Archive for June, 2007

Today, I gave my level 2 speech in Toastmasters. The objective of this level is to Organize the speech.Compared to my level 1 speech I felt more confident in delivering a speech. The topic which I delivered today was ‘Reveal your Identity in Web 2.0′.

I should thanks Gopal for helping me in forming the skeleton of the speech. My organization of the speech had the following skeleton.

                    Reveal your Identity in Web 2.0

1. Opening - With the Definition of Cyberspace by William Gibson

2. Lead to topic with a small explanation

3. Body

       a. Evolution of the Web 2.0

       b. Web 2.0 - A social phenomenon

       c. Examples and Statistics of Various Web 2.0 like

           Wikipeida, Blogging, Social Networking

4. Conclusion - Summarizing examples 

About my evaluation, the positive was my Voice modulation and transition in the thoughts. Things I need to improve were eye contact, Body Language and little more organization of the body.Today along with me a fellow Toastmaster also gave his level 2 speech. He also cleared it. Finally I got the Best Speaker Award today. You can have a look, at my initial draft of the speech here.

A sailor was the sole survivor of a shipwreck, and as he staggered ashore on some unknown tropical beach he found himself surrounded by hundreds of screaming, spear-waving warriors.

“Oh Gosh!” the sailor muttered to himself, “I’m finished!”

“No you’re not!” a voice boomed inside his head. “Don’t be negative. Think positive, take firm, swift action.”

“Who’s that?” the sailor asked.

I’m your guardian angel,” the voice replied. “Now listen carefully. Grab the spear from that little fellow with the bone in his nose and plunge it right into the heart of the chief…. the one with all the feathers on his head.”

“Right!” said the sailor, grabbing the spear and stabbing the warrior chief.

And as the chief collapsed to the ground, the voice said;”NOW you’re finished.”

Hope you enjoyed the joke

For long time I was expecting this from Google.Even my colleague was wrote about this. Finally they have added this in the Google Talk Gadget. You can try that here.

Hope they will soon implement in the Google talk client also

Yesterday, I had a meeting with client to discuss about a new Change Request in the present System. The client we met were really reasonable in their requirements. Though they were not completely bizarre with the requirements they were not completely clear.

I came across coincidentally with an article which gave a better examples on bizarre client requests.You can read that here. You would really enjoy reading it, if you had any client interactions before.

I read lots of feeds, share them, comment them or write about them in this blog. So I decided to write a post on the various blogs I read. I have listed some of my favorite blogs which had fed me with a huge load of information. Its not of any order that I have listed.

The Official Google Blog - For people who admire the Silent Deals and New Release of the Google, this is a feast.

Google Operating System - This gives you everything about Google, even if you are criticizing, praising or ranting, it will be present already here.

TCS Innovations - It does not matter where you are, it’s who you are and what you can. These TCSrs are really proving it. They discuss on latest trends.

Coding Horror - For a Programmer, Code should not be a Horror, reading this will make you understand the nuances, importance of coding. Not only coding, Jeff Atwood talks on everything related to computer.

Feurer Thoughts - Steven Feuerstein is a person who does everything with PL/SQL and does only PL/SQL. But in this blog, he speaks everything other than PL/SQL, and sometimes PL/SQL posts slips here also.

Jonathan Schwarts - He is a man I admire. Being the CEO of SUN, I don’t know how he is getting time to write such a wonderful blog. Its worth reading.

Creating Passionate Users - Kathy Sierra, known among the Java Programming Community, writes this blog in her style like Head first series. But now she has not posted anything after a big controversy which I said earlier.

Raganwald - Reginald Braithwaite writes on passionate programming with very good substantiations on every idea. Don’t miss his delicious feeds.

Scott H Young - To rejuvenate your spirits and to bounce back when you go down, this blog is vital for you. Scott, being an university student writes on topics usually discussed by saints and monks.

The Oracle-Base – Tim Hall, an oracle expert, explains every enhancement in new releases of oracle. You can expect something other than oracle from him in this blog.

TechCrunch – This should be called as Web2.0 News, to get updated on any news about websites follow the posts of Michel Arrington.

Seth Godin - I call him as Internet Guru + Marketing maverick. I love his insights; his eyes are able to grab the power behind every image he sees.

The Corridor - Will writes most of the articles in cricinfo. In this blog he writes very beautiful comments on every cricket match that’s happening in the world.

Worse Than Failure – This is a group blog for Programming. I like their short parables on programming which they frequently post. Don’t miss their CodeSOD, even your dirty code may come in that.

Telecom OSS-BSS – Since I am working in a telecom OSS-BSS system, this blog feeds me with the latest trends in Telecom domain. Every new tool introduces will be reviewed here.

Oracle Scratchpad - Jonathan Lewis can help you how to maximize the use of oracle and how to get the maximum out of a database.

Tom Kyte – Though I write this at the last, this is my all time favorite blog. He is my guru of oracle. I love his flamboyance in writing at the same time noble in presenting.