|
-
Sometimes the best possible way to visualize something really complex is to see it
as a graphic and have it printed on a huge poster. Few years back in one of the Microsoft
Mix event, they released this super cool visualization of an illustration of the process
of launching a web site. It was released into a website as well called “A
website named Desire”, which made the huge poster available as a SilverLight
Application using Deep Zoom. It is super cool, check it out.
(I saw this few years back and today I was trying to find it. Few hours of Google
& Bing search, I couldn’t find it. Then with some help from a friend, I found
it back. This shows how much more work has to be done in Web Search)
|
-
One of my favourite getaways from Chennai is Yelagiri hills (details
in my earlier post). This time I went there with my family and my brother in law
Mr.Badri Thirumalai’s family for the XMas holidays. Staying in Yelagiri is a very
relaxing experience and I love it. This time 3 of us (myself, Badri and his son Aravind)
decided to do the 4KM trekking into Yelagiri forests. We went and came back on our
own, but not sure whether we went in the correct trekking track.
We ventured up to an old pond (360 degree view done with Windows Live Picture Gallery
below) in thick of the forest and a little beyond it and when the tracks ended we
turned back :-)
The experience was wonderful and relaxing. The trek route was peaceful, clean and
green, absolute silence almost all the way in the forest – you can hear only the occasional
bird chirps (see the video below), that’s all. It took us less than 2:30 Hours to
complete the trek & return. Next time, probably I will take a “Guide” so that
we can venture more into the forest.
>
>
>
|
-
-
Last week while in San Jose (CA), my good friend “Ranga” took me for a change to have Ethiopian
food for dinner at “Zeni
Ethiopian Restaurant”. I readily agreed as I like to experiment any food that
is Vegetarian (As I say in foreign lands - No Fish, No Meat & No Chicken).
We went through the menu and
decided to play safe with their ready-made “Vegetarian Combo” (shown above). I didn’t
understand a single item contained in the combo (YE-MISER WOT ,YE-KIK ALITCHA, ATAKELT
WOT, YE-GOMEN WOT, YE TIMATIM FITFIT) but once served and tasted figured out that
all of them are names of different gravy (side-dishes). Each of them tasted like “Yellow
Dal”, “Tomato/Onion Salad”, “Green Salad” and so on. All of these side-dishes were
served on a big bread they call “Injera”
(it looked to me and tasted like a big South
Indian Dosa).
Overall it was spicy, tasty, filling and I loved it!. Thanks Ranga.
|
-
As one of the Windows 7 Beta testers, about a week back I received a commemorative
edition of Windows
7 Ultimate DVD. It was special with a nice “Thank You” message signed by Microsoft
CEO Mr.Steve Ballmer.
In general I liked Windows Vista - its engineering improvements on Security, Stability,
Aero Glass & many other features; except for its slow boot-up and performance
of routine file management tasks. Microsoft made a wise move of not introducing any
major kernel level changes for Windows 7 from Vista, instead concentrating on improving
all round performance. I have been using Windows 7 for last few months in both my
MacBook Air (MBA) & in my Desktop (Quad Core, 64-bit, 8GB RAM) and I love it.
Windows 7 simply rocks in my MBA that I have completely removed Mac OS X and use only
Windows.
Windows 7 – the best Windows OS ever made!
|
-
There are tons of cool stuffs for Silverlight 4 that are being shown in Day 2 keynote
of PDC ‘09 and in the SL4 overview talk by Karen
Corby. I am amazed at the speed in which the Silverlight team in Microsoft has
been able to churn out releases at rapid pace – SL 1 in Nov ‘07, SL 2 in Oct ‘08,
SL 3 in Jun ‘09 and SL 4 Beta in Oct ‘09.
