Ashant's Random Word

The Tabloid Called TIME

2011-05-07T10:45:00.001+01:00

Yes, I mean "the" TIME Magazine, which did an articles titled "Why Kate's Gown didn't Dissapoint" this week. A "royal wedding" in an impoverished nation, is an anomoly in itself. However it's also:

An environmental disaster with 6,765 tonnes of carbon footprint spent for this single event
A day's wasted productivity of some 500,000 people that went down to see the "show". (Sorry William, Kate - a wedding could be just a wedding, they made a show of yours).
Can an indebted nation afford it? Sources estimate the cost of this lost productivity between 1.2 - 2.9 Bill. UK Pounds.
GBP 20 Million for security arrangements
GBP 700,000 for flowers

Good sense of the government though, that the wedding celebrations of 20 Mil. GBP were made to be spent by the families themselves.

And doesn't the TIME Magazine have better things to write about than a pompous wedding? A 2 page story would have been sufficient. If the apparently highly qualified journalists and editorial were indeed to put their minds and pen/keyboard to something of relevance, they should be discussing the young democracies of Arabia and North Africa, the plight of the Japanese millions and their recovery from destiny, perhaps the economy in the UK. These might help readers put their minds to eleviating the difficulties of the day, rather than thinking about a spend-thrifty party.

Lies & Truth

2011-01-15T22:34:00.002+01:00

People who never lie are harmless, people who always lie are only a bit dangerous - but people who sometimes tell the truth and sometimes lie are most dangerous!

.. I think

G-Talk compared with Skype

2010-11-16T07:14:00.001+01:00

Both my partner and I have 2MB+ ADSL. Skype works just great, but not G-Talk between the same 2 nodes!

in Bezug auf: I'm noticing poor call quality. - Google Talk Help (auf Google Sidewiki anzeigen)

Little Shalini arrives in the World

2010-08-22T20:45:00.000+01:00

Little Shalini, 54 centimeters long and 3.52 kg heavy arrived in the world today the 22 August 2010 at 10:39h in Stuttgart, Germany.

As dad, I've probably still to absorb the full depth of emotion surrounding this life-changer, but right now I feel elated, rewarded and very lucky.

Google Analytics Legality in Germany

2010-08-13T05:34:00.001+01:00

This is a collection of resources which address the topic of legality of Google-Analytics in Germany.

Staying Cool..

Fear Generators..

iCompetence Blog

A New Star on the African Sky

2010-08-08T20:43:00.000+01:00

Twitter Tools

2010-07-26T19:58:00.002+01:00

I love Twitter, but can't seem to be able to cope with the speed at which tools for Twitter mushroom all the time.

Here are a number of Twitter-tools worth trying out:

Twitter based Services

MyCleenr
Twitoria
FriendOrFollow
Untweeps

Desktop Clients

Tweetdeck
Twhirl
Digsby

Absolute URL Paths in Joomla! TinyMCE Editor

2010-07-11T11:14:00.000+01:00

To retain absolute URL Paths in Joomla! 1.5 TINYMCE Editor, go into Plugins > TinyMCE and select URLs = Absolute.

कोशिश करने वालों की - On Perseverence

2010-06-06T07:53:00.006+01:00

This is a very famous motivational poem by Harivanshrai Bachchan, shared with me by Parikshit Khopade.

कोशिश करने वालों की
- हरिवंशराय बच्चन

लहरों से डर कर नौका पार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

नन्हीं चींटी जब दाना लेकर चलती है,
चढ़ती दीवारों पर, सौ बार फिसलती है।
मन का विश्वास रगों में साहस भरता है,
चढ़कर गिरना, गिरकर चढ़ना न अखरता है।
आख़िर उसकी मेहनत बेकार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

डुबकियां सिंधु में गोताखोर लगाता है,
जा जा कर खाली हाथ लौटकर आता है।
मिलते नहीं सहज ही मोती गहरे पानी में,
बढ़ता दुगना उत्साह इसी हैरानी में।
मुट्ठी उसकी खाली हर बार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

असफलता एक चुनौती है, इसे स्वीकार करो,
क्या कमी रह गई, देखो और सुधार करो।
जब तक न सफल हो, नींद चैन को त्यागो तुम,
संघर्ष का मैदान छोड़ कर मत भागो तुम।
कुछ किये बिना ही जय जय कार नहीं होती,
कोशिश करने वालों की कभी हार नहीं होती।

Australia Mounts Legal Action against Japan for Whaling

2010-05-29T18:17:00.001+01:00

Finally, finally, finally, oh Lord finally!

After years of deliberation, Australia has yesterday mounted legal action on Japan, to the delight of ocean conservationists. Formal proceedings will be lodged against the Japanese government in the International court in Hague next week.

Read about this watershed moment at BBC News.

Unsatisfied with new Google Apps about not being able to HTML/CSS

2010-05-17T04:52:00.003+01:00

We are deeply dissatisfied with the new Apps/Writer for its inability to influence style. Previously we used to be able to integrate our company CI using CSS under the Edit menu. This was cumbersome, but still was a (we were hoping) temporary workaround.

It is not possible to create our own templates. The baked versions from Google and other companies are not suitable to us.

Now, we are left with black and white documents, that's a put-off.

We require either one of these features:

Bring HTML/CSS editing back
Give us the ability to create our own templates

Simple scenario.. Our CI theme is dark-blue. How to make all h1, h2, h3 tags in all Writer docs in that color?

Sea Shepherd does a Homerun in 2009-10 Operation Waltzing Matilda

2010-04-25T11:03:00.006+01:00

Sea Shepherd beat all records, and odds, and returned home in flying colors from the 2009-10 Waltzing Matilda campaign this season, having saved 528 whales during this season.

The below table shows the original Japanese Killing Target (JKT) and the dramatically reduced numbers that actually fell prey, thanks to direct-intervention by Sea Shepherd.

	JKT	Total Killed	Whales Saved
Humpback Whales	50	0	50
Fin Whales	50	1	49
Minke Whales	935	506	429
Totals	1035	507	528

Still, it is an unspeakable tragedy that over 500 inhabitants of the ocean biosphere have been massacred within a span of 2 months. Donate today, and help provide the resources to save those lives as well!

We thank Sea Shepherd for cutting down the Japanese Killing Target to less than half this year, and wish them god-speed in their upcoming campaign in the Mediterranien to stop over-fishing of the Bluefin-Tuna. We pledge to continue our support to this amazing group of conservationists.

For reading more on the results of Operation Waltzing Matilda, read the official Sea Shepherd press release.

Upgrading Debian Etch Machines to Lenny

2010-03-28T11:10:00.002+01:00

Step-1

First set your /etc/apt/sources.list to point to Lenny repositories:

deb http://ftp.gb.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb-src http://ftp.gb.debian.org/debian/ lenny main contrib non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ lenny/updates main contrib non-free

Step-2

Update your local cache and get the latest apt, aptitude and dpkg versions.

# aptitude update

# aptitude install apt dpkg aptitude

Step-3

Perform a full-upgrade, which will finally update your machine from Etch to Lenny.

# aptitude full-upgrade

Apt GPG Key Installation

2010-03-28T10:17:00.000+01:00

gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv-keys xyxyxyxyxy
gpg --armor --export xyxyxyxyxy | apt-key add -
apt-get update

Replace the xyxyxyxyxy key with a valid one being required by your system. It's shown on the error thrown when apt-get update is run. Ex.

W: GPG error: http://ftp.de.debian.org lenny Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 9AA38DCD55BE302B NO_PUBKEY 4D270DEDB40584E6

Noam Chomsky at University of Stuttgart

2010-03-27T12:07:00.002+01:00

Noam Chomsky was in Stuttgart on 24.03 to deliver a lecture on "Phrase Structure Grammar" - don't ask what that it. I wasn't aware of the technical nature of the lecture hence fought fever and made my way to the Univ. Stuttgart into a lecture-hall of 300, already fully packed some 15 minutes before start.

Can an Eagle that Flies also Swim?

As soon as it was made known the lecture was on Linguistics, I lost hope of taking much back, but Noam's opening example grabbed my attention. Notice the sentence..

Can an eagle that flies also swim?

This is a perfectly simple sentence at first look, but our implicit knowledge of the eagle's primary ability to fly is note-worthy. Wouldn't we understand this sentence differently if we knew of a species of eagles that also swam?

Some other provocative thoughts...

Is Aristotle's definition of language - Language is sound with a meaning, accurate?
Is language a property of the individual, or that of a society?

Kids acquire language even before they understand culture

Everything that can be misunderstood will be misunderstood :)
Does such a thing as "language of thought" exist?

This is more than a sign of intelligence, this IS intelligence!

2010-03-14T11:02:00.002+01:00

Your life for your fin!

