Random Thoughts

Business Cloud: Beyond operational efficiency

2010-10-08T20:06:00.000+05:30

Early adoption of cloud computing in Global 2000 enterprises has largely been for IT optimization. The early drivers have been cost savings and faster infrastructure provisioning. As per a Forrester Report (Dec 2008) more than 70% of IT budget is spent on maintaining current IT infrastructure instead of adding new capabilities. So, organizations are looking to adopt cloud computing model for their enterprise applications for better utilization of the infrastructure investments. However, the true “disruptive” potential of cloud computing is in the way it is going to help these large enterprise reinvent themselves and their business models to meet the changing business landscape.

Digital Consumers are driving changes in the way products and services are being consumed and being delivered. Gen Y is sending more and more time online and their purchasing decisions are being influences by the social network. Increasing adoption of information and communications technologies is increasing pace of change; traditional in-house R&D will not be enough to match up. Organizations need to adopting open approach to innovation so that there is an ecosystem of partners and customers who are co-creating innovative solutions.

Recently I have co-authored an article on how business cloud can help organization to look beyond operational efficiency and explore new possibilities.

Read the article.

AHP based application portfolio assessment for Cloud migration

2010-09-19T18:41:00.002+05:30

Cloud computing promises myriad benefits for enterprises including operational excellence through reduction of CAPEX and OPEX, faster processing of internet scale data, increased business agility. However there are considerable concern and skepticism because of varied reasons like security issues, loss of control over applications, compliance risks and lack of standards. Thus Cloud’s economies of scale, elasticity and flexibility can both be a friend or foe based on how it is put to practice in an enterprise. Some of the questions businesses need to ask themselves before undertaking cloud initiatives are:

What factors should be considered for cloud enablement of enterprise applications? How to judge different competing priorities?
How to identify applications and services that are best suited for cloud migration based on business priority and technical fitment?
How to prioritize applications and services for phase wise cloud enablement? How to avoid "gut feeling" and bring objectivity into the evaluation?
What are the different risk involved?

There is a need, therefore, for an application portfolio assessment approach to evaluate enterprise applications suited for cloud environment.

Recently my article on how Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) based multi-dimensional statistical approach can be used to undertake application portfolio assessment for cloud enablement got published on IBM developerWorks. The article explains different aspects of the assessment including criteria hierarchy definition, criteria prioritization and application scoring using examples and formula.

Read the full article.

On demand test and development environment on Cloud

2009-08-17T21:30:00.010+05:30

Cloud computing holds a huge appeal for enterprise IT organizations in that it helps ramp up/down infrastructure resources in development and test environments based on demand. Test/development environment otherwise is a tricky area:

In a typical IT environment, a considerable part of infrastructure is ear marked for development and testing environment, but they remain under utilized almost 90% of time.
Discrepancies in test and production environments results in large number of problems faced by deployed product/project. However, creating a test environment which is an exact replica of production environment is not a practical option in most cases because of huge cost involved. Moreover testing has to be done for varied hardware/software platforms which the product has to support which is all the more expensive proposition.

Thus cloud based on-demand test/development platform will be of great value to IT managers:

Substantial cost savings: no need of maintaining a dedicated testing/development environment which otherwise remains idle most of the time.
Reduced time-to-market: development/testing will not have to wait for availability of a suitable environment and can be undertaken as planned.

A typical cloud based test/development platform should have provision for service request management, automated resource provisioning, resource management, configuration management, user self-service, charge back (metering and billing), SLA management.

What route should an enterprise take for realizing this platform – private, public or hybrid cloud?

Enterprises that have already made considerable investment in internal test/development infrastructure should go for resource visualization and then transition to private cloud based test/development platform. The cloud can then be shared among business units or groups that don’t share resources today. Further usage of cloud resources can be tracked and charged back.
At times private cloud will not be able to cater to all needs. Private cloud will be relatively smaller and can scale up to a certain limit. For example for very high end performance testing, once private cloud resources are exhausted, additional resource has to be provisioned from public cloud. Here we have hybrid cloud scenario.
Small and medium enterprises that haven’t yet made substantial investment in internal test/development infrastructure can leverage public cloud for the same.

Clouded with Cloud Computing

2009-03-18T19:53:00.007+05:30

Cloud Computing is the latest buzzword in IT industry. Every analyst, evangelist, vendor is trying to add new meaning to it. If all these noise leaves your mind clouded and frustrated, you have good company in Larry Ellison. Following useful resources available on the web can demystify some of the confusion

Artifacts (whitepaper, presentation etc.) by Berkeley.
Peter Laird’s industry map
OpenCrowd.com’s Cloud Taxonomy

Top 25 Hottest Indian web companies

2008-11-22T19:15:00.003+05:30

AppAppeal, a website that aggregates reviews about web applications worldwide, has release a video Top 25 Hottest Indian web companies -

REST applications: Identifying resources

2008-10-14T20:09:00.016+05:30

One of the first step in designing a REST application is to identify resources and define their representation. Oft heard advice in this regard is "nouns are your resources". Go through your application and its requirement/use cases, identify all the nouns, model them as resources and use HTTP verbs on these resources to add their operations. GET is to get the resource, PUT is to modify the resource, DELETE is to delete the resource while POST is to be used to create a new resource.

However, this only serves to arrive at the 1st set of resources. It has to go through multiple iterations wherein this initial resource set is refined to add/prune/modify to arrive at the final list of resource. Often it helps to run the list through a few questions.

Which resources are important from client's point of view ? All nouns or entities that are used internally inside an application behind the scene may not be relevant to clients and so shouldn't be part of resource list. At the same time there would be a number of not-so-obvious resources. Some applications may like to expose some derived information to client as web services, an example would a valuation calculator that provides calculations like average,standard deviation, percentage against ceiling or floor values. Thus "ValuationCalculator" can be modeled as a resource.

Can all actions/operations be handled by using HTTP verbs on existing resources ? For example in a banking application how to handle an AccountTransfer operation wherein an account is transfer from one branch to another. As this operation involves changing the representation of Account resource, we can add an attribute branch to Account resource ( this attribute can be an URI of Branch resource). Then we can apply PUT verb on Account resource to implement AccountTranfer operation.

However some other actions are more tricky to handle. For example - processing of account opening application in a banking application. Which resource should handle this operation - Account, Customer, Branch. Herein, we need to introduce a new resource - AccountApplication which will have an status (with possible values of approved, declined, under process, on hold etc.) attribute in its representation. Thus as the application goes through varied approval processing, PUT verb can be applied on AccountApplication resource to keep track of status.

REST for restless

2008-07-05T18:57:00.013+05:30

REST web services has caught the imagination of the developer community because of its simplicity in implementation and usage. JAX-RS is a JSR that provides API for implementing REST web services in Java. Jersey is an open source reference implementation of this JSR. Here is a simple example of implementing REST web services using Jersey:

Download Jersey (jersey-0.8-ea.zip in my case) and add required jars in classpath. Following jars are required:

asm-3.1.jar
jersey.jar
jsr311-api.jar

Add the Jersey servlet in web.xml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<web-app version="2.4"
xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/j2ee/web-app_2_4.xsd" >

<servlet>
<servlet-name>JerseyWebApplication</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>com.sun.jersey.spi.container.servlet.ServletContainer</servlet-class> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup>
</servlet>

<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>JerseyWebApplication</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/rest/*</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>

</web-app>

Add the service

package com.test;

import javax.ws.rs.*;

@Path("/helloworld")
public class HelloWorld
{
@GET
@ProduceMime("text/html")
public String getMessage()
{
return "Hello World. This is a test REST service";
}
}

Build the war file (restApp.war here) and drop it in webapps folder of tomcat. Now start the tomcat and browse to url http://localhost:8080/restApp/rest/helloworld. The browser should throw "Hello World. This is test REST service".

That's it - a simple REST implementation. This simplicity in implementation and usage is the main reason behind its immense popularity among developer community.

Download the source code.

Web 2.0 Reference Model

2008-05-04T20:27:00.007+05:30

Web 2.0, the second phase in the evolution of Web is based on a set of principles that focus on architecture of participation, user-centricity, collective intelligence, multi-channel and multi-device services, simplicity, openness, transparency, innovation and long tail of economics. It offers enterprises new means to engage and empower different stakeholders more effectively. Though enterprises have started experimenting with different aspects of Web 2.0, very few have actually applied Web 2.0 principles in more than trivial ways. This can partly be attributed to the fact that all the principles of Web 2.0 may not be applicable to all enterprises. Moreover, technology enablers of Web 2.0 are not available out-of-box as a single technology product or as one business application product.

At present there are several disparate technologies available that can be used to realize individual features of Web 2.0. For example Rich Internet Application (RIA) tools/framework like Ajax, Flex/Flash can provide richer and more intuitive user experience, information syndication technologies like RSS/ATOM can be used to aggregate information from different sources, while blogging, wiki enables collaborative authoring/publishing. However a holistic approach towards realization of Web 2.0 in enterprises is lacking. Challenges before enterprises in successful realization of Web 2.0 principles are manifold:

How to identify Web 2.0 services and initiatives that are relevant based on business and stakeholder priority ?
What are the basic building blocks required for an enterprise to realize Web 2.0 features ?
How does Web 2.0 relate to and integrate with other existing computing infrastructure within an enterprise ?
What services does an enterprise need to support Web 2.0 features and derive business benefit out of it ?

