It was the sequel without an equal. Geekfest 2.0 more than lived up to the expectations of the original held earlier this year as hordes of people descended on an event that was billed as the offline social event for online socialisers.

Geekfest is bound to become a permanent fixture in the city’s social calendar and I am sure Saadia Zahid, Alexander McNabb and Simone Sebastien (the people who conceived the event) know they have a winner on their hands. It’s just the sort of event that both the Twitterati and gliterrati love — there’s plenty of networking, loads of intelligent conversation and a whole bunch of really smart people. This time around there were techno showcases and ‘unorganised’, yet heavily attended, talks on photography and new media — just the sort of stuff that gets people really involved.

I will be going to the next one held in December, and if you are the sort of person who likes to put a face to a virtual friend, you must try to be at The Shelter gallery too. Sometimes, being real is much more fun.

Besides, who knows you could bump into some 20-year-old techie who could become the next Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook co-founder and CEO did, after all, make it to the hallowed circles of the rich and famous. At 25, he is the youngest person on Fortune’s list of businesses’ 40 hottest rising stars.

If Sean Parker is to be believed, then all those seeding on social networking media are only going to get richer. At the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, Parker, the managing partner at Founder’s Fund, postulated that network services would drive the web forward.  So, there is at least one person who believes that information services like Google will not continue to rule the roost forever.

However, in the foreseeable future, Google will lock horns with Microsoft when it comes to installing operating systems on your computing devices. Even though Windows 7 is currently driving hardware-software aspirations, the Internet behemoth Chrome OS will definitely add more than a little excitement to the mix. All you will need to do is understand what cloud computing is all about.

But before you do that, find the custom installer, download it on the application installer Ninite if you are upgrading to Windows 7 from XP.  It helps you install all the apps with a minimum of fuss and you will be done in a jiffy.

If you believe that sharing is caring, then what better than Sayabit. The file-sharing service turns your file into a shorter URL and you can download it wherever you are. In case that file happens to be an image, the service takes you to a webpage where it has been hosted. Don’t worry about security issues, because the link is password protected.

Meanwhile, Nigeria has finally taken steps to prevent online scams originating from the country. Project Eagle Claw will help law enforcement officials identify, target and subsequently shut down websites which siphon off money from unsuspecting users. 

(At first Anshuman resisted the idea of being called a geek, but then he realised it was the only language he could speak. Mail him at anshuman @khaleejtimes.ae)