Akshay Jain

(Image courtesy: TechCrunch.com)

So, one day after Scrabulous had been taken down by Scrable Inc. due to copyright infringement, the popular Facebook application is back with a bang.

The new Wordscraper game is designed completely differently in order to keep it really different from Scrable and even the rules have been twisted so that there are no copyright problems with the Scrable folks. Clearly it was a pre-planned move by the Indian brothers to launch Wordscraper Facebook application in the case of such a contigency.

Now the question arises whether the official Scrable (which will soon launch the Scrable app themselves) will be more popular or this twisted, brand-new brother of Scrabulous?

Lets see how this battle turns out?

The Apple Itunes 7.7.1 version was just released and I downloaded it. I tried really hard to look for the change log which would have told me what is new in this version, but I was unable to find any. Therefore, I would assume that this is just another “general” update which contains minor bugfixes.

Here are some observations that I make about it:

1. The number of application updates is not being correctly reported even in this version.
2. There is some problem with the thumbnails. Photo syncing with Iphone does not show the complete pictures. It just shows a boundary and no photo within. I think this could be a minor bugfix which we can expect to be resolved pretty soon.
3. The speed of the full backup / sync is still taking a long time atleast on my Ipod which makes this new upgrade practically a waste for me. I would have loved to stay at the previous version only.

Warning Before Upgrade:
If you have in any way engaged into the illegal / semi-legal (whateva) way of swapping apps then you should NOT upgrade to the latest version till further reports come in. The apple DRM was cracked recently in case you do not know.

Enjoy!

Although I am not a user of Airtel Broadband, but I would like to point out the unethical business practice that Airtel is following. It is redirecting all the mistyped domain names to their own page which shows advertisements in collaboration with Yahoo!.

Thus, if you are using Airtel’s DNS servers then you would see that a wrongly typed domain name such as www.sdkajhdjkashdajdkhausd.com (I hope that does not exist ) will take you to a Airtel page which shows advertisements.

Why Unethical?
Now, this is a very unethical practice as the customers are mislead into believing that these are search results. Moreover, Airtel is benefiting from a such a service which is not giving any “benefit” to the user.

Precedence
There was a case filed against Verisign some time back and they were sued for it. They were successfully barred from using this kind of an unethical practice.

Here is an excerpt from the suit against Verisign:

“VeriSign’s redirection of .com and .net traffic not only is earning, or is intended to earn, profits for VeriSign, but it subverts the basic infrastructure of the Internet, to the detriment of numerous entities,” the suit says.

How to Prevent Airtel
The only way to prevent Airtel from hijacking your typos is to use OpenDNS DNS servers which are not only really fast but also are also more reliable. (If that went above the head, then just go to OpenDNS website: OpenDNS