Ashish Prasad's Blog on Technology, Business and Personal Life

2012 - Gold Predictions

2012-01-07T20:13:00.000-08:00

1) Financial Post (January 7th, 2012) - Rising debt will lead to $10,000 gold.

Time to investigate WP7

2011-02-27T10:34:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about learning new technology for some time now. The regulars don't excite me that much. Recently, I came across this security article on NYT : Security to Ward Off Crime on Phones, where it says:

"...With smartphones outselling PCs for the first time — 421 million of the hand-held computers are expected to be sold worldwide this year, according to market analysts at IDC..."

One more thing to note is:

"..Symbian is the world’s most commonly used smartphone platform, but Nokia said this month that it would be replacing it over the next few years with Microsoft’s Windows Phone operating system..."

This tells me that people are going to smartphone market with great force, even the hackers..so why not a technology enthusiast like myself.

Question is which platform to start with: Microsoft's WP7 seems to be the obvious choice as I am already extremely familiar with Microsoft Development Toolkit. I hope to blog more about WP7 in coming weeks and month.

My first target is to create an WP7 app that authenticate to a web application and perform some fundamental tasks such as user management or page management.

Tracking Bolloywood Diet

2011-02-12T11:07:00.000-08:00

Salman Khan:

Salman thrived on 30 egg-whites, steamed vegetables, salmon, pomfret and chicken, and continues to do so. "Carbohydrates are a complete no-no. He only eats steamed and baked food. His diet comprises proteins like egg whites, fish and chicken. Link

Oil Predictions - 2011

2011-02-12T07:46:00.000-08:00

Barrons (12 Feb, 2011) - Whatever Happens in Egypt, Oil Will Hit $300 by 2020. Link. Today's close 85.28

Public Speaking Needs Rehearsal

2011-02-09T21:55:00.000-08:00

The other day, I was chatting with a gentleman who speaks often at technical events, especially on Microsoft technology. My takeaway from that conversation was: There is a great deal of rehearsal done on important public speaking events. People like Steve Jobs and other prominent public personalities *actually* do rehearse prior to their presentation. It's more or less like a 'show'.

I shouldn't have been that surprised to hear that, but I never really thought about it.

Indian Sensex Predictions - 2011

2011-01-27T20:04:00.000-08:00

Economic Times (2 March, 2011) - Sensex may fall to 14,000 rather than heading to 21,000: Shankar Sharma. Link

Business Standard (06 Feb, 2011) - Worst not yet over for stock mkt, may fall further: Experts. Link. Today's close 18008.15

Economic Times (28 JAN, 2011) - Sensex will lose 15% in 4 months as costs hit market: Birla Sun Life. Link

Indian Rupee Predictions - 2011

2011-01-11T07:18:00.000-08:00

I am going to track what Pundits say about Indian Rupee's valuation as compared with USD here:

1) Economic Times (11 JAN, 2011) - Rupee to appreciate to 42 levels against dollar by 2011-end: Leif Eskesen, HSBC. Link

2011 - Starting with good computer protection

2011-01-01T10:48:00.000-08:00

I've been looking for a good anti virus solution for my home computers for some time. I've had expired subscription of McAfee on one of the Desktops, and the free Avg / Avast antivirus on the others. The Norton had just expired on my new laptop.

Then, I found McAfee Total Protection 2011 at Futureshop for $24.99 for 3 PCs for one year subscription. I think it's $50 bucks off the regular price during the Holidays. If you do your math, 8 bucks (which is less than lunch money) gets me complete protection on one PC for one year; I thought that's a great deal. I pay close to $35 per month for Home ADT monitoring service, compared to that it's way cheaper, although those are apples and oranges. Well, what I am trying to say that we do pay for our home security, why not pay for online security. Being a security professional, I always advise friends and family to never download software from torrents site; you don't know what other stuff they bundle-in.

Hackers are always ahead in the game, they just have to be right once, and your identity and money is out of the window.

Does an antivirus like this shields you completely from online attacks? Probably not, but it's the step in the right direction! In my mind, we should spend on online security or else it can bite you back big time, and then you'd regret...Haven't the wise people said this before.."A Stitch in Time Saves Nine" :)

How I do my own Data Mining - Delicious

2010-12-29T20:16:00.000-08:00

What is Delicious

I've been using Delicious for last few years. For starters, Delicious is an online service for social bookmarking. I believe Delicious and Digg were the first few "online social services" to gain mass momentum. Delicious has been acquired by Yahoo sometimes ago. However, it looks like it's on the verge of closing down or moving to a new company.

How Delicious Work

Any good article I read on the Internet, I try to bookmark on Delicious with tags that I think are appropriate. Delicious makes it very easy to search or navigate through the tags.

Besides tags, a bookmark can have Title (which Delicious sometimes auto-populates), and also a place to store personal Notes. I generally copy-paste salient details from the article into the Notes. One can make the bookmark private, share with few people, or share with everyone. Most of my earlier bookmarks were public, now they are mostly private. I don't necessarily want people to know everything I read and note on Internet. So far I have 1,000 plus bookmarks on Delicious having plethora of topics including Technology, Business, Programing, Education, Kids, Health, etc.

Delicious as Personal Data Warehouse

I often refer to these bookmarks when I blog on a subject. They generally work as my personal Datawarehouse. In fact after I get to collect a few bookmarks on a specific topic, it often leads to a blog. This phenomenon is very predictable, I bookmark articles that I like, then mind takes a few days to synthesize them; if they start to make sense and I have time at my disposal I convert them to a blog. Sounds simple :)

What I have Collected so far
I believe the first page I visit in morning is wsj.com. Naturally I have the most of the articles from this site. Here is a screenshot of my top tags:

ASP.Net Timeouts - How to fix that

2010-12-24T09:34:00.000-08:00

Ever seen these two errors on ASP.Net application:

1) “Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding”.

2) “Request timed out”.

These errors are in a way related. There are two timeout thresholds available in the life cycle of an ASP.Net request. First: The amount of time taken to execute an SQL Query, Second: The overall time taken to complete the request. Error conditions can happen if your application takes more time on any of the two operations.

Overall Request Time Span (default 110 seconds)
= Time spent prior to SQL execution
+ Time spent during SQL execution (default 30 seconds)
+ Time spent after SQL execution

For a snappy application, ideally each of the above components should be completed in few 100 milliseconds, with overall time spent taking less than a second.

However, in poorly designed applications, any of the segments can take several seconds to complete. For example, what if your SQL execution takes more than 30 seconds. In this case, your command object will throw “Timeout Expired” exception. Ideally, you should wrap try catch around your SQLs or better the business layer invoking those data calls and should deal with the errors.

Besides SQL Timeouts, an application can spend time doing other work, for e.g. waiting for a web service to respond or doing complex calculations, reading a large file, in which case the overall time allocated to execute and complete the request may exceed the default timeout (110 seconds). If that happens ASP.Net will yank that request and return a response “Request Timed Out” response back to the client (browser).

Solution:

1) In order to fix “Timeout expired” issue, you can need to bump the SqlCommand.CommandTimeout property from default of 30 seconds to something as desired by your application.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to configure that using web.config connection string. You should probably create a new setting in web.config for CommandTimeOut and use that in your data layer while executing the actual SQL commands.

2) In order to fix “Request Timed Out” problem, you can simply edit the web.config file and bump the httpRuntime.executionTimeOut property. The default value is 110 seconds:

Caveat:

As I mentioned earlier, these two errors are related. For example, if you set the CommandTimeOut to be 240 seconds, and executionTimeout to be 180 seconds, and query takes roughly 200 seconds to execute. In this case, the executionTimeout threshold will reach first, thereby causing ASP.Net to yank that request, even though the CommandTimeOut has not expired yet.

A general rule of thumb: ExecutionTimeOut should be equal to or preferably more than CommandTimeOut.

Summary:

SqlCommand.CommandTimeout and httpRuntime.executionTimeOut can be used to fix two common ASP.Net timeout issues. However, I personally think web applications should be snappy, and ideally one should not bother with any of the two settings.

If you are reading this blog and trying to use the recommendations, I’d strongly recommend to step back and take another look into the app and fix the real problem, you are just treating the symptom, not the root cause.

Dude, I've seen slumdog!!