The main features of Silverlight
4 that caught my attention are:
-
Access to Webcam, Microphone and other devices like Digital Camera
-
Print Preview and direct Print support
-
UDP Multicast, very useful for organization wide network distribution of live video
-
Authorization support in client HTTP Stack (NTLM, Basic and Digest)
-
Same .NET compiled code runs in SL 4 and .NET 4
-
Offline DRM play support
-
Drag/Drop, Clipboard support
-
Audio and video local recording capabilities capture RAW video without requiring server
interaction
-
Embed a HTML control including a Flash control inside that HTML, all usable from Brush
-
Styles support
-
RichtextArea control and better internalization text support
|
-
I am in LA for Microsoft PDC ‘09. One thing in Day 1 I was happy to see in real was
a Azure
container that was on display in the exhibition floor. These are containers (shipping
container) that have all included in them – Hundreds of Dell Servers, Climate controlled,
Networked, Monitoring and so on. When a container arrives at a new Microsoft Data
Center location, all they need to do is plug in power and network uplink. Everything
else is included in the container box. A typical data center will have hundreds of
these containers
|
-
Today my mother while cleaning her book shelf, found few of my envelopes. They were
from my High School days. One was Rs.51 Cash Prize I won in Twelfth Standard for “Most
Deserving Student of the High School”. The other was a First Prize with Rs.150 for
“Best Speaker” in a debate competition – I am trying to recollect whether this was
in any Inter School or Intra School event. Going back nearly two decades is quite
challenging, but nevertheless seeing the prizes feels good.
|
-
It is my birthday today (I am not telling how old I am) and I am in Cologne, Germany
attending Tamil Internet Conference
2009 away from my family & friends, missing the gifts they might have given
me :-)
Anyways, Mr.Steve Ballmer didn’t disappoint me. He has given me a wonderful gift –
he has released Windows 7 today. No doubt Windows 7 is getting raving reviews, it
got released on my birthday!. On a serious note, I have been using Windows 7 for almost
two months now in my laptop (Apple MacBook Air) and my Quad-Core x64 Desktop and it
is simply the best OS I have ever used in last two decades. I like its fast boot,
fast response time for common tasks, lovely wallpapers/background, Aero effect, quick
search, easy to find devices/printers applet and libraries.
And I love those Windows 7 commercials featuring the cute little girl – Kylie, don’t
miss those videos
here.
|
-
-
_1.jpg "Dune Eco Village near Pondy") Being
a long weekend, we decided to go out for few days from city. I generally like going
to beach resorts near Chennai in ECR road for a peaceful stay. Since I had been to
GRT Temple Bay & Fisherman’s Cove in Mamallapuram, Ashok
Resort in Pondy I looked out for a different resort. After reading
about Dune in The Man magazine, I narrowed down on Dune
Eco Village in ECR Road at Pudhukuppam, Tamilnadu near Pondicherry University.
Dune is a Eco friendly resort with most of the materials used for construction being
reused and with little chemicals as possible. They say they used more lime stone than
cement, Solar water heaters, the doors & furniture are from old houses, no tar
roads inside the property and so on. Each of the rooms are different than others and
with unique characteristics, the room we stayed had a nice display of Golu (coincided
with the seasonal holidays as well). The resort provides 2 cycles for each room for
the guests to go around the huge property (over 30-40 acres) on the Bay of Bengal
sea shore. The food in their F.U.N (Food U Need) restaurant promotes the hypotoxic diet
of by a French biologist (from their brochure I learned his name was Doctor Jean
Seignalet).
I liked the fact there was no Satellite connection in the room – so no boring TV Soaps
and Serials that my wife can watch or the usual Pogo/Cartoon Network for my son. Each
room had a small TV with built-in DVD Player and you can borrow DVDs from the restaurant
for free, they boost a collection of over 1000+ titles on various Genres. They have
programs to entertain the kids in evening like Milking the Cow, Pot Making, Sand Pit,
etc.
The room rates are expensive especially for an Indian tourist, guess the rates are
fixed primarily with Foreign tourists in mind (I am in disagreement to this practise,
Indian Resorts and Hotels should make it attractive if India wants to attract more
tourists, India happens to be the most expensive tourist destination even for Indian’s
in South East Asia region). They also have programs for Meditation (everyday free
for guests) & Ayurvedic Health treatments (some of which for 14 days were priced
at few lakhs of rupees!)
