Information Corner

In social networks, Google and Yahoo have tried and largely failed. To be sure, Google has Orkut, which is popular in Brazil and India, but not the United States. For its part, Yahoo has largely pulled the plug on Yahoo 360. But it is clear that MySpace and Facebook (and Bebo in the United Kingdom) remain firmly on top of the social network heap.

“We are not trying to be another social network,” said Yahoo president Susan Decker on Tuesday, during the company’s earnings conference call. “Rather, by linking users’ favorite destinations and content, with their friends’ families and communities, we can deliver better relevance on a scale that no one else has achieved.” Two days later, the company’s new chief technology officer, Ari Balogh, speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, elaborated a bit on the idea. “We don’t think of social as a destination,” Mr. Balogh said. “We think of social as a dimension.”

Google has long hinted that it would take a similar approach. Earlier this week, it suggested that users of iGoogle, a personalized home page service, might be able to share activities with friends. And the company has allowed users of Reader, its blog viewing service, to share items with friends.

One challenge both companies face, however, is how to turn the voluminous amounts of data about relationships that they have in their e-mail, calendar and other services, into “social graph,” a set of relationships establishing who is friends with whom. They will have to tread carefully.

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May 29-June 1, 2008
Portland, Oregon

RailsConf is the official event for the growing Rails community.

Microsoft confirmed today that the final version of Windows XP Service Pack 3 has been released to PC manufacturers right on schedule. The update will be available to end users to download next Tuesday, April 29, and pushed to Windows Update in June. A post on Microsoft’s TechNet developer site confirmed the release.

Far from being a new operating system, Windows XP SP3 is really an accumulation of updates for compatibility, security, and performance. It doesn’t contain new features found in Vista, aside from Network Access Protection (NAP), which lets XP systems work with Windows Server 2008’s ability to enforce system health requirements before allowing access to network assets. In addition to that feature, the only actually new ones are “Black Hole” Router Detection, more description in the Security Options control panel, kernel-level support for FIPS 140-1 Level 1 compliant cryptography, and a new Product Activation system that allows installation without immediately requiring a product key.

Windows XP SP3 will be available via Windows Update as a 70MB download and at Microsoft Download Center as a full installation weighing in at 580MB.

At a seminar on “Innovative Hiring Strategies” organized by CII, recruiters said they are junking traditional talent tapping methods, and increasingly targeting social networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Jobster to identify and attract quality human assets. They said while the bulk of senior and middle level hiring may still be through employee and headhunter referrals, the situation is fast changing.

According to P. Rajendran, director and COO, NIIT, employee referrals account for 30% of their recruitments. He says with web2.0 gaining popularity, this number could go up 60% in future.

According to a survey by Kelly Services, 40% of the respondents found their most recent jobs online. So, companies are actively looking at social networking websites, in addition to web portals.

With recruiters increasingly relying on social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook, to get the right man for the right job, what will happen to the traditional headhunter?

>begin expression executes its body and returns the value of the last evaluated expression.
>Any error in begin part will be caught by rescue depending upon parameters
>ensure is the one which must be exectued irrespective of exception occured or not
>An error message caught by an exception can be accessed using $!

For Java Programmers [ begin => try ; rescue => catch; ensure => finally]

begin
 p "I am doing well"
 p "so well .. and well"
 a = 8/0
rescue
 p "Something went wrong => " + $!
ensure
 p "Oh Somehow I could finish my work"
end

O/P:

“I am doing well”
“so well .. and well”
“Something went wrong => divided by 0″
“Oh Somehow I could finish my work”

a = 8
b = 0
begin
 p "I am doing well"
 p "so well .. and well"
 if a==18
    p "I am happy with a as 8"
 elsif b == 0
    p "Lets say I dont want this"
    raise Exception
 else
    raise
 end

rescue
    p "Exception 1 caught here " + $!
rescue Exception
    p "Exception 2 caught here " +$!
ensure
 p "Oh Somehow I could finish my work"
end

O/P for [[ a = 8 and b = 0 ]]
“I am doing well”
“so well .. and well”
“Lets say I dont want this”
“Exception 2 caught here Exception”
“Oh Somehow I could finish my work”

O/P for [[ a = 8 and b = 1 ]]
“I am doing well”
“so well .. and well”
“Exception 1 caught here “
“Oh Somehow I could finish my work”