Exploring technology

~ Fragmentation hoopla ~

2012-05-12T09:08:00.000+05:30

Techcrunch posted an article 'This Is What Developing For Android Looks Like' based on a Hong Kong mobile app developer that has seen more than 70 million downloads which performs QA on 400 different devices. I feel Animoca seem to have used this article to get publicity.

I haven't solely developed an Android/iOS app, but have got my hands dirty in both platforms at some point of time. At SourceN, we do have developers who develop apps Xross-Platform - iPhone, iPad, Android, WebOS. I for sure can say that we do take our quality seriously be it web or mobile apps. Never had the necessity to QA against 400 android devices. That is pure BS & exaggeration of the Nth order to get eye-balls for a company.

I have constantly had debate with people - developers, fanboys (Apple, Off-late Windows), managers - who don't have complete knowledge about how a platform needs to be built than just state that Android would be a failure or disaster lurking in the future due to their OS fragmentation. I have conceded that indeed that would be a problem which Google needs to address with the OEMs & Carriers to ensure that their is very less layer(s) on Vanilla Android.

You have seen Amazon getting away and fork their own version of Android for Kindle Fire tablet. Not sure if that is a good or bad decision which will help them in the long run. Don't think that other OEMs would take such a big bet (Money n Time) to have their own flavors. Considering the fact, many OEMs (HTC, Sony, Samsung, etc) already have their custom layer on Android phones. This itself is causing a lot delay in the latest Android version (ICS) getting ported to various devices in the market.

Many of the OEMs have gone ahead and released boot-loaders where people can unlock and install latest versions of Android OS. I agree this isn't an easy affair for a layman, but is developer oriented. That's another cliché which you get to hear that Androids are more popular amongst Developers than rest of the mankind.

Don't just complain about Android fragmentation for the heck of it. As with everything in life, there are trade-offs. Fragmentation is over-hyped bubble which is more popularly driven by those who live in the world of tailored walled-gardened & ubiquitous (in simple terms best UX) offering.

From a developer perspective, if you ever want to understand how the system works here are some articles which is worth reading.

Android fragmentation is a feature, not the big problem everyone says it is
Fragmentation is a Bad Excuse

4.6 iPhone display
Why I'm Not Supporting OS X

P.S: I <3 my MacBookPro & SII :)

DWR:A request has been denied as a potential CSRF attack

2012-03-06T11:16:00.002+05:30

Just in case you hit the same issue as me :)

"A request has been denied as a potential CSRF attack" Was facing this exception whenever a DWR call was made on specific browsers on different deployments.

The issue was very inconsistent; what do I mean by that ?

a) Unable to reproduce on dev instance across any browser

b) Reproducible on the Internal UAT instance only from Chrome browser

c) Reproducible on the client UAT instance on all the browsers - Chrome, IE, FF.

Following is the analysis as to why we were getting the SecurityException

We had a requirement to implement HttpOnly feature. Therefore carried out an implementation of HttpOnly very similar to what is mentioned here - https://www.owasp.org/index.php/HttpOnly
Now this very implementation was causing the DWR to throw Security Exception.
This thread - http://directwebremoting.org/jira/browse/DWR-440 - in particular was helpful to understand the internal working of DWR container
The reason why I was facing the CSRF attack was because I was manipulating the JSESSIONID. Usually, JSESSIONIDs are generated by the Servlet Container & I was manipulating the JSESSIONID for HttpOnly as per the requirement.
Here is another blog entry - http://alexsmolen.com/blog/?p=16 - which is quite informative on the java limitations of HttpOnly. The Cookie interface doesn't provide us the simple setter & getter for HttpOnly
During this debugging got to know the DWR container security implementation. They have taken care of many concerns in the AJAX or JS related attacks - http://directwebremoting.org/dwr/documentation/security/index.html