2010-12-21T16:21:00.000-08:00

Last week I was at a Christmas Party, where I happened to sit next to a gentleman born and raised in Vancouver. I was in a decent suite and so was he, you know....the typical ones for such occasions. That restaurant was called Anduccis, one of the finest Italian Restaurant of Vancouver. I believe we had never met before; and obviously we had to be on the dining table for over an hour, so I started looking for a common topic to talk about. If you know me, I am someone who can talk only so much on local sports or politics. I like talking more about technology and contemporary business trends. Four countries that interest me are India, China, US and Canada. I am so keen to know more about Japan and Europe in general. That's not the point though :)

Much to my surprise, we had lots of stuff to talk about. We started with how we both like living in Vancouver. He'd get a sense of relief when his plane lands in Vancouver. With that we talked about living (and not living) in US, travelling, and finally about airports. I mentioned to him about the new International Airport in New Delhi. I said Vancouver was no comparison to the Terminal 3 at New Delhi, in fact Heathrow looked old as well.

I went ahead and said, given the poverty in India, the divide between the rich and the poor, that airport is a testimony on how quickly India is catching up with the west. I compared how Vancouver made a great deal of the Canada Line Construction, the new skytrain connecting Vancouver Airport to Vancouver Downtown, almost costing about $2 billion and taking 5 years or so. In comparison, India spent close to $2.7 billion on the new airport and took about 3 years to complete. What I was trying to get was that, now India spends at or above world-levels on infrastructure projects. The gentleman agreed with me. Then I asked, do you have a sense of the poverty-levels in India...in a way Indians being so poor compared to developed world-standards, the country as a whole is spending at the developed-world levels.

He said, "Yes, I know about India's poverty, I've seen Slumdog....". I paused for a second after that statement, didn't know what to say. Slumdog has shown so much of the dark and grim side of India, that people now use that movie as a reference to depict the sad part of India. Is it a bad thing though? I suppose world should know what India is and what it is not. In my mind, the movie did a good job letting the rest of the world know about India. I think India needs to come clean in front of the world, keep up with the pace, at the same time take care of the 'common man'.

BTW, that was an interesting conversation which ended in about 90 minutes, as me and my wife needed to rush out to pick up the kids.

Did I mention that the food was awesome :), thanks a lot to the Host and the Chef (I believe his name is Greg).

Heathrow does 1,300 flights a day

2010-12-21T16:08:00.000-08:00

According to WSJ, Heathrow airport in London does about 1,300 flights a day including arrivals and departures. In my mind, that's a lot of flights; in fact Heathrow is the world's busiest airport.

Well, that 1,300 number is on a busy day, still if I do my math, 1,300 a day means about 54 flights an hour, that's almost one flight a minute. That's a lot to handle. Hats off to the airport operations, as I happen to travel through that airport for the getting so much accomplished. I pass through Heathrow, at least once a year with family. Safety comes first :) :)

Online Subscriber Statistics

2010-12-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

Here is the blog where I intend to capture subscriber statistics of the various online services. The table is work in progress, I will update as I gather information:

Are there Barriers to Entry in Mobile Games?

2010-12-20T12:02:00.000-08:00

Having worked in the field of software development for years, I’ve started to think that the barriers to entry in this field is slowly fading away. With some sort of training, one can start coding in no time. There is no need to have formal education in software engineering to be able to get a job and do something meaningful. On top of that, there is so much of rich content on the web to learn; most of the content is free. So much of open source code to copy-paste from.

Anyways, I was starting to think that video games (especially the mobile games) are at the same level. But I must say, ever since I started playing Angry Birds on my iPhone or iTouch my view points are changing quickly. It’s just not the visual and the audio of the game that’s impressive and difficult for non-serious ones to accomplish, there is a whole lot of Physics involved. All those shooting birds reminded me of the physics trajectory questions I used to solve in grade 12, especially to prepare for the IIT-JEE (one of the hardest to crack, I happened to pass that ) exams in India.

The way those planks fall, the strength and direction in which you shoot the birds, it’s all physics. These guys must have been through a lot of thinking to present such a wonderful experience in the game. I can clearly see that the folks need to be way smarter compared to any other run of the mill programmer. There’s definitely barriers to entry here.

I am starting to wonder if there are any modeling tools available to make such things easier for game developers. If I get time, I’d go and take some classes on mobile gaming, just to know how these guys are able to pull off such great visuals and awesome reflexes. Great Job!!!

Research and Development Budget of Top Technology Companies

2010-12-18T20:03:00.000-08:00

I'd like to collect Research and Development budget of world's top technology companies. This spreadsheet will be work in progress; I will update as I gather more data.

Portable Gaming Devices Statistics - By Units Sold So Far

2010-12-14T10:50:00.000-08:00

By now, you've probably figured out that I am the guy with lots of stats. I like them because them help put things in perspective. During my morning run of news hunt, came across an article on WSJ about portable gaming device market, where do the players stand. Based on that decided to do some more research to get the complete picture. Below are some of the findings:

iOS is at the top of the stack, but I believe Android is catching up too. One thing to note here is that PC shipment for one year is probably more than the total of all the portable devices. That's where Mr. Softy (Microsoft) gets all the money from :)

Technology Market Projections - next 3 years

2010-12-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

I'd like to dedicate an entire blog on technology-market-projections that pop-up in news from time to time, ranging from Tablets, Cloud, Mobile-Ad, Mobile-App, Location Based Services, Smart Phone, Social Apps, and so on. Often times one would hear demand for such and such thing is going to double the next year. It's very hard to catch-up with these projections from the Industry pundits.

Being a technology professional, I'd like to know which is hot, what's upcoming and what's phasing out; Don't want to stuck doing something that's going to become obsolete soon.

As a starting point, I'd like to start recording here in this blog as I find them, and we can go from there:

eBook Rental - Does it make sense?

2010-12-10T09:56:00.001-08:00

Lately, I have been thinking about the price plunge on eBooks. Most of the Best Sellers are available under 10 bucks, that's the cost of couple of coffee at Starbucks; let's just say one and a half, depending on what you order :)

I am generally thrilled by the fact that cheaper options to buy books are available. On top of price drop, books can be downloaded in seconds, and can be carried out around with breeze. Multi-device support is a big benefit as well. I am thrilled to have so many options available. Well well well..., it's a different story that I ended up buying the crappy Kobo eBook reader. I plan to dump that a get a color version when it becomes available.

Anyways, the drop in price made me interested in variety of books, and quickly bloated my wishlist; Mainly because I can get those books very easily, without making a trip to the bookstore or ordering online and waiting days for delivery.

However, there is a downside to it as well. Those 10 bucks can add up quickly. Besides, not every book is 10 buck, only the bestsellers. The other thing that interests me also is the eMagazines. I'd love to subscribe to a few, and add up quickly as well.

Keeping the cost in mind, I was thinking there is a need for eBook rental service, where you rent something for say $1.99, keep it for couple of weeks, read it, and electronically return (expire) it. If you like, you can buy permanent copy as well.

The biggest advantage of this business model is that it opens up the eBooks to a mass market, thereby increasing volumes. This is a proven business model in Hollywood.

My prediction is this business model will come sooner than later, probably around late 2011. How about Netflix for eBooks. Anyone willing to fund my idea :)

Denial Of Service Attack - (still) Piece of Cake

2010-12-09T10:13:00.001-08:00

Ever since the Wikileaks founder has been apprehended, there has been reports all across of "Rise of Hackitivists". Companies like MasterCard, Visa and PayPal received plenty of DoS (Denial Of Service Attack). I don't think the attacks resulted in stealing of digital information, it was instead crippling of online services.

BTW, Hackivist is a new term referring to the Hacker community dedicated for some sort of a social cause, unlike the other group of hackers, which are mostly after money.

It's surprising to note that communities like these were able to organize and launch attacks of this magnitude within hours notice. It almost feels like that performing DoS is still piece of cake for the dedicated ones. What further surprises me is that these companies are still so vulnerable. I believe it's more due to the nature of attack. These days the DoS attacks are mostly distributed, meaning they can originate from anywhere in the world. It would be very difficult for any protecting device to differentiate from genuine visitors to the web site from the Hackers. The web requests from DoS probably look same as any other web request.

There was an interesting article on New York Times few months ago, "What’s for Sale on the Bug Market?", that tells how easy it is loan computing time from hackers and do whatever you like. These hackers have little bots (or Trojans) installed on millions of computers across the world. Once you read that article on how your (average citizen's) personal informations are traded including their computing, you wouldn't be that surprised how these Hackivists are able to pull attacks like these.

What's the solution: Have a good anti-virus installed on your computer to start with. Don't visit sites that you don't know much about. Do not open suspicious emails.

Why People Walk on Roads in India (and not off the road)

2010-10-12T22:50:00.000-07:00

Bicycles, people, animals (Goat, Cow, Buffalo, Camel, Dog, Elephant) often share road with motor vehicles in India. I used to always wonder why they walk on the road. Don't they feel scared sharing the same road with vehicles.

So far I have the answer for "Why". I think it' because there are no sidewalks (should have been obvious), and a paved road is so easier to walk or bike as compared to muddy road shoulders. I still don't know why people don't feel scared.

