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July 2007 - Posts
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For the last 3 weeks, every Wednesday I had to go through this ordeal of a Dentist
Appointment. Thank God, with yesterday I am done. I don't know what it is
with Dentist (like any other Doctor they are also in a Noble profession), but majority of
the people - Kids and Grown-ups dislike going to a Dentist. In the 3 hours of
time that I was staring at the roof with my mouth wide open while the doctor
filled my cavities I came up with this thought-provoking list of why we might be disliking
Dentists (List is in no particular order):
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The pain while surgeon is operating, especially the drilling
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The thought of keep your mouth opened for long period
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The discomfort of so many instruments inside your mouth
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The fear that the dentist will pull off your teeth
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The idea that you will be told not to eat sweets/ice cream hence forth
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You are awake and the fact you have lost control over your body
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You can't cry or shout for help
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To say it politely I am not for forwarding an email beyond the first level - there
are few exceptions that warrant few levels of forward. Recently I got an email forwarded
from a company, in that in between in one of the forwards it had unpleasant words.
The person who sent me the mail should've deleted the thread and just sent the final
items he had to say to me. Instead he forwarded without going through carefully, I
objected to derogative words used which hurt me. He came back and apologized. This
could've become a big issue when it is between companies and can lead to law suits.
I started to do this post to leave you with the screenshot below showing an email
I received from one of my friends - which was forwarded to 12 levels. If I was interested
in harvesting email IDs - I could've easily got about 200+ IDs from this single email!
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Sometimes you want to identify a SPAM message source or just to find out who left
that blog comment you might want to know to whom the IP block has been assigned. Though
it is difficult to pinpoint it to an individual organization (especially SMEs who
will have only few IP numbers or Dial-up/Home users where the IPs will be in their
ISP's names) there is a service that can give you some information. You can American
Registry for Internet Numbers Whois
Service or Asia-Pacific NIC's Whois
Service. Use one of the services and input the IP address for which you are interested
to find the block owner.
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My official (Vishwak) email is configured with Office Outlook for last 6 years+. My
personal, blog and newsletters are with Hotmail. And I have been a paid
Hotmail user for years, so I read my Hotmail through Outlook Express ON & OFF.
When about a year back Microsoft came out with Windows Live Mail Desktop (now desktop
is dropped and for short WLM) I switched to that. With Hotmail, WLM works great
- it syncs up all folders in Hotmail including Inbox, Sent Items, Junk e-mail, Deleted
Items, Drafts & custom folders.
I like a lot the new Yahoo! Web 2.0 Mail interface. This email ID is being used by
me for a lot of my memberships including INFITT, so I wanted the convenience of using
it offline with WLM. Yahoo! mail doesn't expose Web Interface, so you need
to use conventional POP3/SMTP interfaces. Yahoo! requires you to be a Paid user for
that - so I paid $20 or so per year. I could easily get the POP3/Inbox configured,
but sending emails was becoming an issue. Finally here is the configuration that works
for me:
And
recently when I wanted WLM to be moved from my desktop to my Laptop so that I carry
the emails with me. Yahoo! mail works with SMTP, so it doesn't sync the Sent Items folder
from WLM to Yahoo! mail online. Though WLM did have an export option, it didn't work
- pains of using a Beta software . After few tries I found a quick 'n' dirty way to
solve it. I dragged all the mails from Sent Items of Yahoo! account in WLM to a new
folder I created under Hotmail account in WLM. Installed WLM in my laptop, synched
my Hotmail account. Then I configured the Yahoo! account in WLM, did the reverse process
of Hotmail folder to Yahoo! Sent Items. In short, I used Hotmail as a backup
and restore for Yahoo! mail :-)
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In the fierce war on Search Engines this can be a new page - for all of you out there
who are wondering what war, hasn't it been won by google I do believe it is not. Anyways,
as the book "The Search" talks about how much can be known about you by Search Engine
companies with your search behaviour/data. Accussing Google is doing this today and
tracking everyone is rubbish, as it will take enormous processing power and no one
has yet figured out a way to monetize that information for profit. But in the future
this will become a possibility when computing power and data mining software become
more sophisticated.
So online users worry about their privacy will become a genuine concern. I was happy
to see a news today that Ask.com is planning to do something on this. They promise
to protect your privacy by not storing information on your searches in their database
with AskEraser (to
be introduced by this year-end). If People like and flock to this feature, Google
can implement the technology overnight - they have to stop doing their logging :-).
