Systems

This blog was started in 2006 and this would be my first post from mobile apps. Yes I now blog either from my iPod touch or the HTC Mozart windows phone 7. This is too cool for micro blogging I must say. Amazing growth of technology. Though this is existing for a long time I could afford this only now. More posts to come from my app soon

When I was a Software Developer, this was something sacrosanct – Backup and Recovery.  Especially I used to work in very voluminous backend database for large Telecom and Internet Service Provider. I remember some incidents where we had lost a complete set of data that is essential for us to do the authentication and authorisation of customers who would connect to the system – That is making a call / connecting to the internet. Once the data loss happened, every second counts for us in terms of revenue to the company. Every second it takes to recover the lost data the company would be loosing few thousands of rupees in revenue. This was my first incident I could sense the importance of backup and how much it can impact in business.

But this case is applicable for everybody these days – as everyone store most of your data in PCs/Laptops or Mobile phones. You have multiple storage devices and every damn thing you can imagine is now stored in digital form. So like how we used to insure our properties in life it is essential to have backups for all the data you are having in your PCs or other devices. At least those critical data which you would need – in case of losing that – you would be in a terrible state. Have them in a proper backup schedule.

External Hard Disks / Flash Drives

There are plenty of options for backup these days – The external hard disk rates have fallen so much – every body who can afford a PC would definitely can spend additional thousand rupees to have a external storage device to backup.  Pros : Easy way to maintain  - Lots of software available for free that would help in doing sync every time you connect to the device.  Cons: You must be very disciplined to follow the backup schedule every time so that you don’t have obsolete data in your backup when you lose original data. Also you must take additional care in maintaining the external storage device not to be damaged. ( Who will guard the guards problem – Who will take care of the backup data)

Cloud Storage

In the last 4 years I have used multiple online services for my data backup, which in a way gave the advantage of mobility of my data – access my important data anywhere /  and everywhere whenever needed. Maintaining my important files I would need in any case ( Prioritizing is so important in data maintenance also ) online is better because I don’t need to take care of the storage device – which is maintained dedicatedly by a company.  I used to be amazed with Gmail when they launched the Gigabyte storage in mailbox five years before. So I used to store my important files as mail attachments. All my contacts/ some application details etc. were stored in the form of mail attachments. Again the problem was maintaining versions/ sync up the latest one were not possible. Then I was using the online storage providers who were offering for free like – eSnips, Scribd to store some of my documents and files.

But in the last 2 years the best backup and online storage which I am using which is available for free for many – though people are not aware of it – is the SkyDrive. It is a service by Microsoft ( many Microsoft employees don’t know who’s service is SkyDrive). At present SkyDrive is part of the Windows Live Suite of offerings by Microsoft – which provides 25GB of online storage (25 GB is not a small amount of space you are getting for free).  Biggest advantage is you can just drag and drop files into SkyDrive in browser. That makes it very cool to maintain.

The even more cool feature in the Windows Live suite is the use of Windows Live Mesh Client in your PC. You can configure a maximum of 2GB of documents to be automatically synced to the cloud i.e SkyDrive. So as an when documents are edited/added/deleted in those configured folders files are made sync with the SkyDrive making the SkyDrive an online backup for your important files. This is my latest backup device I am using in the last 2 years and found it very useful and comfortable without any headache. You can give a try – Also for prioritizing files – I maintain those bulky files like photos in online photo-storage not in SkyDrive. You can use any of the photo storage providers like Flickr / Picasa. These things need not be an online sync as mostly you would not be editing the photos every time and you dont need  a continuous syncing.  Also I store my favourites ( Links ) not in my PC rather I store in the cloud – I use del.icio.us, a service acquired by Yahoo. I maintain about 700 favourites tagged in multiple ways and easily searchable. Also it available for public to access it so that they can also use my favourites. For storing it every time I have installed a plug-in for internet explorer. I use the same short cut (Cntl+D) for tagging and it stores the link in my online account instead of browser.

My Picks for Cloud Backups :  Documents/ General Files – SkyDrive, Photos – Flickr/Picasa, Links – Del.icio.us.

