSuse (opemsuse.org) – An alternative to Microsoft Windows
FileZilla

Have you seen enasha.com lately??? Well you better check out. And when you read at buy and sell section, you would see one item labelled ID 493 which stated that if you want that celebrities autograph, it would cost you Rs. 15,000.
For me, this is one of the weird items displayed in ecommerce site in Nepal. Well may be in west, people would go crazy to make such item theirs, but in Nepal. Well I doubt. The item displays that it has been used for 3 years and includes more than 150 celebrities autograph collection including of Mahima Bhattrai (VJ / RJ), Priyanka Karki (VJ / Model), DA 69, Nabin K Bhattarai, Nirnaya (NSK), Richa Ghimire (Actress) and many more. It seems that the vendor has done hard work to collect the autographs.
According to pundits, Nepali artistes still lack that crazy fan following (may be some have). But there are also facts that some atrits have met their life-friend among their fans. We have heard crazy fan’s stories but personnaly i feel may be there are no such fans who might buy such items. IF you are one of them, why don’t you buy it??? If you got them, do not forget to inform US.

Images: enasha.com

Imagine this is 2037 A.D. You get mail from yourself you have written at 2007. How would you feel reading mail sent by yourself in the past for future????

You would feel it’s weird and almost impossible. How can this be possible??? When someone sends email, it reaches to receiver within seconds.

But with futureme.org, it’s not that hard to imagine. Just go to futureme.org and click on create new entry, fill your email address and your message and send it. You have option of dates up to 2037 A.D. You can even create message making it public which others too can read it. I have included on letter which is as follows:

Dear FutureMe,

I hope that I will have found happiness by this time. I hope I have a job that pays well, and someone in my life that loves me as much as (i think) my cat does. I hope my son has passed 8th grade, and has decided not to play football anymore. I hope that he somehow has forgiven me for my dumb mistake of moving out of state when his dad and I divorced. Whether or not I am still with my BF of 3 years, I hope somehow he has found happiness as well, and not in a stinkin beer bottle. I hope I realize my weight loss goal and am a size 8 again and that my lungs are free of black tar…
Sincerely yours,
old me

(written Wed Dec 31, 1969, sent Wed Dec 31, 1969)

Till date more than 408,380 letters written to the future and counting… So why don’t you get started?? I have written for myself…now it’s your turn.

Google has always been innovative and trendy. Either it’s gmail or blogger or youtube, it has brought revolution in virtual community. Even though some of it’s programs are later bought, but google has made it more fashionable. I am not going to talk here about gmail or any of it’s other service but of it’s gadgets. Have you used google desktop or google personalised page? Then you might have brought world in your desktop but have you used free text gadget? Using this, you can SMS to everyone here in Kathmandu to in San Francisco.

If you haven’t used it, go to google.com/ig, sign in there with your Google ID, and when your personalized page come, click at add stuffs.

There are hundreds of stuffs, so might get lost so click on communication and add Free text message. Now go to homepage and you will see free text message gadget. Now click on edit of free text(Edit menu means traingle sign) and select worldwide. Give any international number and try to SMS. It will give one message saying either click on edit and give your ID or click here for account. Click there, another page will open.

Click on “Upgrade To The Newest Version……” then another page will open.

Find there other option and click on Google gadget and wait for sometime. After some time, you can see call wave’s gadget in your personalized page, insert your mobile number and email address.Few minutes later, it will send your verification code. Fill the code and you are done.

Now start sending SMS everywhere, anywhere you want. You can send SMS to NTC and Mero Mobile too.