But the challenge for Google is not Technology but business, because of the impact
this will have on their advertisement business.
All said, privacy has every chance of becoming the next battle ground in search. It
will be interesting to see any path-breaking innovation Google Engineers can come
up with which protects Advt. revenue and privacy.
Till then, let us continue searching on the net as usual ...
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If you are a married Man you can't afford to forget your marriage anniversary &
your wife's birthday. To prove that you remembered you need to have planned for
it and present a good gift on the day. I honestly do believe that for the wife's the
gift as material/money doesn't matter, but the thought is what counts for them (I
have to say this as my wife reads my blog once in a while and you know...).
After few misses in the previous years, this time I went shopping few days in advance,
bought the gift and hide it from her. On her Birthday I presented her a Nokia N76
multimedia phone.
Now coming to the geeky stuffs about the phone:
I know Nokia is known only for their candy-bar phones and only Motorola makes popular
clamshell models. Reasons I went with N76 are two: 1) She earlier has a Nokia
6101, which she likes a lot and that is a clamshell model, 2) The choice was simple
to make - Nokia has few models in clamshell and only one in N Series, I had already
decided it will N Series b'cos of the multimedia features which she likes to have.
The phone is great when it comes to its
technical specifications and has everything that you may want in a phone (even
GPS can be enabled with a small add-on). I prefer Nokia had designed the phone a little
smaller, lighter and ergonomic to open and close. The cool features are the Music
Play buttons on top, Side ways camera usage, Dual colour screens, fast browsing, FlickR
software to upload photos directly.
My only serious complaint is the choice of power connector and for four reasons: 
1) With Nokia phones I like that they all have a standard 3.5mm Power connector. You
can go to anywhere in India and be certain the person(s) next to you will have a Nokia
charger. In N76, they have their alternate smaller Power Connector.
2) This one I consider to be a serious user interface disaster Nokia designers have
committed. Can you believe this?.
In N76 apart from the smaller Power Connector they do have a 3.5mm connector and that
one is for AV (HeadPhones & Video). The manual warns you not to connect power
to this AV Connector. Come on, who are you kidding here. I see a Nokia phone and it
has a 3.5mm connector on top next to Power ON/OFF button I will certainly connect
the standard Nokia charger.
3) The actual (smaller) power connector is in the right side of the phone. I don't
understand how it can be convenient to keep it there for users.
4) The phone has a USB connector on top, so why will anyone on earth will want a seperate
power connector apart from the USB one which can easily double-up I don't understand.
So my final verdict, if you love Multimedia phones and a die-hard fan of clam-shell
models go for the phone. If not, please choose any of the other N Series phones.
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Many
times people ask me on how to setup Non-English Languages (specifically Tamil or Hindi)
in Windows. They get confused on the jargons - LIP/MUI, etc. So far either I
demoed the whole thing to them in one of my presentations or referred them to Microsoft
BhashaIndia website (Incidentally this was developed by Vishwak for Microsoft).
Now my good RD Colleague Scott
Hanselman in his usual brilliance has posted this which demystifies the whole
topic. Though he talks of Chinese Language, it is relevant to all non-english languages.
Apart from this post, check out these Microsoft websites:
Downloads
for languages (BTW, I want to ask someone in Microsoft.com on why should this
be inside /industry/government channel), which includes many of the Indian Languages
including Hindi, Tamil & Telugu; FAQ
on Windows XP LIP
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Before
I continue, let me say I am a novice to finding music online, so if there are more
options than I list here, please leave a comment about them. I normally
just buy CDs from shops and on coming home rip them immediately to my laptop.
Then I burn MP3/WMA versions for listening in my car for personal hearing.
When it comes to genuinely buying Indian Music online (Tamil film and Carnatic
Music in particular) there are few choices available. Most of the sites sell CDs and
since they are in physical format their catalog is very limited. Even those whose
catalog is sizable, the site design and the search features are pathetic. Most of
them require you to browse their catalog page after page rather than a simple search
box.
So no wonder last week I was not able to find what I wanted. I suddenly recollected
the good numbers that A R Rahman has done in "DUET" movie. Accompanied by Kadri Gopalnath's
mesmerizing Saxophone music and brilliantly acted by "இளைய திலகம்" Prabhu, I
believe this album to be one of all time bests of Rahman. I am certainly not impressed
by Rahman's recent works including Sivaji.