The items where Dune has to improve:
-
ECO friendly tag doesn’t mean cutting corners in service & providing poor amenities
– they need to improve on the quality of the Television, Cycles, Furniture's, Bathroom
Amenities they provide
-
Providing a Mobile Phone to all guests instead of In-Room Intercom is a good idea,
but they need to ensure the signal is good. I had to step out of the room every time
when I needed to talk to reception or to FUN restaurant (which was very near to our
room, so I went directly to speak to Chef)
Overall, I will certainly recommend Dune Eco Village for spending few days (not worth
for shorter stays of 1 or 2 days) to relax. Service by staff was generally very friendly,
good ambience and nice food.
|
-
Read
in The Hindu few days back about an exhibition with display of British era items
in Lalit Kala Academy, Greams Road Chennai – this place is near the Greams Road-Pantheon
Road traffic signal, few hundred metres away from Apollo Hospital. The exhibition
(free entry) which runs till tomorrow (August 30) features a collection of what the
British have left behind – furniture, personalities and their ideas. The items in
display are from private collection of Steve Borgia (chairman and managing director
of INDeco Hotels). Today I took my son in the morning and we spent a good part
of a hour looking at the various items on display. The organizers have done a fine
job of neatly categorizing items, clear sign boards for every item, provided handy
cards which explained the items and had many volunteers who were happy to explain
the significance of the items on display.
The exhibition had quite a collection of interesting items – Twin blade fan (first
in this part of the world), first metal lunch box, a old coin-based shooting game
for kids, picnic set, camera, printing press and more. See the entire
photo album here that I took today. Some of the items (like the Fridge which runs
on Kerosene oil) I had seen earlier in their Swamimalai
resort during my vacation there few years back.
While seeing the display, I was called to talk in Tamil for 30-seconds about the exhibition
by Big FM Radio, which I did. Overall, an interesting
hour spent, please take your kids to it.
|
-
Free is
the new book by Wired Editor “Chris Anderson”. His earlier book “Long
Tail” was an acclaimed work that is quoted in almost every conversation with the
word “Web” in it over last few years. This book’s title though had the potential
to capture the same level of imagination, unfortunately doesn’t.
First, Chris Anderson should be congratulated for handling such a controversial topic
like “Free”. Each of us have our own understanding of the word, how it works, whether
it works or not and so on. In trying to answer these questions he has done a good
job. He writes his findings on “Free” from history, culture, marketing to economics.
He does a great job of explaining how “Free” became popular in modern days, its power
and potential. He does a fine job of categorizing various near-zero business models
and how they work with examples. He clearly disambiguates English word “Free” into
“Gratis” (free of charge) and “Libre” (freedom), often people confuse between the
two, especially in the software world. His re-quote of “Information wants to be free”
is certainly true and thought-provoking.
Where he falls flat is in his generalizations and in his examples of success stories.
For examples he repeatedly points only to Google and in few cases of open source software
& Web 2.0. I am unable to shake off the feeling (of-course unfounded) the book
could a PR campaign sponsored by the Mountain
view chocolate factory (thanks Register UK for the term) Google. For me, Google
certainly is not the epitome of “Free”, it makes its money by selling advertisements
for hard-cash and that’s not free. Wikipedia and FireFox would have been more befitting
candidates, but probably Chris Anderson felt obligated to Google – as he was using
their free Google Docs to write this book (as he says himself). To be fair to
the author, he does quote in two places where Microsoft offers “Free” through its
BizSpark program and Internet Explorer. I also fail to understand how he says Apple
through its iPod wants content to be free so that it gets paid for the device. iTunes
through the sales made from iPod and iPhone are the big money earners for Apple and
it is not free!
The other area where I disagree with him is on what seems to be his attempt at equating
“Piracy” to “Free”. “Piracy” is stealing, plain and simple. Though many of us may
be guilty of the crime (knowingly or unknowingly) to various degree, it can’t be praised
or supported. If in China music piracy is rampant, then it is the mistake of pricing,
distribution and education. It is certainly not that people there will not buy Music.