So do use any of the backup methods suggested above to save your data without losing it.

I just went through ComScore May 2010 Search Rankings. Google remains in the top,but there is 0.7% dip in the marker share. Yahoo & Bing are with 29.5% market share. I am combining both data because of their Yahoo-Microsoft Alliance.

These percentage changes may look very small seeing the first time. But it matters a lot, because the total core search activity for one month in Total U.S is about 15935million searches. Now you can do the Math.

Do you think a social media application can help stop the spread of malaria? Could a mobile alert system help warn citizens of a looming natural disaster?  Can a mobile phone be used to detect vascular diseases like sickle cell anemia and type 1 diabetes?

These are just a few of the projects designed by students competing in the Imagine Cup, a global technology competition focused on improving education, healthcare and the environment. These students all have one thing in common; they are going to change the world!

Starting from a field of over 325,000 competitors from all over the world, only 400 have made it to the final stage and will attend the Worldwide Finals in Poland this summer. You can learn more about their projects, watch their videos, and vote to support your favourite team at www.imaginecup.com.  

Open to students around the world, the Imagine Cup is a serious challenge that draws incredible talent, passion and perseverance. The event spans one year, beginning with local, regional and online competitions. The finalists go on to attend the Worldwide Finals held in a different location every year.  The intensity of the work brings students together, and motivates the competitors to rise above challenges and make an impact on the world.

And let’s face it; the world could use a little changing.  We live in difficult times with a ton of problems raining down on people every day.  The real question is who is going to step up and do something about it? We think it’s you. Be sure to tune into www.imaginecup.com on July 8^th to see who emerges as the “People’s Choice” champion.

Today I received a mail from Google Inc. It was really exhilarating to read each and every line.  The mail goes as mentioned below.

Hello everyone,

As you all are aware, Got The ‘App’titude Challenge concluded on February 28, 2009. In the days that followed, we reviewed the accrued usage data and are now ready to announce the much anticipated winner.

Xavier Labour Relations Institute (XLRI), Jamshedpur, have won the challenge by demonstrating the highest usage of Google Apps products. The XLRI team working on Google Apps implementation was led by Prof. Ashish Pani. The other members are “Hariharan R, Chintan Agarwal, Pal Singh and Srikanth Thunga”. The team showed great enthusiasm and managed to stay on top of the challenge from the beginning. They named this initiative XL CONNECT, ran a pilot and implemented Google Apps within a month from the day they secured approval from the college decision makers. They also conducted marketing campaigns to inspire students to find innovative ways to use Google Apps services. 

Alliance Business Academy - Bangalore, Birla Institute of Management Technology - Delhi, Jaypee Business School - Noida, Mudra Institute of Communications – Ahmedabad, Zakir Husain College of Engineering & Technology- Aligarh Muslim University, and National Institute of Technology - Calicut are some of the other colleges which had very high Google Apps usage. These colleges now join the elite group of colleges including Indian Institute of Management - Ahmedabad and National Institute of Design - Ahmedabad that are using Google Apps extensively.

In addition, over 100 colleges in India participated & implemented Google Apps as part of this challenge. Our thanks to those teams also for taking the lead in improving communication & collaboration capabilities in their college.

Thanks

–
Got The "App"titude Challenge
Main Site: http://www.google.co.in/apps/gottheapptitude

For me the best part in Winning this is the prize :). Below mentioned is the prize we will be getting.

• A case study to be featured on our Google Apps website as well as a video testimonial featured on our Google Apps YouTube channel
• A letter of recommendation from FMS and Google
• An all expense paid trip for your team to visit one of our Google India offices

I would write more about improvements on this.

Related Posts

1. A Small Sense of Satisfaction
2. Students testimonial – Update from Google
3. Google Truly Brilliant – Amazing Move

If you ever get a Instant message from any one with a message “lol check this out http://tinyurl.com/xxx“, Don’t enter your GMAIL id and password to login which it will be requesting to watch a video. It was very suspicious the moment I saw. If you enter your Gmail Id and password to login, it will send a Instant message to all the people in your Gtalk list. A nice prank, but a dirty idea.