Referenced links:

https://www.owasp.org/index.php/HttpOnly

http://alexsmolen.com/blog/?p=16

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2992473/setting-httponly-in-jsessionid-cookie-java-ee-5

http://directwebremoting.org/dwr/documentation/server/configuration/servlet/index.html

http://directwebremoting.org/jira/browse/DWR-440

http://www.tux.org/~peterw/csrf.txt

http://svn.directwebremoting.org/dwr/trunk/protocol/dwrp/main/java/org/directwebremoting/dwrp/BaseDwrpHandler.java

http://svn.directwebremoting.org/dwr/trunk/protocol/dwrp/main/java/org/directwebremoting/dwrp/Batch.java

http://svn.directwebremoting.org/dwr/trunk/core/api/main/java/org/directwebremoting/extend/ProtocolConstants.java

~Clearspace 2.5 feature list ~

2008-08-26T12:08:00.000+05:30

Here is the initial list of features of Clearspace 2.5 Release Candidate.
Admin Console

Sytem/Settings
Phrase Substitutions: We can add rules for phrases substitutions for space/document/discussion/blog against a particular locale & theme

Sytem/Settings
Projects: Enable/Disbale the feature from admin console

Spaces/Settings
Moderation Settings: Lets one add moderators & choose the contentType which needs to be moderated for a particular space.

Spaces/Settings
Abuse Settings: Automatically hide content after a pre-defined Abuse Count.

Blogs/Management
Group Blogs: Gives way to System Blogs.
Blog Migration: Is a new feature. Migrating a blog will move that blog to a new location in the system. The blog and all its posts will move to the new location and be removed from the old location.

People/Management

i) Organisational Relationships is renamed as User Relationships.
ii) Apart from Organisational Relationship, we have new feature called Connections (which is similar to that of Twitter).

People/Settings

Profile & Homepage: System administrators and Community administrators can customize the default personalized homepage.
Status Updates (of users): One can Enable/Disable this feature.
Registration Settings:
i) Any profile fields marked as required are automatically displayed.
ii) One can move the fields in the registration form display.
iii) Add a new field.
iv) Preview the form

Status Level Settings:
i) Completing tasks in a project, you get a point
ii) Default Status level can be easily edited, apart from defining new status levels

User Data Synchronization Settings: Apart from previous attributes, we have few more additions as mentioned below
i) Scheduled sync task: Can now be enabled/disabled
ii) Synchronize profile photo?
iii) Last modified LDAP attribute name

User Relationship Settings: One can manage both the Organisational Chart & Connections.
i) User connections request approval process can be enabled/disabled.
ii) Organisational Settings remain the same.

Customer Console

Basic Customization of Clearspace - choosing a color scheme, changing logo or without logo - is very simple & easy. This option is available as 'Customize Your Site' for System Administrator in Your Stuff section.

Widgets:
1) Status updates - Update and view your current status update.
2) Watch a User - Lists the content created by a user in the system.
3) Connection Activity - Recent activity by people you are following
4) Your Groups - Displays a list of groups for which you are a member.
5) Watah a Tag - Lists the content tagged with the given tag in the system.
6) RSS Feeb - Displays results of an RSS feed from another part of Clearspace or from any web site.
7) Your Projects - A list of projects you are following.
Search: The Global search is enhanced, where the result set is sorted based on , People, Places - Spaces/Content-Type/Group

Groups:

Groups are a great way to establish a community for people who share interests. There are various types of Groups - Open, Members Only, Private, Secret.

Group Types:
i) Open membership is open and non-members can view content and participate.
ii) Members Only membership is open and non-members can view content, but must join to participate.
iii) Private membership is by approval/invitation only and only members can view content and participate.
iv) Secret membership is by invitation only, only members may participate, and the group is not listed in the group directory

Projects:

i) Import/Export Tasks - Select the CSV for your project containing a list of tasks to import, or export a CSV containing a list of tasks.
ii) Project Status - You have a risk-o-meter which lets the owner change the status & others know the current status.

Connections:
i) This feature is similar to that of Twitter, which allows a registered user to follow other user. It also supports to tracking user's content by RSS feed.
ii) Approve & decline functionality for Connections can be enabled/disabled in the Admin Console

~ Youtube: New Visualization ~

2008-05-29T00:03:00.000+05:30

Youtube provides a new way to browse related videos. If you had tested the digg site few years ago, something similar was available in the beta phase. This is a very easy way to browse & play around with related videos.