2010-03-14T10:51:00.001+01:00

SVN Handbook for Developers

2010-02-14T08:21:00.002+01:00

SVN Handbook for Developers

Project Work with SVN

SVN is Directory Based

The SVN Server

The SVN Server can be accessed at http://svn1.euroblaze.de. This is the web front-end to view code and manage your account settings.

Your Login

A username for your login and the associated email account will be emailed to you individually. You can thereafter request a password reset using the Password Reminder Form.

This login will allow access to:

Web functionality at http://svn1.euroblaze.de

Your account/profile management
Web-views of code stored in the SVN repository

SVN repository access to various projects assigned to you (for commit, update, checkout etc. operation)

SVN Clients

Windows

Windows users may use the TortoiseSVN client available for free from http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org. Please ensure to read documentation and practice using this client as much as possible before using it on real repositories, since mistakes could in the worst case lead to erasion of full code-repositories.

Linux

Linux users will find the shell based svn clients immensly useful and powerful for the purpose of accessing the SVN-server. Please use man for obtaining first information.

Project Work with SVN

As a developer, you will be using the SVN server almost on a daily basis, and even more so when you are commiting code that will be exposed to customers. A project's life-cycle in an SVN repository are as follows:

At the very beginning of the project's life in the SVN-repository, the SVN Administrator performs an import of a project into a repository. This becomes the code-base upon which all future developments are based on.
Developers checkout a copy of this code-base and create a local copy on their development machines. This copy, called the Working Copy (WC), is what developers use on a day-to-day basis. Developers develop on the WC.

See also SVN Clients

When a piece of code has been tested on developer machines and earmarked as ready to release to end-customers, the developer working on that code can commit it to the repository.

SVN is Directory Based

It is important to bear in mind that SVN commits function at a directory level. This means we always provide full directory paths when commiting files to the repository (and never individual file names).

Contact: Ashant Chalasani, ashant@euroblaze.de, +49-7154-82-7130

SnagIT Problem Solved! (Hangs for minutes)

2010-01-17T09:38:00.000+01:00

Here's the solution to the SnagIT sluggishness (hangs for several minutes)

I would try first turning off the magnifier window under tools > program preferences > program options. Uncheck the box to show magnifier windows. Click apply > ok and then try the capture again.

Check your security software and make sure that Snagit is set as a safe application. A security program that consistently scans the process will cause a very slow response like you are seeing.

Please also check your printers per this article:

Answer Title: Slow SnagIt startup

Answer Link: http://techsmith.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/techsmith.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=742

Finally, please review the steps here and try these as well:

Answer Title: SnagIt crashes or hangs when launched

Answer Link: http://techsmith.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/techsmith.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=137

Let me know what happens.

Tum Chalo to Hindustan Chale

2009-12-23T09:53:00.000+01:00

Devdutt Pattanaik: East vs. West -- the myths that mystify

2009-12-21T20:05:00.002+01:00

Japan's Whaling Fleet - 2009-10

2009-12-16T22:25:00.003+01:00

4 x Sonic Cannons in 2009-10, compared to 1 in 2008-09
1 x Spotter Aircraft, compared to none in previous years
1 x Factory Ship
1 x Supply Ship
1 x Spotting Vessel, to trail Sea Shepherd's Steve Irwin
4 x Whale Hunter-ships

Japan's Killing Targets for 2009-10

935 x Mink Whales
20 x Fin Whales
50 x Humpbacks

Source: news.com.au, as of 16.12.2009

Sea Shepherd - Hunters Become Hunted - Documentary on Sea Shepherd's Work

2009-12-05T12:50:00.000+01:00

Every year Norway, Iceland and Japan massacre about 1000 whales in the oceans of the planet, often in defince of international laws. The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society takes direct action against whaling fleets to shut down their buchery in the ocean.

These videos will give you the facts on whaling in the oceans and Sea Shepherd's action against them.

1/3

2/3

3/3

I'm setting up a Christmas donation for Sea Shepherd. Anyone willing to pitch in $10, please donate directly at seashepherd.org, or email me (or leave a comment here) and I'll help you with the process.

Thank you for looking out for your oceans!

News from Operation Walzing Matilda (2009-2010)

Japan deploys military ships to protect whaling-vessels

MySQL Root Password Resetting

2009-11-26T10:20:00.000+01:00

Log in as root and stop the mysql daemon. Now lets start up the mysql daemon and skip the grant tables which store the passwords.

mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables

You should see mysqld start up successfully. If not, well you have bigger issues. Now you should be able to connect to mysql without a password.

mysql --user=root mysql

update user set Password=PASSWORD('new-password') where user='root';
flush privileges;
exit;

Now kill your running mysqld, then restart it normally.

Originally authored by Nick Anderson at Howtoforge.

Denmark Massacres Calderon Dolphins

2009-11-25T15:40:00.002+01:00

It's unbelievable that this is happening in the European Union.

Petition Against the Danish Dolphin Massacre

Chris Smith's at PetitionOnline

We wrote to Sea Shepherd and GreenPeace about this, and GreenPeace actually replied with interesting information. I'll be updating that over the weekend.

ZOHO Projects looking good

2009-11-25T06:39:00.000+01:00

ZOHO's been doing an amazing job in creating SaaS services. I've been using CRM a bit, but am irritated by lack of integration with Google Apps Mail, since that's my main tool for day to day sales work.

Latest in the suite ist ZOHO Projects, which looks quite good. Again, the key to sustainably using it would be integration with Google Apps Mail and Calendar.

The features look like a neat-copy of BaseCamp. I'm still to figure out the USP's of Project.

However, for the same feature set, ZOHO Projects offers significantly better pricing.

David Garrett über Zwischenapplaus

2009-11-21T11:09:00.002+01:00

ZEIT ONLINE: Zwischenapplaus von Klassik-Neulingen stellt die Nerven von Klassikkennern und Künstlern auf die Probe ...

David Garrett: Es war doch früher ganz normal, zwischen den Sätzen zu klatschen. Beim Jazz ist der Applaus nach einer Kadenz oder einem Instrumental-Solo selbstverständlich. Die heute vorherrschende Haltung, das gesamte Werk am Stück hören zu wollen, ist erst um etwa 1900 aufgekommen. Man darf nicht vergessen, dass Musik auch Unterhaltung ist. Ich finde, es darf keine stille Kunst sein. Musik ist keine Religion. Um sie zu genießen, braucht es keiner Andacht. Musik ist etwas Großartiges, man muss aber immer noch die Freiheit haben, sich zu ihr zu bewegen. Wer verkrampft im Konzertsaal sitzt, der kann seine Emotionen nicht wirklich ausleben. Wenn jemand klatschen will, bin ich der Letzte, der "psst" sagt . Das wäre ja unmenschlich.

Mit freundlichen Grüßen von..
Orpheus Musiktheater e.V. | info@orpheus-musiktheater.de

Perl Development Environment on Windows

2009-11-04T08:51:00.001+01:00

The Perl runtime environment on a Debian 5.0 Virtual Machine worked out wonderfully. It allows the (almost) same development environment to be run on a VM executing on a Win XP/Vista system (the host). The Host and the VM operate in a virtual LAN. So the VM can function as a server, while the host can be used

As a development machine where code is written
Test (web)-client

Just bear in mind that the VM is the server for all practical purposes, and you can access it in any manner you'd access a LAN or Internet based server.

In my setup I use Ultra-Edit SSH-enabled IDE for Windows, which lets me connect to the Debian VM with over an SSH connection.

Downloads

Debian 5.0 Lenny Virtual Machine (150MB image, read readme.txt files)
VMWare Player (a program that runs on the Win-Vista host and loads/plays the Debian VM image)

Understanding my Network

2009-10-30T08:46:00.002+01:00

I'm profiting unbelievably from my constantly expanding network of business and private contacts. After having functioned in this network for over a year, I am convinced that it's not a mere coincidence or luck that it is giving me so much back.

Inspired by some of the talks at the OXID Partnertag on e-Commerce topics I set out to read up a bit on how exactly search engines are observing huge amounts of Internet data as networks, such as the graphic on the right, and ranking them by relative quantitative value of importance. The ranking process is highly mathematical.

Similar network theory has been researched extensively in faculties of electronics, telecommunications and of course mathematics.

I would like to use this space to try to draw parallels of how search-engines network information and rank it, to how network marketing and network sales works.

First off a few Internet resources:

Wikipedia definition of Social Network
101 article on Google Pagerank (Wikipedia)

tbc

Barcode for Google Logo

2009-10-07T16:59:00.003+01:00

On 7th October (2009) - the birthday of the barcode!

JFire ERP, CRM, SCM

2009-10-05T13:17:00.004+01:00

JFire claims to be a:

...the new, powerful and free ERP, CRM, eBusiness and SCM /SRM solution for business enterprises.
JFire is entirely free/open-source software, uses the latest technologies (EJB 3, JDO 2, Eclipse RCP 3.3) and is designed to be highly customizable.