So don’t fall into this phishing prank. This is very recent, I got the instant messages from about 5 people already at this time. Convey to all of your friends to stop this. More details of this prank will come out soon.

Almost the day lively came, I had mentioned earlier as Lively is bit lively But…May be for Children to Enjoy. Of course this was totally away from Google’s innovative product line. Finally the day has been marked by Google itself for Lively to be on Dec 31 2008. A good move by Google I would say, not to manage products which does not has any market.

Related Posts.

1. Lively is bit lively But…May be for Children to Enjoy
2. Google Enters - A new area not thought of

Today, I tried the new feature introduced by Google – Integrated Video and Voice Chat in Gmail. Truly a very innovative move, Google was first to integrate chat inside Email environment. They further improvised it now by adding video and voice to it. But you need a plug-in to be installed for the same. You can download it here.

The great news for me was, this works the same way with Google Apps users also. So I think all the XL users can now integrated further with this feature.

Google has created their every application more like a reusable template and hence they are able to easily adopt changes and do the same applicable for all the customized users. Their Apps is an innovation in terms of business strategy in this internet industry.

Only bad news now is this feature is not available for Linux users, only for the loyal Windows OS users. I think the Linux version of the plug-in would follow soon, so no need to comment on this.

Related Posts

1. A Small Sense of Satisfaction
2. Students testimonial – Update from Google

The following is from the Google Got the aptitude challenge website.

Please check here to read about other college testimonials(Click this Link –>Student Testimonial)

XLRI Transforming with XL Connect

Google’s ‘Got the Aptitude’ challenge has given us the opportunity to transform our communication system. After registration, the first thing we did was to implement Google Apps in our existing test server. We named this initiative ‘XL CONNECT’ because the services provided by Google Apps will help the XL community stay connected 24/7. We then came up with a working model to increase Google Apps awareness and market its advantages in campus. The presentation created by Google came in handy to explain the benefits from Google Apps to our faculty members, IT admin and student committees. Since Email was a default application we focused on the other Google Apps products like Talk, Sites and Docs. Our main selling point was Google sites which would be very helpful for our student committees. As every committee wanted a group site, it was easy to make the sale and obtain approval from our IT admin. The contest deadlines really pushed us to stay focused. We are excited about the launch and we have already started increasing Apps awareness through teasers, posters and some merchandise. We also plan to create some use cases on how effectively Google apps can be used.

- XLRI Team Members: Hariharan R, Chintan Agarwal, Amrit Pal Singh, Srikanth Thunga, Prof. Ashish Pani

Today at XL, we have completed the shift of our Students mail server to Google Apps Education Edition. I am a member of Systems Society of XL– better known as

SOCRATES – Society for Rapid Assimilation of Technology and Systems

My love for technology and systems made me apply only for this students committee. I was very happy when I was selected for this committee because I consider being with this society was not an extra-curricular activity but an opportunity to be in touch with my interests. I always believe technology can make our life simpler and our energy can be utilized for better needs to care for people. Actually I should learn this, caring and concern for people which I most of the times miss it which I am struggling to get it.

At XL we were using an internal mail server for students which had the age-old Squirrel Mail. We provided a 100 MB limited space for every student. This year my agenda was to bring in a change for the betterment of everyone in any are which I am comfortable. Finally, I had a chance to suggest a change for shifting the internal server to Google Apps Education Edition. Google of-course provides 7 GB of mail box each and also a gamut of services bundled like Chat, Sites, Docs and Calendar. Google provides the basic edition for free which is far better than the system we had.

Suggested this change on October first week to the IT administration. After a set of permissions ,approval and testing finally today we went live after complete migration from the legacy server. Now we call the new gamut of Google Apps service as XL Connect. This change will be of great use to the students community to be in touch with every one easily using the internal chat now , also I hope the Docs and Sites will serve further for team projects and committees. I am happy that some change I wanted is visualized, though a small change but a Satisfaction for me. This would not have been possible without the help of my committee secretary Chintan Agarwal and the Help Desk guys at XL who really did the actual implementation.

Next :  The one I felt a great thing done by a great institute is MIT OCW. This one will be my next agenda. Hope this comes true soon.