~ Quote of the week ~

2007-08-22T13:55:00.000+05:30

'If the API is better, the end product will be more maintainable'

- Bob Lee (Users Vs Programmers)

Thought for the week

2007-07-25T20:55:00.000+05:30

'There are only two hard things in CS: cache invalidation and naming things'
- Phil Karlton, via Tim Bray

Miro

2007-07-20T00:26:00.000+05:30

After spending just 15 mins with the player, here is my review of Miro a.k.a Democracy Player.

Features:

Plays all/any kinda video files without any more installers.
You can subscribe to video channels through RSS, with hourly update.
Has loads of HD content.
Download support for some of the popular video sites on the web [youtube, veoh, googlevideos, blip,dailymotion,etc].
You have 1598 channels for free.
BitTorrent support.

What i like about Miro:

Simplicity of the player.
No more hassles of downloading plugins and software to view different flavors of flash video players.
Managing downloads has never been so easy, with an option to save or delete the download from u'r HDD.

Got get yourself a Miro and start using now.

Via my daily source of cool stuff.

Quote for the week

2007-07-04T20:49:00.000+05:30

'Design, by nature, is a series of trade-offs. Every choice has a good and bad side, and you make your choice in the context of overall criteria defined by necessity. Good and bad are not absolutes, however. A good decision in one context might be bad in another.'

GMail sports new features: Slideshow, FilterAssistant

2007-06-27T17:16:00.000+05:30

Google has been very quick to integrate Zenter - their latest acquisition - to support online viewing of Micorsoft Powerpoint application into Gmail. I happened to notice that yesterday evening when one of my friend has sent an powerpoint attachemnt. It was handy because I haven't installed MS Office on the laptop.

a) Snapshot of slideshow feature

b) Snapshot of FilterAssistant feature

Was discussing about 'Slideshow' feature with my friend (who was on the mailing list of the earlier mail) in the morning, but she didn't have feature on her account. But, she spotted another feature called 'Filter Assistant', on her account. Again, this feature wasn't available on my account.

No clue as to why do we need 'Filter Assistant' on every mail you recieve. Looking at the brighter side, the GMail dev-team seems to be constantly introducing new features; unlike their competitors who seem to be resting on their laurels.

Am not sure when these new features will be available to all google accounts.

Yahoo Mail follows GMail?

2007-05-16T12:45:00.000+05:30

Looks like Yahoo has taken a leaf out of Google's GMail stratergy - free unlimited storage. Now Yahoo Mail seems to heading the same way as GMail & probably even more.

The new interface of Yahoo Mail seems to be conveying that. Healthy competition is always good, gives a better choice to the end user. Lets see what Yahoo has to offer us this year

Update Google Reader: See personalized trends

2007-01-09T10:04:00.000+05:30

Over the past years we have seen Google launch Google Trends - which analyzes a portion of Google web searches to compute how many searches have been done for the terms you enter relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time & display the result as graphs. Last year after the launch of GTalk, Google intergrated Trends with GTalk & called it Music Trends - which captures information about the music GTalk users are currently listening to from their music player.

After breathing life into their Reader during the last quarter of 2006, in 2007 they have introduced Personalized Trends into Reader. I love this new feature, which gives an overview of my reading pattern over the last 30 days. The feature is classified as Reading Trends, Subscription Trends and finally the Graphs.

~ Trends Overview ~

Reading Trends
They are classified under three categories Read, Starred & Shared. Each category can be listed as Top 10 | Top 20 | Top 40.

~ Reading Trends - Read ~

~ Reading Trends - Shared ~

~ Reading Trends - Starred ~

Subscription Trends
This one shows the frequently updated feeds & the inactive feeds.

