REDMAGIC MEDIA

Archive for the ‘General’ Category

Red Magic Media on expansion Mode

Wednesday, February 17th, 2010

Yes we have grown. RedMagic Media has opened a new branch in Peelamedu area of Coimbatore in order to cater to our growing domestic and international client base. RedMagic Media’s Coimbatore center was exclusively devoted to product development, but considering the huge demand for web design, development and web based products in the Manchester of South India, we have deemed it fit to open a full fledged branch office.

This state-of-the art facility spawning 1200 sq ft, is situated in a prime location in the industrially renowned city. It will serve as the hub of activity for handling Domestic and International web designing projects.

The Coimbatore wing is nestled strategically in the Peelamedu area which houses several industries, the airport and a string of world-class educational institutions.

Hiring process is going on in full swing and we welcome all able candidates looking to prove themselves in the arena of Web Design and Development. Motivated candidates looking for the opportunity of their lifetime can send their resumes to jobs@redmagicmedia.com

They may also walk in with their resumes to our office for a one-on-one assesment.

Our Address:
RED Magic Media Pvt Ltd.,
160 D1, Second Floor,
Avarampalayam Road,
(Off Avinashi Road)
Peelamedu,

Coimbatore 641 004.

Call us at : 0422 - 4397 587

Google Wave - Realizing the Dream of the Masses?

Monday, October 5th, 2009

The wave has traveled far and wide to unsettle the sphere of web communication. If it is as revolutionary a tool as Google claims it to be then the responsibility to justify the dreams of many for an open source communication and collaboration platform which performs, stays with Google. Let’s see whether the dream is made a reality to the masses. Google wave combines email, instant messaging, wikis, documents, and blogs for real time collaboration. Google wave now looks like an extension of a social networking platform integrating the mentioned applications in real time.

Working of a wave:

When you start a communication with a person in wave, it begins a wave and then to include a third friend, all you have to do is drag and drop his avatar into the wave. Similarly, you can drag and drop documents, images, videos and blogs into the wave. The real time editing feature of waves and then spell check with grammar and semantics is a revelation.

The wave functions as an email feature when offline and as an instant messenger when online. In a wave even before you could complete uploading, the files appear in your friend’s wave. Users can rewind the waves and play back from the instance they would like to view from and edit wherever necessary. The applications that would facilitate real time conferencing, wikis on web pages and many more can function as a value add to enhance the richness of the experience.

Google wave is a product, a platform and a protocol at the same time. The wave has made it debut as a ‘product preview’ supporting real time collaboration. The wave as a platform can integrate thousands of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). The federation protocol on which Google wave is based is completely open source. This means Google will give away the protocol and even competitors can use the federation protocol and compete with wave. For Google, what’s the fun without little competition?

100,000 Google wave invites have been already sent to the subscribers. The developer community amidst users is still fine tuning Google wave, which is now only a preview, of what is expected in the future.

Making of Google wave:

The name was inspired by the firefly TV series in which a wave was an electronic communication mode.

The developers of the famed Google Earth from Google Australia, the two brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen are the brain behind Google wave. Google wave is built with open source codes and its web tool kit leveraging on Google web supremacy.

Google wave redefines communication and takes it to the next level. Even if its initial hype slows down Google wave is here to stay. The advantage of Google wave is access to multiple web applications in the same platform, which makes it highly convenient for the users. This is the major premise which will make it a success and the future of communication. For a company with resources such as Google, building wave further will not be a difficult task, and then not to forget the help it is going to get from the developer community who have always welcomed open source protocols.

Except for the few who received invitations, the rest are in a queue. Can you imagine, some person even auctioned the invite in e-bay for $200, to be banned later by e-bay. Google Wave holds a lot of promises, but still being made accessible only to the elite, will it fulfill the dream of the masses?