Therefore there is a need for a model that should act as a reference for realizing Web 2.0 principles in an enterprise. In a recent two part article we have proposed a Web 2.0 Reference Model which provides a conceptual model that will allow an enterprise to consider, in an organized manner, the many constituents and factors of Web 2.0, their purposes and inter-relationship.

Check Part I and Part II of the article in Cutter.

Related Post - Web 2.0: What's in it for Enterprises ?

Nature in its mystic splendor

2008-05-01T11:43:00.009+05:30

A few snaps taken during my recent vacation in Tripura, my home state ....

Web 2.0: A bubble about to burst ?

2007-12-07T10:08:00.002+05:30

Well this video seems to think so ..... one of the funniest videos in Youtube.

Oracle's bid for BEA

2007-10-12T20:25:00.006+05:30

CNN has reported that Oracle is attempting to buy BEA Systems at $17 a share, a 25% premium over the normal share price. Supposedly its latest effort to up the ante against Microsoft and Germany's SAP.

Wonder what will be Oracle's marketing strategy once the deal is through. There are so many redundancies in their product portfolio including application server, process server, SOA stack etc. Most interesting will be the portal stack. BEA already has two portal servers in its portfolio: Weblogic Portal Server and Aqualogic User Interaction (repositioning of Plumtree Portal server which BEA got because of its 2005 acquisition). While Oracle has its own Portal as part of its Fusion Middleware product family.

The punchline used by BEA for its Aqualogic User Interaction is - Putting a Face to SOA. Wonder if it will get rephrased to - Putting 3 Faces to SOA !!

Web 2.0: What's in it for Enterprises?

2007-10-09T00:18:00.003+05:30

Web 2.0 is creating quite a splash as it stretch the boundary of what traditional web can do. Be it enriched user experience through rich internet applications (RIA) or fostering community or encourage end user collaboration, Web 2.0 has added many a new dimensions.

However, the implication of Web 2.0 phenomenon in larger enterprises is still not well understood. Web 2.0 is often associated with startups and technology companies, while enterprises still perceive it mostly as irrelevant. At times, the open and decentralized nature of Web 2.0 is even seen as a threat; enterprises are wary of giving more control to end users.

But there are many opportunities outside, within, and across the enterprise firewall wherein Web 2.0 can be leveraged. In recent past Cutter has published my article (as Executive Update) on this topic. The article explores some of these possibilities and examine how enterprises can leverage them to engage and empower different stakeholders -- end customers, employees, and partners.

Check the article in Cutter.

Menace of email overload

2007-06-13T16:56:00.001+05:30

These days there is so much of hype around Enterprise 2.0 and its advocated role in improving the efficiency of knowledge workforce. However even the very basic of collaboration tools - email can be an overkill and prove counter-productive if not handled properly.

Every day I spend a sizable part of working hours in reading, replying or taking action on emails. I believe most will identify with this plight.

Stever Robbins has shared some tips in this regard in this Harvard Business School article. Catch is, you can not put a few of the tips into practice if you are not 'at or near the top of your organization'. For example, try out 'charge people for sending you messages' on your boss !

Moon present: An amazing photo

2007-04-24T14:34:00.002+05:30

Source: Moon Present by Ahmed Zahid

Open source car: Tatas got competition !

2007-04-20T21:01:00.001+05:30

In the recent AutoRAI show in Amsterdam, working model of an open source car was in display. The vehicle's specifications, technical drawings etc. are available to everyone. The car named c,mm,n (common) is the first output of the OScar project. This car was designed by the online community over the past eight years.

Seems Tata's one lakh car has got a competition :)

Source: The OScar Open Source car finally debuts (forwarded by a collegue)

Time to ditch PowerPoint presentation ?

2007-04-10T21:39:00.001+05:30

A recent article entitled Research points the finder at Powerpoint challenges the way most often powerpoint presentations are made. The article highlights findings by researchers from the University of New South Wales, including John Sweller. One of the findings mentions that it is more difficult to process information if it is coming at you both verbally and in written form at the same time. Since people can not read and listen well at the same time, the reporter suggested, then this may mean "the death of the PowerPoint presentation."

The article mentions a quote by Professor Sweller: "The use of the PowerPoint presentation has been a disaster, it should be ditched."

He further adds: "It is effective to speak to a diagram, because it presents information in a different form. But it is not effective to speak the same words that are written, because it is putting too much load on the mind and decreases your ability to understand what is being presented."

So what does all these lead us to? Its time to ditch the way usual presentations are made and not the medium (powerpoint). Time to realize that putting the same information on a slide that is coming out of our mouths usually does not help. If sum total of all the information in the slides can convey the full message, what are you(presenter) there for ? Might as well email the presentation and the receiver will go through the slide at leisure.

The Coop: Firefox addon for social networking features

2007-04-05T23:56:00.002+05:30

Mozilla is working on adding some social networking features into Firefox. The project codenamed "The Coop" will help the browser users to keep track of what friends are doing online and share content with them.

Users will get to see the image of online friends, and a click on the image will list details about the friend like recently added Flickr photos, favourite YouTube videos, tagged websites, composed blog posts, updated Facebook status, etc. Sharing interesting stuff with your friend is as simple as dragging that into their face. Similarly, if your friend sends something, his avatar will glow; notifying you that he has sent something. Things cann't get any better !

Just wondering what would be the implication of this add-on on memory and performance.

Pics from Bangalore Barcamp 3

2007-03-31T17:04:00.001+05:30

Different sessions in progress ....

Related Post: Bangalore Barcamp 3 is just round the corner

Bangalore Barcamp 3 is just round the corner

2007-03-28T22:23:00.001+05:30

Bangalore BarCamp is back. This time it is scheduled on 31st March and 1st April at IIM Bangalore campus. The theme is "Internet, Mobile and Society".

The vision of Barcamp Bangalore is to bring together technology enthusiasts, thinkers, designers and visionaries together and thereby create an ecosystem for the ideation, cross pollination and germination of ideas that could lead to realization. ..... We hope to have stories like Indian copyright law and innovation in music and celluloid movies, e-governance electronic record keeping and what it means for those without access; and the resultant impact of these in shaping of society and culture.

Already more then 500 campers have registered for this edition. The two days surely will be interesting - full of ideas, discussion and networking.

Post related to earlier BarCamps:

Bangalore Barcamp 2: post1, post2 and post3
Hyderabad Barcamp 3: post1, post2

IT Architect Skills Library from IASA

2007-03-20T23:43:00.001+05:30

IASA, the International Association of Software Architect, has published IT Architect Skills Library. The library contains articles for each primary skill set that an IT architect should possess.

The current skills library consists of 633 pages of valuable information written by practicing architects from around the world. The skills project was commissioned by Microsoft and designed and executed by IASA for the professional community. This library will remain free to architects and it provides the first ever practical description of what IT architects do and how they do it.

The articles are grouped into areas like IT Environment, Business Technology Strategy, Design, Software Architecture, Infrastructure etc.

India the Superpower ?

2007-02-13T22:11:00.001+05:30

Among all the hype around 'India Shining' or 'India Poised' or the recent much talked about multi-billion takeovers by Indian companies, Fortune's Cait Murphy does some reality check. He points to some startling numbers about not-so-shining side of India :

47 percent of Indian children under the age of five are either malnourished or stunted.
The adult literacy rate is 61 percent (behind Rwanda and barely ahead of Sudan). Even this is probably overstated, as people are deemed literate who can do little more than sign their name.
Only 10 percent of the entire Indian labor force works in the formal economy; of these fewer than half are in the private sector.
The enrollment of six-to-15-year-olds in school has actually declined in the last year. About 40 million children who are supposed to be in school are not.
About a fifth of the population is chronically hungry; about half of the world's hungry live in India.
More than a quarter of the India population lives on less than a dollar a day.
India has more people with HIV than any other country.

There are many hurdles to be negotiated before it can lay claim to the tag of a Superpower. But for now 'its waxing self-satisfaction seems sadly beside the point'

Read full article.

Related Post: Tatas Chorus buy out.

Web 2.0: Digital Ethnography

2007-02-08T20:46:00.001+05:30

A nice YouTube video forwarded by a colleague ...

A Million Penguins: Wiki powered collaborative novel

2007-02-05T22:10:00.001+05:30

As Wiki become increasingly popular, publishing house Penguin has launched a wiki powered novel, A Million Penguins to allow budding writers to collaboratively tell story. The wiki site will allow writers from across the world to write piece of the novel.

A Million Penguins is an experiment in creative writing and community. Anyone can join in. Anyone can write. Anyone can edit. Let’s see if the crowds are not only wise, but artistic. Or will too many cooks spoil the broth?

Last checked, the novel has seven chapters.

