This week (Post Deepavali) has been good to Chennai City for couple of things.

After a month of frustrating traffic and hour long traffic jams in T.Nagar Shopping District, driving on Monday & Tuesday (23,24 Oct) felt relaxed. On Monday at peek hour (7PM) I was able to drive from my office (Habibullah Road) to Srinagar Colony (Behind Saidapet Magistrate Court) for a meeting in 15 minutes. I just wish everyday is like this . The reasoning (do you need one?) for roads being empty - one after Deepavali people have to return at last to work, second they are left with no money after all the Deepavali shopping.

In one move - Chennai City Police went to NYPD range. I was driving to my house and was surprised to see a stunning white color Police Car fitted with Hollywood Police like Lights parked in a tea-stall in Thambiah Road (West Mambalam). For a minute I thought it was for a Hollywood Movie - Why in a Tamil Movie would they want this car, for Tamil Movies it is always a Colonial day Jeep which itself would have acted in over 10,000 movies. Reading the next day newspaper I realized that Hyundai India has donated 100 of these beauties (Hyundai Diesel Accent) to Chennai City Police Free. Critics might say it is a marketing move by Hyundai to make the Police trial run this, get hooked to it and then make them more. I just hope after 12 months, parts of these cars are not sold in platform in front of commissioner's office.

Last two-three days we have been having good down-pours here. Thanks to weather gods, all the reservoirs aroud the city are getting filled. Hopefully this should help the city ride through the coming summer comfortably.  

I was asked by someone on what are new Native Windows APIs introduced in Vista; when I searched I came across these two useful resources.

- Video on "Tips and Tricks on Vista" presented in Tech Ed '06 covering new File Dialog API, Search API, UAC Issues and API.

- PDF file of a Slidedeck on "Tips and Tricks on Vista" - Covers the same topics as in the video above.

The online video sites are seeing action like never before. Last week Google bought the market leader in this Youtube.com for over $1.6 Billion dollars. The Social networking site Myspace.com has a popular video section as well. MSN is launching soon its Soapbox service.

Though I have been to these sites a few times and seen few of the videos, I was not that captivated with them - as the media expects everyone who visits video sites to do. I guess I am not the target audience - which predominantly is Teenagers. I am also not sure on the business model - presently I find no advertisements in Google Video and the advertisements on other services are also very minimal, if not absent.

Anyways, today I decided to give these sites a try by uploading a video. The video I selected was the speech I gave last month in Jayaram College of Engineering on "Can India Sustain its IT Growth and what I look for in freshers?"  (Hyperlinked to the other post which has the links to various sites)

The first disappointment for me was all these sites, expects you be with a video - edited, fine-tuned and ready to upload. None of these sites provide you either an offline or an online tool to do typical video editing jobs, which if you are not a professional can take hours.

Though almost all of them worked the same, these are the differences I found:

1. Google Videos: Two good things about the service - This service allows files more than 100MB; It gives you a small (240KB) downloadable Application that makes uploading files more than 100MB a breeze.
2. Myspace Video: Though easiest to use also has the minimal features. Limits to 100MB of filesize
3. MSN Soapbox  (Beta): Currently Invite only site; Uses extensive AJAX to give a multi-task interface and file upload - you can upload and watch videos at the same time; Limits to 100MB of filesize. The post upload processing here took hours. Good think, it gives readily the Hyperlink, Code for Embedding Player, etc. Scores high on UI.
   
4. YouTube.com: Simplest interface; ability to group videos into playlists; Limits filesize to 100MB.

Wish you all a very happy diwali.  தீபாவளி நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்.

 

Let this Diwali - the festival of light, bring peace and prosperity for everyone.

If you haven't seen Live.com site, go check it out. It is a personalizable start page, you can add any number of available Gadgets - which are tiny AJAX applets that gives you functions like Calculator, News, Currency Converter, Games and more. There is a built RSS feed reading gadget as well that displays the contents of any RSS feeds. At Vishwak, we decided to improve the functionality of this RSS Gadget and we have come up a new RSS Viewer gadget. This gadget accepts any RSS link, displays top 5 stories, expands one abstract at a time in rotation.

You can add this gadget to your live.com page from: http://www.vishwak.com/gadgets/live.com/vishwakrssrandom.xml. For adding, click on the Add Stuff link above the Pages Tab, then on Advanced options and type the URL of the gadget in the Subscribe textbox and press subscribe. Let me know what you comments .

If you would like to write Gadgets on your own check out the Live.COM SDK here. There are differences between the Live team approved gadgets that have access to the entire page DOM and JavaScript objects; and your own (not approved) Gadgets which are run on an IFrame, which restricts it from drawing outside the Iframe area. That's why you will notice our gadget having the Edit button not on the same line as in the title display (border) but as a seperate line (Right-aligned).

It is rare for me to finish a book that I started till the end. Though I love to buy books (as I grow up among books - my father runs LIFCO Books) and a bookstore is a place I can spend hours, I am hardly into big fat books like novels and fictions. I am puzzled on how kids can finish the 500+ pages Harry Potter Books. I buy a book, take a snapshot, read the first few chapters in one sitting. Then the book goes into my personal library - hardly taken out again (with few exceptions). That's why you see my posts under "Books" Category in this blog less populated - I keep waiting to finish a book before posting, but finishing never happens.

