Now browsers are becoming App Store

Now even browsers are becoming App Store - at least Crome!

Will there be little bit of Steve everywhere?

Compute per square foot, Big data .... Key IT Trends 2012

Gartner recently published 10 key IT Trends for 2012. Virtualization, Big Data, Compute per square foot, Social network .... read on @NetworkWorld

Something will inevitably come along and take it from us ...

“History shows that popular technology is often supplanted by entirely new models.”

That simple observation, presented in a letter from Google Chairman Eric Schmidt to the Senate Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy, and Consumer Rights, summarizes Google’s single best line of defense against the blunt instruments of government regulatory dismemberment. You don’t have to fear our power, Google says, because something will inevitably come along and take it from us.

Well, that something is finally here. Her name is Siri.

Read full story from TechCrunch

Comments in Compurer Programs - why?

IMO comments in computer codes are waste. 99% of the time these are dead text that no one uses or doesn't carry much sense. I kept 1% separate hoping there are cases where probably it make sense - though I have my doubt.
Like any other languages - English, Assamese, Hindi, Marathi, France  etc, computer languages like java, C++, Ruby, SQL, C# etc are also medium of expression - a medium through which a programmer expresses what he or she wants to perform - his/ her thoughts. In "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs", Abelson and Sussman mentioned what computer programs are for

First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute

So, programs must be written for the people to read and understand. When we speak to some one we don't use comments - listener understands what the speaker is talking. Using comments is like using interpreter - the other person doesn't understand what speaker is talking & such cases cause transmission loses & productivity.

                                      

NASSCOM RIM Conference & Two Interesting News today

Indian IT Industry association NASSCOM organized a two day Infrastructure Management summit at Bangalore on September 21 - 22. At the end of 2 day, when I came out, I was literally  cursing myself why did I spend 2 days here - pretty disappointing! Expectation was to understand current issues, new technology, market dynamics, case studies on new approach (self healing, self management etc) on Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) & associated services - like CLOUD etc but most of the speakers spent time either giving "gyan" or narrating their company. However, highly energetic Dr Anil Memon from Cisco broke the monotony by delivering a thought provoking speech but not on the subject.  Bob Beauchamp from BMC was exception as well.

Anyway, Remote Infrastructure Management (RIM) & CLOUD are the buzzwords in current IT space. While there is a tremendous market potentialities - Verizon predicts $150B by 2020 from current $10B but question is from Indian IT perspective how do we prepare ourselves for a bigger pie of this. Do we continue to take the cost arbitrage approach or we look for alternatives. Here goes the 2nd interesting news that came today - "Using humanoids, IPSoft making the low-cost business model of Infosys, Wipro and IBM look like relics of the past" 

Desire Vs Decision

 Bharat Goenka, Founder of Tally, explained the difference between desire & decision in a recent conference on global shared services centers organized by Zinnov in Bangalore. He said ...

Many a times to meet project deadlines we work very hard and as a result we stay late at work. No matter whatever the time is at the end of the work we eventually reach home. That is because we made a Decision within that no matter whatever happens at the end of the work we need to be at home. Instead, if we have a Desire than we would land up in neighbor home.

Most of us, including me, are unable to convert our desire to decision.
I have been using these 2 words for sometime and many of you have asked me to explain. So, hope this helps and let me know if you guys have found a good technic to convert desire to decision!

Two Interesting Article This Morning ...

1. Some of you might have heard about this start-up by name "Narrative Science" or might have heard about what they are trying to do - Converting Data into Stories. If not read this post in today's (September 19, 2011)  The Economic Times about how "A software that turns raw data into news articles".

2. VJ narrated his thoughts about  Reverse Bidding almost a year back. He spent some time and was checking if idea looks promising particularly in India eCommerce space. I introduced him to Vineet - an entrepreneur by himself and keep exploring new ideas/ thoughts. VJ didn't pursue further - he got into the typical problem of Desire Vs Decision (will write about this later). The subject came up again with Vineet in our last weekend blabbing sessions - this is high potential area looking into how Indian eCommerce market is saturating and getting accepted. Flipkart is now valued $1B.But there is tremendous competition - so reverse bidding make perfect sense. Here is a story from Times of India about this is growing - Bid online for bookings.

