Yacy is a P2P search engine where in you can participate in crawling the web and create a local repository of index.You can also use it as your proxy server.
disabled remote accept/reject
One big flaw is that it does not have any parameters to control disk space usage.So it will eat up all the hard drive space that it can.
From a privacy standpoint since all the websites which has your private/personal information , they don't get indexed because as per Yacy these pages are detected and not crawled.
Also if you want to filter some unwanted websites, you can look at this thread http://www.yacy-forum.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=78
If you are using Yacy I will highly recommend that you use the FoxyProxy Extension for Firefox as that will allow you to browse with the Yacy proxy and then switch to not using it.You can also create a blacklist/whitelist of URL's and the proxy server will be used dynamically.
You can also customize the your yacy home page by modifying /htroot/index.html

posted at: 16:28 | category: /p2p | permanent link to this entry

I have finally said good-byes to my phone landline and have moved to exclusively to mobile phone .
I hated paying almost $20 for a landline with no features and just local calling.
I have moved to Virgin Mobile as my preferred mobile carrier(have been using them for almost 2-3 yrs) because it is the most flexible service that is it allows you to switch between a pay-as you go model to a monthly service anytime without **any** annual contracts etc.You can also switch plans like say for example in the next month you anticipate that you will need a phone more then usual , then you can increase the monthly amount, and then say the month after next you are going out of country and wont be using the phone at all you can , reduce your monthly charges.
It seems that the mobile phone industry pretty much has a price war going on right now and I would not like to lock myself into a contract when I could have more choices in near future.In general I just don't like contracts, I prefer freedom for consumers which seems to be hard to get these days especially with the telecom industry.
Here is a nice site that provides a good comparison of pre-paid wireless plans/carriers.
Time to time there are good deals on Target or at Calling Mart where you can get Virgin Mobile Top-Up cards at a significant discount , sometimes upto 10%.

posted at: 20:36 | category: /general | permanent link to this entry

I recently came to know that there is finally a health insurance which can cover pre-existing medical conditions for folks on visitor visas especially for visitors from countries like India.
You can check out this website for more details.

posted at: 04:36 | category: /nri | permanent link to this entry

I have been thinking about the same topic for a couple of weeks now and then I recently read an article at Linux.com , Web apps: the next battleground for FOSS?. But it is good that more people are thinking about this and I'm sure the FOSS community will come out with something intelligent to solve this issue.

posted at: 04:30 | category: /unfolding | permanent link to this entry

1. FireGPG : This firefox extension is a must if you use GnuPG for encrypting/decrypting emails especially online mail accounts like Yahoo Mail/Gmail etc.
2. Operator : This is another very important extension if you want to browse the future of the web (like semantic web/microformats).I would encourage every used to install this because you don't have to understand the new web structures like semantic web but you can bear the fruit of it with this extension.Be sure to check out the user-scripts to enhance this extension.My website has a lot of content which can only be displayed with this extension only.
3. Sage : For the longest time this was my rss reader but this seems to be a dead project and dumped it especially because it did not support firefox 3.0 for a very long time and I definitely wanted to test out the new 3.0 version.Though I like the simple interface of Sage I have now settled on the actively developed Wizz reader.
4. Wizz RSS News Reader : This is the newsreader(rss) which I have settled on after dumping Sage.
5. Semantic Radar : Again this extension is a must have if you want to see what the future of the web looks like.It tells you about the presence of semantic data on the page and then you can launch the various semantic data in explores.My website has a lot of content which can only be displayed with this extension only.

posted at: 00:29 | category: /reviews | permanent link to this entry

Over the last couple of years I have made multiple attempts to move over some of my friends/family and myself for secure email and communications via tools like GNUPg.But I think because of lack of ease of use it just doesnt go anywhere.Anyways I'm trying to see if I can restart that attempt , my main reason for renewed interest is mainly to put personal data like home address/phone number etc on my website encrypted so that only folks that I trust can see my data especially in my FOAF file.
I use GnuPG for *nix platforms and Gpg4win on Windows.
My public key is http://bhavesh.freeshell.org/keys/bhavesh.asc
Be sure to install the firefox extensionFiregpg as it will make your life easier with online mails like Yahoo/gmail etc.

posted at: 00:14 | category: /cuttingedge | permanent link to this entry

posted at: 21:04 | category: /reviews | permanent link to this entry

To include my changes to make pyblosxom xfolks aware. The thread is at http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.web.pyblosxom.devel/2099

posted at: 13:37 | category: /worklog | permanent link to this entry

Introduced gps3d as one of the tools which can be used to log gps data on Windows and then can use NMEA sentences to GPX which can be further used at OSM.
My wiki edits can be looked at Wiki Edits my Bhavesh

posted at: 13:37 | category: /worklog | permanent link to this entry

Recently I have been making changes to the maps on openstreetmap.org for the Sunnyvale area.
I have added lot of restaurants around Sunnyvale , pretty much anytime I visit a restaurant or any other place I make changes on OSM.My goal is to add as much details as possible to maps.
I have also added a lot of GPS traces, so pretty much wherever I go these days I carry my laptop and my GPS mouse and record my GPS traces and then convert into GPX format and upload it to OSM.You can see my GPS traces at My GPS Traces

posted at: 13:37 | category: /worklog | permanent link to this entry