So are we in for a great novel ? Quite unlikely. The Wisdom of Crowds talks about some key criterion that separate wise crowds from irrational ones : Diversity of Opinion, Independence, Decentralization and Aggregation. However, writing a good novel doesn't confirm to these criterion. Author(s) usually starts with an end in mind and builds it up through character development and story telling.

Nonetheless a good experiment and a PR exercise. Penguin wont mind the buzz this has created.

Wikicamp: Wiki Unconference in Chennai

2007-02-02T16:16:00.001+05:30

WikiCamp, a one day event is scheduled on 25th February at Tidel Park, Chennai. The event aims at understanding and harnessing the power of Wiki.

In line with other unconferences like BarCamp, WikiCamp will be an informal gathering of like minded people enthusiastic about Wiki. There is no passive audience, everyone participates either as a speaker or in helping organize the event.

The star participant in this WikiCamp will be Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia & Wikia and President of Wikimedia Foundation. So hear about Wiki straight from the horses mouth !!

Add your name to participate.

Related:
- Hyderabad Barcamp snippets
- Hyderabad Barcamp3 : Web 2.0 - What's in for Enterprises ?
- Bangalore Barcamp: Agile Development at ThoughtWorks

Keepvid: Download videos from video sites

2007-02-01T21:41:00.002+05:30

KeepVid is a very handy site through which you can download videos from most video sites including YouTube, Google Video etc. You just have to submit the URL of the desired video and the site provides you alternate URL(s) from which the video gets download.

Wonder why the name of the site is KeepVid and not KeepVideo.

Tatas Corus buy out: Sign of changing time

2007-01-31T22:14:00.001+05:30

When Tatas proposed to set up a steel plant in early 20^th century, Sir Frederick Upcott, the then Chief Commissioner for Indian Railways commented - Do you mean to say that the Tatas propose to make steel rails to British specifications? Why, I will undertake to eat every pound of rail they succeed in making.

Legend has it that the Tatas sent the first ingot from the plant, neatly packed to Sir Upcott with a note - For your culinary delight !!!. In fact, Dorabji Tata was later to comment wryly that - Frederick Upcott would have had a slight bout of indigestion since Tata Steel went on to ship 1500 miles of steel rails to Mesopotamia during World War I!

Today Tatas snapped up the British firm Corus, becoming the 5th largest steel company in the world. I was watching an interview of Philippe Varin, CEO of Corus, and he termed the event as a 'Sign of changing time'.

Indeed.

Related Post: India Poised: Pulsating, dynamic India

P2P lending - leveraging Long Tail in retail finance

2007-01-31T14:44:00.002+05:30

Long Tail, brainchild of Chris Anderson is today the most talked about business concept. His research suggests that market for items that sells a few units is often as large as items that sells a lot; though it's the later that hogs all the attention. Anderson has shown that irrespective of how niche a product is there is always some customers for it. And the sum total of sales of all niche products can bring in substantial revenue and profitability to businesses.

As discussed by Guy Kawasaki, there are a number of tactical items that businesses need to fulfill to capitalize on the potential of long tail - infinite product choices, low cost production, near-zero selling and marketing cost, near-zero distribution cost, near-zero support and training cost etc. Herein lies the challenge for established retail bankers. Traditionally banks have seen their customers as a single mass market, and have taken a "one size fit all" approach in designing their products. Moreover, most established players are large institutes and lacks the agility to scale down. Anderson identifies "scaling down" as one of the core Long Tail competency.

These challenges for established players has however proved to be an opportunities to new P2P lending players to enter retail financial services space. The likes of Prosper, Zopa, FYGO are leveraging the Long Tail and user community (a trait of Web 2.0). They allow users to post a request for loan while other users can make offer to fund part/whole of the loan at an interest rate of their own choice. Once multiple offers are made the system finds the least expensive offers and the deal is made ! While different players differs in execution details, the basic concept is the same. In FYGO transaction can occur only between known participant while the other two allows the same among unknown participants. Now, why would you go to a bank if can get loan from a known person at an acceptable term without much hassle ?

These P2P lenders have democratized the production of financial products (loans); any one can create a loan product. Infinite product choices - lending interest rate and terms are set by lenders; low cost production - lenders create their own loan product online; zero cost distribution - loan is matched online; near-zero selling and marketing - network effect of user community is leveraged.

What is the long term implications of P2P lending on established players ? The jury is still. Though it's still early days for P2P lending concept, business and technology leaders in established banks should take note of this new phenomenon. It has the potential of taken some wind out of their sail. Long Tail and participatory user community opens up new opportunities as well as challenges; success depends on how you play the game.

Sunrise in Google Earth for lazy-bones !

2007-01-30T20:21:00.001+05:30

Google has launched a new layer in Google Earth that brings the sun's ascent right to your computer screen. This layer displays Discovery Channel placemark icons showing the locations for video clips from the Discover Channel Sunrise Earth program.

Source: Official Google Blog

Related Post: GeoGreeting: Send greeting Google Earth Way

Swedes virtual embassy in Second Life

2007-01-28T17:33:00.001+05:30

Sweden will become the first country to establish diplomatic representation in the virtual world of Second Life. Second Life, 3-D virtual world created by San Francisco technology company Linden Lab is currently inhabited by 3,049,553 people from across the world.

The embassy would not provide passports or visas but would guide users how to apply for the same. It will also provide information about the country. The service will be big boon to people planning to travel to Sweden, hitherto tedious job of getting visa will hopefully get simpler.

With the saturation of other advertisement channels and burgeoning popularity of virtual world, Second Life has opened up a new marketing channel. Many organizations including Dell, Sun Microsystem, Reebok has already joined the bandwagon. Sweden however is the first country to do so.

News Source: thelocal.se

Doxory: Outsource decision making

2007-01-27T19:08:00.001+05:30

Doxory is a community site that lets users outsource their decision making; you can post questions and solicit answers from other users. And hopefully answers provided by others will help you in making decision.

It took me some time to get the real meaning of the name , it's "Do X or Y?".

And how serious is the site ? As pointed by FAQ

Not terribly. But hey. It's Web 2.0. We've got to pretend that we don't have any sort of plan for how to stay afloat, right?

Related: Is your site Web 2.0 ?

Bullying in the blogging era

2007-01-26T12:58:00.001+05:30

Seems A-list bloggers will become better role models for their kids !!

Picture credit: Blaugh

Many Eyes: IBM's data visualization service

2007-01-25T13:47:00.002+05:30

IBM has recently released their collaborative data visualization platform called Many Eyes. According to IBM press release Many Eyes is

an innovative new service that allows people to explore different visual representations of large amounts of data and share it with others to help them collectively make better sense of the information.

Users can upload their own dataset or use the existing datasets available in the site. There are a number of visualization options provided in the site including Pie chart, Treemap, Stack Graph etc. Users can leave their comments on the site regarding dataset, thus many eyes (or collective intelligence) will help better understanding of the data in a collaborative way.

As with any user contributed content there is no control over the authenticity of the data uploaded by the users, but as the usage increases the quality of data will also improve.

Many Eyes is currently available as a free service in IBM's alphaWorks service site, early adopters can access and use the same. This will be very useful for researchers.

Other similar visualization services which provide compelling ways of data comprehension, navigation, mining and visualization include Swivel, Data360 and Grokker.

A picture tells a thousand words

2007-01-19T20:48:00.002+05:30

But there are exceptions ...

Picture credit: What the duck

Related: New generation tech babies

Dr. Abdul Kalam in Yahoo Answers

2007-01-19T11:35:00.001+05:30

Who's who of India are asking their questions in Yahoo Answer's Ask the Planet 2007.

The first question is from our President Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam - what should we do to free our planet from terrorism? You can also hear him asking the question in the video.

Yahoo has roped in prominent personalities like Kiran Bedi, Akum Longchari, Leander Paes and Sri Sri Ravi Shankar to share their thoughts on the subject. 12036 answers are already posted for this question.

Related: What's for dinner ? Yahoo Food has the answer

MapmyIndia: Embed map to blog or website

2007-01-13T10:03:00.001+05:30

Recently MaymyIndia has added a new feature called Embed Map which allows to add an interactive map snippet to blogs and websites. It provides features like zoom in and out.

Steps to add the map is very simple. All it takes is to search for the target place and then cut paste a JavaScript code snippet to the blog or website. It also provides a preview feature wherein you can check how the map will look before using the same .

Embed Map will be very useful for blogs, portals or websites dealing with travel, tourism and other such recreational sectors.

Embedded below is a map which shows the location of Lotus Temple in New Delhi.

Related:
- Burrp: Social recommendation site

Burrp: Social recommendation site

2007-01-10T15:29:00.001+05:30

If new in a city you often have to rely on friends, acquaintances, yellow pages or tourist guide for suggestion on restaurants for lunch or dinner. Now there is a better choice in the form of a social site - Burrp.

So what is Burrp? The site describes itself as an online platform where you can search and review local businesses, such as restaurants, bars, nightlife, juice centres, paan shops, bakeries, etc. Basically it is a social networking site which uses "wisdom of crowd" to provide users reviews and recommendations about different recreational establishments in India cities.

In true Web 2.0 style it provides a social networking platform wherein users can share opinions and recommendations, rate and blog about these places in their city. Currently Mumbai and Bangalore editions are online; according to the site other editions - Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Pune and Goa will also be available soon.