This would a piece of software I'd love to test for confero24.com

SSL Certificates

2009-09-20T08:29:00.002+01:00

Some sources for obtaining reasonably priced SSL certificates for your web-server.

http://www.namecheap.com/learn/other-services/ssl-certificates.asp

http://www.instantssl.com/ssl-certificate-products/free-ssl-certificate.html (90 day free trial)

WhichSSL is an independent provider recommendation site which offers advise and comparisions.

Keywords for Google research.

Tagore & Eínstein: On Matter, Character and Music

2009-09-12T09:46:00.007+01:00

Excerpted from: A Tagore Reader, edited by Amiya Chakravarty.

Tagore and Einstein met through a common friend, Dr. Mendel. Tagore visited Einstein at his residence at Kaputh in the suburbs of Berlin on July 14, 1930, and Einstein returned the call and visited Tagore at the Mendel home. Both conversations were recorded and the above photograph was taken. The July 14 conversation is reproduced here, and was originally published in The Religion of Man (George, Allen & Unwin, Ltd., London), Appendix II, pp. 222-225.

TAGORE: I was discussing with Dr. Mendel today the new mathematical discoveries which tell us that in the realm of infinitesimal atoms chance has its play; the drama of existence is not absolutely predestined in character.

EINSTEIN: The facts that make science tend toward this view do not say good-bye to causality.

TAGORE: Maybe not, yet it appears that the idea of causality is not in the elements, but that some other force builds up with them an organized universe.

EINSTEIN: One tries to understand in the higher plane how the order is. The order is there, where the big elements combine and guide existence, but in the minute elements this order is not perceptible.

TAGORE: Thus duality is in the depths of existence, the contradiction of free impulse and the directive will which works upon it and evolves an orderly scheme of things.

EINSTEIN: Modern physics would not say they are contradictory. Clouds look as one from a distance, but if you see them nearby, they show themselves as disorderly drops of water.

TAGORE: I find a parallel in human psychology. Our passions and desires are unruly, but our character subdues these elements into a harmonious whole. Does something similar to this happen in the physical world? Are the elements rebellious, dynamic with individual impulse? And is there a principle in the physical world which dominates them and puts them into an orderly organization?

EINSTEIN: Even the elements are not without statistical order; elements of radium will always maintain their specific order, now and ever onward, just as they have done all along. There is, then, a statistical order in the elements.

TAGORE: Otherwise, the drama of existence would be too desultory. It is the constant harmony of chance and determination which makes it eternally new and living. EINSTEIN: I believe that whatever we do or live for has its causality; it is good, however, that we cannot see through to it.

TAGORE: There is in human affairs an element of elasticity also, some freedom within a small range which is for the expression of our personality. It is like the musical system in India, which is not so rigidly fixed as western music. Our composers give a certain definite outline, a system of melody and rhythmic arrangement, and within a certain limit the player can improvise upon it. He must be one with the law of that particular melody, and then he can give spontaneous expression to his musical feeling within the prescribed regulation. We praise the composer for his genius in creating a foundation along with a superstructure of melodies, but we expect from the player his own skill in the creation of variations of melodic flourish and ornamentation. In creation we follow the central law of existence, but if we do not cut ourselves adrift from it, we can have sufficient freedom within the limits of our personality for the fullest self-expression.

EINSTEIN: That is possible only when there is a strong artistic tradition in music to guide the people's mind. In Europe, music has come too far away from popular art and popular feeling and has become something like a secret art with conventions and traditions of its own.
TAGORE: You have to be absolutely obedient to this too complicated music. In India, the measure of a singer's freedom is in his own creative personality. He can sing the composer's song as his own, if he has the power creatively to assert himself in his interpretation of the general law of the melody which he is given to interpret.

EINSTEIN: It requires a very high standard of art to realize fully the great idea in the original music, so that one can make variations upon it. In our country, the variations are often prescribed.

TAGORE: If in our conduct we can follow the law of goodness, we can have real liberty of self-expression. The principle of conduct is there, but the character which makes it true and individual is our own creation. In our music there is a duality of freedom and prescribed order.

EINSTEIN: Are the words of a song also free? I mean to say, is the singer at liberty to add his own words to the song which he is singing?

TAGORE: Yes. In Bengal we have a kind of song-kirtan, we call it-which gives freedom to the singer to introduce parenthetical comments, phrases not in the original song. This occasions great enthusiasm, since the audience is constantly thrilled by some beautiful, spontaneous sentiment added by the singer.

EINSTEIN: Is the metrical form quite severe?

TAGORE: Yes, quite. You cannot exceed the limits of versification; the singer in all his variations must keep the rhythm and the time, which is fixed. In European music you have a comparative liberty with time, but not with melody.

EINSTEIN: Can the Indian music be sung without words? Can one understand a song without words?

TAGORE: Yes, we have songs with unmeaning words, sounds which just help to act as carriers of the notes. In North India, music is an independent art, not the interpretation of words and thoughts, as in Bengal. The music is very intricate and subtle and is a complete world of melody by itself.

EINSTEIN: Is it not polyphonic?

TAGORE: Instruments are used, not for harmony, but for keeping time and adding to the volume and depth. Has melody suffered in your music by the imposition of harmony?

EINSTEIN: Sometimes it does suffer very much. Sometimes the harmony swallows up the melody altogether.

TAGORE: Melody and harmony are like lines and colors in pictures. A simple linear picture may be completely beautiful; the introduction of color may make it vague and insignificant. Yet color may, by combination with lines, create great pictures, so long as it does not smother and destroy their value.

EINSTEIN: It is a beautiful comparison; line is also much older than color. It seems that your melody is much richer in structure than ours. Japanese music also seems to be so.

TAGORE: It is difficult to analyze the effect of eastern and western music on our minds. I am deeply moved by the western music; I feel that it is great, that it is vast in its structure and grand in its composition. Our own music touches me more deeply by its fundamental lyrical appeal. European music is epic in character; it has a broad background and is Gothic in its structure.

EINSTEIN: This is a question we Europeans cannot properly answer, we are so used to our own music. We want to know whether our own music is a conventional or a fundamental human feeling, whether to feel consonance and dissonance is natural, or a convention which we accept.

TAGORE: Somehow the piano confounds me. The violin pleases me much more.

EINSTEIN: It would be interesting to study the effects of European music on an Indian who had never heard it when he was young.

aTAGORE: Once I asked an English musician to analyze for me some classical music, and explain to me what elements make for the beauty of the piece.

EINSTEIN: The difficulty is that the really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.

TAGORE: Yes, and what deeply affects the hearer is beyond himself.

EINSTEIN: The same uncertainty will always be there about everything fundamental in our experience, in our reaction to art, whether in Europe or in Asia. Even the red flower I see before me on your table may not be the same to you and me.

TAGORE: And yet there is always going on the process of reconciliation between them, the individual taste conforming to the universal standard.

Online Storage Spaces

2009-09-08T07:38:00.004+01:00

Online storage services such as DropBox have finally solved the problem of accessing files across multiple desktops. Here're are some of the more popular services, with the free space offered in paranthesis:

DropBox (2 GB)
StoreGate (2 GB)

I'm using the DropBox service and love it for the convenience, however wonder, if using multiple services could be disadvantageous in anyway.

Your comments, and suggestions on more services welcome!

Success Factors for a Start-Up

2009-09-05T16:51:00.001+01:00

Unique selling proposition (USP)
Easy to understand value proposition
Short sales cycle
Large potential user/customer base

Water for all - the LifeSaver

2009-08-30T09:58:00.000+01:00

Trust!

2009-08-30T00:21:00.002+01:00

A mutually satisfying business arrangement is the foundation of trust between businessmen. When either of the parties feels that they must comply to an unfair agreement, the seed of mistrust would have been sown then and there.

Joomla! Link Structure | Inter-Content Links

2009-08-29T09:11:00.009+01:00

The Joomla! link structure has been mystifying me off late as I try to create some links in the content area without the template, menus etc. changing. Until now the only links I used were in menus, but never "inter-content" links.

According to Alledia's Understanding Joomla ItemID, there are two identifiers that are key to calling Joomla content - the ItemID and the ID. What these correspond to are alluded to in Alledia's article.

Key questions are:

Where to get the Id from
Where to get the ItemId from

The Id is the content identifier, which can be noted from the Article Manager.

The ItemId is the unique identifier that Joomla! uses to construct your page with the different modules, their positions, and other such page-structure related decisions the CMS has to make.

In addition the option=com_content request parameter is needed to be passed in.

References

Understanding Joomla! URL' s and ItemIDs

Fun Stuff

2009-08-27T18:46:00.003+01:00

Picked these up on the Internet..