~ Subscription Trends - Frequently updated feeds ~

~ Subscription Trends - Inactive feeds ~

Graphs
Coolest feature, which gives me a snapshot of my reading pattern over the past 30 days, time of day & which day of the week I spend reading the most.

~ Graphs - over the past 30 days ~

~ Graphs - Time of day ~

~ Graphs - Day of the week ~

Looking forward for more innovative features & services from Google in 2007.

Posted through Google Doc Service

2006-10-11T16:03:00.000+05:30

Hello

Interesting isn't it? U have so many options to save u'r document....kinda all in one :)

this is really cool
amazing stuff
type something

something......something

Who added this pic? I don't like pics in word docs ;) . I feel there is a bug in collaboration.......it doesn't let the collaborators know who made the edit & wat time....it shld also be notifying everyone on the changes....once a collaborator makes any edit. -- Vivek

Image can be resized
revision history can be navigated - older - comes with the name of the editor but not the timestamp

Google breathes new life into Reader

2006-10-07T14:06:00.000+05:30

I had signed up for Google Reader 6 months ago, but didn't really enjoy the experience. The Reader then had User Interface which I felt wasn't friendly, the navigation & managment of feeds wasn't easy, finally the reader provided only a list view of your favorite subscriptions & u only got a snapshot, if u clicked on a particular item. Gradually overtime I had stopped using it, untill last-week when I read the post 'Google Reader gets a facelift' by Garett Rogers on ZDNet's blog 'Googling Google'.

~ Google Reader Home ~

I logged into my Google Reader today morning to get a feel of the new features. The first thing which stood out was the clean and simple view of Google Reader Home. On your left-hand-side it has shortcuts to your home, starred items, shared items and finally to all your subrscriptions.

~ Shortcuts ~

Then I noticed, that all the tags which I had used to label my favorite feeds where transformed to a folder view. All the feeds are neatly classified under each folder. I liked this idea of folder-based navigation, keeps it is simple & easy to manage all the feeds.

~ Folder-based Navigation ~

The next feature, is the different viewing styles available as of now are Expanded View and List View. Both of them are very useful for me, I use the Expanded View, to browse the feeds of my fellow bloggers & I use the List View to have a glance @ all the news feeds - Rediff, ESPN, CNN_IBN, ZDNet, etc.

Finally, the Reader has borrowed few features from sister services (GMail, Blogger and GCal) like adding stars, tagging, sharing, emailing. Has much better implementation of Read-state management.

~ Shortcuts for sharing, tagging, emailing on an item feed ~

I am a guy who loves reading & on any given day I spend atleast 2 hours reading save them on del.icio.us & sometimes I share them across with my friends based on our common subjects of interest. The sharing was a painful process, everytime I read something interesting & felt like sharing it, I used to IM (Instant Message) them those links. Google Reader reduces this hassle of sharing, as it provides me to share my Reader feed with the rest of the world on my website. Click here to view what I have shared for you.

With all the new features and enhancements, I feel I would use Google Reader more often. Another good reason for one to use Google Reader is to read blogs/sites when there are restrictions enforced by your government or your employer.

If you aren't using it, then I suggest you to give 'Google Reader' a shot.

Blog Surfing

2006-07-31T18:50:00.000+05:30

It had been a while since I paid visit to few of my favorite blogs & today managed to hit a few interesting posts while I was surfing them.

First, Ronan Bradley's post 'Data: The Heart of SOA' on 'SOA Roads'.

'Source --> Data --> Process --> Information --> Decision' is the most common flow you would come across in any Data Warehousing & Data Mining business solution. Offlate everyone seems to be talking about how *data* plays a major role in SOA.

Couple of weeks ago, I was working on a business scenario for our client Raining Data's Tigerlogic MDM. In one of the scenarios we were rippling master data across the customer information records of three different business units (Telco, High Speed Internet and Satellite TV) of a large enterprise. For more on the TigerLogic MDM, please feel free to visit here.

Ronan Bradley, recently on his 'SOA Roads' has written an interesting post titled 'Data: The Heart of SOA'. He covers how data is behind exposed through services, how this *data* has been useful to the customers and has also highlighted on the approaches of data can be integrated within SOA.

