I have been seeing PCs from PC-AT days and the wish has always been to see the plethora of connectors behind your PC eliminated. With USB Headphones, I see no need for EP Jacks for Audio In/Out, but they still exist. Same like that no need for the legacy COM and LPT ports for printers and accessories. Though majority of the device can now be connected to USB, including Wireless Network (and there by eliminating RJ45 Socket) - the monitor has been stubborn on its VGA and Digital sockets.

Now Samsung's new Ubisync Monitor will hopefully say farewell to this. This monitor connects to any USB, needs no graphics card and works with Software Drivers. It supports connecting upto 6 monitors in one USB port. Cool...

Having nothing else do on a Sunday Evening, we went to Chennai Trade Fair at Island Grounds. Though we have gone there few years before, my wife was skeptical whether we will like it now - but we certainly had a good time. My son certainly enjoyed the Toy Train ride and the huge open spaces.

For me, I do go to the fair every few years once - the event happens every year for 3 months from Jan 15 (Pongal Day). Whenever I do go to the trade fair it brings nostalgic days when my father used to take me there as a kid there in his scooter. Recollecting the fun those days this simple 5 KM trip and the fair brought to me, I definitely don't get it even when I am in Las Vegas. I was sharing my wife, when you are kid you get "happy" with a 2 Rupee toy / train ride, but as an adult with each year, your "happiness" becomes more and more expensive.

(Above photos are not recent they were taken in 1999 - 9 years back)

If you are in Chennai, this is certainly a good place to go. Be prepared to pay Rs.30 (US$0.70) for Car Parking - which is 3 times the normal parking fee you pay in Chennai.

I have in my house, a desktop PC with Intel 915G motherboard (little older than 2 years). Recently I upgraded to Windows Vista Home Premium. Vista detected and installed all the devices needed for basic functioning. Only two devices didn't work as they did in Windows XP SP2.

1) My HP Photosmart 2608, scanner and printer is working using Windows Vista default applets. The HP default scanning program doesn't get installed, HP still doesn't have a Vista compatible application (though their website announces coming soon). I am missing the HP application gives you convenient functionality like multi-page scanning, PDF format, etc.

(Update 10/April/2007: HP has released a new set of drivers for platforms including Vista and Vista 64 bit. The new application installation is faster than earlier and the new UI much more cleaner. Good thing HP took a little bit more time developing the new application. I still don't understand what their installation does for over 30 minutes)

2) When I wanted to input some Audio from my cassette player (yes, I still have it around) through Audio-In I couldn't. I checked and saw in Vista only see Mic-In Device, no Audio-In. After some searching, came across the new device driver for Vista from Realtek website. I downloaded and installed Vista Driver(32/64 bits) Driver only (R 1.63), everything is working fine once again.

 

My earlier post with Vista Beta 2 on the same machine

It is now (almost) over - India is out of World Cup 2007, after their bad performance yesterday and losing to Sri Lanka. Without any doubts Sri Lanka proved they are a much better qualified. The problem for Indian team has always been their unpredictable nature. One day they are the best, the next day they are the worst and loose to Bangladesh.  But for a World Class team and to be World Cup winners, consistency is most important and Indian team certainly doesn't have it.

One good thing is School Students in India having their exams will not waste time anymore in watching late night matches but concentrate on their studies. For that thank you India team for losing!

Next few days media will write few columns on what went wrong for India and soon World Cup 2007 will be over, everyone will forget it. Then Media and Sponsors will start projecting the next Indian team as World Cup 2011 prospect winners and all of us can day-dream all over again.

My earlier post on India losing to Bangladesh

I have always been only using MSN Messenger, so I never got motivated to install Yahoo! Messenger and have one more program running in my PC. Few months back Windows Live (MSN) Messenger started supporting to add contacts of Yahoo!, so that you can communicate with Yahoo! users from MSN Messenger itself and vice-versa.

I didn't think this to be that important, as most of my contacts were in MSN. But now I have few of my friends in Yahoo! who never IMed me before, contact me and we started chatting. I realize now this is a cool feature that MSN and Yahoo! have brought in.

Yesterday Hutch-Microsoft soft launched Mobile Search in their PlanetHutch Portal. PlanetHutch (www.planethutch.in) is a web portal accessible only by Hutch Mobile Subscribers in India who have a GPRS capable handset and Data Services enabled. Though Google-Airtel have announced a similar service, the Live Search from Microsoft is the first to market in India.

To quote from Jaspreet Bindra, MSN India Country Manager "What this means is that the default search bar on the Hutch WAP portal is branded Live. The service is both on-deck and off-deck search: If you type ‘Aishwarya’ the search results will give you Aishwarya related content (music, wallpapers, etc.) on the PlanetHutch portal, as well as Web search results for ‘Aishwarya’ "

So why am I writing this here, because I am proud that at Vishwak we worked with Microsoft in developing the backend content integration modules for this service. Vishwak is also the "Development and Operations Partner" for Microsoft in the PlanetHutch portal for last 4 years.  

Everytime when I travel especially abroad, I make it a point to buy some toys for my son who is now going to four in few months. But after few purchases of cars, dolls, CDs, the purchase becomes same and boring. So I try to search for some new or different items to buy.This time during my London visit, I saw one such interesting but simple item. It was from ELC called Let's Go Shopping.

The objective of the game is to simply shop. Click on the back image of the box for more instructions.

