While travelling, especially overseas Skype is very useful to keep in touch. At times, I pay for SkypeOut to make International phone calls and find their conferencing feature exceed expectations. The only requirement is for you to have a good broadband connection.

Anyways, for you to use Skype you need to carry apart from your laptop and mouse, additionally a headset. Recently while in Tokyo I bought this convenient device from Sony that combines a mouse and a Skype Phone (USB) for about Yen7500.

Cricket World Cup 2007 has finally begun today. A two month marathon of some of the finest teams and games of cricket will be played in the Caribean Islands. Though "1" billion Indians love the sport and watch it occassionaly, the noise level about the game in the recent few weeks have been deafening. The amount of money adverisers are pouring to the sponsorship are really huge - unheard in India & Asia before. All the radios, websites, mobile phones carry nothing but about "upcoming" World Cup. I am doing this post while watching the first match between West Indies and Pakistan with the PIP feature of Samsung SyncMaster 910MP. In the stadium again, I am seeing mostly Indian Companies advertisements.

Is it all warranted?, I am not sure.

The matches are happening from 7:30PM IST, so most of the people in India will be catching up on the match from their Telly. One good thing I like about the attention on World Cup is that it does distract people from everyday worries and relax a bit - including myself.  

As a business, I am feeling great and certainly not complaining - as at Vishwak we are working on several cool projects on Web/Mobile for the World Cup for our Media customers.

I know I am using an over used "Title" for this post. But I really mean it.

It is about building Windows Applications that are connected to the cloud (Internet) for either authentication or utilizing other services. Though there are applications today that work this way - like Windows Live Writer, Google Picasa, Yahoo! Flickr - they are few and very difficult to develop and test. The development tools including Visual Studio 2005 does very little to support a model like this. Microsoft Dev Tools team is aiming to change all this with the upcoming version of Visual Studio "Orcas". Read about this and other features of "Orcas" and download the CTP from here.

Related Articles:

Read a good blog post on this here by Microsoft's Saurabh Pant

Juval Lowy (My fellow RD) writes about how to do this with VS 2005 today

Today while driving to office from home, a two wheeler narrowly escaped from getting hit by my car.  It happened in front of Ayodhya Mandapam, West Mambalam. An elderly person was driving the motorbike, straight from the opposite street to ICICI Bank which is on the other side of Arya gowda road without even glancing for the traffic flowing on the main road. I was driving towards Brindavan street and had to stop my car with all the energy applied on the brake pedals. Thank God, my Opel Corsa stopped within Centimetres of the bike, otherwise the impact would have been fully on the bike and the rider.

I wanted to shout at the bike driver for his carelessness, but as I said he was a grandfather figure looking very respectful, he apologised, so I moved on. Anyways, what is the use in arguing with him, the act has been committed.  

Please share your similar driving incidents in the comments below.

Hindustan Times in content partnership with Wall Street Journal launched a new Business Paper in India "Mint" on Feb 1st. Designed by well-known newspaper designer Dr. Mario Garcia and edited by former Wall Street Journal deputy managing editor and European editor Raju Narisetti, the paper brings some fresh perspective in the Indian Business News area.

So why I am writing about it here?, because at Vishwak we developed the technology for the online edition "LiveMint.com" and it runs on our Vishwak Portal Framework (VPF).

It was a great team effort to launch such a prestigious portal between our teams at Vishwak, HT Media and other partners. Read here the peek on the technology case-study of LiveMint.com Portal (PDF).  Please post your technology comments below and anything about the portal to newsroom@livemint.com

Today I was invited to present on "A Case Study - on my experiences as being an Entrepreneur". The event was Computer Society of India's National Symposium on PREPARING IT PROFESSIONALS FOR 2010- A ROAD MAP. The event was featured in "The Hindu" Education Plus supplement dated 26, March 2007 (Hi-Res).

I enjoyed presenting in this, especially to see the enthuism and the energy with students.

You can read the references notes I used for the talk here - PPTX Format, PDF Format. It is not very detailed as I didn't project it as a slideshow.

In this connection, I remembered an Interview of me done around 2003 by Pallavi Aravind Narasimhan from Friendsofsvce (One of Alumni Associations of my college). Most of it is relevant, but remember it was four years back!

After carrying for years, fully loaded laptops I have come back to basics. My laptop for last 3 years was a HP Compaq nx7010, a 15.4" Wide Screen with 2GB RAM. In my many trips around the world and presentations the laptop has never let me down. I have seen rarely a blue screen, the cons are it is not a speed monster, wireless support is spotty and Vista doesn't support Aero glass. Battery life has been decent (90 - 120 mins) considering the wide screen and it has survived my numerous formats and re-installs.

My chief complaint has been weight - my hand-baggage on an average weighs 9.5Kgs. The major culprit being the nx7010 laptop weighing around 4Kgs - Laptop itself at 3.4Kgs and Power Adaptor the balance. I got so fed up carrying this brick block, I vowed a year back that my new laptop whenever I buy it will not weigh more than 2Kgs (including Power Adaptor). If you ask why wait for a year – simple, I wanted Vista to get released & come pre-loaded with the machine. Having lived through all major releases of Windows, I have learned not to buy a new laptop (Desktops are OK) before the preceding months of a major Windows Release. If you do, then be prepared to keep hunting drivers for its life. There are only few instances I know where people have successfully upgraded OS in their laptops. 