I often do the same, walk on the road and not worry about any traffic. I believe there is a great degree of trust amongst the road users in India. It's very true, one driver can assess other driver's move very quickly.

People also use a lot of sign languages to communicate as well. Sometimes, just turning on the head-light means, let me go first. Pedestrians show their palm to make oncoming traffic stop and give them the way.

I don't know the statistics of per capita accidents in India vs. the developed world. I believe somehow things work out in India, which is not a bad thing anyways :)

KBC 4

2010-10-11T18:35:00.000-07:00

Last night was the grand opening of KBC 4 on Sony TV. Humbly, I'd like to admit that this was the first KBC show I ever seen. Oh boy, it was splendid; Watching on a larger LCD TV made it even more richer.

I was watching the show with my entire family including my Mom, who's a regular and an avid Indian TV soap consumer. My Dad was watching too, who is generally opposed to watching TV.

Having out of India for so long, I wasn't knowing how popular the show's been here in India. My Mom says when it came for the first time in 2000, roads gotten quieter around the show times. This reminded me of some of the popular TV shows from yester-years: Ramayan, Buniyad, Mahabarart.

The story of the participants seems touching, especially with Big B's soft calming voice in pure Hindi on their feelings. However, at times it sounded funny, Big B sympathizing with the participants, but at the same time him charging crores for a single episode. But that's life..rich and poor....fortunates and not so fortunates.

Anyways, looking forward to the second episode tonight.

India Trip - Day 1, New Delhi International Airport

2010-10-10T16:35:00.000-07:00

We landed close to 2 AM. By this time we had lost sense of time zone, we were all fully awake and excited to be in India. Kids were hoping to see grand parents in New Delhi. I told them..not so soon, we still have one more flight to take in the morning...their excitement faded away momentarily, but when I told them it was going to be an hour flight, they were in-game again.

The new terminal at New Delhi International airport was bliss, couldn't believe my eyes that such a thing could exist in India. The carpet was brand new and very clean, decorations and the paintings on the wall had a traditional touch.

What I really liked were the bathrooms. The entrance to bathrooms had beautiful traditional pictures of Indian man and women. It indeed was very beautiful. I believe there were one to two service personnel on each of the bathrooms to keep them clean and spotless.

Since it was morning, we wanted to brush our teeth and feel fresh, so we did exactly that..along with a clean shave. Within a minute of leaving the mess on the washbasin, the service guy watching us from few feet away, cleaned up the spot, as if nothing had happened. I felt a bit sorry for the guy, but then thought travelers need good service and locals need jobs. I think it plays out nicely at the end.

Our immigration check was pretty quick, within an hour of landing we had all our luggage in hand and ready to sink teeth on some delicious Indian food.

India Trip - Day 1, Shanghai stop over

2010-10-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

Our stop-over from North America was Shanghai, China. The airport didn't look any different from last time I've been there, although a lot less busy.

It was great to lay feet on the ground especially after a flight of 11.5 hours. Kids were exhausted from the flight, and were pretty relieved to just walk around the terminal.

That was about 5-6 hours lay over, we were all tired of listening to flight announcements every few minutes, although it was lot soothing....I overheard someone else saying ..it's like listening to kids lullabies, you might fall sleep....Indeed, their slow and soft announcements were pleasing.

It's hard to be vegetarian! Many can relate to it. After checking menu from couple of restaurants in the terminal, we settled on Bamboo shoot noodle soup (without egg). It took a while to get the order completed, but the hot soup was worth the wait.

Our next flight was going to be about 6 hours long, and we were all going to sleep through it. So decided to eat enough in the airport itself so we don't need to keep awake for food to be served in flight. We all knew we could count on some really tasty food when we land in India.

The flight was not too long, we all pretty much slept through it.

India Trip - Day 1

2010-10-10T16:08:00.000-07:00

We are on another family vacation to India from North America. Lots to observe and lot to write. My boys were asked my their teachers to maintain a journal of their activities and share with the class when they come back. They were asked to write about 3 times a week.

I might follow them as well, especially there is nothing to do waking up at 3 AM due to Jet lag.

I like what the teacher said, not many of your classmates will have the opportunity to travel outside their country, so anything you could share about your experience in India would be great!

I agree, while growing up in India, I never had a chance to visit outside India. Must say, we did travel a lot within India. Thanks to Dad's LTC, not sure what that acronym stood for, but his company paid for family air-fare every couple of years to anywhere in India.

Why I like Costco

2010-05-17T13:50:00.000-07:00

I must admit that our entire family is in love with Costco. I used to think Costco didn't keep good stuff (especially vegetables, being vegetarian), so we avoided Costco for a long time. We happen to have Costco within few miles for last 5 years at least, and we didn't start going there until 2 months ago. Duh...What were we thinking?

Here is what I like about Costco:

1) Good pricing; I won't say cheap, as at the end of the day we shell out more dough than the average grocery store.

2) No useless stuff like toys or variety clothing. It's good that they don't have toys, as kids then don't bother us. I believe Costco figured out, why to get their customers to buy stuff that they don't need. Instead, let them buy what they really want.

3) Short store hours - Wait, is it a good thing from a shopper's perspective? Yes, from my perspective. There is no need to keep the store open for 12 hours, paying employees, wasting electricity. Why not open it for limited time, those who need to come will definitely come.

Just an example, I didn't know that store opened at 9:30 AM on Saturday; last week we continued to Costco right after kids dentist appointment, which got over by 8:45 AM. Obviously, store wasn't opened, no worries, we drove home and came back next morning a 10.

This was our second time that the store was closed for us, but that didn't deter us from returning.

4) Free technical support for 90 days - Although I don't need technical support on electronics, but I figure its a good thing to have for non-technical folks.

5) Free food sampling - I love to sample their food, gives me energy to keep going and a way to try new stuff.

6) Friendly (and mature) staff. I am happy to see the store is not being run by bunch of teenagers. I personally don't have anything against teenagers, after I all I was one amongst them; it's that I don't get enough information from them on products or any other issues. They generally seem to be lost in their thought.

7) No marketing - Instead they pass the savings to customer.

What I don't like about them:

1) Upgrade to expensive membership - Sometimes they push too much to upgrade to higher level membership card, which I think is not needed.

2) Online store - Looks pretty old and unfriendly. Hard to research on products. I would say, Wal-Mart's online store is the same, much better at Best Buy.

3) Parking - Need to be really careful with kids, as there are trucks and mini-vans backing all the time. I suppose a busy store is a good thing.

Does Facebook need Kernel / File System type security?

2010-05-06T09:48:00.000-07:00

For last couple of days, the tech Blogosphere has been buzzing with yet another security glitch on Facebook. This time it exposed chat and friend request.

Having background in security, storage and kernel space, I like to question if Facebook needs to implement kernel level security, or file system type security, e.g. NTFS Access Control List, with ACLS, DACLS and SACLS. As a side note: they are nasty to comprehend and make use of, but well worth it :)

Facebook is being tout as a platform. We all remember that keynote speech by Mark Zuckerberg in the summer of 2007 during f8 conference.

Inherent to each platform is a sound security system, besides other features like scheduling, prioritization, encryption, etc. Although, Facebook is not 'any' run of the mill computer system platform, in fact it's a very specialized, one of a kind, social platform geared towards our digital lifestyle; definitely not all features are needed, however, security is a must.

We have heard many security related horror stories on the Microsoft platform, but not much from their file system security. Microsoft being one of the investor on Facebook, I think Facebook should consult Microsoft and the likes in Linux world to rethink security, and build from the ground up. This is exactly what Microsoft did, when it implemented IIS 6.0 at the kernel level. Remember that Microsoft's Trustworthy Computing Initiative.

Sport Check - Error - Store Closed

2010-05-02T20:31:00.001-07:00

That was a Sunday night, we were all ready to close the weekend. I was going to have one last check on news; kids were around the computer as they wanted to find score on NHL games. I was on The Huffington Post. It so happened, we were looking for pair of good running shoes for the kids. Sport Check's ad was on the home page of the site. It got mine and my kids attention, mine because it had 50% off, kids because some shoes looked cool.

Anyways, mesmerized with the banner ad, we clicked along. Much to my surprise, it resulted in an error page. Being someone working in the technology space, I couldn't resist blogging about it. It looked like the IP - Geolocation mapping indicated that I was entering the site from Quebec, Canada. Clearly, I wasn't. I am surprised, this is 2010 and some of the companies haven't still figured the IP Geo tagging yet.

In any case, that web fiasco is not going to stop me from getting me a good deal on pair of shoes. I'd still checkout their website, perhaps a bit later. For now, the shoe buying is pushed to the next weekend. :)

BTW, San Jose Sharks won 4-3 over Detroit Red Wings, and kids liked that.