Establishments that you can currently talk about in the site includes restaurants, bars and clubs, cafes, lounges and desserts. The site provides important details about these establishments, for example it provides address, phone, location, food type etc. of restaurants. And if you want to carry the details of your favorite restaurant while you are traveling or send details to your friend the site allows free SMS.

Given below is a screen shot of a restaurant (Little Italy, Indiranagar, Bangalore) as provided in the site.

Why burrp is more useful then off-line resources like newspaper, travel guides? Well, the comments available are supposedly from people who have actually visited these places. Details are more live and comes from multiple sources. It provides photos and and you can do tagged search. Besides it helps you to connect to like minded people.

A few features that will add more value to users:

Display a location map of establishments with road details. With Google Map now providing road data for major Indian cities this is a possibility. For people new to a city this will be useful feature.
Feature to upload audio, video file.

One year for sale

2007-01-08T23:32:00.001+05:30

Remember the Million Dollar Homepage that sold 1m pixels at a price of $1 each? The site was setup by a student to finance his university education.

Now another college student Peter Sauer has started a similar site; One Year For Sale sells you minutes ($1 each) and you get to display your message on the homepage for the time you purchased.

Why would you buy minutes ? From the site's FAQ:

I was hoping you would ask! Well first of all you get the time that your message is up on the homepage which can be used in many ways (already listed above). When people come to the site, your message will be the first thing they see. Secondly, you would be supporting a college student. It seems like I'm always shelling out more money for one thing or another. In addition to costs incurred while in college, I have dreams of starting my own business. I donot know exactly what kind of business I will start, but I have many ideas. I am majoring in Marketing and General Business with a minor in Entrepreneurship. If I sold a year's worth of minutes I would be able to pay for all of my college expenses as well as have a good amount of money to help me start a future business.

Potentially this guy can make 525948 dollars in a year. Now why would someone buy minutes in this site when you can do efficient search engine marketing ?

Related: Student hopes to reach space via web site

India Poised: Pulsating, dynamic India

2007-01-07T21:45:00.001+05:30

India Poised is a campaign launched by Times Of India to celebrate India's christening of 2007 as the 'Year of India'. Sweeping aside the euphoria and headiness surrounding Brand India, it attempts to do a critical assessment of India's preparedness to face the world. It aims to

pry open areas of public governance, infrastructure, health, business and economy, environment, social sector and culture, among others, to sort the stars from the non-performers. We will seek answers why, and draw a roadmap with lucid action points.

Do log onto http://www.indiapoised.com and sign in to receive your very own India Poised Badge. Here's mine:

TOI has also released an inspirational video featuring Mr.Big B

My cubicle

2007-01-01T10:41:00.002+05:30

If you identify with the video above, it's time to look beyond the current cubicle, revisit your career option and possibly go for a new job !

Note: The video is a parody of James Blunt's You're Beautiful.

Other hilarious posts:
- School girl wants her school demolished
- Dayal Baba Kala Khaba

YouTube New Year from Chevrolet

2006-12-31T11:45:00.002+05:30

This New Year Chevrolet presents A Youtube New Year. New Year videos submitted by people will feature on the Youtube homepage on December 31 and January 1,2007. Besides many special videos from featured artists, Youtube celebrities will also be featured on the Youtube homepage.

You can create a clean video under 2 minutes and add it to YouTube New Year Videos group. Submitted videos can be regarding:

New Year Resolutions
New Year Wishes
Shout-Outs to your home town or your friends
New Year Celebrations

By the latest count already 53 video has been shared in the site. Upload your video and you get famous this new year!

This is a sure way of riding the Web 2.0 wave to create brand awareness. As these videos reach umpteen web users over the web, get shared, discussed, blogged and commented they also carry the name of Chevrolet along.

Related post: Desi cousins of YouTube

New Year resolutions

2006-12-31T11:10:00.001+05:30

New year is upon us and people are busy making New Year resolution. During last week of December and first week of January we are often asked what is your new year resolutions ? However, as Alex Epstein comments in The Meaning of New Year's Resolution

Unfortunately, this ritual commitment to self-improvement is widely viewed as something of a joke--in part because New Year's resolutions go so notoriously unmet. After years of watching others--or themselves--excitedly commit to a new goal, only to abandon the quest by March, many come to conclude that New Year's resolutions are an exercise in futility that should not be taken seriously. "The silly season is upon us," writes a columnist for the Washington Post, "when people feel compelled to remake themselves with new year's resolutions."

The problem is the focus most often is on what and not on how part of the resolutions. Thus the resolutions made are often very lofty and unachievable. However, if we focus on how to achieve them keeping in mind constraints like our own ability, mental resolve, time etc we will end up making realistic and achievable ones. Moreover instead of having subjective resolutions like "Enjoy life more" make it objective ,like "go for 15 day family vacation". And then, make the list short. It's better to have a couple of them rather a daunting laundry list.

My New Year resolutions ? I did keep them personal. But in the new year I would try to blog more often.

Happy New Year to you all.

Related: 10 New Year resolutions regarding personal finance from Rediff.

Slide: Picture slide show tool

2006-12-26T23:52:00.001+05:30

Came across an interesting picture slide show tool named Slide. The tool is very simple to use, it takes couple of minutes to create a basic slide show. There are predefined style, theme, size to choose from. Photos can be uploaded from different sources like Flickr, MySpace etc. or from local machine.

Shown below is a slide show created using this tool with a few pictures from the Hyderabad BarCamp.

GeoGreeting: Send greeting Google Earth Way

2006-12-26T23:04:00.001+05:30

This holiday season you can send greetings to your family and friend using geoGreeting. Type your message in the input box, as you type the letters geoGreeting will construct the greeting using alphabet shaped building snapped by Google Earth. It will also provide a link for the greeting which you can email to your loved ones.

A sample greeting message ("Happy New Year") as produced by geoGreeting is given below.

Flex cookbook released

2006-12-25T21:35:00.001+05:30

Recently Adobe in partnership with O'Reilly has released an online Flex Cookbook. In this public beta you can:

Find solutions to your Flex-related problems.
Publish solutions you have created for the greater Flex community.
Comment on solutions created by others.
Opt for a chance to have your solution published by O'Reilly.

Items in the cookbook consist of three main parts: problem, solution and explanation. Posts can be tagged with core tags and any free-form tags. The tags make it easier for other users to find a solutions for a problem at hand.

So go ahead and share any Flex or AS3 code snippet that you believe will be useful to others. There is also a possibility that your submission will get included in a O'Reilly publication.

Software development methodology round up

2006-12-24T22:05:00.001+05:30

Simon Munro provides an interesting round up of software development methodology fads from the nineties on in his blog.

... methodology was, and still remains an important part of delivering IT systems. The need for methodology has not decreased; it is just that methodology is very unfashionable at the moment. The familiar pattern of hype cycles in IT, such as data or centralized processing, go through cycles of being fashionable or not - methodology is in a slump and if it does come back into fashion it will look very different.

Problem with most formal development methodologies is that they are heavyweight, time consuming, straitjacketed and is often perceived by developers as a hindrance to their freedom. Nonetheless development methodology is a necessary evil, large scale software project can not be executed successfully without following some methodology. Best way out is to adopt a suitable methodology and tailor that to project context without getting entangled in lengthy processes and documentations.

Related post: Agile development at ThoughtWorks

Making money blogging

2006-12-23T13:21:00.001+05:30

Came across an interesting presentation by Matthew Haughey on making money through blogging. You will find the presentation informative and interesting even if you blog just for the fun of it.

Hyderabad Barcamp snippets

2006-12-18T22:48:00.002+05:30

Microsoft's Janakiram gave an interesting demo on IM Bots to showcase interactivity of Live Messenger chat. On the Filmy Bot he was throwing interesting questions on Mallika Sherawat evoking laughter among the gathering. He also added with a smile that his knowledge of Bollywood is limited. But given the fact that he picked the hottest babe in Bollywood, it seems he underestimates himself or is too modest!

Uzanto's Vishnu gave a presentation on JRuby. He mentioned that he was to able develop Slideshare functionalities using JRuby in 3 hours .......boy that's productivity !

Jay Pullar's (CEO, Pramati) session was the most debated one. He was trying to highlight some of the problems in web applications today - our personal data gets scattered in multiple web applications (like flickr, blogs, mails), problem in using these application when offline and not having fine grained control in sharing data. He has detailed these problems in one of his blogs. These are the problems that Pramati's next product will try to solve ...... he hinted that the product is expected in early 2007. Something in line of Adobe Apallo ?

In the middle we also had a small rush ....... everyone vying to get hold of a T-Shirts out of the limited stock ! I missed last couple of session, had to rush to the airport to catch my flight to Bangalore.

Ramesh and krishnendu did a great job in managing the whole show and making things happen.

Some pictures are available here and here.

Related Post: Web 2.0: What's in it for Enterprises?

Hyderabad Barcamp3 session: Web 2.0 - What's in for Enterprises ?