They wade through pestilence
We call them wasted youth
The kids are running restless
Not a single f..king thing to lose
Give them enough rope
They'll f..king hang themselves for lack of things to do

Question of the day

Who's Jesus?
A pretty cool guy whose reputation has been run down by his fan-club!

Groups: Deviating from Google Quality of Service

2009-08-27T08:26:00.005+01:00

I administer some 10+ mailing lists using Google Groups and it has been disappointing to see that the service continues to carry bugs which had originally floated over an year ago and users have been complaining all along.

Case in point: Owners of groups are getting their messages to the group bounced back with the message:

We're writing to let you know that the group that you tried to contact (eb_xxx) either doesn't exist, or you don't have permission to post to it. There are a few possible reasons why this happened:

* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
* The owner of the group removed this group, so there's nobody there to contact.
* You may need to join the group before being allowed to post.
* This group may not be open to posting.

If you have questions about this or any other group, please visit the Google Groups Help Center at http://groups.google.com/support.

Thanks, and we hope you'll continue to enjoy Google Groups.

The Google Groups Team

This can of course not be true for owners of groups.

The problem has been reported many times to Google Groups Team on mailing lists, but is apparently being ignored.

Poor Email Integration in Zoho-CRM

2009-08-21T07:31:00.008+01:00

I've reported in the past about Zoho-CRM and my on-going love affair with the tool. See past posts.

Recently one of the technical support staff helped me setup POP3 access with my Apps/Gmail account. Having used it, email integration using this the POP3 mechanism seems quite rough at the moment. Following feedback for folks at Zoho and their user-community.

Pro's

Well, we finally have some email tracking in Zoho-CRM.

Con's

Only received emails into Gmail account appear in the contacts list. What about CRM record of messages that originated from me?

Zoho's standard answer to this is: "Use ZohoMail to send all your emails, and we'll sort those the CRM ones under your Contacts". It's near to impossible to move to ZohoMail for us since we have long standardized on Gmail, and hence this is not really an option.

Feature Request

Not all conversations are releated to CRM (ex. emails relating to project work). It should be possible to hide/delete such mails from the CRM records.
It should be possible to view messages pertaining to _all_ email addresses listed under a contact name.

Microsoft Schemes the Next Big Wastage

2009-08-16T14:11:00.002+01:00

This is in response to Joelle Alaya's article - Yahoo and Bing Teaming up Against Google

I'm not sure if I'd call it a struggle between David and Goliath; this is more like three Goliaths in combat. But as you said Google is ready! I'm one of those people that has come to trust Google over the years, simply because of the merit of their services. Though I've used Microsoft products for twice the amount of calendar-time, I can't unfortunately say the same of them.

Google's incessant focus on search throughout their history is IMHO the sole reason why they continue to be the best search engine out there. Sure they have done tons of other stuff like Apps, Gmail, Android, Wave etc, but all of it is related to improving search. Here's a clue for Microsoft to stick to core-competences, instead of madly obsessing about domination in every new market that develops in course of industry evolution.

If Microsoft should take cues from the best ever Internet company there was, it should be to improve their core-competences, namely Office Apps and consumer Operating Systems. That will for sure make us customers happy (coz we can stop wasting money on failed products like Vista), maybe even some day love M$ products (which honestly very few of us currently do), and help gain market-respect.

CMS for OrpheusDialog.de

2009-08-16T08:04:00.009+01:00

CMSAfter reviewing Pligg for some 3 hours now, I'm tipping to not deploy it for the new OrpheusDialog.de site.

Pligg is a really nicely done PHP/MySQL based CMS which allows maintaining a site of articles contributed by a community. A large and growing community of article contributors can use Pligg to pool the knowledge into the community.

Exactly that seems to be the reason I would not be able to use it to deploy a "regular" website, with a number of purely-static pages and some dynamic pages such as Blog and integration with Twitter, FaceBook etc.

Requirements for OrpheusDialog.de

Easy managability of static content pages
Integrated Blog
API Artchitecture to connect with external systems, ex. FB, Twitter

CMS Evaluated So Far

Pligg (PHP/MySQL)
Contenido (PHP/MySQL)

To Be Evaluated

WebGUI (Perl)
Bricolage (Perl, PostgreSQL)
Web-App (Perl, flat-files)
BigMedium (Perl, for-cost, open-source)
Cyclone3 (Perl and XUL based)

Mother-load of all/most CMS.

My Google Checkout Wishlist

2009-08-09T08:30:00.002+01:00

Google does an awesome job with most of it's products, but has left me begging for more when it comes to Google Checkout (GCO), especially the administration tools of this service. Here's my wish-list, in order of priority, and hope one of the GCO developers takes a look.

A way to submit tracking numbers for multi-line orders using GCO > Orders > specific_order
View invoices that have been sent (manually) from GCO > Tools > Email Invoices.

Is Europe Changing Faster than we Notice

2009-08-02T12:55:00.002+01:00

The distribution of world religions is as below:

Dates Fixed for Oxid Certification Training

2009-07-30T08:49:00.002+01:00

Dates have been fixed to the end of August for certification training of our employees in the following technical training programs:

OXID eShop Zertifizierung Technik Modul 1 – Professional Edition
OXID eShop Zertifizierung Technik Modul 2 – Professional Edition
OXID eShop Zertifizierung Technik Modul 3 – Enterprise Edition

The certification process is an advancement of our commitment to the Oxid community and our value-proposition of providing highly skilled and certified developers to e-Commerce agencies implementing shop systems based on the Oxid platform.

For constant updates, please bookmark this page or contact Ashant Chalasani by phone or email.

ZOHO Most Impressive

2009-07-22T06:36:00.002+01:00

ZOHO's online SaaS products are looking ever more amazing by the day. At a technical level they are a legitimate competitor to Google. M$ probably doesn't come close with it's Office Live suite, but they'll probably get somewhere eventually with their "keep trying" mentality.

I'm using ZOHO CRM, and can't deny a definite improvement in my sales data organization, as well as productivity. This will be my choice of CRM tool.

I'll stick to Google Docs for now for historical reasons, in spite of superior functionality that's appearing on ZOHO.

Plane Crash revisted

2009-07-19T10:03:00.002+01:00

Another tragedy in mid-air..

With the fateful crash, prolonged search and recovery of debris from the Air France A330 hogging the media bytes over the last week, you folks may like to see this about another crash over South America, which was forwarded to me recently.

A B737 had a mid air collision with the Embraer Legacy while cruising at 35,000 feet over South America. The Embraer Legacy, though seriously damaged with the winglet ripped off, managed to make a landing at a nearby airstrip in the midst of the Amazon jungle. The crew and passengers of the Embraer Legacy had no idea what they had hit. The B737
however crashed, killing all crew and passengers on board.

The two photos attached were apparently taken by one of the passengers in the B737, just after the collision and before the aircraft crashed. The photos were retrieved from the camera's memory stick. You will never get to see photos like this. In the first photo, there is a gaping hole in the fuselage through which you can see the tailplane and vertical fin of the aircraft. In the second photo, one of the passengers is being sucked out of the gaping hole.

These photos were found in a digital Casio Z750, amidst the remains in Serra do Cachimbo. Although the camera was destroyed, the Memory Stick was recovered. Investigating the serial number of the camera, the owner was identified as Paulo G. Muller, an actor of a theatre for children known in the outskirts of Porto Alegre. It can be imagined that he was standing during the impact with the Embraer Legacy and during the turbulence, he managed to take these photos, just seconds after the tail loss the aircraft plunged. So the camera was found near the cockpit. The structural stress probably ripped the engines away, diminishing the falling speed, protecting the electronic equipment but not unfortunately the victims. Paulo Muller leaves behind two daughters, Bruna and Beatriz .

The Great Indian Developer Conference

2009-06-24T08:30:00.002+01:00

I think for a developer community so vast as the Indian, an event like the Great Indian Developer Summit is an awesome idea. We should be spending some time at Indescon thinking on how our presence in Germany can contribute to it. Ideas welcome!

Twittering time-investments

2009-06-13T18:11:00.001+01:00

I'm twittering my way into 3 accounts - Indescon, euroblaze and private/ashant. Seem to prefer it to Facebook. Yet to be seen how significant a distraction this will be!

Webpage Optimization Tools

2009-06-07T09:05:00.003+01:00

For all of you trying to cope with having to manage sluggish website performance, this page-analysis tool could do you some help.

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

Fastest Sales Closure

2009-06-04T13:37:00.002+01:00

Today I closed my fastest deal ever doing sales in the German B2B market. The first pitch to his customer was on 15th May, with closure coming in on 4th June - my all time record.

For those of you wondering what the fuss is all about, B2B sales, especially in a recession time like the one we face now, take upward of 3 months to close, sometimes even 6, 9 or 12 months. So getting the customer signed in within 3 weeks is something of a wonder!