"Flash is the number one reason Macs crash" - Steve Jobs

2010-04-29T10:07:00.001-07:00

Found CNET's dissection of Steve Job's open letter called "Thoughts on Flash". I tend to agree with Job's comments, but the one I can relate most is on reliability of Flash on Mac.

I happen to own an iMac, which I primarily use as video device for my home gym (I occasionally use for software testing as well). The Apple remote comes very handy in shuffling through the video library. However, anytime I watch video on YouTube either on Safari or Firefox, Mac shuts down in about 45 minutes due to over heating. I even upgraded to the latest Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, still no joy. It's frustrating to see the machine shutting down in the middle of a workout. The other application that causes it to shutdown is Boxee, loos like that uses flash as well. Having said that, XMBC runs pretty smoothly.

Mr Jobs - Don't just crib about Flash...give us an alternative to that :)

Twitter Stats

2010-04-16T14:45:00.000-07:00

Obtained the following stats from an article at Data Center Knowledge:

* Twitter’s traffic grew 752 percent in 2008 and 1,358 percent in 2009.
* The service now has more than 105 million users, who send 55 million tweets daily.
* The velocity of the Tweetsream reaches a daily peak of 1,000 messages per second.
* Twitter users conduct 600 million searches per day.
* About 75 percent of traffic is from third-party services using the Twitter API, with the remaining 25 perfcent from the Twitter.com web site.

Chirp 2010: Scaling Twitter

View more presentations from John Adams.

Karma really does exist!

2010-03-28T14:04:00.000-07:00

Recently, I watched two TV programs where people mentioned about Karma, so I thought to mention about them. I personally believe in Karma. What you today comes back to you tomorrow, good or bad. Most important aspect of Karma is that good is not negated by bad and vice-versa. For example, if we do good, good comes back to us, likewise, bad gets bad back.

So, always do good.

Undercover Boss:
One of the employee who wanted to save money for his marriage was rewarded by the undercover boss for positive outlook and respect for work. The guy in picture is the employee who spoke those words:

Here is the link to the full episode.

Ryan Seacrest on Oprah
The other person mentioning the same this was Ryan Seacrest at Oprah's show. Here is what he said:

"...Oprah- you have to believe in something greater than yourself otherwise you can’t do anything greater than yourself. Oprah asks Ryan what he believes in.

Ryan - karma, what you put out you get back, maybe not today or tomorrow but it comes. Its for real, says Oprah...."

Billion Dollar Valuations

2010-03-28T10:56:00.000-07:00

I'd like to track businesses that reach $1 billion mark. It's fascinating to know the secret sauce behind the success. Few comes to mind:

P&G Febreze
P&G Turns Febreze Into a $1 Billion Brand. Source: WSJ (MARCH 8, 2011). P&G has 24 brands (e.g. Pampers diapers, Tide detergent and Pantene shampoo) with over 1 Billion dollar valuations. They contribute over 70% of overall revenue of $79 Billion from total of 250 brands.

Movie - Avatar
Every one knows Avatar has crossed Billion Dollar mark very quickly. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, it is currently listed at around $2.7 Billion dollars in box office revenue worldwide. This number is just box office revenue, merchandise sales and other revenue will take the numbers further high.

Sports - IPL (Indian Premier League, the likes of NFL, NBA, NHL for Indian Cricket)
IPL started just two years ago, and into third season, the ecosystem around IPL is estimated to be $4.3 Billion. Granted IPL must have cannibalized other forms of cricket in India and elsewhere, but it's definitely a big achievement.

TV Show - SpongeBob SquarePants
Last night, I watched the Nightline show on abc, where they talked about the success of popular kids TV show SpongeBob SquarePants. Here is an excerpt for the related online article:

"..The cartoon has been going 10 years now. It's broadcast around the world in 25 languages and it has spawned an entire line of toys, clothing and food, with total sales estimated at nearly $1 billion a year..."

To be continued...

Life as a Healthcare CIO: Purging Files

2010-03-18T11:02:00.000-07:00

Life as a Healthcare CIO: Purging Files

Here is the question asked in the above post:
>>How should organizations approach the complex of problem of what data to save and what to delete?

My response:

I'd like to offer a philosophical response to your current dilemma.

I tend to like your idea of giving responsibility to user to manage their own quota. If you compare the user’s behaviour in UGC (User Generated Content) web sites such as YouTube, Digg, Delicious, Flickr, Wikipedia, etc., users have the responsibility to manage their own content. They know exactly how to "Title" their content, what sort of "Tags" to add, and so on.

There was a study (I don't remember the details) that tells technology adoption (especially web based) by corporate lags behind consumer. It usually takes over 2-3 years for a mainstream consumer technology to become parts and parcel of corporate intranet portals. Remember those CEO's monthly messages in your voice mail; thankfully those things are being replaced by tweets, blogs or status updates n Facebook type app.

What I am trying to get here is, eventually the sense of responsibility will come to corporate users on the matter of content creation, promotion, associations (tagging), archival, etc. It's better to gear them up from now and make them ILM (Information Lifecycle Management) aware.

Microsoft.Net Security Blog - Or Is It?

2010-03-16T16:22:00.000-07:00

The other day, I was looking around for good articles on .Net security architecture, and stumbled upon Microsoft's official .Net security blog.

I was very surprised to note that the blog was hardly up to date. It had just one entry in 2010, then few in Nov 09, then in June 09. What I was after was new stuff in .Net 4.0 from security's point of view, looks like I am going to look elsewhere to get more info.

Is it time for “I am an iPhone”, and “I am an Android” ad campaign?

2010-03-15T16:18:00.000-07:00

Came across this very interesting article on NYT “Apple’s Spat with Google Is Getting Personal”. It looks like not only the rivalry between the two Silicon Valley giants is heating up at the company level, it's getting personal too; specifically between Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs. Once friends, worked hard to bring Google apps to iPhone in the beginning; but not any more. Apple thinks Google has betrayed by copying the multi-touch concept. Apple once even warned about suing Google in a meeting between company executives. Sure enough, Apple has up the ante and sued HTC, the maker of Android based mobile devices.

One more thing to note in this 4 page long article was the brief mention or lack thereof Microsoft. It's not that surprising after all. Mr. Softy is so behind in the mobile race.

Does this give enough reasons for Apple to start "I am iPhone" - "I am Android" ad campaign against Google? I personally think it won't, but who knows.

In any case, Apple beware, it might boomerang this time!

Self-powered sensors - MIT Research

2010-03-13T07:58:00.000-08:00

Self-powered sensors

I have a feeling this decade is going to be huge on energy innovations. 2010 has started with a big bang, some of the early indications are beginning to unravel. Bloom Box is making waves, WSJ is saying changing batteries is going to be a thing of the past. And then, I stumbled upon this very interesting research from MIT, where they are talking about generating and storing energy from just about anything, perhaps by rubbing hands; that sounds more like a magic trick, well, not quite.

MIT researchers are working on to capture energy from minor temperature differences between the device and the surrounding air or body temperature. If successful, this technology can be used to power all sorts of devices; ranging from everyday items as flash lights and mobile phones, to sophisticated medical devices implanted in the body. I am very excited about this research, hope it becomes commercially available soon, and best at an affordable price for everyone around the world to buy.

I believe the era of energy boom has begun, and we all need to find out how to benefit from it.

Social Networking and Video games stats

2010-03-13T06:58:00.000-08:00

Came across this interesting article on Market Watch about the latest trends in Video Game industry. There is curiosity in the industry about the next console to fuel growth in gaming. However, the article tells that the next console is already here, something that you've already been using; it's called "social networking". Some quick stats on user base vs. users playing games:

*Social Networking User Base*
Site	Monthly Users	Gaming
Facebook	400 million	200 million
Myspace	100 million	N/A
Hi5	50 million	N/A

Generally speaking, the article suggests that there is lot of potential on these platforms, the production costs are low and there is great flexibility to modify the games on the fly:

*Game development stats*
Game	Time to develop	Cost
Call of Duty	2 years	$100 million
FarmVille	7 weeks	N/A

Another staggering figure is the market valuation of Zynga, the maker of FarmVille and Mafia Wars; this article estimate the number to be whopping $1.5B.

I am no gamer by any chance, but sure will try either FarmVille or Mafia Wars on Facebook...some day.

Contrasting Amazon and Barnes & Noble's eReader and Market Cap

2010-02-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

I've been looking to buy an eBook reader for a while, been pushing the decision till iPad's announcement. I am usually not the very first adopters of technology, although trail closely behind. I happened to buy one of the HP iPAQ way back in 2003 or so for over $650; still waiting for it to die, currently works as a mp3 player for the home theater. Anyways, like many, I am disappointed with iPad, primarily due to lack of e-Ink screen and poor battery life.