Others do read my blogs, I mean it. One of my aquaintance in a software company abroad had read my Interview given to FriendsOfSVCE few years back. In that I have talked about how important it is for people in your team to have right Attitude.

My aquaintance (for privacy sake let us call him Kannan) is facing a situation now and he called me today to help him with suggestions on how to handle it.  Kannan is having a Junior Associate report to him and this associate (incidentally from a different culture) is having serious attitude issues, according to my Kannan. Kannan's question to me is how important Attitude in the overall job responsibility or in other words how bad should a bad attitude be to declare a person unfit for a job and what qualifies for a bad attitude.

Very difficult questions to answer. Attitude is not a data point and it cannot be measured and expressed in numbers - you cannot say this job role expects an attitude of 75% and the person in question is scoring only 62%. It is subjective, relative and also vary between cultures - especially in this case it is a multi-culture team, where each member is from a different culture/ethnic backgrounds.

American Hertiage Dictionary defines "Attitude" quite nicely:

• A state of mind or a feeling; disposition: had a positive attitude about work
• An arrogant or hostile state of mind or disposition

Software and Design Jobs are all made in the "Mind" of the individual. So it is important that the person doing the job is in a right state of Mind for him to perform well and to the extend demanded by the job responsibility. That is why companies pour tons of money into having a good HR, work environment, etc. A negative attitude certainly affects performance, but the tricky thing is how can you measure them and convince your superiors/peers/legal that it is bad and qualifies for a change/fix.

When you face a situtation like this:

• Have no doubt, it is your job responsibility as a manager to handle these issues. It is not something you are alone in doing it out of your loyalty
• You will never get people who match your requirements/measure 100%. Accept people for their strengths, but don't compromise on the job qualification bar
• You need to have made it clear (communicate) to the Associate that you are not happy with their behaviour/attitude. One of the points I hear in Exit interviews is that people say they didn't know you are unhappy with them and they cannot read your mind on your expectations
• Give the other person few chances to correct the issue in question
• Then talk to your manager - they will have more experience than you in handling situations like this (or) talk to your Office HR Manager. Ensure your manager is in your side for your planned course of action - whatever it is
• Document things. Especially since in USA, things can get messy with Legal actions. What you said over a coffee table don't count on your side, but can count for the other party
• Start laying down the work items that you are expecting the associate to do, the time line to complete it and send it as an email or Intranet work item. Be realistic, don't be pre-judiced to make him fail in the timelines set. Doing the list, the associate will know that you are serious on what you are saying and that if he is smart that you are trying to prepare proofs for your case. This itself might fix the problem, if not you can use it for your case. Have your manager/his manager endorse this list. Ask for regular reports on the progress. The minute you are clear that his job is suffering because of the attitude your assessment is validated.
• Lastly, once you have done all this, take a decision and be firm with that. Read my first point again.

Finally I told Kannan "As an Engineer you don't feel afraid writing the most critical piece of code, so why have doubts while you are facing management issues. Face it with the same courage. Plan well and Things will work out well".

I don't understand what is the big fuss the media is making this to be. Cricket is a game and in any game winning and losing are common. They are sounding as if, Bangladesh Cricket team is playing the game for the first time and Indian team has come from heaven. Yesterday the Bangladesh team was better than India and they should be appreciated. If at all anything has to be done, the Indian Team should take this as a caution for their over-confidence coming from their Sponsors and Media. If present Indian Team members spend more time in practising than Ad Shoots, they will play better Cricket.

Read my earlier post on Cricket World Cup 2007

For few months my brother-in-law (BIL) has been asking me to help him shop for a digital camera that fits him. Finally early last month, we both could go out for it. I had done research on the web for the ideal camera for him:

• He is a first time Camera user, so the camera had to be price wise mid-range. Since he doesn't know his likings on a camera, this will keep his option open to buy a more sophisticated camera later
• Since this will be the only camera in his family, the camera has to be very easy to operate - especially his wife and his kid. So the camera has to be a point and Shoot - definitely a digital SLR is ruled out
• He has a computer at home, so he can download the photos after each shoot. So a high-megapixel camera shoudln't be a problem
• It has to have few minutes of video recording as well, since he doesn't have a Digicam seperately
• It has to be light-weight so that it is easier for them to carry around

I ruled out Nikon right at first since there point 'n' shoot models compare badly with Sony and others in terms of features for the price. I generally like Sony Cybershot for their ease of use, but found there new models focussing too much on smaller size than quality/stability.

I found an ideal camera in the form of Canon IXUS 850 in eBay India. The features impressive - 7.1 Megapixels, Compact Size, Standard SD Memory, Image Stabilization (very important for first time users) & Wide range optical zoom (which no other camera in this range had to this extend). Found good reviews in Cnet and DPReview. The eBay seller price was around Rs.20,500 and available from a Chennai Seller. Since I didn't know the seller I decided to go to Camera Citi in Radhakrishnan Salai and buy it -so that my BIL could feel the camera before buying. We got a good deal at Rs.21,000 with 3 years Camera Citi Warranty and a 1GB Memory card free.

The photos he has taken with the camera are impressive as well, he is very satisfied. I found the camera very good that I bought the next model IXUS 900IS for my wife during my Tokyo trip from Yodabashi Camera Store for Rs.17,751 (Yen 47,080) with Japan only warranty.

While comparing prices I found very little difference in the prices of these cameras between Chennai and Singapore. So it is better to always buy it in Chennai, so you get local warranty and save the hassles of carrying them from abroad.

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.