Unix Hard vs. Softlinks

2009-05-30T07:01:00.001+01:00

Unix Hard vs. Softlinks - excellently explained by Lew Pitcher!

The First Austrian Cloud Computing Company - Netmonic - A Review

2009-05-29T07:43:00.019+01:00

Netmonic is the first ever indigenous Austrian cloud computing company. I decided to give them a spin, since I'm in need of dedicating an FTP server for our projects being done in India.

Technically it's all been working good so far. No untoward failures (unlike my first days with serverpronto), the server has been up since I signed up online. Here's my review as I continue to use the server.

Sign Up & Payments

Signup was straight forward at netmonic.com - registration form. I automatically got a virtual server assigned with user/pass sent over by email. Our company did have a special requirement of payment by bank-transfer, since we don't use company CC', so a quick round of emails had to be exchanged with the support@ address listed on their site. The original account I setup had to be overwritten, and they provided new login details, within a few hours the same working day.

Netmonic currently supports their Registration workflow only with Credit Cards, which are unusual for corporate customers in Europe. Support for bank-transfer payments would be desirable.

Price to Performance

Spac e pricing is a tad higher than comparable US based services, for example ServerAxis (I use their 512MB/50GB metered server plan, $30 /month). This is likely because of the higher operating costs in Europe, and hopefully compensates itself in avoiding latencies of hosting in US for European traffic.

For this premium, it should also be said that Netmonic offers a great deal better management features for monitoring and managing all cloud servers you host with them. Most features can be managed over https://manage.netmonic.com. This is a boon to non-admin users, but also for the server-savvy, there's nothing like circumventing support and rebooting your machine on the click of a button on the web-interface.

One not-so-visible feature I think I am really going to like is the unlimited number of free DNS-Zones you can manage on your Netmonic Account. This will save me some 250$ per year that I currently shell out to for DNS at zoneedit.com, which charges a per-DNS-zone rate.

Support

Right now all issues have to be emailed to their support@ address. The response times have been anywhere between a few hours to 2 days.

Netmonic formally offers 2 levels of support - Basic and Extended. Basic is included to all customers free of cost. Extended support is offered on basis of per-hour billing or a fixed price. What's covered on each level is listed here (see to the left of page).

An ideal "to be" situation would be a ticketing-system where a standard work-flow can be followed, and response times of less than 2 hours during European work hours and less than 4 hours during non-work hours.

Operating Systems

List of currently supported Linux Operating Systems on the Netmonic Cloud.

Infact they did include support for Debian 5.0 (Lenny), both 62 and 64 bit, and a bunch of other OS's. I was able to select from 12 platforms in all when rebuilding the VS/cloud-server.

Some European Hosting Companies

I haven't studied these deals in depth, and certainly haven't tried any hands-on, but here are some other EU hosting/cloud-computing companies.

Hosttech, Köln
x|encon, Hannover

fixmbr - Repair Windows XP Master Boot Record

2009-05-26T07:53:00.002+01:00

I happened to hose my MBR which pointed to a GRUB (boot loader for Linux) while uninstalling all Linux OS-es from a Laptop. In the process, the Windows boot records also got deleted, and the machine lay sans a valid boot-loader. Eventually the only OS that I was interested in having on this laptop was Win-XP.

To install a fresh new Win-XP (actually Win NT) boot-loader

B from the Win-XP installation
Enter the "Repair" mode and find your way to the DOS prompt
Type in the fixmbr command, and let it replace the MBR completely
Exit and reboot

Firefox Plug-in for KeepInTouch KIT

2009-05-23T17:28:00.008+01:00

I'd love to have an FF plug-in that will allow adding email addresses of contacts, say when reading email, organizing CRM records or social-networking, to KeepInTouch (Google Code site).

It should be possible to

select an account
select a mailing list
add f_name, l_name and email address

by selecting a string an right-clicking on FF pages.

Some Resources

Eric Hamiter's Hello World! Tutorial
Adding search plugins (tons of resources linked on left-menu)
XUL / MDC Documentation
Firefox Extension Development Tutorial

O2 UMTS/GPRS USB stick on Kubuntu 9.04

2009-05-23T09:53:00.001+01:00

Here's how I got my O2 UMT/GPRS USB stick to work on my Kubuntu 9.04 Latitude X300.

German phrases

2009-05-20T18:23:00.003+01:00

This will help with my weakness in German conversation - small talk!

http://www.phrasen.com/uebersetze,Das-hoert-sich-gut-an,88302,d.html

(to the right, an unrelated "touching moment")

Of Collosal Political Errors - East German Industrial Development, Post Reunification

2009-05-16T12:32:00.004+01:00

These days, I don't read the newspaper, never watch TV and just sometimes pop-in news websites for current affairs. But I do read the Time magazine fairly regularly. This week, the cover-story was how economy-managers worldwide could take cues to solve the current global recession from Germany's experience of managing the economic integration of the earlier Eastern and Western Germanies.

Those of us who live in Germany know that there are still many unresolved problems in the East such as out of proportion unemployment, aging population (emigration of youth), industrial under-development etc.

Time's 18 May, 2009 article mentioned one collosal error made at the time of planning and executing the German Reunification under Chancellor Kohl back in 1990 - that of exchanging the East and West German Marks at par, one of one for each, while the real value of the Eastern Deutsche Mark (DM) was only a fourth of it's western counterpart. This automatically over-valued east-German labor, assets etc, thus losing an important natural competitive advantage for luring investors from West Germany, as well as all over the world, into setting up enterprise in this newly included part of the nation.

As a direct effect, industry in the East didn't develop naturally, rather solely (and minimally) based on economic stimulus granted by the federal government from tax-coffers (paid and maintained for the most part by West Germany).

Interestingly, further east, Czech Republic, Poland etc, prospered much better by keeping their currencies under-valued and taking advantage of the natural advantage low-valued assets and labor offer.

There might be some clues here for economy planners who seem to be pinning hopes on "pumping" trillions into enconomies worldwide.

XAMPP Port 80 and (mischevous) Skype

2009-05-16T09:12:00.003+01:00

Don't know why Skype has to block port:80, but it apparently does, which prevents XAMPP, or any other instance of Apache/2 to run. This snippet from ApacheFriends helped isolate the probem.

(7) You have other software, such as the Internet Telephone "SKYPE" which also blocks the port 80. (thanks Peter! ) However, one can change the SKYPE port: Actions -- > Options --> Connection. Here remove the check mark at "Port 80" for an alternate port. Restart Skype and also it should work.

Wolfram Alpha

2009-05-11T17:08:00.002+01:00

Here's a new approach to search...

Being Good!

2009-05-09T10:05:00.001+01:00

If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for
reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

Albert Einstein

Zoho CRM

2009-05-07T11:54:00.005+01:00

I'm enjoying Zoho CRM, as my staff moves tons of data into it right at the moment. Check this blog post..

What I like in Zoho CRM:

works faster than sf.com
has a benign image, whereas sf.com has a monopolistic suck-em-for-more-profit predatory image (above episode included)
has all CRM features I need
3 free accounts and 12$ per month is generous. Thanks

What I don't like:

Google Calendar is still the best for managing todo's. Can Zoho CRM make it easier/faster to manage tasks?
seems to be a clone of all CRM SaaS deals out there. Innovation anyone? (for ex. I would appreciate a Firefox plugin alá twitterfox, which lets me add activities fast)
I managed to import my Google Apps account contacts to Zoho Contacts, but not further down into CRM.
Small quirks like, the Open Tasks list doesn't sort by date (descending), so I don't get my immediate to-dos at the top of the list
Styling gets messed up in Google Chrome (not sure whose fault this is)
They are competitive with Google, which is generally bad for my IT, since we use Google Apps, Mail and Calendar too much to adapt an island CRM solution.

Wishes on the product-map.

Open up API, so the ZCRM will play with Google Apps and Gmail, which is salt and pepper for our work here.
Twitterfox like plug-in to Firefox for adding activities, which improves quailty of usage

Other (mostly Open Source) CRM Tools

OpenCRX (made in Europe:), super-active project, matches the hosted products in features). Screenshots page. SourceForge Listing. OpenCRX is a Java/J2EE based product.

Layer3 Model for Indian IT SME's in Europe

2009-05-01T14:19:00.025+01:00

This is the first article from the series I hope to finish for Indian IT SMEs' participation in the European, more specifically the German-speaking European market, mentioned earlier in my blog.

For years and still today Indian IT SME's have struggled to find opportunities for adding value in the European market. I have argued that this is principally because of the lack of ingenuity of business-models on the part of IT services companies from India. For far too long, they have focused on one and only one value-proposition, that of low-cost development resources. I believe it is now time to stop betting the farm on that one value-point, and start identifying under served opportunities, which the same strengths that have propelled Indian IT service companies into global fame, can serve.

