~ True Lies ~

All the Social Media Gurus & Managers, how would you deal with such a scenario. 

There's just one problem: The story that sparked this social media firestorm may not be accurate. How do you restore the image of the Business once it has taken negative publicity even though the whole thing has gone viral?

After customer goes to jail, NYC restaurant learns that social media can be unfair

What would you do to recover from social media mob or backlash? Most of the times, technology could be a catalyst for your business. At times, they do have side-effects.

~ 3ga to mp3 ~

Converting .3ga files to mp3 is damn easy. Just rename your .3ga file to .mp3 and you are done! That simple? Yes!

Go give it a try for the audio files recorded with your Samsung Galaxy S2 / S3 / Note.

~ Overview of Spring 3.1 ~

If you use Spring Framework for your daily technology needs, then you should be watching the talk by Chris Beams - Modern enterprise application configuration with Spring. Following is the summary of the talk if you cannot watch for 50 mins.

Spring has evolved a lot over time from 1.0 to 3.1

Spring 3.x != Spring Framework

Spring 3.1 == { Framework, Security, Integration, Batch, Data, Social, Roo, WebFlow, AQMP, REST, MVC, ... }

Spring 3.1

Some of the major feature additions to Spring 3.1

1. Code based configurations. Yes, configurations can now be completely done {100%} via Annotations. 
2. One can even configure Java Web Application without web.xml if you are following Servlet 3.0 spec + Java 7.0 + Tomcat 7.* || Jetty 8.x {Container which supports Servlet 3.0}
3. An ORM framework like Hibernate can now be configured without XML w/ Hibernate 4+
4. XML is over. Don't worry Spring is STILL gonna support it
5. You can now *Enable* a specific Spring Component or Custom Component w/ Annotation called @Configuration
6. Any developer would have come across many times to load  properties from property file, database table, Tomcat Server, JVM Args, etc. Spring now introduces *Environment & PropertySources* Environment.getProperty("") gets us the data; can re-order, add, etc ;)
7. Bean definition Profiles is another good addition. I would love to use this for handling configuration of different deployments - Dev, UAT, Stage, Production. Have been waiting for this feature!!!
8. They even support Testing support for @Configuration
9. Scala finds its way into Spring now. Time to learn Scala at some point of 2013
10. Builds of Spring Framework has been moved to Gradle. Maven was good enough. Gotta read up on Gradle too.

References: Chris Beams {Twitter} | Different Styles of DI {Git}| Spring Framework {Git}

~ Graph Search ~

The post is response to today's Facebook Graph Search event. Verge coverage. Engadget coverage. My initial reaction to this was: 

Facebook + Bing = Graph Search.

Basically they are adding more functionality to their Graph API to search not just your own feed but now amongst your connections. Technically if I have you on my friends' list, I can build a tool to snoop what you did, liked, watched, attended, checkins, etc.

Am not sure if Facebook is getting Evil or not. Zuck said that Graph Search is privacy aware. Om nailed it well, "Graph Search is privacy aware, says Zuck. Of course, that is private till Facebook needs to make money off it".

Facebook owns the data - Connections, Likes, CheckIns, Comments, Shares, etc. They already know a majority of this. Graph Search is more of an indexing feature which gets the results faster & they have opened this up to Users. 

Zuck says no ads for now. Am sure advertisers are waiting to pour in money to squeeze their ads in between the trillion connections which the Graph Search aims to resolve.

BTW, Google has integrated web search into their Gmail service for quite sometime. I have never done a single Google search from Gmail fromt the time this feature has been there. Going with that factor I doubt people would switch to #GraphSearch over #WebSearch. 

There is a lot of potential for snooping amongst the friends on what they are reading, listening, doing, visiting, etc. 

Recommendations or Promotions for a targeted audience is where I feel Graph Search will fit. Don't think people would like Ads being poped up every now & then. 

Graph Search brings competition Yelp, Google, LinkedIn, Dating Sites, Good Reads, etc.

What do you think -

1) Have you used Google Search from your Gmail Account?

2) Will you use Graph Search in FB to search something on web?

3) In general about Graph Search?

Updates:

Wired has a good article - Facebook’s Bold, Compelling and Scary Engine of Discovery: The Inside Story of Graph Search Interesting to note that two Ex-Googlers have helped build Graph Search.

~ Review of Chrome Remote Desktop ~

Gone are the days where one needed a static IP to access a machine remotely. 5 years ago had explored the options to access my home desktop {a Windows machine} behind a LAN via my MBP {a OSX machine}. Back then it was a tedious process to achieve cross OS remote access. However, there were solutions for PC-PC remote access like RemotePC, LogmeIn. There are others like TeamViewer  & VNC which allowed the same but you have to install the software and get it running.

Coming to the browser era, where the lines are getting blurred between what browsers & Operating Systems {OS} can achieve. Chromium comes in two avatars - Browser & the OS. Google has an App for Chrome Browser called Chrome Remote Desktop, which has come a long way. From Beta release in May 2012 to an App on Chrome Webstore today. The current release of the Chrome RDP stands at Version: 24.0.1312.32. 

The app allows one to remotely control the machine in an OS-agnostic manner when installed. You can setup a minimum 6 digit PIN to control the access to the Remote Machine. Once you have it, you can access the entire machine through a chrome tab. 

For some reason I brought my Windows desktop to life couple of months ago. Today I booted it & wanted to remote control it while I use the MBP as a primary choice. The setup is a breeze & usage has been quite good with one disconnect so far. 

Advanced features of the app can be found here.