2006-12-18T20:01:00.003+05:30

I gave a presentation in the Hyderabad barcamp titled Web 2.0: What's in it for Enterprises ? Most often Web 2.0 is associated with technology companies and startups. However, I believe once the initial euphoria and hype around Web 2.0 settles down, it is the enterprises (organizations in verticals like retail, banking, media etc.) who will reap the benefit of the Web 2.0 phenomenon. For an enterprise there are Web 2.0 opportunities both within and outside of the firewall.

Me presenting (Pic courtesy: Krishnendu)

Over the years there has been a perceptible change in the online strategy followed by organizations. Initially organizations used their online presence to talk or advertise their products or services. Over time the importance of customer experience and choices set it. So the focus shifted from "product" to "customer", thus online applications became more and more user friendly, customer started getting more choices in terms of personalization, customization. Latest in this customer focus is the usage of RIA technologies like Ajax, Flash to provide more interactive and intuitive experience to the customers.

The next stage in this evolution would be to move toward "Customer Community", wherein organizations will use their online presence to facilitate customer community around their product/services. The inceptive for that is manifold. Marketing can be outsourced to the community; customer community and interest groups can be used to create buzz for a product. By nature people tend to believe any feedback provide by their circle of acquaintance while making purchase decisions. Community feedback can also be used while developing new products. A classic example is Google Labs; the same model can be employed by organizations while introducing new products to the market. Better understanding of customer community will also help organizations to better define their go-to-market strategy.

Having said that there are certain challenges before enterprises in Web 2.0 adoption for their customer facing online applications, at present there is no model to quantity business benefit of adopting Web 2.0. In absence of definitive ROI, it will be very hard to sell Web 2.0 to business heads who sponsors most IT initiatives in an enterprise. Besides there are other open questions like - where does Web 2.0 fit in an Enterprise Architecture ? Where to place Web 2.0 vis-a-vis other paradigms like SOA which IT has been advocating for the last couple of years.

There is a silent evolution happening in enterprise workplaces also; the shift from transformational to transactional and then to tacit type of job. In today's knowledge age, most critical jobs are tacit in nature - requires very complex interactions between multiple stakeholders from multiple domains both from within and outside organizations. Though organizations have optimized transformational job and transactional job by introducing automation (using tools) and process optimization (like ISO, CMM etc.) respectively, the challenges faced by them today is to optimize the productivity of their tacit workers/employees. That can only be done by optimizing the discover-connect-share-execute cycle involved in tacit jobs through effective collaboration.

Therein web 2.0 technologies like RSS (syndication), VoIP, blogging etc can play a role. Though these technologies individually solves different aspects of collaboration, what we need a collaborative platform which will utilize all these technologies to provide a end-to-end solution. (Web 2.0 in enterprise workplace has got a new name now: Enterprise 2.0). Many product companies have already smelt the opportunity in this space and started positioning their offerings. However these are still early days towards a true collaborative platform.

Just returned from Hyderabad BarCamp3

2006-12-16T23:49:00.001+05:30

Just returned to Bangalore after attending Hyderabad BarCamp3. The venue was Infosys campus and the theme was "Consumer/Enterprise software opportunities around Web 2.0 communities", a topic of my interest. The sessions were good, took one session myself. There were lots of demos, discussions and some heated debates too. All in all a good experience , though I felt back to back sessions left very little time for networking. Also my flight from Bangalore in the morning played spoilt sport ;got delayed and by the time I reached the venue the conference had already started.

Will post a detailed blog tomorrow on this; now its time to hit the bed !

School girl wants her school demolished

2006-12-15T15:25:00.001+05:30

Little school girl Becky wants her school demolished (including her school teachers). Hear her phone conversation with the demolition man ....

Just hilarious ....

Video Credit: YouTube

Web 2.0 : Yet another definition

2006-12-13T00:26:00.002+05:30

O'Reilly, credited for coining the term Web 2.0 has given another shot at defining it. According to a recent post in O'Reilly Radar the compact definition of Web 2.0 is:

Web 2.0 is the business revolution in the computer industry caused by the move to the internet as platform, and an attempt to understand the rules for success on that new platform. Chief among those rules is this: Build applications that harness network effects to get better the more people use them. (This is what I've elsewhere called "harnessing collective intelligence.")

Web 2.0 a business revolution ? I thought it is more of a social revolution on the internet rather then a business one; aren't people still trying to figure out how to make money with Web 2.0 (other then advertisement of course).

The debate and enigma of Web 2.0 continues.

Web statistics using Clicky

2006-12-11T23:12:00.001+05:30

Clicky is new web statistics monitoring tool made especially for blogs, it lets you track what exactly people do on your web site.

Features:

A dashboard to give a quick summary of traffic for today, last 2 days, daily average and cumulative total.
Visits by individual users are grouped into sessions.
See how many pages users have viewed, how long they stayed
See every click of a session from start to finish by selecting the View session link.
Search clicks by IP address, referer domain, referer search query, and more.

The tool is free now. Register or try the demo account.

Suggest an idea for Guy Kawasaki's next book

2006-12-11T16:18:00.001+05:30

Guy Kawasaki is requesting ideas for his next book. For that he has created a wiki. You can jot down your ideas about what you would like him to write about in his next book. If your idea is good enough you might find your name in the acknowledgment section of the book !!

Potential risk with iPod usage

2006-12-08T15:33:00.001+05:30

Cory D.F. Portnuff and Brian J. Fligor have done a study which evaluates the output levels of several popular MP3 players to determine the risks to hearing from using these devices.

The report suggest:

MP3 players produce high enough sound levels to pose a risk of hearing loss, if used at high enough volumes for extended durations. As technology improves, with greater music storage and longer battery life, it is possible that people will choose to listen for long periods of time. Users of MP3 players must be aware of their volume levels, and the maximum amount of time they can listen at their chosen volume without risking hearing loss.

Read the full report.

Government to screen "dangerous" blogs

2006-12-05T22:40:00.002+05:30

According to a report in economictimes.com, the department of telecommunications (DoT) is planning to deploy a screening system to block individuals websites and blogs that are perceived as threats to national security. As per the report:

The technology to be put in place at the eight landing stations - which bring international bandwidth into the country - will be capable of blocking websites at a sub-domain level, thus saving internet service providers (ISPs) from a sweeping shutdown.

This is not the first time that bloggers in India are going to bear the brunt, in July this year many blog sites including Google Blogspot was blocked.

Hope Babus will comes out with a clear definition of "dangerous blogs" such that bloggers can take precaution.

New generation tech babies

2006-12-05T21:56:00.001+05:30

My 7 month old daughter, Aarushi is yet to learn to call me "Baba" (Bengali version of Papa). And now after seeing the cartoon below I am worried !!

Just hoping I won't meet the same fate as the poor guy in it.

Picture credit: http://blaugh.com/

Bar Camp Bangalore 2.0 session: Agile Development at ThoughtWorks

2006-12-03T22:34:00.002+05:30

Marco Jansen, a project manager in ThoughtWorks took a very interesting session on how Agile Software Development is being practiced in the company. It is governed by 4 principles:

Principle 1: Individuals and Interaction over processes and tools.
A lot of emphasis is given on interaction among the team members of a project. So instead of separate cubicles all team members of project work out of the same table (looks more like a dinning table !); developers, functional guys, QAs, team lead sitting together which leads to better communication and easy problem solving.

Every morning starts with a stand up meeting wherein everyone is asked 3 questions - what did you do yesterday? What do u plan to do today ? What is it that might stop your work today ?

Why stand up meeting ? Marco demystified it - people talk less while standing then while sitting; this helps to keep the meeting short !!

Principle 2: Working software over comprehensive documentation
Minimum required documentation is done. Thus you wont find bulky documentation - requirement document, design document.

Principle 3: Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Instead of user acceptance testing at the very end of the project implementation, client feedback is taken at regular intervals. Client visit India development center every couple of months and work with the development team.

Principle 4: Responding to change over following a plan
Clients are allowed to swap planned stories with one which priority ones that were not planned. ( Story is a user requirement which can be implemented in 2/3 days. Analogous to use cases)

ThoughtWorks uses peer development, wherein two people work on the same story simultaneously; this helps to train developers fresh out of college as they are paired with experienced developers. This also helps experienced developers to refresh basics. Marco also mentioned another benefit of peer development - people don't waste time in chatting, personal mails when they are working the same machine with his/her peer !!!

Bar Camp Bangalore 2.0 demo: Stockhive

2006-12-02T17:15:00.001+05:30

Presenter: Yogi Kulkarni (founder of stockhive)

Stockhive - a web based tool for stock market investing was born out of Yogi's frustration of available stock investment tools.

Some of the differentiating features shown in the demo:

The site provides intuitive visual interpretation of technical analysis with visual clues which will result in easy decision making.
Users will not have to leave the current page to see news items related to a stock.
Easy registration; minimum details is asked for.

Yogi mentioned that the tool is developed using Ruby on Rails (RoR), a choice he made because of its productivity benefits. So here's a success story of RoR.

Stockhive is currently open for user feedback, membership is free during the beta phase. The tool is quite impressive, it can give the likes of moneycontrol, equitymaster, myris a run for their money.