Question is, not for VJ, how do you convert the Desire to a Decision!

 

It is not about working software anymore!

Undoubtedly,  Agile Manifesto brings in a tremendous change in our mind set towards software development. It is very easy to understand that -

"Individuals and interactions over processes and tools

Working software over comprehensive documentation

Customer collaboration over contract negotiation 

Responding to change over following a plan 

                    That is, while there is value in the items on 

                    the right, we value the items on the left more.

However, this was a thought in early 2000. Today, it is not about working software anymore - it is all about customer delight. We have multiple experiences where we developed applications that does the job perfectly but failed miserably to bring customer satisfaction or delight.
So, is it time now to update the Agile Manifesto? Rather than focusing on working software we need to focus on customer delight. After all Agile needs to be Agile as well!

Mr Jobs' Attention to Details

One thing that makes successful CEO and (probably) successful organization different from their other counterparts is the attention to details. Though I don't belong to the perfectionist category , & I don't want to be, but lot people with whom I work at times becomes unhappy due to the fact that I put lot of emphasis on making our delivery naturally attractive. I believe this come from attention to details. Here is one great story from Vic Gundotra — the man behind Google +,on one of the great person of our time - Steve Jobs. Here is how it goes -

One Sunday morning, January 6th, 2008 I was attending religious services when my cell phone vibrated. As discreetly as possible, I checked the phone and noticed that my phone said "Caller ID unknown". I choose to ignore.  After services, as I was walking to my car with my family, I checked my cell phone messages. The message left was from Steve Jobs. "Vic, can you call me at home? I have something urgent to discuss" it said. Before I even reached my car, I called Steve Jobs back. I was responsible for all mobile applications at Google, and in that role, had regular dealings with Steve. It was one of the perks of the job.

"Hey Steve - this is Vic", I said. "I'm sorry I didn't answer your call earlier. I was in religious services, and the caller ID said unknown, so I didn't pick up".

Steve laughed. He said, "Vic, unless the Caller ID said 'GOD', you should never pick up during services".

I laughed nervously. After all, while it was customary for Steve to call during the week upset about something, it was unusual for him to call me on Sunday and ask me to call his home. I wondered what was so important?

"So Vic, we have an urgent issue, one that I need addressed right away. I've already assigned someone from my team to help you, and I hope you can fix this tomorrow" said Steve.

I've been looking at the Google logo on the iPhone and I'm not happy with the icon. The second O in Google doesn't have the right yellow gradient. It's just wrong and I'm going to have Greg fix it tomorrow. Is that okay with you?"

Of course this was okay with me. A few minutes later on that Sunday I received an email from Steve with the subject "Icon Ambulance". The email directed me to work with Greg Christie to fix the icon.

Greatness brings greatness! And in business that brings customer delight. 

Weekend Read

• Why Software Is Eating The World 

• Fair Boss Fall Behind

How Software Companies Die - by Orson Scott Card

Got this accidentally & thought of sharing with you - interesting read!

The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won.
You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine. They'll never understand it.  Continue reading ...

The Internet of Things [INFOGRAPHIC]

In 2008, the number of devices connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on Earth. And this is growing exponentially. With IPv6 we will have enormous capacity to connect new devices to the internet. Check this interesting article (infographic) from cisco

Ruby is good but Lua is ...

Someone said, if you are bored of doing the daily chores learn a language. Someone else said if you are becoming dull learn a language. So I did - I picked Ruby. This also coincides with my thought of how do we (developers) become more productive - is there a better productive language than Java!

 
I took few hours to set it up - mostly due to Eclipse Ruby plugin - failed couple of times due to proxy setting. Thanks to Srinivas (one of the Architect in my team) who pointed me to proxy setting. With that done I started looking into the language and get going with "Hello Ruby!" program. My first impression was "Ruby is good". Now I think it is "Ruby is beautiful"!