I started exploring other eReaders in the market, such as, Kindle, Sony's Digital Reader, and Barnes & Nobel's Nook. They all have their pluses and minuses, but they are much better for reading compared to laptop, desktop, netbook, iTouch, iPhone or even iPad.

The above is not what I wanted to write in this blog. As you can guess from my previous blogs, besides technology, I have a keen interest in the financial markets. I've been noticing that since iPad announcement, Apple's stock has had a hair-cut for about 10%, from around $210 to $190; however, at the same time, Amazon's stock went up about the same percentage, $120 to $130. This morning, I wanted to see how's Amazon doing; it was actually down about 10 bucks. But's that's not what I wanted to write, keep reading.

I was shocked to see the market cap of Barnes & Noble as compared with Amazon, the ratio is 1 to 50, B&N being $1B, and Amazon at $50B. That's an astounding number, given how people are comparing their products on the same level (Kindle and Nook); essentially, Amazon can have Barnes & Noble for breakfast...just kidding :)

See the screen shot from Google Finance:

Chrome OS - Is Google Shooting Itself in The Foot?

2009-11-19T14:22:00.000-08:00

Google announced today that Chrome OS is now open source. I had heard little about Chrome OS prior to this announcement. Out of curiosity, went ahead to check it out.

I was surprised to find it had no ability to store or access data locally. It's meant for the cloud, meaning this is simply a fast booting machine with a browser built-in. All your data is on the cloud.

Wait a second....Does that mean I can't hookup my iPod or USB device to play media? I can't even run BitTorrent to download anything from web. What is it then, sounds to be worse than a real browser? Also, you need special hardware to run it. What's the point of this. Hmmm..what happens with no internet connection?

So many questions...will have to wait and watch when this becomes available in late 2010. I have a feeling this may not be successful.

Jumpbox - Open Source In A File

2009-10-25T19:13:00.000-07:00

Recently, I was trying to experiment with some of the open source solutions such as Drupal, Joomla and Sugar CRM. They are all pretty popular in their own space; although I must say they can be extremely painful to install and configure, especially for someone coming from Microsoft world. You could be pulling out hair for a long time. Do I need Windows or Linux as OS? What about a database? Perl or Python? I don't want to answer any of those questions.

Gone are those days, where you are struggling with myriad of Linux distributions and packages to try an open source product. Here comes Jumpbox, an all-in-a-box solution in a virtual disk. All you need is free VMWare and a copy of the VM image from Jumpbox. The image file is usually not that large. So far, I've got Joomla and Drupla installed and running in minutes. Installation is a breeze, and most of them require simply 256 MB of RAM to run.

Needless to say, I am still struggling with the further configuration of these products, which is another story; at least I am one step ahead in the game, thanks to Jumpbox.

Andy Jordan's Tech Diary: Online Hookups Get Geo-Aware. - WSJ.com

2009-04-12T16:48:00.000-07:00

Andy Jordan's Tech Diary: Online Hookups Get Geo-Aware. - WSJ.com

Saw this video about the power of "location based services" LBS on WSJ. I have a feeling LBS will sooner or later be the next sensation in the social networking space. As true with most of the computer technologies, they usually start with retail consumers, and then find its way into the corporate world. From just being a service to hookup like minded people in the near vicinity, it is very likely that LBS may become the next thing to perform trade in the neighborhood.

Listen up quietly: I am giving out a business idea. What if I there is an online LBS service that can list the handyman in the neighborhood. Suppose I am in need of a plumber to fix my kitchen sink, all I need to do is check on my mobile phone for a plumber near me. I will post the job, and hopefully get couple of bids in few minutes. Based on previous ratings, I will pick the best person to get the job done in the best price I want. The guy will come and get the job done. More than likely, I will pay through the online system, and give a rating. Craigslist is so passe.

Anyone willing to monetize this idea of Craigslist 2.0?

Ding-dong, DRM Is Dead — But Here Comes Variable Pricing - Giga OM

2009-04-07T23:17:00.000-07:00

Ding-dong, DRM Is Dead — But Here Comes Variable Pricing - By Giga OM:

Here is my take on the subject:

"Variable pricing is not uncommon in entertainment (or for that matter, in any industry). Retailers like Wal-Mart and the likes always sell DVDs with different pricing. On the extreme end, the eBay model is all about variable pricing…it’s actually auction. I hope we don’t see mp3s being auctioned on iTunes, although that’s a selling model too, where buyer bids and pays what he/she likes."

Embedded vs. In-Memory vs. Server Databases

2009-03-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

Software developers often interact with server oriented databases. However, there are at least two other types of databases, embedded and in-memory, which are less known to the software developer community. Here are the three types I would like to broadly classify the databases into:

a) Server Centric: They usually require a separate installation of the database server component. These are the most common types of databases, for example, SQL Server, Oracle, MySQL, Postgres, DB2, and so on. The database engine of these databases are hosted in a separate process. The applications trying to access data in these databases need to first connect using a database connectivity technology such as ODBC, OLE DB, ADO.Net, etc., and then execute SQL commands. The actual execution of the SQL queries are performed by the database engine.

b) Embedded: These databases do not require installation of any database components; often they are called as server-less or embedded databases. Some examples are SQLite, Firebird, MS Access, Derby, etc. The applications making use of these databases can create and manipulate databases from within their application itself, without requiring any additional software to be installed. These databases support SQL types command. There advantage is that they are easy to setup and require very little maintenance.

c) In-memory: These are the fastest of the breed. The database engine becomes part of the application accessing the database. Few common in-memory databases are Berkley DB, Microsoft's ESENT, Perst, etc. In order to make the data access faster, these databases do not provide support for SQL type command. In any other database type, the support of SQL forces additional layer of parsing to perform data access, and hence make them slower as compared with in-memory datavase. In fact, applications are required to use special APIs to access and manipulate data.

The in-memory databases are hardest to implement, although they have the best performance. However, there are wrappers available to ease out the development process, but still they do require additional work on the developer's end.

Delicious vs. Blogger

2009-03-29T20:36:00.000-07:00

I am an avid Delicious user. I bookmark a lot of content on Delicious. Half of my content are technical stuff (software, technology, etc.), and the other half are business news (trends, strategy, analysis, etc.). The business bookmarks are primarily from WSJ.

The other day, as usual I was half way through an article on WSJ; and was getting ready to bookmark that on Delicious. My wife popped up from behind and asked if I ever read the articles bookmarked on Delicious. That made me ponder, I hate to say, as usual she was right this time as well. I hardly go back and read them, although I do refer to technical articles from time to time, but not on the business ones.

From now on, I am planning to add the business articles in my blog as opposed to just stuffing them on delicious. While delicious is painless to use, blog requires some effort to come up with the right choice of words. Will see how it goes.

Bypassing Enterprise Security Through Firefox Extensions

2009-03-29T09:22:00.000-07:00

Firefox is gaining momentum in terms of its install base. Most corporates are installing this browser on their typical desktop image. In a typical enterprise environment, a user's desktop is quite locked down. The person cannot install any software as such; has pre defined set of mapped drives, remote backup software, anti virus, and any other enterprise application, all pre installed.

However, there is one catch. Firefox allows extensions to be downloaded and installed without requiring any special permissions. In theory, an enterprise user can download his/her favorite extension on Firefox and do all the things that typically is not allowed to do. This is very similar to the availability of applications on browser such as Google chat, Meebo, Yahoo chat, etc. without requiring any software to be installed locally.

For the enterprise security group it's always a race against new technology, what to block what not to block, and more than often they are too late in figuring that out :)

ISV: Targeted software selling in enterprise

2009-03-17T22:30:00.000-07:00

By no mean I am an expert in selling software. However, based on what I know so far, I can tell selling software to an enterprise needs careful planning and above all a good strategy.

A large enterprise has many departments, which mostly function independent of each other, having their own budget, resources, projects, SLA, etc.; a good analogy can be the small boutique shops in a strip mall.

In my experience, there is usually very little inter-department coordination as far as creating a unified solution is concerned. ISVs need to know exactly how many departments are going to be impacted by their software, and try to keep them on board from the get-go.

Departments usually prefer full ownership on software, as opposed to working with other units. Take for instance if your software primarily runs on server, with a bit of desktop component as well. The server group will love to work with you as you are solving their problem. On the contrary, the desktop group will not welcome your solution as it adds burden on them without any perceived advantage.

My advise would be to keep the deployment environment in mind from the very beginning and target your software for 'a' department as opposed to the entire enterprise, unless it's a true enterprise software like SAP and the likes.

Happy selling!