Last month I used every opportunity I got during my business trips in Seattle, Tokyo & Singapore to do extensive window-shopping for the lightest laptop. Then narrowed down to Sony Vaio TX Series (VGN-TX57GN) that weighs only 1.25Kgs. There are few Fujitsu, NEC, Panasonic and even a Sony G Series (890grams) that were available in Tokyo - but they all came only with Japanese OS and warranty limited to Japan - photos of these models for a different post. The model I bought was priced in Tokyo around 290,000 Yens, but I bought it last friday (2 Mar 07) in Chennai itself for Rs.112,500/- mainly for the convenience of support in India.

The VGN-TX57GN comes with a Carbon Fibre body that is extremely light. It is not a power-horse, has a Intel Core Solo 1.33Ghz CPU, 1.5 GB (max), 80GB HDD, 11.1” Wide Display, DVD Writer, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, USB, Firewire and Vista Business. Apart from the weight and the display brilliance, few more things impressed me with this laptop. The bundled software especially the Adobe PhotoShop and Premiere elements, Sony’s easy-to-use yet highly configurable recovery utility and the fingerprint sensor for sign-in. Full Specifications here (PDF).

I am setting up the laptop now – yet to load MS Office and other applications. So my actual experiences to be posted later.

In general there is talk in market circles about how Retail in India is set to boom in few years. The trend has certainly started and I feel the retailers are slow to keep pace with the consumers demands.

To understand look at the massive crowd in Saravana Stores (பிரம்மாண்டாமாய்), Pothys or RMKV in Usman Road, or in Spencer Plaza or Chennai City Centre. Earlier it used to crowded only before festivals & weekends - now it is crowded 365 days. The time is right for Saravana Stores to follow Singapore Mustafa and keep the shop open 24 hours a day. More than anyone I will be happy to shop if they keep it open 24 hours - you can go in the night, park easily and shop without the hassles.

Today I went with my wife and kid to the new entrant in the city Pantaloons' Big Bazaar. In the store and in the parking lots there were hugeeee crowd (ஃபிரியாக {free} கொடுப்பது போல் கூட்டம்) . There was an attractive exchange offer going on, people can bring any old household items, old papers, old clothes or anything. Based on the weight they are given coupons of "N" value. You need to shop for 4 times the "N", then you can get "N" as discount. Not a total free deal, but certainly a good marketing plot to get the mass foot fall - especially the lower income and low middle income who otherwise will consider a brand like Big Bazaar to be expensive and not walk in at all. We didn't buy anything today, as we didn't have the patience to stand in the huge "Queue" for check-out. In the 30 minutes or so that I spent in the store, it seemed to be well-laid, staff informed and well stocked - and this is a complement from someone who enjoys to spend time in all major retail stores around the world (US, UK, Aussie &  South-East Asia). If BB can maintain the prices, quality and ambience - I feel Big Bazaar can give a good competition to "Wal-Mart" whenever it enters India.

Big Bazaar seems to have an online version at FutureBazaar.com

Yes, "Gut Feel"  doesn't look nice to use in public. Is there a better term, I learned one today, to find out read on...

In casual conversations to indicate something is very easy, we say it is not "Rocket Science". I feel only a Rocket Scientist (like our President ABJ Abdul Kalam) can say for certain whether one is or not. This term is more often used in Software Development Lifecyle to indicate a module that the person feels is not difficult to build - I am a little skeptical whenever I hear this (I am also guilty of using it). I am skeptical because we are not talking metrics to indicate the complexity but relative terms, which vary person to person.

Anyways, what is definitely "Rocket Science" is to do Software Estimate. Scientifc Methods to estimate do exist and they should be used always - which I am firm believer when validated by experience inputs and risk analysis. Deliberations on this is for an other day.

Most often in the industry we hear the excuse there is no enough time to do a scientifc analysis and we have to go with "Gut Feel" estimates. Today while conducting an Interview, I learned a new term for saying this from the candiate and it is "Expert Judgement". Sounds Professional, isn't it!

I am a pure vegetarian by belief and choice from birth. So whenever I travel abroad I have to say No Fish, No Meat, No Chicken!. Immediately some people reply back How about Water? - definitely not funny especially when I am hungry. Only saving grace is that I eat everything vegetarian and Egg is OK as long as it is masked inside cakes and sweets - no omelettes though.

So why am I saying so much about me here, not only because it is my blog and I can write whatever I feel like here , but to give you the context.

Last week I was in Japan on my second business trip there, stayed there in Akasaka (ANA Tokyo Hotel). Fortunately I could find lot of Indian Restaurants in walking distance or few subway stations away. The one I liked was Moti's. Other options include "Maharaja",  last visit I had visited this restaurant in Shinjuku - but the food there is made more for the Japanese/Western taste.

Japanese are known for their hospitality and friendliness. My clients in Japan hosted a dinner specially for me and my co-worker. Like I did during my last visit, I requested them for a Japanese dinner. They took effort in finding a good restaurant near Omote-Sando station. It was a classical Japanese style home, and they served a seven (or eight) course lavishing meal. The meal was pure vegetarian and consisted of boiled vegetables, fruits, rice, tofu and Japanese tea. I was told by my hosts that the meal was modeled on what Japanese Buddhist monk have in their monasteries. For me, it was a different experience. The restaurant manager gave all of us a paper (shown in the image here) that has the entire menu we had for the dinner listed in Japanese.

Like Indians, Japanese also have their food sitting on floor. But a new thing I learned on that day was that Japanese conventionally sit in Vajrasam Yoga style while sitting on floor. The normal folded legs posture is considered in Japan to be rude - but nowadays very common.