This post is about an exception. Early last year I bought the book "Blink" by Malcolm Gladwell. Immediately in that trip I finished the first chapter, then in few trips though I took the book I could never read more than few pages. Last two weeks due to trips to New Delhi (3 Hour Flights for each leg and then all the Airport waiting time) I re-started this book and finished it easily.

The book is about how our SubConsious mind processes informations differently than our Concious/Scientifc mind; it covers how at times this can be used for effective decision making. This book proves the statement that you might be using many times "I have a gut feeling that this works only like this".

I will certainly recommend this book for anyone interested.

I had written about 6 months back about the revamped Hotmail to Windows Live mail. Though it was better than the aged Hotmail interface, it still lacked fit-and-finish elegance.

Today I was happy to see a new version(M8) of the UI when I logged in to my Hotmail ID - Microsoft certainly have improved the experience and it is feels more responsive and stable than the previous version. Check it out.

 

Few weeks back I installed the free Windows Live Toolbar - normally I am skeptical on installing any IE Toolbars (Browser Add-Ons) as they tend to destabilize your Windows Explorer and IE. But WLT so far seems to be stable and causing no performance issues. Two things that you can get only if you have the WLT are Live Favourites (that allow synching your Browser Favourites online and access it from any computer) and PC Health (Free OneCare Virus Scan and PC Optimization tools like Registry Clean). Check it out.

Today in the supplement of one the tamil newspapers carried a piece that the English word "Cash" came from Tamil "Kaasu". "Kaasu" means smaller money - coins. European merchants travelling to India and China, have taken this word to Europe and it was later adapted as "Cash" in English.

The Tamil word in turn is believed to have its influence from Sanskrit word "Karsha" - which denotes weight of precious metals like Silver and Gold.

Anyway I am proud as a Tamilian that the most important word in English has its origin from my mother tongue

Today all FM Radios in Chennai were talking only about the birthday of Dr.ABJ Abdul Kalam - Hon'ble President of India. He is a great self-made man and I am big admirer of him. Born today (15-Oct) makes him a Libran (I do come up with such great discoveries once in a while ) and it is a great feeling to know I share the same Sun Sign with him.

Finally I have made the full switch to Vista RC2 and Office 2007 Beta2TR as my primary work environment, from last weekend. I should say I am very happy with the results so far.

Read my earlier post on my experiences with Vista.

Vista - Pop Ups asking Elevated Credentials: One of the things I like in Vista, is that when I run as Normal user, then try to do something like Change settings in Control Panel that requires Administrator priveleges, the OS automatically pops-up a dialog box asking for a different credential (Username and Password). This seems to work in almost all situations - including the upgrade of MSN Messenger. This one in MSN Messenger always used to irritate me, for I had to quit Messenger, rerun it (using Run As command) as Administrator and then upgrade.

Office 2007 Beta Installation: After spending several hours installing Beta 2 Office (separately Office Pro, Groove, Project, Visio, OneNote) and then applying Technical Refresh (TR) for each of them, I realized I can’t run Office 2007. I initially didn’t give a Product Key as I didn't want to waste an activation if things didn't work in my hardware, hence activation didn't happen while installing.

For every user login I try to run Office, it gave an error “Not installed for Current User, rerun setup”. After searching in Office beta site, it turns out that you need to switch off UAC, run each of the Office 2007 applications once, activate them (or supply with the key) and then turn ON UAC.

Yesterday when I heard the news that Aptech has bought a majority stake in Synergetics, I was happy for the promoters. Synergetics is a mumbai based training company offering advanced programs in .NET. One of the founders of the company is a good friend of mine Sanjay Vyas - a dedicated trainer who is known in Microsoft technology circles for his brilliance on C/C++/COM/C# expertise. 

The existing board will continue to run the company and I wish them all the best in the years to come. Having a strategic investor like Aptech is going to help the founders in improving the business and removes them the trouble of cash flows and risk taking.

As a responsible citizen, I casted my vote for the ongoing Localbody elections in Chennai (Tamilnadu). Though localbody elections are not high-profile, they have the most direct impact for citizens.  

Last 3+ parliament/assembly elections that I voted have been on Electronic Voting Machines, but I was surprised that today it was paper based.  May be they don't have so many voting machines.

Today in Intel Developer Forum, I saw Intel Classmate PC. It is a small little Laptop for students. It runs on Celeron, 256MB, Wi-Fi, 1GB NAND Storage (no HDD), a fanless/noiseless desgin and Windows XP Embedded. I would love to have one to carry around rather than my big laptop. It is supposed to be available Q1 2007, for around < US$400 and for general consumer as well.  For educational institutions, they have a great classroom management software that allows teacher to see the screens of everyone in the class (thru' Wi-Fi), lock the laptops, etc. This S/W will be useful even in professional environments.

Update 10/5/2007: Intel seems to have started the piloting of these classmate PCs in India. I wish it good luck.