2008 Bear Market - No where to hide

2008-10-25T10:31:00.000-07:00

What a dramatic fall of equity indexes all across the globe. Look at the chart above from Barron's (Source: That Was Way Too Close for Comfort). So far Canada has held well compared to other indexes.

Beijing Olympics 2008 - a crowning glory for China

2008-08-16T12:26:00.000-07:00

I am still trying to find out why the Beijing Olympic is getting such a profound attention than the previous ones. At least that's what I am thinking, the last time I paid serious attention to Olympics was while reading about the great athletes in text books back in India. Nadia Komenich, Carl Lewis, Muhammad Ali, were all parts of our high-school syllabus.

Despite the initial criticism of lip-syncing and illusions in the opening ceremony, Beijing has exceeded expectations. It is noted that Beijing has spent $6.5 Billion just on security, about 4 times more than Athens. In my mind the key reason behind the overwhelming response on the games is that the event is happening in China, a so called developing nation. China has once again made its presence felt in the world, and that it can live up to its promises.

I spoke to few people who recently visited Beijing on business, and they were taken by surprise after looking at the infrastructure built around Olympics in Beijing. It looked so surreal, especially the bird's nest and the basket ball stadium, they hadn't seen anything like that in North America here.

India is bidding for 2020 Olympics, we have to see if India can win that bid, and if it does then how it fairs with Beijing. I believe Beijing has raised the bar; UK will need some serious planning and investments to meet or beat that standard in 2012.

Beer Growth in India - 25% YOY

2008-06-15T07:47:00.000-07:00

Yet another example of how India is growing in terms of consumer spending. Beer market in India is growing at 25% per year over the last few years. The figure is as per a TV series on BBC that I saw yesterday (can't find its link though). Having similar growth in North America is a dream; Wall Street is usually happy if you can maintain single-digit growth.

The series also talked about the new pub culture in India. Some folks at a hustling pub in Mumbai said: "..Beer is now the coolest thing to drink, ...I am drinking because everyone else does...".

Needless to say the pub culture in India is at rise, and so is the beer consumption. The international brands are entering to tap into this growing trend, aiming to grab a pie out of it. Indians are quite brand-savvy, we have to see if they are willing to shell out extra mullahs for the international brands.

The TV program made another note that Beer is about to get expensive as cost of Barley (a key ingredient for Beer) has surged in the recent past; in-line with price-rise in other food grains in India and world-wide. So far Indian economy has defied fear of recession in the US and elsewhere, we have to see how consumers behavior change with oil shocks and other economic uncertainties that lies ahead.

Airlines running lighter

2008-06-10T22:54:00.000-07:00

New York Times ran a wonderful article To Save Fuel, Airlines Find No Speck Too Small about measures taken by airlines to deal with soaring oil prices. I am amazed to note how fast these large companies adapt to new business realities. They are not leaving any stone unturned, right from dusting off the plane-exterior to carrying less amount of water. The logic being dirt causing drag while airborne, and water weighing more than fuel. I should have known this from my engineering background :), but obviously didn't strike to me. Apparently, the little science tidbits that we least cared about are becoming significant today. Like, carrying a larger plastic bottle of soda in place of cans. Earlier all we cared about was convenience, now it's about cutting cost to survive.

Everything counts when you multiply these cost savings spread across hundreds of thousands of flying hours.

There is virtually no company large or small that doesn't depend on oil; albeit some are more dependent than the others. We have to see how other companies are dealing with the oil problem. Are the Government agencies going to change as well? Are we going to see utility personnel like postman or meter-readers riding a bike instead of a car/van. I am not trying to be pessimistic here, but it's prudent to change now and innovate new ways to do things.

SQLite - a good alternative for MS Access in 64 bit

2008-05-01T06:52:00.000-07:00

For those around the Microsoft platform long enough know that, Microsoft has had a number of database technologies; to name a few, they include: ODBC, DAO, RDO, ODBCDirect, OLEDB, ADO, ADO.Net, and now LINQ. Obviously, the newer ones are better than the previous ones, especially ADO.Net, which has made using SQL Server in .Net platform a breeze. However, in our recent endeavors to move to 64 bit computing platform, we found that Microsoft dropped support for MS Access Jet driver in native 64 bit environment. The only easier alternative is to use SQL Server Express. SQL Server Express is free, but not as lightweight as MS Access. Many forums are filled with complains on why Microsoft dropped support for Jet in 64 bit without any warnings. Many used MS Access in IIS for low volume web sites; they are all being suggested to use 32 bit capabilities of IIS in 64 bit environment to continue to use MS Access.

SQLite is a very good alternative for MS Access in both 64 bit platform and 32 bit platforms. Just like MS Access, it is a single-file based requiring minimum maintenance. There is a nice ADO.Net binding (with 64 bit support) to use it in any .Net programing language. It also has very easy to use C/C++ bindings. The SQLite Administrator is a very handy tool to perform most of the database operations. One place where SQLite lacks is MS Access type reporting capabilities; MS Access has very easy to use wizards to generate reports from tables and queries in no time.

SQLite is backed by industry heavyweights like Adobe, Mozilla and Symbian. I believe Google Gears uses SQLlite for offline features as well. Needless to say I am a big fan of this database platform and will write more in due time.

Encryption - Symmetric, Asymmetric or Both?

2008-03-23T13:51:00.000-07:00

I wish the choice be as simple as ordering Frys at your favorite fast-food restaurant, small, medium or large. Well in a way, it is. I should say although encryption terminology seems confusing at a glance, but actually the underlying concepts are not that difficult to understand. As the name implies, symmetric encryption requires same keys for encryption and decryption, whereas asymmetric needs different ones. Of course, hybrid encryption means a combination of both.

Asymmetric encryption is often referred to as PKI (Public Key Infrastructure), where both parties have two paired-keys, public and private. Private key is retained with the owner, whereas public key is available for public to use. The premise here is that any clear-text encrypted with one type of key can only be decrypted with the other type of key. In simple words, if something is encrypted with public key it can only be decrypted with its equivalent private key, and vice versa. So, if I need to send an encrypted message, I would pick up your public key (as it is readily available, or alternatively you might have given me earlier), then encrypt with this public key and send across to you. Since you are the only one in this world with the corresponding private key, you are the only person who can decrypt the message. That makes it secure. This infrastructure usually meets the "confidentiality" part of security ecosystem.

One should know that majority of the encryption algorithms are released in public, which puts a lot of pressure on safe storage of keys. No matter how hard your encryption algorithm is, the keys to the kingdom literally are the encryption keys here. So always store it securely.

Due to the complexity of the PKI algorithm (it is actually based on prime-number based mathematical formula), the entire encryption and decryption process becomes very slow as compared to the symmetric process, where only one key serves both the purposes. The disadvantage of symmetric encryption though is that key management becomes very difficult. If one can get to the key at any end, one can decrypt very easily. In fact the transportation of keys is a know risk, and needs due care is needed for its distribution. In today’s world, there are not too many inexpensive ways to send information but to send electronically via email, http, ftp or IM, which are all very insecure as far as a medium to key-exchange is concerned.

So, what is the solution, asymmetric is slower, symmetric is risky? Good guess, a hybrid one. That’s right, establish a session using asymmetric encryption, and then do bulk of encryption using symmetric key. For example, if server 1 and server 2 need to communicate securely, server 1 will create a dynamic symmetric key, encrypt with 2's public key and send over to 2. This encrypted symmetric key can only be decrypted by 2's private key, which is available with server 2 only. Once server 2 decrypts the message and extracts the symmetric key, both the servers have the same symmetric keys, they can now both communicate securely using symmetric encryption which is much faster than the asymmetric one.

Tata's Nano - DIY Car?

2008-02-28T13:09:00.000-08:00

Learning from Tata's Nano

The above is a very interesting article talking about distribution strategy of Tata's newest innovation, the Nano - $2500 people's car. Article essentially is talking about DIY(Do it Yourself) car making. Well, not exactly like a Lego toy! One would still need some sort of assembly-plant to bundle-up the car. Ratan Tata is adopting a dealer/agent model, something that is very common in India, specifically in financial sector such as insurance and banking. The company will have designated agents with the know-how to build Nano from boxes and sell it to customers. This will help the company penetrate into regions not accessible earlier like small towns or rural areas.

I am a bit skeptical about this approach as making car is no child's play, especially when it's a passenger car, potentially carrying up to four persons. Safety is a big concern, what if the guy forgets to install brakes for the rear wheels :) I hope that's not the case. However, I liked the concept, and can't wait to hear more on this.

Future of SaaS

2008-02-26T08:23:00.000-08:00

Recently I replied to a question on LinkedIn on SaaS impact on Software Industry, in particular to the people developing software. Below are my thoughts:

SaaS is a rapidly growing space, with lots of interest from the enterprise. There are good case studies to indicate that it will reduce TCO both in the short and the long run. However, it is yet to prove itself as a viable substitute for critical business application running today's Fortune companies.