"There are two fundamental approaches to dealing with data integration within SOA: Build a global data model for your business which each connecting business unit must bridge into and out of in order to integrate with other units or build multiple data models."

Everything he has mentioned in this post makes complete sense & echoes our thoughts on the approach of o RainingData's MDM.

Second, Brenda Michelson's 'Agile & SOA: Like Apples & Oranges, Google & Search or Oil & Water?' on Business Driven Architect.

For the first time(atleast for me, since the time I have been following Brenda's blogs) has spoken on software engineering & was glad to know she supports Agile methodology as well. In this post, Brenda refers to an interesting article on SearchWebServices.com by Rich Seeley covering Gregor Hohpe speaking on Agile & SOA as a powerful combination. As always, she has provides a different perspective to the conversation on two interesting subjects Agile & SOA.

Brenda has followed up this post with another interesting post using a good metaphor & more inputs from Annie Shum to speak more about Agile and SOA; titled 'Agile & SOA: Like Structure Building and City Planning (Special Guest Post)'.

Finally, the post from Gregor Hohpe explaining how 'Starbucks Does Not Use Two-Phase Commit' in a real world scenario. This article makes a good read in understanding on how & where 'Asynchronous & Synchronous messaging interactions work well'.

Pakistani Underground Playlist

2006-06-16T15:19:00.000+05:30

Inteha - Daastaan

Inteha - Anjaana

I-Konz - Abhi Waqt Hai

Smoke Band - Faana

Akash - Ji Liya

Akash - Aaj Phir

Riff - Main Na Manoon

Athar Anis - Maine Kabi

Xplode - Najane

Taab - Qadam

Ka'enaat - Ratoon Ratoon Mein

Aryanz - Sada

Parwaz the band - Shamain

I-Konz - Abhi Waqt Hai

Analyzing Brenda Michelson

2006-06-13T13:54:00.000+05:30

Brenda Michelson is the architect-in-residence for the Patricia Seybold Group and the founder of Elemental Links, an IT consulting practice specializing in strategy, architecture, IT portfolio planning and delivery for the enterprise. To know more about Brenda click here.

It had been a while since I paid visit to Brenda's blog & as always Brenda has some more insights into the latest developments on technology, products & events happening across the IT world. This particular post ' Responding to James McGovern's "Analyzing the Analysts: Brenda Michelson" ' on the Elemental Links blog made me write this post.

I have spent sometime reading articles of other Analysts from major firms & have also come across Analysts exchanging their thots over Service-Orientated-Architecture - group on Yahoo. Personally, I have found few of these Analysts being biased towards a particular technology or a vendor, but I have never witnessed such thing from Brenda. Even though Brenda happens to be an Analyst for PSG, she has an holistic approach to every topic she covers on her blog. Her posts have helped me at times in understanding the concepts of SOA, EDA, BDA from a broader perspective. Her insights into the architecture of the product has been invaluable & what separates her from the rest is the fact she happened to be Chief Enterprise Architect with L.L. Bean, Inc.,. The analysis of Products - Open Source or any vendor in particular - has given me an head start into the architecture of that product.

I thank Brenda for taking her time in maintaining ElementalLinks & for sharing her thoughts with the rest of us on blogosphere. Keep them coming & wishing you the very best.

I also would like to thank James McGovern for his effort on trying to get various analysts on the series titled 'Analyzing the Analysts'.

Adobe Reader 7.0/6.0 Hacks

2006-06-01T13:06:00.000+05:30

You can hear any PDF instead of reading with Adobe Reader 7 .0 or 6.0. Yes, you read it correct, there are shortcuts for doing the same.

Here are some of the shortcuts:

To hear the entire 'Document' - Ctrl+shift+b
To hear only a particular 'Page'- Ctrl+shift+c
To stop hearing - Ctrl+shift+e
To resume hearing - Ctrl+shift+v

Now you can enjoy listening to all your favorite e-books.