If Hulu.com and CBS.com today are making some money out of their advertisement driven
site it is because the money from advertisements comes to the producers who made the
shows, not to the pirates and other video sharing sites. If everyone in the world
moves to “Pirated” version of watching TV shows from YouTube, then soon there will
be no new professional TV shows to watch. Google too is very much aware of this threat,
that’s why it is trying
hard to woo producers into building legal channels for them on its site and share
revenue with them. The real question is whether this money alone will be sufficient
for producers to compensate for their investments. Even in the example the author
begins his book, MontyPython group deciding to put their clips legally free in YouTube
– they too made their money by selling legal versions of their CDs and DVDs. If their
entire collection is made “free” in YouTube HD then how will they survive to make
new episodes. The author leaves us with many of these questions unanswered.
A disclosure: I listened to the Audio book (unabridged) version that was offered free
of charge by Wired
from here. The e-book download seems to be time-limited (for a month and that’s
over) and geography limited (US only) from
here. Though I got the entire book free as an audio book, this limited free distribution
of the e-book seems to be more a 20th century free, than the 21st century free that
the author preaches throughout the book. He should have known better, he says repeatedly
that “Free” is the most powerful marketing tool ever invented and he should have known
to handle it with better for his book.
My recommendation: If you are in the Internet/Software business then this book is
a must read, but for others you may want to think twice before opening your wallet
to buy it. You may want to listen to the free
audio book like I did :-)
|
-
I have written in the past about lack
of Tamil unicode rendering support in all popular smartphones (iPhone,
Windows Mobile, Nokia). This week one of my colleague who uses a Windows Mobile 6.0
(HTC branded) phone showed me SkyFire browser.
SkyFire is a free mobile browser that uses a proprietary proxy server technology to
encode all Web contents (Text, Images, Videos, Flash, Silverlight) at their server
that gets rendered in the Mobile client. Because of this technology the individual
device limitations don’t affect their ability to render any language.
(Mobile IE not able to render Unicode Tamil)
 
(Windows Mobile running Skyfire displaying fine Unicode Tamil web pages)
SkyFire is a great technology and seeing Tamil being rendering seamlessly makes me
happy. But I am sceptical on the success of SkyFire – First, Mobile devices processing
power are increasing every day to support iPhone Safari like true desktop browsers
itself without need of a proxy server; Second, I don’t see a viable revenue model
on how SkyFire will make money to run the operations especially the high server costs.
Nevertheless a cool technology for now. If you have a Windows Mobile give it a try,
better than waiting for IE 6.0 in Windows Mobile or WM 7.0 :-)
|
-
Though we have done lot of Microsoft SharePoint projects, I find it difficult to give
a single answer to everyone for the question on “What is SharePoint?”. Depending on
who (their job role) is asking the question and for what they are asking it, the answer
for the question “What is SharePoint” varies. It is different things for different
people. One thing is sure – it has been a very successful product franchise for Microsoft
and has been the fastest growing Billion Dollar business for Microsoft.
From a technology perspective it provides Content Management, Document Management,
Blogs, Wiki, Rights Management, Workflow, Forms and data capture, Search, a limited
RAD (Rapid Application Development) framework and more.
The Microsoft’s
site for SharePoint doesn’t make answering this question any easier, it says “Microsoft
Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can
help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management
and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing
across boundaries for better business insight”. After few words my head has started
to spin - this definition is nothing but a boring soup of all possible technology
terms that Microsoft has managed to find. This didn’t help, so let us throw it outside
the window.
Till now the elevator pitch for SharePoint I have managed to come up with for answering
this has been to say “Connecting People and Information”. This was inspired
by the Microsoft
.NET initial days messaging that vaguely said Microsoft .NET is software for
connecting people, information, systems, and devices. Today I came across this
short video that introduces SharePoint in Plain English, finally
a good job by Microsoft marketing on this.
SharePoint
in Plain English
On a related note, you may be interested to watch this sneak peek video on the upcoming
release of SharePoint, SharePoint
2010 here.
|
Browse by Tags
All Tags » Syndicate ( RSS)
More Posts Next page »
|
|
|