Do you think Banks are going to trust any third-party vendor to store critical financial transactions, who [Saas] by the way, can potentially host their competitor's information as well? I think besides "Confidentiality", "Availability" is the other question that SaaS vendors need to address. Recently Amazon's web services were plagued by multiple outages leaving many customers in lurch.

SaaS seems to be the next exotic thing on horizon for SW industry, albeit I think companies will continue to develop and use traditional software unless SaaS proves itself as a viable "bread-winning" avenue for software developers and ISVs.

iPhone mail client - not up to mark

2007-10-28T10:44:00.000-07:00

I have been playing with the iPhone's email client for a while, and found it to have a number of issues. Few I can list below:

1) Can not easily mark an email or a list of emails as "read", a feature that is so common in traditional desktop based mail clients. The only way to mark an email "read" is to actually read it, which can take a while for larger mails as they need to be downloaded in full first.

2) Email notification is not instantaneous. The minimum time one can set for auto-retrieval is 15 minutes; albeit, it can be downloaded manually any time.

3) Email and Phone do not work together in EDGE network. It works fine in Wi-Fi, but who has free Wi-Fi besides home and few other places. I think this is a shortcoming in all the major hand-hand held devices.

4) Erratic email notification - This is the most notorious of all; I am still struggling to find out how it works. Needless to say the 10 pager pocket guide that comes with iPhone doesn't have all the information to dive deeper into the gadget. It appears that the notification is made (sound or vibration) only when count of unread messages increases.

Let’s say iPhone is setup to store 50 messages on phone, and it so happens that 20 of them are unread, with the last one being unread also (50th mail). When a new mail arrives, iPhone pops out the last (50th) mail to make room for the new one. At the end of it, it still has 50 mails with 20 unread, as the decrease in unread count by the popped-out mail was just balanced by the new upcoming. And hence, no notification. If this is what it is, then it isn't that intuitive.

5) Can't create/reply/forward emails in rich text. For example if you receive an email in rich text, and reply to it, it may or may not preserve the rich text from the previous mail, but it will definitely not allow changing of fonts, etc. in any new text that you type.

However, I must admit that the rich html view of mails and finger-scroll is quite slick, and worth the money. Needless to stay iPhone is one of a kind and I am thoroughly enjoying it

Wal-Mart loosing steam

2007-10-07T19:16:00.000-07:00

I have been following stories related to Wal-Mart for last 5-6 years. I couldn't resist my temptation to blog when Wall Street Journal wrote about Wal-Mart loosing steam in the article "Wal-Mart Era Wanes Amid Big Shifts in Retail". The retail sector in general had been lagging behind for last few quarters, mainly due to meltdown of sub-prime mortgage, credit crunch and rise in unemployment. Little did I know that company is also struggling with other macro issues as change in consumer's taste and competition from other discount retailers. It almost appeared that the company had perfected it's game-plan, after all in just over 30 years it became the world's largest company with a humble beginning in rural Arkansas.

Wal-Mart competitor's are offering convenience, quality, larger selection and better service. Most of all, consumers are now preferring quality over price. They want new things to show up on shelves; this is something that's not very easy for Wal-Mart to achieve given it's humongous size. Perhaps, Wal-Mart's Supply Chain is not geared for such rapid change in product offerings. Target, which has just-about one-fourth Market Cap as compared with Wal-Mart, offers better products, cleaner stores, and best of all almost at the same price.

These days consumers also demand quality along with better pricing, and in many cases they are willing to pay an extra for better service. For instance, take the case of Apple stores. Apple stores are widely successful, mainly due to "friendly hospitality" and the "cool-factor" at the store; none of which are seen at Wal-Mart stores.

We have to see how Wal-Mart reacts to the new dynamics of the retail-place and maintains its position.

Surge in Food Prices

2007-09-29T12:27:00.000-07:00

Today read this interesting article on Wall Street Journal titled "Historic Surge In Grain Prices Roils Markets", which essentially is predicting that the food prices are going up. I hadn't thought that the growth in emerging markets will have an impact on food prices in North America. It's a well known fact that there had been strong demand in metals and related commodity due to tremendous growth in infrastructure in countries like China and India. As a result energy and metal stocks have rallied for several years around the world including North America, but who would think that the food industry is about to get touched as well.

A new middle class society is being created in these developing countries, where people are willing to consume any thing coming on the way, you name it, they buy it. Things like slick mobile phone, branded shoes or clothing, watches, TV, cars, etc. As evident from Indian newspapers Indian youth are spending a lot on movies, restaurants, travel and other non-essential leisure activities. The WSJ articles makes a subtle observation, which seems obvious after reading it, that this new class now has a larger appetite too, yes, they like to eat more and indulge, specially milk and meat. But, how does it affect grain prices? Well, milk and meat comes from livestock, which feed on grains. Basic grains as corn, soya bean and wheat have been in great demand, countries are importing them to keep up with demand. As a result food prices are increasing.

May be it's time to buy some stocks from the food sector :)

Desktop Search Tools: Comparing Yahoo, Google & Microsoft

2007-08-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

Until recently I was using beta version of Yahoo Desktop Search called as X1 for searching my years of emails in outlook. I must admit it was one of the best search tool I ever used on desktop, has all the bells & whistles one needs, search as you type, search attachments, documents, Boolean search and so on. All of a sudden it stopped working without any warnings, probably because the beta had expire. The release version costs around $50, which seems reasonable given the rich feature-set it offers. However, paying for a search program seems odd. After all Google became what it is today by offering a good quality search service to the masses, all with no cost.

Needless to say I felt helpless on search after losing on the Yahoo’s search tool. Relying on Outlook 2007’s search for little things was a painful experience, given that Outlook 2007 takes a fair amount of time to just get started; on top of that, search on the fly is devastating. It's almost like having a flat tire on the driveway and taking a bus for errands. I decided to try alternatives. Tried Google Desktop Search first, which was slick, but found to be quiet intrusive. All of a sudden it listed my blog in a little side bar without me doing anything. I figured, it’s probably using my saved Gmail id in the browser to map by web presence. If it is what it is, then it’s invasion of privacy. So, decided to get rid of it and tried Windows Desktop Search (WDS). I had dreadful experience with beta versions of WDS, where CPU spike and instability in general was the norm. The release version seems slick and fast, the Deskbar comes handy, however, it’s not as powerful as X1. For now, I will stick with WDS and see how it goes.

In either case, I must say desktop search is a no longer a luxury, it’s rather a necessity to skim through the wealth of electronic data we have amassed so far on the desktop.

StartForce - Desktop on Your Browser

2007-08-05T17:40:00.000-07:00

Just happened to spot this video on CNET about a cool new web application called as StartForce, the name chimes with SalesForce [.com], one of the prominent provider of software as a service (SAAS). My curiosity dictated upon me and made me create a quick account on the site. Registration was very simple. It is surprising to find how closely this application resembles a typical desktop (Linux or Windows). Presence of a start-button, popping up of menus and sub-menus, drag and drop, messenger, media player, files, sharing, and even a web browser. I decided to give the browser a try, which looked amazing too. The browser has the typical out of the box address bar, back and forward buttons, search options from sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN, Amazon, and so on.

Little bit of digging around here and there indicates that this application uses Ajax to present the user interface, and underneath uses services from other web 2.0 applications as Zoho and Box.net for file storage and collaboration. It appears that the application was first published for Japanese audience. The app seems very cool from the get go, but not sure if I will stick with it as it offers way too much than what you really need, at least that’s what I think for now.

Amazon S3 - Storage on the go

2007-07-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

Amazon recently announced Simple Storage Service or S3 allowing users to store data on the web at a relatively low price. Coming from a storage background, I decided to do little bit of reality check.

Unlike many other popular web 2.0 services on the web (Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, Picasa Web Albums), it’s not free at all. However, I must say the costs are very low, for instance 10 cents per month to store 1 GB worth of data, another 10 cents per GB for uploads, and 18 cents for downloads. Wall Street Journal assert that S3 coupled with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud or EC2 is a boon to tech startups. These companies can tap into world-class storage and computing system at a fraction of the cost, permitting them to focus on their core-competency rather than hardware management.

However, I could not find any downloadable application provided by Amazon to use this service out of the box. It appears that one needs to buy application from third parties to leverage this service. There are lots of technical articles on the website giving sample code for developers to create application for S3. I have opened an account for myself to give it a try; will do some digging and post updates here as I get free time from other commitments.