MoBlogging: An Executive Summary

2006-05-30T12:21:00.000+05:30

What's Moblog?

Defn: A moblog, or a mobile blog, is an online record of anything you feel like sharing with the world, whether they want it or not. The difference between moblogging and regular blogging is that you use your phone or Pocket PC to post text or pictures.

Defn2: Mobile Blogging (also called moblogging) is the act of posting text and photos to a weblog from a mobile device. The element of reading weblogs via mobile devices is also gaining popularity.

Brief History of MoBlog

Earliest development occurred in Japan.
Stuart Woodward is believed to be the first person to post from an ordinary mobile device in Jan 2001
Moblogging gained much adoption in 2002.
Term “moblogging” was coined by Adam Greenfield in 2002.

Current Mobile Trends

Mobile phones/devices have a very significant role in our day-2-day affairs. Primarly, it connects an individual to the rest of the world anywhere anytime. These days Mobile phones provide an end user lot more features than just making calls & sending text msgs.
You can share your memories and conversational content – photos, videos, text messages, multimedia messages, and notes - into a chronology that you can easily browse, search, and share.
Mobile phones have replaced computers as the de facto e-mail terminal of choice for many Japanese who are not in technology, finance, engineering or other computer-intensive occupations. This is particularly true for the young, who most clearly prefer handsets to handhelds.

Context differences of blogging between mobile & PC:

Mobile: Living in the moment, multitasking, varying environment
PC: Longer attention span, more focused, rich input & formatting methods

Blogging Patterns

“I blog the instant moments first from my phone and return to them with the PC to edit them”
“I use the PC more for thought posts and the mobile mainly for pictures”
“I blog stuff I did not blog previously, since I can post, for example, when traveling”

Motricity's provides scores of games for millions of members stretched across several carriers and it wraps around specific games tools for rating and reviewing a title, for creating buddy lists of fellow gamers and for communicating to these groups via SMS.

TextAmerica is an online photo album or moblog site that allows you to take pictures & Videos from your digital camera or camera phone and post them to their site.

Buzznet.com is a photo sharing and journal community. The site features tools to create your own public or private homepage with integrated photoblog and journals. Buzznet also provide a rich set of API's based on XML-RPC and ATOM.

Google's Blogger Mobile lets you send photos and text straight to your blog while you're on-the-go. While Blogger Mobile is currently only available in the US.

Nokia provides a service called M-Blog for Nokia users to post the pictures & videos from their mobile phones. Nokia also provides an update to its cell phone blogging software – Lifeblog,

Six Apart has apparently purchased Splashblog, the mobile photosharing solution for handhelds.

Sony Ericsson that support Google Search and Blogger.

Cingular's new mobile blogging and social networking platform called Rabble.

Other Innovative Ideas

REXplorer is a rich interactive scavenger hunt designed to enhance the tourist experience for young adults through the fun and excitement of a public game using mobile technologies as a part of the Regensburg Experience1 (REX) Museum. The well-preserved medieval city of Regensburg (to become a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2006) serves as the game board for the competition.

MoBlogs - the Future of Distributed Learning and Distributed Learning Institutions.

Connectivism - Is a learning theory for the digital age. Learning has changed over the last several decades. The theories of behaviourism, cognitivism, and constructivism provide an effect view of learning in many environments. They fall short, however, when learning moves into informal, networked, technology-enabled arena.

eTravel Assitant for Backpackers - The aim of the project is to design an electronic travel assistant for backpackers and extend existing research methods so that they are more appropriate for mobile group research.

EarthCam adds a twist to the usual photo blog. With a paid subscription, $4.95 US a month at the time I wrote this, you can access Web cams around the world on your phone. You can also set up your own Web cam on your desktop computer, and view it on your phone. This could be useful for people who want to see their children during the day, or check on a pet.

Mobile P2P - I bet this would be the next 'big thing' to happen. Imagine the power of P2P with your PSP or XBox or any hand held device.

Disclamier: The information found in this summary on MoBlogging is aggregated from various resources & articles which were found on World Wide Web through Google Search. The content/idea/information belongs to respective owners & I don't claim any credit for them. This summary is meant for educational purposes only.