While I am continuing my Ruby journey and I was also looking at the popularity of the language and eventually checked the ranking of Ruby - at programming community index. Ruby ranked 12. Not bad. But look at the language just above Ruby - at rank 11 is Lua. In terms of popularity gain Lua is 2nd position below objective-C.

Will dirty my hand on Lua as well but if you are a developer keep looking at programming community index.

Ubuntu & Home Media Server

It was pending for long. Downloaded 11.04 and made a USB installer. Boot the system from USB - you have to change booting option (F2 during startup). I already have Vista installed - so I tried just plain booting from the USB. It's real fast and simple. However, making it bootable from the hard disc - dual bootable - Vista and Ubuntu takes time as my hard disc was not partitioned earlier. Hmmmmm - this really takes time.

It is all set now. Anyone can do - absolutely lay man's job.

My next step would be to set up a media server. Did some basic research - looks like UPnP - MediaTomb is doing good. Vineet & I talked briefly about having a media server for our small apartment community - let's see how it comes up. If you have done this before - share your experience and knowhow.

July 9 - Installed MediaTomb - installation is pretty straight forward. However, I had trouble in figuring how the client (player) will find the server. Vineet figured out that IGMP protocol needs to be enabled on the server side. MediaTomb FAQ site has the details on how to enable IGMP.

Great! It's up and running now! Thanks Open Source -:)

Business of API & Data

Application Programing Interface, in short, API is very common term for any software professional. Once, one cross "Hello World" or "This is my first program" in the programming worlds - you get to the world of APIs. These low level programing constructs are becoming business drivers in the world of web beyond browser.

Look at these 3 company in this space - Apigee, BlueVia & Mahery.  They all manage APIs and  help developers in building application using these APIs. Intersting enough that BlueVia is a spin off from Telefonica  - a large telecommunication company.

ProgrammableWeb, directory of API and Mashup listed 3375 APIs and 5886 Mashups as on today. You can look for API and start using.

So, is this is a new business model? From developing a web to developing APIs. API-as-a-Service. Looks like future will be on using the APIs to mine the data and build innovative apps based on these 2!

Mon's winning art work at Bangalore Art competetion

Here is Mon's winning art work at Bangalore Art competetion organized by 3 Peel on June 19 at UB City. Top left one.

What I saw last week end at TED

Two interesting and thought provoking videos - both from TED. One on "Magic Washing Machine" by Hans Rosling and next one on "What makes life worthwhile" by Chip Conley.


Magic Washing Machine" by Hans Rosling


What makes life worthwhile by Chip Conley

Will you fly an Open Source Airplane?

Some one asked this interesting question somewhere and to someone! Are you "yes" or "No"?

Remember, future is co-created!

Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2011

Bloomberg list of Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2011.  Simple ideas are attracting fundings to create wealth.

A New Kind of App Store - SnapStore

Apple's revolutionary AppStore concept has gone far beyond creating applications for mobile or tablets. SnapLogic, a cloud integration co, is using the appstore concept to create a connectors called Snaps. As a developer once you are done building the Snap you can upload and put your price tag - you get 70% of the sales revenue.

Mamon, do you know why success is elusive?

Mamon, we are middle of big & critical project. Inspite of our best effort, doing whatever is required to be successfull, we are missing our schedule. Stakeholders/ sponsors are very unhappy. Team is putting countless extra hours, weekends, nights - infact I can see they are bleeding but still motivated to pull it out. We moving forward but looks like someone is pulling us back again & again. We are crossing hurdles, solving issues ... and after each of these we thought we are there ... but, dear, success is elusive to us. Sometime we call it bad luck. But, we also know, we need create luck. Do you know why it is so? Do you know why success if elusive at times?

What Motivates Us - 10 Mins Video!

Interesting Read - The Best Tech Writing of 2010!

2010's most notable, controversial and challenging tech articles on web, web culture,  entertainment, life,  people, business and gadgets.Best Tech Writing of 2010