Bar Camp Bangalore 2.0 Session: Web 2.0 Business Models

2006-12-02T15:16:00.002+05:30

Speaker: Sowmya Karmani

At present following business models are used by web 2.0 companies:

Advertising: most widely used business model, but she is of the opinion that this is not sustainable.
Subscription : Ex Flickr, base camp, zoho
Transaction : Ex Jobster, Root markets

But where is the money, honey? She is of the opinion that Web 2.0 companies are not making enough money yet.

How can web 2.0 companies differentiate their services ? Her prescription

Hard to recreate data (ex: myspace, youtube, flickr)
Hard to recreate algorithm (ex: flickr, google, Root markets)
Value added mashups (ex: zillow, zvents)
Tools (base camp)

Is Web 2.0 a bubble that is about to burst? Jury is still out.

Commercial translation goof ups

2006-11-30T15:53:00.001+05:30

Multinational companies often fail to take care of local norms and culture while promoting their products in new markets. Successful commercial are literally translated and used in new markets, resulting in many a goof ups.

You can check such a list here. My pick from the lot:

Frank Perdue's chicken slogan, "It takes a strong man to make a tender chicken" was translated into Spanish as "it takes an aroused man to make a chicken affectionate."
When American Airlines wanted to advertise its new leather first class seats in the Mexican market, it translated its "Fly In Leather" campaign literally, which meant "Fly Naked" (vuela en cuero) in Spanish.

These advertisements surely get lots of publicity for the products.

Hindsights by Guy Kawasaki

2006-11-29T00:08:00.001+05:30

Stumbled upon a speech by Guy Kawasaki which he made in Palo Alto High School way back in 1995. In the speech "Hindsights", he gives 10 success mantras from his experience:

10. Live off your parents as long as possible.
9. Pursue joy, not happiness.
8. Challenge the known and embrace the unknown.
7. Learn to speak a foreign language, play a musical instrument and play non-contact sports.
6. Continue to learn.
5. Learn to like yourself or change yourself until you can like yourself.
4. Don't get married too soon.
3. Play to win and win to play.
2. Obey the absolutes.
1. Enjoy your family and friends before they are gone.

A nice read; especially point 10 wherein he suggests to delay inevitable entry into work life and lifetime of servitude to bozos (bosses ??) by extending college life. Though most young graduates find it hard to deny a job offer that they gets through campus interview. However, anyone you spends couple of years in job would subscribe to this idea. And then the point 4, which only married ones will identify with !!

You can download the full speech here.

Firefox Addon: Fotofox

2006-11-26T16:07:00.001+05:30

Fotofox is a new Firefox extension from Briks Software that lets you easily upload pictures from your computer to an online photo album. Works with the following online photo album services : Flickr, Tabblo, 23hq, Smugmug, and Marela.

It lets you provide titles, tags and album names for your pictures.The extension is 322 KB in size and works with Firefox 1.5 - 2 versions.

It is currently in beta version (v 0.7.2).

Backup your blog using BlogCollector

2006-11-25T01:40:00.002+05:30

A lot of effort goes into writing blogs. So it is very important to take regular backups of your blog, lest you lose them because of accidental deletion. Another area of concern would be the stability of the blogging and web hosting service.

One of the ways of backing up your blog is to use BlogCollector. It is a free software which provides features like synchronization ( meaning subsequent backups only backup new updates), publication of your blogs as a book (in pdf or word form).

The software is easy to install and use.

Student hopes to reach space via web site

2006-11-24T00:06:00.002+05:30

A graduate student in the UK, Michael Halls-Moore has come up with a novel idea to reach the space. He has set up a web site BuyMeToTheStars.com, wherein he is selling fictional "Stellar Objects" to raise fund for the journey. The catalog listed includes stars (of multiple size), nebulae or even galaxies. The smallest star will cost you 10 pound. Once you buy a stellar object, a pop-up tag will show the objects name (provided by you), your company/individual name and a description. Anyone who clicks the stellar object will be directed to a URL of your choice.

Michael is hoping to raise around 100,000 pound in order to achieve his dream. Once the fund is raised , he plan to board a flight offered by Virgin Galactic. In the site Michael introduces himself as a 24 year old graduate student studying for a PhD in Aeronautical Engineering in London, UK.

When I last checked the site it was still to rope in its first buyer. So go ahead and submit a request for purchase.

Paris Hilton a geek ?

2006-11-23T22:36:00.002+05:30

Well, CNET thinks so. CNET has released the top 10 girls geek list. Surprise entry in the list is Paris Hilton. And what makes her a geek ?

Photographed numerous times clutching her PSP, and famous for having her Sidekick hacked, Hilton is, in her socialite heart, a geek. Hilton attended the gamer's Mecca, E3, and even stars in her own mobile game, Diamond Quest. . .

To her credit she has got Paris Hilton YouTube Channel, Paris Hilton House of Wax Podcast.

Phew !

Desi cousins of YouTube

2006-11-19T08:52:00.001+05:30

At least two video sharing sites (ApnaTube, MeraVideo) are trying to clone the YouTube model in Indian context. I would say good attempt, but they will have to improve a lot in terms of their service if they are to make a mark for themselves.

Challenges for such desi vedio sharing sites are manifold:

They will have to think of revenue models other then online advertisement; as of now online advertisement is not that organized in India as in the West.
Market their site properly so that their is enough traction. One way is to conduct targeted marketing campaign for the younger generation who is the main target audience for these sites. Like sponsoring college fest, video contests etc.
To curve out a niche space for themselves in terms of local content and local language video.
To attract enough users to create content (video) for the sites. Average Indians are not in the habit of shooting videos other then marriage or family ceremonies. One way of encouraging good video submission would be to share some revenue with creator of videos who are rated high by visitors.
To ensure variety of video content. At present most of the video uploaded in these sites are either soft porn or related to bollywood.
Create differentiation for themselves; there is hardly and difference between ApnaTube and MeraVideo in services that they provide.

Recently, it has been widely reported that MeraVideo is close to getting $1.5 million venture capital funding. As of now I don't find anything that would merit such funding.

Enigma of the Web 2.0 elephant

2006-11-18T00:45:00.002+05:30

A few days back we had an interesting debate among few colleagues regarding the true meaning of Web 2.0 and its impact on an enterprise. Invariably each one of us had varied view on this. One of them was even enterprising enough to stretch the discussion to Web 3.0 (seems he is not alone; it has already been mentioned here, here and in many other places).

At present the term "Web 2.0" lacks a precise definition; each evangelist, vendor has his own version which further adds to the mystery.In absence of any industry consensus it is been used as a catch all term to refer to any web site that is more interactive and participatory than plain and static traditional web sites.

This reminds me of the blind men and the elephant story.

Ironically, the source of this story itself is debated. It has been attributed to the Jainists, Buddhists and at times to Sufis and Hindus. Check out this wiki entry on this.

Hopefully, this enigma over Web 2.0 will soon demystify and we will get to see the elephant in totality.

"Top 20 Internet Security Attack Targets" - report out: MS tops the chart !

2006-11-17T18:29:00.001+05:30

SANS Institute (one of the most trusted sources of IT security vulnerabilities) has released its 2006 Annual Update to the Top 20 Internet Security Attack Targets. The report not only lists the attacks but also suggest ways to protect against them.

Attacks listed in the report clearly shows that Microsoft products are focus of most of these attacks. These include Office, Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Internet Explorer etc.

Report source: Microsoft's Security Problems Multiply

Using Google Maps for prank calls

2006-11-17T00:07:00.001+05:30

It is very easy to make prank calls to friends using Google Maps, Valleywag shows how. Basically search for some embarrassing place that will make your friend mad and then click "Call". When prompted for your phone number, provide the phone number of your friend. And then enjoy the prank at your friend's expense.

Is your site Web 2.0 ? Mine "Appears to be Web 3.0" !

2006-11-15T21:33:00.001+05:30

One of my colleagues forwarded a funny site today - Web 2.0 Validator. The site supposedly evaluates if your site is Web 2.0 or not !

According to this Validator, my blog gets a score of 7 out of 52. Still it "Appears to be Web 3.0" !! It beats other so called Web 2.0 poster boys hands down - myspace.com (4/52), youtube.com (6/52); while del.icio.us (8/52) does slightly better.

So go ahead and check yours. And if you are not satisfied with the score you can rig it, the site allows users to set rules.

The Find: Go Shopping, Web 2.0 way

2006-11-14T22:41:00.001+05:30

Came across this Web 2.0 shopping site: thefind.com. Features include:

Displays item details on mouseover (as shown in the picture above)
Displays top brands and top stores selling the item.
Modal windows like email to friend, more options.
Convenient way of saving and managing your item finds.

In true spirit of Web 2.0, this site is also in beta version. However, that should not deter you from shopping here.

Hot IT job market and candidate tantrums

2006-11-13T23:26:00.001+05:30

IT job market is in an upswing. While quarter ended September 2006 has witnessed the highest-ever increase in the combined headcount of Infosys, TCS, Wipro and HCL Technologies, total openings in IT and ITES sector in 2006 is 7 lakhs.

