Mozilla says thanks

And I am much obliged.

Today is Firefox Download Day, when Mozilla Foundation attempts to set a world record for the maximum number of downloads of a particular software within a specific time period (24 hours). They even set up a site where people signed up to pledge to download the browser. This was given wide publicity by the Internet and users from all over the world have been waiting with bated breath for the new version of Firefox (it's 3) to be uploaded on the homepage.

With more than one million pledges Mozilla looked like it needed to hire additional servers to handle the strain once Download Day kicked in. They might have made some arrangements but I don't think it was enough. People all over the internet have been complaining about how slow or unresponsive the servers have been once the clock started ticking. And folks have been hitting the servers with gusto. For, at the time of writing this post (7 pm IST) there have been 6,757,833 downloads, with approximately 3 hours for the cut off time. Rounding the figure off to 6 million in 24 hours, this means 70 downloads every second from every corner of the world. And when you consider that it is a free and open source web browser that is not backed by big money, the effort is phenomenal, and once of the best illustrations of why power of the crowds can no longer be ignored.

A big Firefox fan since its 1.5.x.x days I was more than happy to participate in this effort. I duly downloaded the executable from the site though there was nothing new in its features for me. You see, I have been using the betas and release candidates since the last two months and I have been more than pleased with the new shiny version. In recognition of my "efforts" I got this record certificate to flaunt. I don't know if the link would still stay active after D-Day, but this is where you would go if you want your certificate. Try your luck.

For folks who want to know what the brouhaha is all about here is a handy guide to Firefox 3 by the fine folks at Lifehacker, one of the best in the business of tech journalism. Read in your free time.

On a parting note, here is some fun stuff. Open a new tab and type about:mozilla. You might also try this Firefox 3 specific Easter egg - about:robots. Have fun with your new browser and rediscover the web.

UPDATE: The Firefox downloads have crossed the 8 million mark in 24 hours. Which means that after I posted there were more than 1 million downloads in 3 hours. Freakin' awesome.

Digg it, Stumble Upon it........

Are any of you users of Digg, Stumble Upon, Slashdot and such other Web 2.0 content aggregation services? Do you write a blog and feel that readers should have more options in book marking and sharing your content across these Websites ? If you are interested in driving up traffic for your site (who isn't?) bear in mind the fact that these news aggregator sites can provide a very wide exposure to your content

In case the answer is yes, to both or to either of the questions I would recommend the use of bookmark buttons, the kind which you see near the title of this post. Get it from here. You just need to open an account, choose your blogging platform and choose the type of button you want. In Blogger the process is just point and click: the button is installed as a page element. But this looks ugly and is surely going to be missed by readers who has an attention span of not more than 3 seconds. Where you preferably want is near the post headline, or in some other cases near the bottom where it is easily visible and the viewer needs a minimum amount of cursor movement to access it.

For that to happen, as I have done it here you need to dive a bit into the template code. In Blogger go to Layout > Edit HTML and select the Expand Widget Templates checkbox. Copy paste the HTML code in Word or Notepad (Notepad++, even better) and search for

div class='post-footer'

tag (replace header with footer if you want the button at the beginning of your post, which is what I have done). Save the template and you are good to go, your content accessible to billions of viewers.

It's raininggggg

Oh, at last. The rains hit Bombay the other day and I was so inspired that I just had to blog about it. Well, actually I need to keep up a good number of posts per month, which is why I am staying up at 2 in the morning and pounding the keys on a pretty insensitive keyboard!

To be precise, the pre-monsoon showers hit Bombay last Friday in the evening. Shower would be a wrong, and strong word to use. At least where I was, it was more like a light drizzle.
I was walking down from the railway tracks when I saw flashes of lightning on the horizon and the low rumble of thunder. A sound that is sometimes made by your stomach when lunch hour arrives and you are still 50 meters, or 5 minutes away from eating. What was that? Me exaggerating? Fine then, the sound is on a much larger, atmospheric scale. Jeez.

The moment the first drops of rain hit my head I ran. Ran like Julia Roberts in "The Runaway Bride". And boy, did I run? I am frankly surprised at my own stamina. No tiredness, no breathlessness. I dodged matronly ladies hurrying with their vegetable purchases, roadside vendors scurrying to get their wares under cover and legions of preteen kids treating the road like their playground. The kids seemed to go out of their way to trip me or at least make me stop. Blasted brats!!

My sprint through the crowded and dark roads enabled me to reach the apartment just as the rain gods took it in their heads to pour 7 and half bucketfuls on our collective heads. Enough to make a thirsty, grimy ,dusty city hope for succour but noth enough to fill up even a few potholes. I also had a new experience that evening-in that concrete jungle I got to smell ,for the first time in my life the rich smell of the soil when the first rains hit the ground. Funny because most of my life I have spent amongst trees and open houses where there is more earth and less concrete.

These days it rains every evening. My flatmates, bored fro the daily routine of going to their offices are sending fervent prayers for torrential rains to come and flood the roads before their offices. The ideas is to get a rain leave. They may have their wish fulfilled pretty quickly.

I ran like a hare before the first rains. Poets and romantics have very obviously different ideas as to how we should welcome the first showers. What did you guys do when you first saw the rain of the season?