The Layer³ Model which I'd like to propose here, segments the market into 3 horizontally laid out layers for visualization purposes. At the left end is Layer-1 where an Indian IT SME fits. Placed right of them at Layer-2 are indigenous European IT companies that consider this market home-turf. At Layer-3 is the end European market which is occupied by IT end-user companies of the most diverse nature.

Playing by Strengths

The Layer³ model champions the idea for Indian IT SME's to work for/behind their European counterparts. The premis for this is simply to play by one's own strengths. Layer-1 companies have it to their advantage that they have significantly more software development resources compared to European companies. Furthermore, while European IT companies have traditionally served their domestic markets, Indian software companies on average derive over 75% of their revenues from overseas customers. This has resulted in global delivery processes and best-practices that have become first-language to most Indian IT SME's. This strength, tested over time and matured over many projects, will result in adapting best-practices for project delivery across the geographical, and to some extent cultural, separation between India and Europe.

Strengths of Layer-2 companies lie in serving their local markets. Europe, with it's multi-lingual, multi-cultural and multi-national fabric can indeed be an overwhelming new market for Indian companies, if they attempt to approach Layer-3 companies, the end IT-users directly. Even zeroing on a single European national market leaves Indian executives with many challenges. Business standards in each market are varied and learning all of them will incur significant costs both in time and money. These hurdles should best be avoided by serving Layer-2 companies as back-end production partners, where a Layer-1 SME's role is limited to technical delivery.

Effects on Bottom-line, Competitiveness and Innovation

Layer-2 companies on the other hand, thanks to added capacities provided by the Indian partner stand a real chance of positively driving their top as well as bottom-lines in their native markets. They become more competitive by offering more services at better conditions in the market. At the same time, if the resources of the Indian partner are leveraged appropriately, European IT companies can also attain higher levels of innovation by freeing up their indegenous engineers to undertake more technically challenging tasks, and allowing their Indian counterparts to perform the more "regular" tasks. Best of all, end customers stand to benefit due to the better deal that the consortium of their regular European IT supplier and the Indian IT SME provide jointly.

Bridgeheads - the Key Success Factor

The advantages highlighted above are infact nothing new in the offshore software services market. When managed successfully all offshore projects offer them, but in the European market, cases of successful offshoring, particularly in the SME sector have been just a handful.

In the context of India, the factor that inhibited successful project work have been points of disconnect at a cultural and work-ethic level. These are full subjects of investigation in themselves, so we'll save them for later. For now, let me introduce the concept of a Bridgehead. Bridgeheads are members of a project team who are comfortable with both the German and Indian ways of work. Lack of bridgeheads in projects can be the single largest failure-factor for offshore projects between Indian and German IT companies.

In perspective of the Layer³model, on the European side, bridgeheads assume the role of understanding the project requirements, customer's concerns and expectations and standard project management tasks such as scheduling, release-management etc. On the Indian side, they ensure that the team(s) responsible for the delivery are in full understanding of requirements, expectations and standards. Bridgeheads typically also enforce the necessary discipline among all parties involved. In end-effect bridgeheads are point-men who can masterfully coordinate both sides of the buyer-vendor relationship. In the Layer3 model, the presence of bridgeheads could realistically drive the success-rate of projects to near 100% between Layer-1 and Layer-2 companies.

The Layer³model offers a sustainable and profitable solution for offshoring needs of IT companies in Europe. It significantly increase success rates of projects. At the same times it answers classical political debates like job-loss in local market, because the role of overseas companies is restricted to production activities and they need not be viewed as competitors to domestic players.

.. to be continued ...

Great new way to do video presentation

2009-04-30T19:32:00.002+01:00

Check out this awesome way to make video presentations..!

Apache2 VirtualHost configurations

2009-04-26T06:16:00.012+01:00

I'm unable to get rid of these warning messages on one of my webservers:

ashant@washington:~$ sudo apache2ctl configtest
[Sun Apr 26 00:16:19 2009] [warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence
[Sun Apr 26 00:16:19 2009] [warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence
[Sun Apr 26 00:16:19 2009] [warn] _default_ VirtualHost overlap on port 80, the first has precedence
[Sun Apr 26 00:16:19 2009] [warn] VirtualHost eby.xxx.com:80 overlaps with VirtualHost admin.xxx.com:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Apr 26 00:16:19 2009] [warn] VirtualHost www.xxx.com:80 overlaps with VirtualHost eby.xxx.com:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
Syntax OK

These are the VirtualHost tags for each of the subdomains noted above.

ServerName admin.xxx.com
ServerAdmin it@xxx.com

DocumentRoot "/home/xxx/www/admin/"

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/xxx.com/access.log combined
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/xxx.com/error.log
LogLevel warn

The eby subdomain.

ServerName eby.xxx.com
ServerAdmin it@ xxx.com

DocumentRoot "/home/eby/www"

CustomLog /var/log/apache2/xxx.com/access.log combined
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/xxx.com/error.log

LogLevel warn

Each of the sites configured in the VirtualHosts are all working just fine though.

BITCOM profiled me!

2009-04-21T08:07:00.002+01:00

BITCOM did a 1-pager on my time and career in Germany... on page 17 in Hightech Standort Deutschland magazine. Should be available in English sometime soon...

Black Book Blunders

2009-04-20T07:21:00.004+01:00

First posted at indescon.org group on Xing.

Not sure if the public gives any credit to this 8-page report with a big-fat title, which seems to have been done on a flight from New York to Florida, but it seems to have been cooked up to targetedly discredit India as an offshore-destination.

Notice that in the Introduction section the authors take reference to terrorist events (plural) in India. For starters, there was just one terror attack, in Mumbai, on the 26th November, 2008. But hey, wait...

under Methodology > Primary Research, it has been stated that the data for this report has been collected between Oct 20th and Nov 12th!! Makes me asks - were the conclusions for the report made before the data was collected (and the attack on 26/Nov used as basis for conclusions)??

I don't want to pick on this one detail too much, but it looks like all nearshore destinations have been fully eliminated from the risk-list. (Moscow has been included in the safe-list).

Besides, since when have Dublin (part of the UK, which the report claims to have excluded from data-pool) and Singapore started to be considered offshore locations? These locations are more expensive than several continental US locations.

Last but not least, this report might as well be named "Travel Advisory for Offshore Outsourcers". A risk-analysis for offshore outsourcing should probably cover much more factual depth, covering aspects such as technical competence of companies, process maturity (CMMi/ISO certifications), future-proofness of offshore partners (how big are they, how high is the management commitment, will they be around in 5-10 years, _and_ direct or indirect impact on innovation-abilities of US and European companies.

Black Book Blunders

2009-04-20T07:21:00.002+01:00

First posted at https://www.xing.com/net/indescon/

Not sure if the public gives any credit to this 8-page report with a big-fat title, which seems to have been done on a flight from New York to Florida, but it seems to have been cooked up to targetedly discredit India as an offshore-destination.

Notice that in the Introduction section the authors take reference to terrorist events (plural) in India. For starters, there was just one terror attack, in Mumbai, on the 26th November, 2008. But hey, wait...

under Methodology > Primary Research, it has been stated that the data for this report has been collected between Oct 20th and Nov 12th!! Makes me asks - were the conclusions for the report made before the data was collected (and the attack on 26/Nov used as basis for conclusions)??

I don't want to pick on this one detail too much, but it looks like all nearshore destinations have been fully eliminated from the risk-list. (Moscow has been included in the safe-list).

Besides, since when have Dublin (part of the UK, which the report claims to have excluded from data-pool) and Singapore started to be considered offshore locations? These locations are more expensive than several continental US locations.

Last but not least, this report might as well be named "Travel Advisory for Offshore Outsourcers". A risk-analysis for offshore outsourcing should probably cover much more factual depth, covering aspects such as technical competence of companies, process maturity (CMMi/ISO certifications), future-proofness of offshore partners (how big are they, how high is the management commitment, will they be around in 5-10 years, _and_ direct or indirect impact on innovation-abilities of US and European companies.

Open Office 3.0 Surprises

2009-03-21T12:57:00.002+01:00

Has anyone noticed the pleasant surprises in the Open Office 3.0 release?

It includes OO-Draw, which is a Visio-like drawing tool. I used Lanflow from Pacestar (single user license for 89$) for the purpose previously, but it's nice to have a tool within the OO-Suite. I'm keen to see if network diagrams are possible with Draw.

For those of you using OO in technical academia, OO-Math will let you write formulae, equations etc conveniently.

Download OpenOffice 3.0.x

New Business Models for Indian IT SME's

2009-03-17T04:07:00.005+01:00

Since the service industries revolution in India of the 1990's a majority of IT SME's have focused on providing software and systems development for customers in USA, Middle-East, UK, Japan and other smaller markets like Singapore/Malaysia, Australia/NZ and Africa.