Book Review: Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers

2007-07-08T10:33:00.000-07:00

Off late I have been following the latest developments in Adobe AIR technology. Recently I stumbled upon the book “Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) for JavaScript Developers “, which is written by Mike Chambers, Daniel Dura & Kevin Hoyt in 2007. I have been able to get a free electronic copy of this book from both ajaxian website and Adobe’s website . I am likely going to be getting a paper of copy of the book at the on AIR Bus Tour SUMMER ‘07.

This book has been written in a very simple and easy to understand language. It offers good discussion on evolution of web technologies in the recent past. It notes that Macromedia coined the word rich internet application (RIA) through a whitepaper in 2002. Essentially this paper says that the RIA clients should be able to support not only desktop operating systems, but also other platforms as smart phones, PDAs, set-top boxes, game consoles, and Internet appliances.

Some of the initial pages have been dedicated towards limitations and challenges faced by current web sites. It essentially says that existence of multiple operating system, and multiple browser environment poses grave difficulties to web developers. Developers are required to develop and maintain separate code for the same functionality to support the diverse operating environment. Moreover, web-consumers do not get a consistent UI experience across web-sites, specially back-button handling is very erratic. Besides, the current web applications do not have access to the desktop resources such as files and folders.

AIR has been developed to addresses such issues. AIR allows developers to create one unified application capable of running across all the operating systems. AIR applications can be written in both JavaScript and ActionScript, however, the book only talks about JavaScript. A very simple example to create “Hello World” example is provided; later on areas as cookies, windowing, Ajax support, security, file system calls, drag and drop, embedded database, networking, and sound have been discussed with sample code.

Frankly I have not played with all the examples, just a handful; however, I found them to be useful. I must admit that the very first example “Hello World” was a bit frustrating to deal with, as the sample contained some typo. As we all know Adobe AIR was formerly known as Apollo, it seems that this sample was half-converted to the new naming convention. It would have saved an hour of my time troubleshooting and hunting through the forum if “ApolloHelloWorld.html” would have been mentioned as “AIRHelloWorld.html” on page 30. Anyway, I have noted it here just in case someone else needs it. Besides, the typo I think the book has also been silent on other features of a desktop application such as threading, inter-process communication or ability to access registry settings. I am thinking none of these are supported.

I will post more on this after I attend the upcoming on AIR bus tour next week.

Efficiency and Innovation

2007-07-01T16:42:00.000-07:00

Recently BusinessWeek came out with a very nice article talking about efficiency and innovation. The article discussed at length on the organizational culture at 3M. It immediately caught my attention as I had done fair amount of research on this company while completing technology management specialization for my MBA. 3M is indeed an amazing company which successfully created innovative products as masking tape, Thinsulate and the Post-It note.

The article wanders around James McNerney’s leadership style at GE and 3M. Motorola originated the concept of Six Sigma in 1986, which was adapted by many companies in 90s including GE. GE is well known for its commitment on quality, after all GE exits from a business if it is not No. 1 or No. 2 in that sector. McNerney embraced Six Sigma along with everyone at GE, but made the mistake to carry it forward to 3M.

GE is known for implementing efficiency in the workforce and removing defects on the production line; however, the culture at 3M is very different, where the company is all about innovation, risk taking, and tolerance for failure. Employees at 3M had the option to work on their pet projects, something that Google believes in currently.

Things changed at 3M after McNerney took charge as CEO; he made many radical changes such as slashing budget for R&D, letting go older employees, and emphasis on return on investment. Wall Street cheered the new focus on profitability, but the enthusiasm faded away soon after, as the company could not bring any ground-breaking product to the market, something 3M was known for. After all, innovation and efficiency does not go hand in hand. McNerney eventually left for a bigger opportunity at Boeing. In the meantime, Gorge Buckley, an old timer at 3M took over as CEO, trying to do the damage control by his predecessor.

In my mind, what is needed is a good balance of risk and control. We have to see how Buckley strikes this balance and brings back 3M’s old glory.

Web 2.0 on your desktop. What's next?

2007-06-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

It appears that all the leading software companies are trying to bring web 2.0 technology to your desktop. Google recently announced Google Gears which provides Javascript centric APIs for web-site developers to store and retrieve online content locally; content is stored in SQLite database, which is installed on the desktop by Google Gears. Likewise, Adobe recently announced AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) beta allowing developers to create Rich Internet Application (RIA) for the desktop. AIR was previously called by code-name Apollo. Adobe provides a rich AIR SDK that not only gets all the desktop-centric processing done, but also has easy hooks to tap on the web technology.

One thing good about these tools is that they provide a Rapid Application Development environment to create powerful applications with access to both the local file-system and the internet, something that was not possible earlier, except for ActiveX and the likes. Although I've not explored the SDK in great details, looks like the desktop-functionality is close to that of VB.

One question that comes to mind is - are we running in circles here? Earlier the talk was to take everything to web, contrast that to bringing them back to desktop now. Google made so many acquisitions in last one or two years to make office applications like word processing, email, spreadsheet, photo-album, calendar and presentation delivered through web. None of these required any software to be installed locally, but for a web browser. Now it seems that we are coming back to the good-old desktop. We are talking about installing a runtime or a framework on the desktop, which will be the new launching pad for web applications. Well, things are a bit different here this time though, these applications are meant to be developed once and run anywhere, which was the old Java mantra. It is claimed that application developed for Windows can run on Mac, Linux, and yes on the mobile phone too.

However, coming from a storage background, I still wonder how we would go about syncing our data across so many platforms. There’s still a need to store data at a centralized location so we can carry it anywhere and work with it, perhaps we need a mechanism to replicate data. Replication seems alright, but given that content is growing at a very fast pace, it may not be a viable to replicate TBs of data; may be we would need a better technology to intelligently classify data and manage them efficiently. I guess we will know the answer in times to come.

Wii and Me

2007-05-29T23:28:00.000-07:00

As soon as I got to play Tennis on Nintendo’s Wii at my friend’s house, I immediately got hooked up to the device. After coming home I phoned the local retailers about the console, needless to say they were all sold out. So, I waited a couple of days, and then finally spotted it on Wal-Mart’s flyer thrown on my door. I immediately rushed to the store and got one for myself.

I must say I am not a video-gamer, last serious computer-game I played was probably in mid 90s. Actually I got a Xbox free from Microsoft a few years ago by participating in a technology webinar and later getting selected in a giveaway draw. I didn’t find much use of it so gave it away to my nephew.

However, Wii is much different though; as far as I can see, it’s not really a gaming device, it’s actually a tool to do some workout at home with lots of fun. Immediately my whole family got captivated with the device, and switched turns trying to beat the console on Tennis. Although I do both cardio(elliptical) and some strength training (Bowflex) at home, for a couple of days I woke up with sore muscle here and there. I think the sudden hand movement caused the stiffness. Well, I am going to keep working on Wii and see how far I can go with it. It is going to be really handy in winter where you don’t get to go out that often.

Acrobat Reader and Flash Player Installation Outnumber Microsoft and Apple OS combined

2007-04-25T10:30:00.000-07:00

Jay Palmer(2007, para. 22) notes that Adobe’s Acrobat Reader and Flash Player, which are both free software, outnumber combined install-base of Microsoft and Apple operating systems. This indicates that Adobe is very well penetrated in our desktop, more than either of the above software powerhouses.

Adobe makes money on the free software in an indirect way. Adobe sells tools that allows content-creation for these two products. Adobe Acrobat, which is used for PDF file creation provided 20% of Adobe’s revenue last year. Likewise, people buy Flash to create content for Flash Player.

Jay also notes that Adobe’s upcoming Apollo software is yet another feather in their cap as far as web technology is concerned. This software will allow users to use web technology in a more desktop-way; it will no longer be required to open a browser and navigate to a web-site to interact with web content. The data can be accessed, changed, added, deleted with enormous ease straight from the desktop.

Personally I think Adobe is not only the creator this niche market of productivity tools for the web, but also is “the” leading company in the market. Other companies in this market as Microsoft, RealNetworks or Google are way behind Adobe in both technology and market penetration. On the contrary, Google’s YouTube uses Flash to deliver content to web-consumers. It’s probably in Google’s interest to not use Flash for business reasons, however, it doesn’t have an alternative yet as far as video is concerned. Wherever it can, Google has been steering away from Flash; for example, Goggle uses Ajax for both e-mail and map services. Ajax is a open standard for web interactions, which is a bit difficult to develop as compared with Flash. However, overall Adobe is still quite small in front of both Microsoft and Google in terms of market capitalization, and has still limited set of products to offer compared to the other two.

Reference:
Palmer, J. (2007). Software That Keeps the Web Spinning: High-Wired Act. Barron’s. 87(16), p. 27-31. Retrieved April 25, 2007, from ProQuest Database.