While this is good news for job seekers, you will have tough time if you are on the other side of the coin - looking for a right person for an opening. Today I had a first hand taste of this. Our HR has been trying to fix up an interview call with a candidate, ultimately the time for technical interview was fixed at 10 am today. However, we couldn't contact the candidate at the scheduled time even after trying a number of times. He wasn't picking up the phone, all we heard was a catchy caller tune (some telegu song which I didn't understand). IT candidates are surely in demand.

So if you are an experienced IT professional looking for job, be on your mark, get set for job-hunting Season. However if you are in HR of any IT company braise yourself for some tough time and candidate tantrums.

Google adds new features to Gmail

2006-11-13T18:23:00.001+05:30

Google has recently added a few cool features to Gmail. These include:

Email is displayed in 3D box.
Drop-down list has reply to all, forward, print, report phishing, show original, etc. ( The picture above shows the new drop down list)
Details menu is easier to read, and not separated from the body of the email as much.
New icons for reply, reply to all, and forward

Google goof up: Sends virus in mass email

2006-11-09T22:33:00.001+05:30

On Tuesday, Google sent Kama Sutra email worm to subscribers of Google Video email group. Google Video team in their blog later assured that the problem has been fixed.

This is the latest in a series of mishaps at Google. Others include hack of its official blog and accidental deletion of its official blog.

IBM develops technology to improve accent of Call Center employees

2006-11-09T17:37:00.002+05:30

One of the problem hitherto faced by Indian Call Centers is that their employees speak heavily accented English. It's easier to adopt an American name then the American accent. An international contact center survey done recently reveals that Americans clients are most frustrated by hard-to-understand accents:

When asked what frustrates them most about contact centers, U.S. respondents said bad accents (29%) are their top complaint followed by rude or condescending agents (18%), being made to wait too long on the line (17%), and having to listen to an agent upgrade their services (15%).

This has let to growing customer dissatisfaction and at times abuse of call center employee by irate customers.

Now IBM India Research Lab is reported to have found a way to help these call center employees to fix their local accent. They have developed a web based training application using speech recognition software to improve the language skills of the operators.

Hopefully life will be easier for these folks and customers will also have better experience.

Shatabdi Express: Don't take panga

2006-11-08T11:14:00.001+05:30

It's fast enough to knock you off.
One thing though is it brought the couple closer !

Video Credit: Google Video
Link sent by Manish Srivastava

Happy Birthday, Eclipse

2006-11-07T20:27:00.001+05:30

Today marks the fifth birthday of our beloved Eclipse. IBM bought the domain name eclipse.org in the month of November 2001 from an Illinois based girls soccer team.

It has been a remarkable 5 years for eclipse and its followers. It has become the development platform of choice for developers across the world inspite of alternatives like NetBeans which are vying for developer mind share. However as of today Eclipse is the clear winner in terms of job trends, Google
trend analysis.

Over the years it has been a major success story of the open source movement. And if you look into the project proposal s there is lot more to look forward to in the near future. I am especially excited about the Ajax Toolkit Framework (ATF) project, hopefully it will bring some sanity involved in Ajax development today.

You can sign the Eclipse Birthday Card and also join one of the birthday parties organized at 25 locations across the world.

Here's wishing the birthday boy (or girl ??) many happy returns of the day.

Picture Credit: morguefile.com

Microsoft finishes Office 2007 development

2006-11-07T00:46:00.001+05:30

According to report in topix.net, Microsoft has completed the development of Office 2007 and will start offering the software to corporate customer on November 30. Office 2007 (previously codenamed "Office 12") is the next major version of Microsoft Office, and the biggest upgrade ever in this history of this office productivity suite.

In this new version, Microsoft is changing the interface drastically, replacing the standard menu-and-toolbar interface we've known since the earliest Windows applications with a new UI paradigm based on context-sensitive ribbons and tabs. Other updates include new OpenXML file format, SMS Link service for Office Outlook 2007—that lets Outlook 2007 users connect with mobile phones using SMS text messaging. Infamous Office Assistants have been completely removed.

User can go for a free online test drive of the software before they decide to buy or upgrade to the 2007 release. More information about the 2007 Microsoft Office system and the new SMS Link service can be found by visiting the new Office Online.

What's for dinner ? Yahoo Food has the answer

2006-11-06T00:38:00.001+05:30

Yahoo has launched a new site Yahoo Food devoted to food. It has recipes, cooking guide, celebrity advice and more. Users can search recipes arranged by occasion, cuisine type or ingredients. Kitchen novices can also watch one of the dozens of food video available in the site before trying their hand in the kitchen. Currently most watched video is the one on cooking turkey.

According to press release Yahoo has teamed up with a number of partners who will share video and informational content throughout the site to provide consumers with an in-depth food experience. The site will initially provide service to US market and Yahoo plans to enter other English speaking countries like Canada, Australia.

Yahoo hopes that the site will attract vast social network of people who share a common interest around food and will drive their revenue from advertisement. But the question is how many people will like to go online before or during cooking ? How many people will like to have a laptop in kitchen ? And how to navigate the site with flour in hand ?

Social networking: Your safety is at stake

2006-11-04T01:00:00.001+05:30

Social networking sites like MySpace.com, Facebook.com, Bebo.com and their Indian counterparts like sulekha.com enable users to meet new people, share pictures and information, and interact with others in online communities. While these sites present many opportunities for members to connect with others on both a personal and business level, they also expose users to people who may have bad intentions, including identity thieves and other cybercriminals.

These sites have features like "friends of friends". While these features help you to quickly increase your friend circle, they also expose you to people having less-then-friendly intentions. A study conducted by US National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) has revealed that a staggering 83% of US adults who visit social networking sites exposes themselves to identity theft and hackers (get the full report). In India a number of instances of identity theft in social networking sites has been reported, the problem gets more aggragated here as cyber laws are not at all mature.

So how to safeguard your identity?
- Do not circulate personal details like phone number, address etc.
- Do not post photos (more important for females).
- Be wary if any of your online friends insists on meeting in person.
- Resist temptation of flirting online, most often the details provided are false.
- Rememer that any information posted cannot be reverted.

Useful resources: Parent's guide to protect children, secure social networking tips.

Fun Video: Dayal Baba Kala Khaba

2006-11-03T23:35:00.001+05:30

A cool video... this guy will give MJ a run for his money.
You need to know bengali to enjoy the video to the full extent.

Bangalore to Bengalooru: Politics of name change

2006-11-01T11:52:00.001+05:30

Bangalore, the IT-capital of India is all set to get a new name Bengalooru. A formal announcement on this will be announced today, on the occasion of Suvarna Karnataka, the state Golden Jubilee year. Besides 6 other cities of the state- Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli, Shimoga, Belgaum and Hospet will get renamed to Mysooru, Mangalooru, Hubballi, Shivamogga, Belagaavi and Hosapete respectively.

Bangalore is the colonial name for the city, which British settlers found easier to pronounce. Bengalooru is the older name for the city, which is said to be derived from benda kalooru, or boiled beans. Story has it that an exhausted King was restored by a meal of boiled beans fed to him by a villager on the spot where the city now stands.

English spelling of the new name is however still to be finalized. Daijiworld reports:

The English spellings still have to be finalised, with the department seeking linguistic opinion on whether it should be Bengal-u-ru or Bengal-oo-ru. The department is inclined to follow the stand taken by Jnanpith awardee U R Ananthamurthy that it should be Bengal-oo-ru, to account for the elongated syllable in Kannada.

The name change is the latest in a series of such revisions of Indian cities: Bombay to Mumbai in 1995, Madras to Chennai in 1996, Calcutta to Kolkata in 2001 and Pondicherry became Puducherry this September.

I believe the real motive behind all these name changes is to get cheap political mileage. This easily appeals to the regional pride of the local people and hopefully results in some vote in elections. This also helps to divert attention of the people from other pressing issues faced by people and hide incompetence of government authorities. There are many other issues including crumbling city infrastructure in Bangalore which hardly gets any government attention besides occasional lip service.

But can we totally erase the name Bangalore? Definitely not, for long we will know two names for the city. One is Bangalore and the other is Bengalooru. More then 10 years after Bombay became Mumbai prime landmarks of the city have retained the old name: Bombay High Court, Bombay Stock Exchange, IIT Bombay. Not to mention University of Calcutta, Calcutta Telephones, IIT Madras, Madras Medical College.

So Bangalore is here to stay, not withstanding government approval. And you can still get Bangalored.

Will shutting mobile networks stop election rigging and exam cheating?

2006-10-31T13:00:00.001+05:30

Well, some government authorities definitely think so ! Check this report:

During the last week, cellular operators have received letters from district authorities in Meerut, Karnal and Sahranpur to shut down all mobile services for an entire day on various grounds, basically to prevent cheating in exams, prevent rigging and spreading of rumours during local elections.

And I thought guns and muscle power are used for election rigging. So naive of me ...

When will these guys get rational? How old is mobile usage in India ? 10-12 years at max? But the menace of cheating in exam and election rigging is going on for ages . Instead of targeting criminal-politician nexus our babus has got a new scape goat. Way to go guys !

My sympathies with the cellular operator.