This series of articles highlights a few new business models that could help Indian IT SME's survive the global recession of 2009-2010 and drive a new era of growth.

Value Added Resale (VAR) services for established product platforms
Partnership for product companies from US and Europe to enable penetration into the Indian domestic market
Adaptation products and tools made in India for overseas markets, in cooperation with local partners

To be continued...

TinyMCE Control Reference

2009-02-28T15:57:00.003+01:00

All the control references to TinyMCE.

TinyMCE does put in a full effort to "sanitize" the changes you do to the HTML code it produces. If you don't want TinyMCE to mess with your changes, set cleanup:false, like this:

tinyMCE.init ({
cleanup:false;,
});

Google Docs Rocks again!

2009-02-27T13:41:00.003+01:00

Just when Google Docs was starting to stale and pale in features, a bunch of new features are charming the public again.

Check out Forms in the G-Docs Suite. (I'm so happy my subscription on Survey Monkey expired;)

Using these features, I'm hoping it will be possible to spin new forms and make data from Spreadsheets available on my Joomla! sites.

http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=473&t=272566
http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/punbb/viewtopic.php?pid=20817

3 Features that Keep Taking me Back to Open Office

2009-02-21T09:19:00.002+01:00

Three features that I miss in Google Docs and which keep taking me back to Open Office are:

Templates: I can't possibly work on business documents without creating and storing templates
Document Variables: Several documents, for ex. contracts, project protocols etc, need changing a set of variables.
Merge with Spreadsheet: Serial letters that allow integration with a Google Spreadsheet are a must for heavy users of office software.

The good news is that Open Office handles these features well.

Lohnsteuer-Rechner 2009

2009-02-17T06:17:00.005+01:00

Wieviel Lohnsteuer zahlen Sie? Berechnen Sie hier Ihr Nettoeinkommen mit Ihren Sozialabgaben. Mit diesem Online-Lohnsteuerrechner.

Lohnsteuerrechner

Wer zahlt wie viel in die Rentenversicherung ein?

Mehr netto: Freibeträge auf der Lohnsteuerkarte nutzen - This article suggests Werbekosten (including transportation to and fro place of work) can be deducted from Lohnsteuer calculation.

Fun with Business Intelligence

2009-02-15T13:36:00.005+01:00

Of late, on behalf of a customer, I've had the opportunity to work on the fascinating world of Business Intelligence.

This article by Cindi Howson at B-eye-Network does a good overview of the subject.

Other interesting resources:

Open Office Mail Merge (deleting data sources)

2009-02-09T18:44:00.002+01:00

This little tip came in handy for deleting OO datasources after a mail-merge.

Stop EU Patents

2009-02-08T21:17:00.004+01:00

Way back I voiced against software patents in Europe.

It's time to rejuvenate the fight. Learn all about why software-patents will kill competition in our industry and Sign a petition today!

on Satyam..

2009-01-22T22:09:00.004+01:00

... had to let off some steam on this guy..

René,

What happened is unfortunate, and one can point a "moral-finger" at Raju. Through criminal prosecution, the law should take it's course.

But let's not forget, before using words like "shame on...", that this very man..

* created a company from scratch (1 employee in 1987)
* that had run well for some 22 years,
* created thousands of job over the years,
* fed many families,
* paid taxes to Republic of India,
* made many 1000's rich in the stock market, and,
* created an IT company that many millions have been proud of for many years (and still are).

So while wrong-doing should be punished, and will be, little guys like you and me should use some retrain in our language!

Ashant

Visual Guide to the 2007-08 Financial Crisis

2009-01-04T15:09:00.001+01:00

Eye Sight to a Billion

2009-01-04T08:56:00.002+01:00

Professor Josh Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

Full article at:

Inventor's 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world's poorest see better | Society | The Guardian

Logging in Perl

2009-01-03T10:51:00.005+01:00

For months now, my learning curve of Perl had completely flattened, in spite of the infinite richness of the language and my low knowledge-level of it. Finally, the problem of efficiently monitoring my KeepInTouch and SellerBay production usage apps are addressed in Log4Perl, seems to offer the next skill-upgrade opportunity in Perl.

Log4Perl is an easy, sophisticated, and everything-in-between logging API to Perl applications. Among it's capabilities:

log to a log-file of your choice, or to STDOUT, or to STDERR
dispatch emails for certain application runtime conditions
configuration in an external conf-file, or inline in code
... much more ...

I'm mainly keen to monitor scripts run by my cronjobs, whose performance I'm unable to track on a daily basis otherwise.

Resources

Conspiracy Theories, or Reality?

2008-12-29T00:26:00.002+01:00

http://www.infowars.com/

http://www.davidicke.com/index.php/

We are the World - USA4Africa

2008-12-21T16:53:00.001+01:00

Strange - 20 years after this song, conditions in Africa have infact gotten worse!

Perl Logging

2008-12-20T07:15:00.002+01:00

It occurred to me that I've been using pretty primitive means to keep status of the running of my Perl applications. It turns out that Perl has rather mature and advanced logging mechanisms that allow tracking status of applications.

This Mastering Perl tutorial about logging contains basics.

What can Fix Indian Political System

2008-12-17T09:56:00.003+01:00

With the outpour of anger against the political establishment in India after the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai, 4 measures seem appropriate for fixing the Indian political system for good.

Starting some near future year, ex. 2015, no politician with a criminal record should be allowed to candidate for the state assemblies or the parliament
Candidating age should be maximum of 65. This will motivate young people to choose politics as a serious career choice. The experienced 65+ veterans should seek out advisory roles.
A political scorecard should be maintained by media elements (national as well as regional media players) for the promises made by a certain party before election. This should best be broadcast continuously on how the politician is performing relative to his mandate commitments. It should also be broadcast prior to next election.

As for foreign policy, New Delhi's security agencies should systematically target Pakistan's terror camps and demolish them. Foreign intelligence agencies should be brought on board to assist in this, particularly European and Isreali, and if possible, NOT CIA.

Emotions against Pakistan in wake of 26/11

2008-11-30T13:27:00.000+01:00

In wake of the terrorist attacks on Mumbai of 26/11, as one tries to put together the whole picture, and the mind seeks to differentiate friends from enemies, I must confess that all my negative emotions are directed against Pakistan. Hopefully this is temporary, but hopefully Pakistan does something on their part in order to ease India's frustration.

It is indeed plausible that the attacks have nothing to do with the government of Pakistan. This is however not to say that the ISI, which is a power in itself in that country, is not abetting terrorists. If Pakistan's concerns for terrorist attacks in India are any more than crocodile tears, it should reflect in gradual rounding up of terror groups operating out of Pakistan and their elimination.

Pakistan hopefully realizes that terror in India will cause definitive collateral damage to itself, it's image in the world, it's economy and the dignity of it's own people.

2050 till India the 2nd Largest Economy?

2008-11-30T09:48:00.005+01:00

Predictions like this one by Goldman Sachs usually surprise me in how conservative they are. It predicts India will overtake the US economy to become the world's 2nd largest economy by 2050, behind China.

I believe it will not take that long. I've stated before that the entrepreneurial potential of the Indian people is it's biggest strength and source of new jobs and wealth. This in turn, together with a free market and enterprise facilitates unpredictable disruptions, such as the successive booms of the telecommunication and organized retail sectors.

I predict that disruptions of the future will result from business models and new markets discovered at bottom of the pyramid (BOP), while the higher parts of the pyramid continue to develop in more or less predictable fashion.

Studies & reports such as the one above from Goldman Sachs fail to factor such "insider-effects" in India as BOP and the demographic dividend.

Perl Command-line Search & Replace

2008-11-22T10:29:00.001+01:00

example:

# perl -i -pe ’s/PHP/Perl/g’ file.txt

Next generation corporate DNA

2008-11-10T09:28:00.002+01:00

I've had some great food for thought over this weekend reading up into insights at:

http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/haque/2008/02/whats_your_companys_dna_1.html

Unfortunately the comments seem to have been closed, so here's a short note of response here from me..

I think one thing that I'd like to place on record here that, in the old corporate DNA companies placed share-holder value before customer satisfaction and employee satisfaction. That needs to change, probably putting employees first, customer closely next, and the pure-greed driven (I mean this in an objective way) share-holders third.

Thanks for the great insights!