Level 26 – The Written Word sans Limitations

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Level 26: Dark Origins - A thriller from the stables of Crime scene Investigation (The CSI series) director Anthony Zuicker is an account by the famed writer Swerzynski of a heinous serial killer butchering innocent victims. The serial killer in question is the psychopathic Squeegal who dons a latex suit and commits unspeakable crimes. One thinks that another to the list does not make a difference. This is no ordinary serial killer saga but a transition of the printed book format to the experience of the generation next. A cross platform, multimedia experience constitutes the website level26.com and a series of video footages supplementing the printed form.


The reader can read 20 pages of the book and then watch the 3 minute footage functioning as a connection between the content called cyber bridges and then resume reading. Readers complain that too much effort goes into first reading the prescribed pages, use the code given and then access your internet to watch the movie clip. Two of the videos which were previewed hopefully should stand testimony to the rest of the movie clips. The trailer was slickly presented in the CSI style.

watch the trailer here
Even if you own an e-reader like Amazon’s Kindle, a PC is inevitable; probably the proposed Apple Tablet would prove a panacea as it will support multimedia as well.
Now interactive contests are posted in the website like photo story telling by the readers which will turn out into a 500 word story by Zuicker himself. They have even promised live discussions with a serial killer. This is sensationalizing level 26 to the next level.

Interestingly level 26 indicates a complex psychopath with high IQ committing murders given with shocking explicitness in the trailer.


With so much hype and hoopla level 26: Dark Origins is the first in the series of the printed word, transitioned because of being pushed beyond its conservative limitations.

This initiative sparks the debate amidst readers, if attention spans demand more choices as Zuicker says, then information consumption has to be made less tedious. Jumping from one medium to another doesn’t excite the reader in anyway. The tablet for this only ailment of the cross platform reading experience is that single device solution.

Hazed and Glazed by WEB 2.0?

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

‘I have always imagined the information space as something to which everyone has
immediate and intuitive access, and not just to browse, but to create.’
Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web.

The term ‘Web 2.0’ was officially coined in 2004 by Dale Dougherty, a vice-president of O’Reilly Media. The Dot-com bubble had just burst. Companies that survived had something in common. It was brainstormed whether the common something could be web 2.0. The year 2006, Time magazine person of the year was ‘You’ and a picture of a PC in the cover of the magazine with the tag line reading
Yes You, You control the information age. Welcome to your world.

Web 2.0, the global web phenomenon is the buzz word in India now. Everyone is trying to squeeze into the band wagon and there is plenty of space to occupy all. Let’s explore why it is that all are falling for web 2.0, be it an entrepreneur to start up a company or a small time user. The rich user experience one gets on using the web 2.0 social spaces like the blogosphere or the Wikis or Del.icio.us or even Orkut is totally interactive when compared to yahoo for instance. Yahoo is a typical example of Web1.0, where very few publishers generate the content on the web for the entire set of users.
Web 2.0 is also termed as the read - write web where users can also write the content and voice their opinions. Web 2.0 utilizes the standards built and practiced by Web 1.0 users, which forms the basic platform.

The advantages of using web 2.0 from the user perspective are listed below

The content is generated by the user. Blogs let us comment. Photo sharing social sites facilitate sharing of images. Social networking sites let us share profiles. It’s all about getting noticed and grabbing attention.
The power of the crowd as a collective force can do wonders. Crowd sourcing is one such trend where talent from the crowd is leveraged, voted on and then used for developing applications or software. E.g. Cambrian house.

• Tagging of photos, articles, links and websites which can be retrieved later is the essence of Web 2.0. This is termed as folksonomy and Del.icio.us, the popular book marking site is based on this concept.
• Web 2.0 develops mash ups. Oft-quoted example HousingMaps.com combined Google Maps with the USA-based CraigsList of flats available for rent to give you a view of the flats on the net, which can be located on the map.
• These kinds of mash-ups are facilitated by what are known as ‘open APIs’–Application Programming Interfaces. This is because of opening up the application for use by the developer for building variety of applications using it.