So I searched for "DUET" CD in various shopping sites including Rediff,
Indiatimes, Fabmall and also in ChennaiOnline's
Tamil Songs database, I didn't find it. Then I went to HamaraCD - where you can
create your own audio CDs of your favourite songs. Unfortunately the site allows only
Audio CD format so the number of songs are limited to about 13 and so no MP3 formats.
And it costs Rs.300 including shipping.
Anyway's, I went ahead and compiled DUET and some of the other what I consider best
songs of Rahman into an album. Surprisingly I got the CD delivered in less than 3
days and the whole CD was neatly printed, customized and music quality was excellent.
Great show!. I just wish they did their website a little better designed and intuitive.
I had a very similar experience last month as well, when I wanted to buy few India
Music CDs and gift it to one of my American friend in USA. None of the sites ship
to USA and those who do don't have any choices. I thought I cracked this by finding
and ordering a set in IndiaPlaza,
but after few days they come back and asked me to fax my credit card number with the
3 Digit code for verification. Forget it, I called one of my colleagues in USA and
asked him to buy it in local Indian Store and post it.
So much for legal music online!
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In my voluntary role as Vice-Chairman in INFITT I am currently helping in maintaining
the website of INFITT.ORG. One
of the things is to get myself familiar with a Web CMS called Joomla! -
which is a LAMP based Free Open Source CMS that is targeted for small community websites.
This post is about problems we faced in Joomla! for Tamil Texts and two quick fixes
that solved it for us.
1) The CSS Problem in the Top Navigation Menu. The menu in IE 6.0/7.0 will have the
text appearing below the menu - invisible to naked eye. It turned out to be the CSS
had issues, which we fixed and republished in our implementation. If you face the
same issue, please download the fixed template_css.css
from here or view
it here. 
2) Pages had problems displaying Tamil in IE 7/Vista. Tamil text were displayed but
as jumbled non readable characters. It turns out to be that charset is not set to
UTF-8. I changed the flag to set it to UTF-8 in the file /www/templates/js_education/js_template_config.php
in the Joomla! instance we had.
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If you are using any of the Microsoft Search tools like MOSS 2007, Desktop Search,
Vista Search, SQL Server FreeText Search or Indexing Server you will need a piece
of software called IFilter. IFilter is a set of DLLs designed for each file format
that you want to be indexed and searched.
Microsoft ships for their file formats in Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) when you
install the Office Suite in the machine. Out of box, the search tools include for
IFilters for Text, HTMLs, etc. But if you need to index additional file formats most
commonly for PDF (Adobe Acrobat) you will need to download IFilters for them
and install. The installation will not give you any User-Interface Application or
will you need to configure
anything. Just install the IFilter package and reboot your machine or indexing
service. That's it.
The sources for getting IFilters are many, I have listed few of them below:
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FoxIt Software IFilter - Download
here (32 and 64bit). This supports 64bit of Vista and Windows XP, many
of the other IFilters don't
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Adobe's own IFilter for PDF files - Download
here. If you have the Free Acrobat Reader 8.0 or so you will get the IFilter also
pre installed along with it
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Search Windows Live Gallery for more IFilters here.
Here you will find for PDF and several other file formats
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இது ஒரு விடுதலை மனப்பாங்கோடு உருவான மென்பொருள் ஆவணத்திட்டம். இதன்
அடிப்படை கொள்கை வாசகம்: "ஒரு சமுதாய முயற்சியாக, முன்னோடியான பன்னாட்டு பயன்பாட்டிற்கு
உகந்த , அனைத்து முக்கிய அடிப்படை செயலிகளிலும் இயங்கக்கூடிய அலுவலகப் பயன்பாட்டுச் செயலித்தொகுப்பை
உருவாக்குவது மற்றும் இத்தொகுப்பின் அனைத்து செயல்பாடுகளையும் மற்ற செயலிகளிலும் பயன்படுத்திக்கொள்ளும்
வகையில் திறவூற்று ஆணையின் கீழ் API களாகவும் XML சார்ந்த கோப்புப்
படிவமாக அளிப்பது ஆகும்"
The above paragraph is taken from Tamil
OpenOffice page, but this post is not on OpenOffice or its translation in particular.
I have just taken this as an example to make few observations I see in many technical
documents in Indic Languages. Most of these documents seems to be literal translation
from English, done by a non-native speaker of the Indian Language in question. Somehow
when you read these you don't get the feel of reading it in your mother-tongue (Tamil).