Quote of the Week

2006-05-10T10:42:00.000+05:30

"Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small _trivial_ project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision.

So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way _useful_ first, and then others will say "hey, that _almost_ works for me", and they'll get involved in the project. "

--Linus Torvalds

Found this interesting quote here.

Interesting post on REST

2006-05-02T18:51:00.000+05:30

I just stumbled on this interesting post titled 'How I explained REST to my wife' by Ryan Tomayko. The best past about the post is that Ryan explains the whole concept of Internet & its related technology in its latest avatar (read SOA) in a conversational manner. He covers the concepts of internet in the past & its limitations, their protocols and how things have changed over the passage of time in a layman's terms & drives the picture of SOA or to be more precise REST in a simple manner.

Google offers 3D modeling tool for free

2006-05-02T17:22:00.000+05:30

Few months ago while I was reading the Google's Official Blog I read this post. The post titled ' A new home for @Last Software ' was written by Jeff Martin, Product Marketing Manager of @Last Software. Google acquired Skecthup, which offers 3D modelling software & is now offering the same software in two versions - free & paid. I have been following Google for quite sometime now & their acquisitions of - Keyhole, Picasa, Writely & the most recent one Skecthup. What excites me is the stratergy of Google's Integration of these newly acquired services to their eco-system in a meaningful manner & offer them for free. I am eagerly waiting for Google to integrate Writely's Web Word Processor into their GMail service, so that I can have all my essential documents available anytime anywhere.

I was curious to know the Google's Acquisitions in the past, so I digged in a bit to get this post by William Slawski of 'SEO by the SEA' titled 'Google Acquisitions'. This post has an impressive trail of companies accquired by Google starting right from the acquisition of Deja.com in the year 2001 till @LastSoftware, 2006.

Yahoo! offers 'Tech' service

2006-05-02T12:59:00.000+05:30

Just hit this new 'Tech' service from Yahoo!. Now Yahoo is trying to compete with the mother of Technology site c|net.com. I am not sure whether Yahoo can match the kind of reviews & news on latest technology like CNET, but, competition is always good for the consumer. Don't u agree with that?

Via: Digg.com

Watch Banaglore Roads Live!

2006-04-26T16:19:00.000+05:30

Now you can watch 2 majors interesections of Bangalore live!. The 2 intersections are

Mekhri Circle - Bangalore North

Basaveshwara Circle - Bangalore West

Video Feeds from Sifymax.

P.S: Open this post in Internet Explorer.

Experimenting Play Tagger from Del.icio.us

2006-04-23T14:41:00.000+05:30

I found a JavaScript called 'Play Tagger' on Delicious sometime in Feb 2006. I had just saved it & never used the script, today I thot of experimenting the same on my blog and it works fine!

Water Under Water - The Thrill.mp3

James Blunt - Goodbye My Lover

James Blunt - You're Beautiful

Building a Behemoth

2006-03-27T14:30:00.000+05:30

Out-sourcing is a very common term that is very often associated with the IT industry. I am sure this term is valid to a certain extent with other industries as well. But, there are so many issues I have come across myself or heard from my friends about the software development process. Many companies in India spend enormous amount of resources [time, money & personnel] in getting the various certifications which are currently there. The most popular certification which many of them posses is Capability Maturity Model (CMM) which was developed by the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Despite having these certifications many of them fail to follow the core aspects which are clearly laid down in the CMM.

Now if you are thinking what has the title 'Building a Behemoth' got to do with Software Engineering & the IT industry in particular? I just happened to read 'How the world's biggest passenger jet is made' and then went through the following slides. I hope most of you would agree that IT industry has lots to learn from such challenges in order to overcome the numerous problems which we come across in our SDLC. Just by having mere certifications, things wouldn't look better unless they are implemented and practiced by one & all.

And for all those companies who don't follow any process nor any methodlogy in their software development process, then I am sure they are never gonna achieve the best.

Source: Rediff | Business Week