The Web 2.0 technology
The technology behind web 2.0 is cloud computing. This is a system architecture which is very economical and cost effective. The server is shared amidst users and is based on the pay per use model.
Ajax which comprises of XML and asynchronous java script is the language used to get the rich web 2.0 experience. Alternatively Macromedia flash is also used in place of Ajax.

Features of Web 2.0
Web 2.0 is very user friendly. The user need not even have to be internet Savvy to use web 2.0. Web 2.0 is feature rich and very colorful. The colors predominantly used are black, red and white. There is a lot of focus on good content, than images.
Web 2.0 is a convergence of business and information technology which makes the web flexible, collaborative and open to every one. This makes Web 2.0 an attractive business avenue which holds many promises to investors who are willing to take risks.

Some of the very novel innovations of Web 2.0 applications are

Zopa : Taking money lending to the masses
Zimbra : Messaging and collaboration
Toggl :Online time tracking
World66 : A wiki on Travel
NetworthIQ : Track your networth online
openID : Single identity across all applications
Foldershare : Keep your files online

There is a lot of frenzy to innovate and a lot of money to back it with. There is a gold rush to start up web 2.0 sites. People have not seen return on investments yet. It might be a beginning of a bubble that is yet to burst. That’s why Venture capitalists are averse of Web 2.0 technologies. Meanwhile the world of Web 3.0 has emerged. Watch this space for a journey into the semantic web.

Googled with a dose of Caffeine

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Caffeine has stimulated the entire set of searchers all around the globe. The Microsoft Bing’s sensitivity to caffeine is expected to show up, with Caffeine keeping both Yahoo and Microsoft; awake at nights. Caffeine is the upgraded version of the Google search engine, which is superior in infrastructure and features when compared to the current Google version in existence.

Now there is a mutual agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo, the two biggies are on a strategic pact to control the search empire. Now the searches conducted in Yahoo are powered by Bing and the marketing for Microsoft is done by Yahoo. Bing has had a good start supported by its ads targeted against Google. Some of the ads depicted that Google provides us with irrelevant results and has made us Seo machines, churning out keywords by the minute.

Google Caffeine gives the most relevant results optimized to the right number leaving out false links. Google has to prove that the accusations posted by Microsoft are untrue. The drop in market share of 1.3% for google eroded to its top two rivals is a worrisome factor. This didn’t undeter Google; it came back with a challenging upgrade to google termed Caffeine. Will this work out for Google or backfire?

Google has come up with an interesting marketing strategy, which is very interactive and which involves the end users. Now the link to caffeine is posted in the google Blog and if a person visits Caffeine and finds something useful that can be added. There is a section to provide feedback at the bottom of the page. Google encourages high level feedback from the developers community. This would definitely work as it solves two purposes. One-creates good Word of Mouth, two-helps improve the site.

Caffeine is all about speed. The display on the page is very quick, on the click of search; the results are displayed immediately.

There is a complaint that Caffeine’s focus on real time results has given too much way forward to the social media. I typed my name in Caffeine and found that my Facebook profile and Twitter account were given the most importance and displayed as the first few in the search listing.

Caffeine has a new iteration in place which is more advanced than google. This helps in increased accuracy of search and indexing of results. This time around Google has focused on size, accuracy and speed. All this they say is because of google’s superior storage system for Caffeine and a new file system on which it runs. This is similar to Microsoft word running on Windows. The new file system powers the new architecture and is termed as GFS II.

Is this a stitch in time saves nine sort of an experiment? When analyzed it looks so on the exterior, but is a camouflaged google strategy. Caffeine has been in the making for almost two years now. It is actually a google strategy to bring out Caffeine at this opportune moment to break the rhythm of both its rivals. How else will the world know of Google’s leadership in search technology, where as Microsoft is just catching up.

We users are on the look out for real time changes to Caffeine as the search screen looks like the usual google screen. External user experience hasn’t been changed. Waiting for Caffeine to have a full fledged launch. Caffeine is here to get us addicted.