Ashant

The Art of Testing

2008-11-05T19:18:00.002+01:00

The seemingly boring skill of testing has a certain depth of it. Check out this excellent Wikipedia article on the subject..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_testing#Non_Functional_Software_Testing

IT Competitive Index 2008 (Economist Intelligence Unit)

2008-11-03T19:30:00.002+01:00

If you were looking for a quantitative ranking of competitiveness of IT markets, look no further...

http://www.eiuresources.com/mediadir/default.asp?PR=2008091601

SOA India 2008, Bangalore

2008-10-10T11:49:00.002+01:00

I'll be speaking at the SOA India 2008 conference in Bangalore on the topic "Europe - The Next Battlefield for Indian IT SME's", and will be in India between 16/11/08 - 22/11/08 (split between Bangalore, Hyd, Delhi and Kolkata).

Further details at http://www.sda-india.com/conferences/soaindia2008/index.php

Story of Stuff

2008-10-04T20:32:00.001+01:00

Corporate Goodwill Index

2008-10-03T10:26:00.003+01:00

Wouldn't it be great to have some kind of an index for companies, especially for big corporation which have an impact on thousands & millions of people, that measure the "goodwill factor" for them. It would be a measure of how the public, or consumers, perceive a certain product or service provider.

German marketing, explained in Cricket language

2008-10-02T08:59:00.002+01:00

Since I'm involved with market development for a number of Indian companies in Germany right now, one thing I have to take many pains to explain to CEO's from India is that the German market takes a long time to deliver, usually never less than 6 months.

This is hard for many CEO's to grasp, as they are have been fairly successful in closing deals in the US/UK markets faster than that. Purchasing patterns of German companies is much much much different than those in US.

In this sense, cracking the German market is like winning a test match, when compared to the US market, which is like an ODI.

Computers & Telescopes

2008-09-02T21:44:00.000+01:00

In der Informatik geht es genau so wenig um Computer, wie in der Astronomie um Teleskope.

Edsger W.Dijkstra

Integrating GeoIP

2008-08-30T14:17:00.005+01:00

Just implemented GeoIP into confero24.com (for currency selection), with help of following resources:

http://htmlblog.net/geolocate-your-visitors-with-php-part-1/
http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country
http://docs.huihoo.com/php/pear/manual/en/package.networking.net-geoip.html

Other possibly useful resources:

http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/
http://firestats.cc/wiki/ip2c
http://svn.xnull.de/svn/misc/geoip2mysql/

2-Letter Country Codes

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/_ccodes.asp

Who really snubbed Jesse Owens?

2008-08-23T17:14:00.001+01:00

by T V R Shenoy

August 19, 2008

Every four years, when the Summer Olympics hit the headlines, some media outlet or the other mentions the great Jesse Owens and his victories at the 1936 Berlin Games. Inevitably, the story of his famous snubbing by Adolf Hitler when the murderous Nazi dictator refused to shake Owens by the hand, is brought up.

There is just one thing about the story -- it is pure hogwash from beginning to end. And digging up the truth reveals some interesting facts about the United States.

So, what exactly happened in Berlin in 1936? Hitler and his goons were bent on leaving a good impression by crafting the most magnificent spectacle seen till then. (How many people realise that the relay of the Olympic torch from Olympia in Greece to the host country was dreamt up by the Nazis? There was no such 'tradition' before 1936.)

Hitler was at the stadium on the first day of the track and field competition on August 2, 1936. When the German athlete Hans Woellke won the shot put gold medal, the delighted dictator called him into the presidential box to congratulate him in person.

Henri de Baillet-Latour, then president of the International Olympic Committee, politely informed the German dictator that he could either receive all the athletes or none at all; congratulating only German athletes, he said, violated the Olympic spirit. Hitler, who was at his charming best, actually apologised for breaking tradition, and said he, would refrain from singling out athletes of any nation.

This was the origin of the famous 'snub'. Did Adolf Hitler actually insult the famed American athlete? The answer comes from the man best qualified to answer that, Jesse Owens himself.

'When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticising the man of the hour in Germany’

Interestingly, Owens did not say that in 1936, he wrote that in 1970, in the book The Jesse Owens Story, at a time when Hitler's monstrosities had been public knowledge for a quarter of a century.

Yet his concern for the truth was great enough that he acknowledged that it was Hitler who arose first to acknowledge the athlete.

So who did 'snub' Jesse Owens? Once again, Owens speaks for himself:

'Hitler didn't snub me -- it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.'

The 'FDR' mentioned in the quote is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then president of the United States. 1936 was an election year, and Roosevelt, who was running for re-election, simply did not want to be seen shaking a black man's hand. That might have cost him valuable votes in the southern states.

I am sure American journalists knew the truth. But they did not acknowledge that President Roosevelt, an icon of the liberal media, was such a racist that he could not spend a few minutes in the company of a black man. It made a better story to pin the story on Hitler, who, ironically, had publicly acknowledged Owens.

Owens also said that he was treated far better in Germany than in his own country. At a dinner held for all the victorious American athletes in New York, Owens and the other black athletes were ordered to ride in the freight elevator, used for transporting luggage, because the elevator for guests could not be used by blacks! He was denied all recognition by the American system, and reduced to stunts like running against horses; when he got too old for that, the great athlete worked as a janitor. In 1966 he had to endure the pain of filing for bankruptcy.

The story of Jesse Owens is hardly unique in American sport. A young Muhammad Ali ( then named Cassius Clay) was reputedly refused service in a whites-only restaurant; humiliated, he threw away the gold medal he had won at the Rome Olympics. Later, he refused to be drafted during the Vietnam War, famously declaring, 'I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong, they never called me a nigger.'

The United States has traveled some way since the days of Roosevelt and Owens. In those days, there was a white man in the White House and a black man doing the hard yards out in the stadium. Today, there is a serious chance of a black man sitting in Roosevelt's chair, while a white man is winning accolades for his octet of gold medals.

Sadly, some things never change. In 1936, the press allowed itself to be seduced by Nazi propaganda; sift through the archives, and there is no shortage of admiring reports about the economic and social development of Germany under the Hitler regime. In 2008, there seems to be the same unquestioning admiration for Communist China as for Nazi Germany.

I cannot help reflecting that his athletes achieved one of the aims that Hitler set for them. Germany won 33 gold medals and 89 in all, handily beating the 24 gold medals that fell to the United States (56 in all). When you see the determination with which the Chinese are setting out to beat the United States in the gold count, you cannot help wondering if this dictatorship too will follow the Nazis in other areas too.

Tailpiece: I have long since despaired of Doordarshan's commentators -- why can't we simply get the foreign feed? -- but the national broadcaster hit a new low with the Beijing Games. Even its technical standards have slipped, with comments from the harassed engineers clearly audible over the air, not once but just about every day. And then there was the time that we saw the men's badminton championship match while the audio feed related the tale of the women's diving finals. Simply horrible!

Heart Health Tips from Dr. Devi Shetty, Bangalore

2008-08-17T10:43:00.002+01:00

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty , Narayana Hrudayalaya (Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged.
The transcript of the chat is given below. Useful for everyone.

Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart ?
Ans:
1. Diet - Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil
2. Exercise - Half an hour's walk, at least five days a week; avoid lifts and avoid sitting for a longtime
3. Quit smoking
4. Control weight
5. Control blood pressure and sugar

Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart?
Ans: No

Qn: It's still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?
Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.

Qn: Are heart diseases hereditary?
Ans: Yes

Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress?
Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life.

Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart?
Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints .

Qn: You have done so much for the poor and needy. What has inspired you to do so?
Ans: Mother Theresa , who was my patient.

Qn: Can people with low blood pressure suffer heart diseases?
Ans: Extremely rare

Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age (I'm currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age?
Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.

Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart ?
Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body's enzyme release for digestion gets confused.

Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines?
Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.

Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments?
Ans: Yoga helps.

Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?
Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.

Qn: Which oil is better - groundnut, sunflower, olive?
Ans: All oils are bad .

Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?
Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.

Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack?
Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position , place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour.

Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble?
Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG.

Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters? I see people of about 30-40 yrs of age having heart attacks and serious heart problems.
Ans: Increased awareness has increased incidents. Also, sedentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy?
Ans: Yes.

Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true?
Ans : Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child

Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart ? What precautions would you recommend?
Ans : When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.

Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)?
Ans : Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe.

Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks?
Ans : No.

Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease?
Ans : No.

Qn: How would you define junk food?
Ans : Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds , samosas, and even masala dosas.

Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food?
Ans: Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.

Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension?
Ans : No.

Qn: Can a person help himself during a heart attack (Because we see a lot of forwarded emails on this)?
Ans : Yes. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time, the ambulance does not turn up.

Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems?
Ans : No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?
Ans : Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.

Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar?
Ans: Yes. A strong relationship since diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation?
Ans : Diet, exercise, drugs on time , Control cholesterol, BP, weight.

Qn: Are people working on night shifts more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers?
Ans : No.

Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?
Ans : There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to
reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles.

Qn: Does dispirin or similar headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks?
Ans : No.

Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women?
Ans : Nature protects women till the age of 45.

Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition?
Ans : Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkup s if you are past the age of 30 ( once in six months recommended) ...