Uncategorized

Its been a while I posted.. Last six months I had hectic travel due to my work..most of the time to Bangalore. Will share those experiences and also at present I am preparing for Mumbai Marathon next week..will post the pictures and experience of the marathon..Running for Mumbai marathon was one of my important item in the Bucket list of To-Dos in life…I am really super excited for the marathon..I will be running the half marathon this time..Need your wishes:)

1. Unconscious Incompetence:  I know not that I know not.
2. Conscious Incompetence: I know that I know not.
3. Conscious Competence: I know that I know.
4. Unconscious Competence: I know not that I know

If there had been one great social bookmarking tool I enjoyed using in the last five years it was delicious. The ease of use, knowing the popular bookmarks, easy plugins with Mozilla. Folksonomy or social tagging was a step ahead from the conventional browser based bookmarking. This helped us a lot to access our bookmarks anywhere wherever we need.

Few years back Yahoo acquired this and said it is going to improve this service further.

Now I get a ail from Yahoo today saying they sold of. This company so infamous for acquiring killing some big products, why could they not turnaround this product.  But since Yahoo had plans to pull the plug from delicious, I have already migrated to Google bookmarks which is the only closest thing which is as good as delicious but the missing features are social aspects. I do not know which are the famous links, networking etc. I will live with that anyway until AVOS does something for delicious.

I had a need to update my movie and songs list today and was looking for a tool that would ensure the song lists updated in my external drive and my laptop hard disk. Found this simple Microsoft tool SyncToy. You can choose two independent folders ( left and right folder ) to keep your data in sync between folders.The best options that comes with this tool

1. Two way syncing also Echoing a particular folder / Subfolder.
2. Very simple and intuitive UI.
3. Also you can create many pairs of folders and you can run the pairs whenever you need to / schedule the synch.

As I reflect about the last one year had - 2010, the amount of changes that had happened were not just a few. So wanted to list some of the great things that had happened in this year for which I must thank many people who helped pass through this journey.

The year 2010, started with the final term of my post graduate program in XLRI but a great term in terms of learning important things for my life. Got some of the great friends in this place and getting a gold medal made the last term very eventful though there was a heartbreak in my previous term. My mother had her day in my convocation, it was one of her long waited sight which I keep hearing from my school days - Finally she was happy that at least once I could get her the sight of getting a medal.  Left XL with a good number of friends who had helped me pass out this place successfully and also a few I was not interested to meet ever in my life. But saying that I do not have any grudges against any of them all forgotten now, all helped me in my learning.

Joined Microsoft in March, started the journey of work for second time. Great team at my work made the remaining part of the year very memorable. I finally shifted my home from Coimbatore this year. Yes, after 44 years of living in Coimbatore, my mother had to shift with me to Hyderabad. This was one big change she herself never expected.

After about 4 months of working in Hyderabad in couple of roles, got an opportunity to work in Redmond for 3 months. End of July, I flew to Seattle. Made new friends in this place and first time ever in my life I started running. All thanks to my coach and my super boss, Matt who coached me in swimming and inspired me with his Iron Man participation. I started swimming regularly and knocked of a minute from my timing log for a 100 yard swimming. Cycling a 100 mile, completing two 5Ks and swimming a 2.5K were some things I would consider as sincere efforts in my training when I was in Seattle. Also learnt a bit of cooking during this time and tried some different cuisines like Lebanese, Ethiopian, Mexican, Thai… Left Seattle gaining a good fitness and determination to run more when I get back to India.

After coming back to India, traveled further for some recruitment trips. This year I had visited all metros in India. Took a vacation with my Mom and visited Taj. The beautiful sight of Taj Mahal is still in my eyes, early morning run at Agra around Taj and entered the place at 6.00 AM. I would rate the sight of Taj early morning as one of the best time to see it. Went around Agra, Mathura and Shikri with Mom. And by the way during this I have also added another few sites to my journey to complete visiting the 28 UNESCO heritage sites in India. I have so far visited 12 of the 28 sites, and in 2011 I hope to add a few more to this.

Learnt some new things in this year - finally I can drive a car now and got my driving licence. I can read Telugu slowly like a first standard kid, I am at this stage only now. I completed my first half marathon in Bangalore with my best friend. Though both of us struggled, since we were running a half marathon in midnight after a long day walking around the city.  The year closed in Mumbai, with my XL friends.

I hope this new year, 2011 would also be a very eventful journey. Lots to learn new and I continue to change for the good..Happy and Prosperous New Year 2011 for all.

Another big head in the company is going to leave, came the announcement today. The Chief Software Architect position is something which I valued so much for the people like Nathan Myhrvold and Bill Gates occupied it. Ray Ozzie , who had been an Independent Software Vendor for a long time with Microsoft, came into the company when Groove Corp. was acquired. The Groove is one tool I absolutely love it for the ease of collaborating with team and share documents seamlessly.  BTW Groove is now part of MS Office suite if you are not aware of it. It is called Microsoft Groove in Office 2007 and as Microsoft SharePoint Workspace in Office 2010.