Why shot the messanger ?

2006-10-30T23:40:00.001+05:30

According to a report in Wired.com, security researcher Christopher Soghoian is under fire for creating Northwest Airline Boarding Pass Generator. The site (seems to be shut down now) allows anyone to create a facsimile of NorthWest Airline with any name they choose.

Soghoian claims that his motive was to drive home the seriousness of the security loophole and make US Congress aware of it. But now a member of the House Homeland Security committee want him arrested. It seems this security loophole is not a new one; it has been mentioned here, here and here. But still no action was taken.

Why shot the messanger? Solve the security loophole instead. Seems like politicians are the same everywhere - inactive.

Disgusted with your partner? Use uBreakup to do the dumping

2006-10-30T18:58:00.001+05:30

Things are not working out with your partner and you want to end the relationship. Enough is enough. But you are so disgusted with him/her that you do not even feel like breaking the news yourself. Wait, there is help.

uBreakup.com provides a service wherein you can record your break-up message, schedule a time for the call and leave it on uBreakup to do the rest. Your message will be sent to your X. Besides, you can also choose an excuse from the predefined list of excuses provided in the site. Sample this: I love you, but I am not in love with you or My buddy bet me that i couldn't get you in the sac, i did, so i won the bet and now it's over.

The icing on the cake? The service is free!

As of now the service is available in US and Canada only.

Hungry keya ? Order dabba online !

2006-10-30T00:17:00.001+05:30

Mumbai's dubbawala is a big success story. They have been subject of numerous documentaries, case studies, media coverage worldwide, got invited to Prince Charles and Camilla's wedding and have lectured students at B Schools. They have a wikipedia entry too.

Recently these guys have gone online with a web site - www.mydabbawala.com. The site is not that sophisticated as yet, but a great step forward nonetheless. You can apply dabba online. Though this service at present is limited to sending a mail, they are planning to launch a software application for order booking. They are also available on mobile phones - you can also book a dabba by sending a SMS message. Besides, a few other interesting products are listed in the website - VCD, calendar, T Shirt, Mug !! Wonder what a hungry sole will do with them.

In this hugely efficient model, dabbawalas carries food prepared by housewives in an aluminum dabba to the office/workplace of their husband. With the increase in nuclear families wherein both husband and wife works or in case of singles migrated to cities for job/study this distribution model can also be used by housewives or small businesses to provide food on commercial basis.

Wonder, why they are not starting the same service in other cities of the country, especially Bangalore. I too want to enjoy fresh and hot homemade lunch sitting in my office at Electronic City !

Hell is for Sale, Go grab it

2006-10-29T21:16:00.001+05:30

Internet domain name Hell.com is up for sale. Quite an interesting domain name !

CNNMoney.com reported that it didn't get any buyer via a live auction on 27th October, which the organizer hoped would bring bids more than $1 million. The next auction can take place only after a gap of 1 year.

So here's a change to own Hell. Go grab it.

News source: CNNMoney.com

Tips: Having your preferred Windows Explorer view

2006-10-28T10:22:00.001+05:30

It is a major irritant when Windows Explorer throws the default view every time a new folder is open instead of your preferred view. For example, I prefer to have the detailed view of the folder with details (or attribute column) like file name, size type and date modified. So for each new folder I have to change the settings.

How to ensure that Windows Explorer remembers your preference and display all folders that way?

Open up Windows Explorer and go to any folder.
Go to View and select the view type (Thumbnails, Tiles, Icons, List, Details).
Do other setting. For example for Details view type you can choose the attribute columns, their order etc.
Go to Tools, Folder Options, select View and click Apply to All Folders.

Done. Next time you open any folder, Windows Explorer will display the contents according to your preferences.

Cool Tool : WinPatrol, an anti-spyware watchdog

2006-10-27T23:55:00.001+05:30

WinPatrol is a simple but efficient tool provided by BillP Studios to fight malicious programs and critical changes made to your PC without your permission. Salient features include:

Inspects programs launched at start-up, browser helper objects, scheduled tasks, services, cookies.
Allows you to manage the programs launched at system start-up.
If new program is installed in your PC, it notifies you and asks for your permission.
Full report is provided in HTML format.

The tool consumes minimum resources and does not slow your PC. Installation is also very easy. In totality a very handy tool that puts you in control of your own PC. The tool comes in two flavor: WinPatrol FREE (Freeware) and WinPatrol PLUS (Commercial)

Download WinPatrol FREE v10.0.5.

Google offers customised search

2006-10-25T18:52:00.001+05:30

Google Custom Search Engine was rolled out in the United States on 23rd October. The Custom Search Engine will let web publishers and bloggers to create customised search on their site, built using Google's core search technology, which will restrict search results based on the websites/pages that the publisher specifies. It provides online tools to tailor query boxes for websites or blogs in a guided step-by-step process. Google plans to expand the offering internationally in near future.

www.realclimate.org, www.jumpup.com are among those that tested Google's custom engine service before it went public.

Similar customized search engines are already provided by others like Rollyo.com and Eurekster.com.

Web 2.0 security concerns

2006-10-25T01:37:00.001+05:30

Web 2.0 is latest "in-thing" in the IT community and is capturing lot of mindshare. While enterprises are exposing their business functionalities as loosely coupled reusable "service" using SOA, RIA technologies like Ajax can consume these services and expose them to the end user in an interactive and intuitive manner. However, as with any new technology transition, web 2.0 has brought in new security concerns. In the recent past a number of security breaches has been reported; most notable among them are Yamaner worm on Yahoo mail and Samy worm on MySpace.com. The root cause of most of these attacks is the increased usage and reliance on JavaScript in Ajax based RIA implementation.

Most common among the attacks are cross-site scripting, sql-injection, XML poisoning, RSS/Atom injection. In this article, author Shreeraj Shah has detailed some of these web 2.0 security attacks.

Picture Credit: Blaugh.com

Mozilla releases Firefox 2.0

2006-10-25T00:38:00.001+05:30

Mozilla has released FireFox 2.0 to take on Internet Explorer 7.0 which was released a week back. Some of the salient features introduced in this release are:

Built-in spell checker.
Search term suggestions will now appear as users type in the search box when using the Google, Yahoo! or Answers.com search engine.
Add-ons manager to enhance UI for managing extensions and themes

Download the windows version.

RIA technology options

2006-10-04T08:51:00.001+05:30

RIA (Rich Internet Application) technologies (specially AJAX) has become the latest buzzword and has captured lot of mindshare. Some time back my article on RIA and related technology options went live on JAX magazine.

Tips from the trenches

2006-05-31T00:13:00.001+05:30

In The Standalone Programmer: Tips from the trenches, Matt Gullet lists down some technical and non-technical do and donts to succeed in IT industry from his own experience. Most of us will identify with the points and worth reading.

Goodies from Yahoo!

2006-04-06T21:47:00.001+05:30

Yahoo! has released UI Library (consisting of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, HTML and AJAX) and Design pattern Library as Open Source.

Check them out, real cool stuff.

EJB 3.0: Development made easy

2005-11-12T19:38:00.001+05:30

The EJB 3.0 expert committee released a public review of the EJB 3.0 specification on 27th June, 2005. One of the primary goals of the new release is reducing the complexity of EJB architecture from a developer's point of view and to simplify application development.

Some of the pain areas of earlier releases (like 2.x) of the specification are:

Multiple interfaces need to be implemented.
Unwanted life cycle methods needs to be implemented like ejbPostCreate, ejbPassivate, ejbActivate.
Mandatory to handle checked exceptions like CreateException, FinderException etc.
Client lookup is cimplex and exposes JNDI details.
Deployment descriptor gets verbose and is error prone.
Hard to unit test ejbs outside the container.

The expert group has brought radical changes in the architecture of EJB in release 3.0. Some of the salient features of the new release which will make life of developers easy are:

Every thing is either POJO or POJI (Plain Old Java Object/Interface).
Persistence model is in line with Hibernate or Toplink.
Annotations has replaced deployment descriptor
Client view is much simpler.
Life cycle methods are optional.
Support for primary key generation is case of entity beans.
Number of artifacts is less. No need to implement Home interface.

All these feature will result in easier development and deployment of EJB base J2EE applications. However, the release is still work in progress. Current status of the release is available at JSR 220: EJB 3.0. It will take some time before the new specification is ready and all application server vendors start supporting it.

JBoss and Oracle are however providing EJB 3.0 preview releases for their application servers.

Recently, I have written an article on EJB 3.0 which was published an by Jax Magazine. I the article I have implemented a simple application using EJB 3.0 Beta 1 from JBoss to check the new features of the specification first hand. Check out the article and let me know your feedback.

Struts Best Practices

2005-10-04T21:23:00.002+05:30

Some time back I had written an article on a few best practices for application development using Struts framework. Though Struts is loosing some of its shine to other presentation tier alternatives like JSF, AJAX etc. a lot of J2EE application are still being developed using Struts.

The article was published in Jax Magazine.

Welcome

2005-10-04T00:37:00.003+05:30

Hi, welcome to my blog. Postings in this blog contains my pondering on technology, life and just about any thoughts that cross my mind.