For
example, I am not able to relate very well to விடுதலை being
used to mean "Freedom" (as in Free to do what you want in the Open
Source sense of the word). I checked in LIFCO’s
Great Dictionary for “Free” and it says “not restrained, not
bound, சுயேச்சையான”. Instead of விடுதலை, சுயேச்சை seems to be more
suited for Free. Look at திறவூற்று being used to mean "Open"
(Open API's) I would have preferred to have திறந்த. Also notice how
the second sentence in the paragraph has about 39 words. Yes 39 words in one sentence
- can't it be broken into easily digestible smaller sentences.
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In
a recent visit to Landmark, I purchased an audio book titled "Built
to Last". At the time of purchase I didn't realize it was the Audio version of
the famous book by James C. Collins & Jerry I. Porras. Anyway after listening
to 6 hours plus of the audio I think it is one of the best purchases I ever made.
The Audio book turned out to be a more convenient format than the paper book,
because I could listen to it in portions every day while I drove my
car. A best use of the traffic jams that are now becoming common in Chennai.
This book is a classic and reviewed many times on the Internet over the last decade,
so I will keep mine very brief. The book is a result of six years of research on what
makes great companies great. It does this by identifying 18 "visionary" companies
and compares them systematically with "successful-but-second-rank" companies
over nearly 5 decades or more of data. I wonder with the power of Internet and access
to more data, what the authors could have done more (I am yet to read their sequel
Good to Great). The book shatters the core myth that visionary companies must start
with a great product and be lead by charismatic leaders. The book talks on these main
concepts:
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Preserve the core, stimulate the progress
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Other than your core purpose to exist, everything else can change - have to change
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Follow Darwin Survival Theory, try multiple things and quickly kill the non-prospective
one's
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Have BHA (Big Harry Audacious) Goals one after the other to keep the motivation and
juices in people flowing
This is a must read textbook for anyone running a company or managing a sizeable team
in an organization.
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The
built-in file download applet in any of the browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari or Opera)
leaves much to be desired. They don't support accelerated downloads (parallel downloads),
most of their resume function don't work as advertised. So you will need to use a
3rd party download manager especially for huge file downloads. The 3rd Party
applications since they hook into browser process they tend to slow or destabilize
the browsers. Over the years, I have found GetRight to be the best download
managers.
After I moved to Windows Vista on a 64-bit Hardware I wanted something less resource
hungry and with less frequent updates. I found Free
Download Manager and I have been pleased with its performance for last several
months. Check it out and the best part FDM is
free and it is spyware free.
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Expecting
rains today we (myself, wife and kid) decided to spend our sunday evening today we
decided to go to Spencers Plaza. On nearing it the sign in entrace said "Parking Full".
I was sure it will be the same scene in Chennai City Centre, so we decided to drive
somewhere. I remembered the recently beautified Haddows Road Park maintained by Chennai
Corporation. Though we had doubts whether it will be open at 7:30PM, we gave
it a try - and glad we did that. The park was beautiful, clean (surprising for a Corporation
Park in India), well lit and was spacious enough for jogging and walking. It had
a tiny play area by kids - could have been bigger but something is better
than nothing.
The sign in the entrance said the park is open from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to
8 p.m. So next time you find yourself wanting a peaceful place to go in Chennai,
give this park a try.
The Park on Haddows Road is further down from Shastri Bhavan on the opposite side.
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Many times when you technical documents or just presentation you will find useful
wanting to capture some portions from the screen. Earlier in
November 2004 I had written about using OneNote 2003 to do it and in October 2004
I had posted about using a freeware
Zabgrab to it.
Though OneNote (esp. OneNote 2007) will work with Windows Vista, Zabgrab doesn't.
So in my laptop with OneNote 2007 I don't have a problem, but when I am using a Vista
machine without what to do?. Apple Mac 10.x have an easy to use Screen grab tool in-built
in the system menu.
The good news is Windows Vista bundles (out of box) a great screen capture tool called
"Snipping Tool". The tool helps you to Capture a portion of your screen so you
can save, annotate, or share the image.
(Thanks to my colleague Murari Rajagopal for telling me about this
useful applet)
You can find the Snipping Tool either via Start > Accessories >
Snipping Tool or by simply typing Snip into any Search window. But it is easy
to create a shortcut for it by using the path %SystemRoot%\system32\SnippingTool.exe.
This path should work in all Windows Vista (32 bit) editions. It also has rudimentary
painting (pen) tool.
The tool allows you to copy the URL associated
with a screen area and you can control this in your application through
this API
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