So Today the news came Ray Ozzie is going to leave the Company. This is just not the one thing in the company this year. Here goes the bleeding list of Top guys who has left the company now – Robert Bach, President of Entertainment & Devices(House of Xbox, Zune etc.) who would be leaving soon, Steven Elop, President of Microsoft Business Division (House of Office Suite), James Allard, Chief Experience Officer of Entertainment & Devices Division, Rebecca Norlander, Partner Engineering Manager for AdCenter platform( James Allard’s better half), The list is not complete if I miss some of the technical fellows and distinguished engineers who are the pillars of the company, but left Microsoft for good. Gary Flake, Brad Lovering are some of the TFs who are leaving the company.

As Mini-Microsoft, this is like seriously a Boom-Boom-Boom time for the company to prove that we are still going strong and back on growth. Kevin Turner said the company is back on growth with strong growth in revenues because of Windows 7. I hope Windows Phone 7 and Kinect proves to be successful like Windows 7 to prove the market wrong and against the Goldman Sachs downgrading recently

Off late I am tracking the market share of various operating systems. I used to read many user reviews, research data to keep updated. Today I found an interesting way to find out the operating system market share from the data which I have been accumulating. I use Google analytics to analyse the site statistics for this website. Google analytics captures the operating system and browser capabilities. That gives the visitor operating system capabilities. I just picked the last 3 months visitor statistics for my website and that gave a glimpse of market share of OS among the people who use internet the maximum.  The image over the left shows Windows is among the top with about 80%. But the data here shows only the PC users who have access to internet. In countries like India/China there are many PCs without an Internet connection and logically they would not be having a Mac/Linux but Windows (Highly likely a pirated version). Another interesting piece was there was couple of visitors from mobile devices to my website – from an Android/ iPhone/iPad. This shows people of now search more from mobile devices. Let us see how the Chrome OS skews this data set in future.

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.

When I saw Google/Gmail Buzz today, this time it was not a big surprise for me. I was expecting already some development behind the word “Buzz” was going on. I had tried creating labels in Gmail with the name Buzz earlier and it never allowed me because it was a Gmail Reserve Word. GTalk also never had the Buzz option. The option of buzz in Gmail-  it is another Twitter or Facebook News feed option. Integrating all the things in one is something Gmail started long ago when they introduced chats inside the mail box. They even integrated video and voice chat inside your mailbox. All the recent developments these days is providing all the need in one place – Videos, music, pictures, mail, search, social networking etc all in one. One Application for all these is what every one are trying. I see this as a technological convergence. This is what seen in electronic and computing gadgets where you can get all the things in one gadget. It acts as a mobile communicator, camera, video and audio player etc. The need of customers has also moved to one gadget for all purpose from multiple gadgets for multiple purpose. So the Google/Gmail Buzz can be called as another Gbook/Gwitter right inside your mail box.

A Good move by Google, since Orkut is losing its market share in one of its dominant market – India. Facebook has become the cool thing now in India compared to Orkut and Google very badly need to lock the customers completely switch to Facebook. The idea of locking its email users in this is a good try by Google. Early adopters of technology like me would try at this point and say it is a cool thing. But its the laggards who make the application a success by staying for longer time. Google Wave is yet to make an impact, I keep shouting inside wave to find the use of it and it is yet to become a success. Buzz should create some buzzing for Google next.

After entering XL, I rarely read any books other than the course materials. Most of the time I was busy behind the laptop screen doing some assignments or projects. Even if I found some free time, I never felt like reading a book, would watch some new Tamil movie which relaxes me a lot. During my summer internship I found some time to read some books. Recently a couple of weeks during travel I could read.

Predictably irrational by Dan Airely 

The basic assumption of Traditional Economics is – “All Humans are Rational, we always make rational choices “. But this book is a fascinating examination of why human beings are wired and conditioned to react irrationally. We human beings are a selfish bunch, so it’s all the more surprising to see how easily we can be manipulated to behave in ways that run counter to our own self-interest.  What I learned from Predictably Irrational is that everyone is irrational sometimes, and that’s OK. We’re not perfectly logical creatures, after all. The trick is training yourself to know when you’re most likely to make irrational choices, and to resist those impulses. I would say this books increased my interest in Behavioural Economics. I would rate this a 4.5 / 5 in terms of value add, style of writing and research done.

Freakonomics by Steven Levitt

No special mention required about this book, as this is one of the book most reviewed, and also you can refer the Freakonomics blog at NY Times. But this is also of the same genre similar to behavioural economics. “Conventional wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through” – You will understand this if you read this book. A must read if you would like to understand many economic problems could be related to something which are not obvious. One of the most famous correlations gave by him is the Link between - US crime rate and Legalising Abortion. I would rate a 4/5 for this book.

I have started again, at present I am reading Gregory Robert’s – Shantaram.

Previous Reviews

1. Quick Review

2. Under Cover Economist