As I have said in the past, many times I find interesting articles handpicked and featured in MSN.COM homepage. Today I read one such article on World's Cheapest destinations. It covered about places where you can spend a day for $20 - Laos, Bali, Vietnam, India, Zambia, Tunisia, Honduras, Guatemala, Peru and Argentina. Sadly it has left out Sri Lanka - may be it was because of the ongoing unrest there.

Though India is featured there, don't get fooled. Anything in Travel that falls under luxury is expensive in India compared to other Asian countries. Five Star (though not everyone will be looking) accommodations are the most expensive in India, even Las Vegas is cheaper than Indian Metros. One of our abroad client is visiting us in Chennai this week and Chola Sheraton's per day rate for them is Rs.8800 (USD 225).

Last week just before my Sri Lanka short visit, I finished this audio book. It was "Tough Choices" by Carly Fiorina who spent nearly twenty years at AT & T and Lucent Technologies before working as CEO for HP from 2000 to 2005. The book is a must read (or listen) for people starting their career in a large organization and especially Women Executive's will find themselves relating well to Carly's experiences. The initial chapters are definitely inspirational for fighting against the odds in modern businesses.

If you have read Who says Elephants can't Dance Audio book by Louis Gerstner Jr., the former IBM CEO on how he transformed IBM, you will expect similar material here on what happened in HP. In which case, you will be disappointed. Though there are elaborate coverages on her interview process for the CEO post and her firing from HP board, there is little coverage on her job as CEO. I was surprised to hear her bold statements about few executives who she comes across in her career, some of them quoted by her with actual names I am sure are still around in the industry. She raises strong criticisms about Michael Capellas (Ex-CEO of Compaq) and David Woodley Packard (son of HP co-founder David Packard) in the book.

The title Tough Choices indicates the tough one's Carly had to make in her personal/career life as an individual. I liked her repeatedly used quote in the book about "my soul is still with me".

On being selected as Fortune magazine Top Woman CEO she had the following to say: “After striving my entire career to be judged by my results and my decisions, the coverage of my gender, my appearance and perceptions of my personality would outweigh anything else”

As I have kept noting down in this blog, Microsoft's Live Service offerings are improving day by day. In the recent weeks there have been significant improvement in the search relevance, breadth of offerings and more so on the improved user interface. Today when I went to Live Search Maps, I liked the Single Text box Interface (shown above), the earlier two text boxes UI was a pain to use. What impressed me most was their support for business owners - I searched for "Vishwak Solutions" looking for our company in Redmond, WA. It didn't give up any results, then I clicked on the Help button expecting no useful information or out dated links. I was surprised to see the first topic itself being what I wanted - How to list my business?. The steps that followed was easy to complete and they verified real time with a PIN number by calling the business phone number I had furnished. Overall excellent consumer experience, keep up the good work Live team!

As I wrote yesterday - On 16th October I presented in Sri Lanka DevDay 2007. The audience were more than 500 in number and were enthusiastic bunch, who were very eager to learn new things in technology. This was different from the programs in India, where Audiences are not that excited even when you show them new stuffs. This may be because in India you have lost the charm of big events as too many of them happen that too throughout the year.

Anyways, coming back I presented on two topics I like a lot nowadays - WPF and Silverlight.

WPF, a new way of looking @ your Windows Applications
Overview of Windows Presentation Foundation, the goals behind WPF and the power of XAML language. See for yourself how the UI world around you is changing forever. The session will cover the design and implementation of UI using Microsoft Expression Blend and Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 “Orcas”. It will get into discussing about the popular controls in WPF including Layout, Data Binding, Audio/Video, Flow Control and composition techniques. We will wrap up the session by looking into the new features introduced with WPF 3.5.

Silverlight: The web just got richer
See Microsoft’s new arsenal for the web, the cross browser cross platform Silverlight.  In a world where designers had more say in Web Applications this session will show you how developers can get back into the driving seat. The Session will go into details of case studies of applications built with Silverlight 1.0. You will see demos working across browsers seamlessly. We will wrap up the session by discussing the new capabilities that .NET integration is bringing to upcoming Silverlight 1.1 version.

References:
1. The presentations I made (Thanks to Tim Sneath of Microsoft) are available here
2. Most of the demos (other than the demos we built for our customers in Vishwak) are taken from Silverlight and WindowsClient.net sites.

I was in Sri Lanka for last two days on invitation from Microsoft (Sri Lanka) to present on their DevDay 2007 event. The event happened in Mount Lavinia Hotel and I stayed there as well. What a beautiful place this is, with clean unspoiled beaches and adding to the vintage effect given by a Railway station right in the front of the hotel. Imagine the place that has Railway Station in Front and a long unspoiled beach on the other side. The hotel itself has 200 years of history starting as the house of the British governor and moving to various owners. Check out the photos of the place below:

MT. LAVINIA Hotel 16 OCT 2007

Microsoft gave me a beautiful gift, which was a replica of Sigiriya style of art of a Fresco maiden holding flowers. The replica was done on a irregular shaped stone giving it a genuine antique look - may be this is what made the Sri Lankan Customs question me on whether I am smuggling out one of their antique piece out of country. Of course, they allowed me to take it after they found it to be a replica. I have given below the images of the original painting (Left) and the replica (Right) I got.

Earlier today when I was doing a WPF demo in Colombo for Microsoft DevDay 2007 I wanted to show the new Solitaire and  other games rendering smooth UI in Vista. But I didn't find any of the games in my demo laptop. The last I have used the games in Vista was when Vista was in Beta and in Vista Ultimate edition. On further investigation and looking into other Vista installations (Windows Vista Enterprise x64, Vista Business x86) I realized that games are not installed by default in these editions - obviously why do you want them in a business edition of the OS?. The good news is that you can go Programs and Features applet in Control Panel, and install the games. Immediately upon installation, I played and won a game with Solitaire. Hip hip hooray!!!

சுமார் இரு வாரங்களுக்கு முன்பு மக்கள் தொலைக்காட்சியில் என்னை பேட்டி எடுத்தார்கள். ஒரு இருபது நிமிடங்கள் ஒடிய இந்த பேட்டியில் என்னால் முடிந்த அளவுக்கு பிறமொழி கலக்காமல் தமிழியில் பேசினேன். எனக்கு தாய்மொழித் தமிழ் என்பதால் தமிழில் பேசுவது கடினமே அல்ல. ஆனால் அலுவலுக்குக்காக தொழில்நுட்பங்களை ஆங்கிலத்திலேயே பேசிப்பழகியதால், தமிழில் கணினி மற்றும் செல்பேசி முன்னேற்றங்களைப் பேசுவதில் சிறு தயக்கம் அவ்வளவு தான் .

இந்த நிகழ்ச்சி நாளைக் காலை 8 மணிக்கும், மாலை 11 மணிக்கும் ஒளிப்பரப்பாகிறது. மறக்காமல் பாருங்கள்!

Video: TNCV Interview in Makkal

If you are like me who has multiple mail profiles configured in Outlook 2007, you will be tired of selecting the profile everytime. Instead using command-line switches (parameters) for Outlook.exe you can create a shortcut for each profile that you want to run. For example I have a Profile (configured using the Mail Applet in Control Panel) named "Vishwak" and another named "Hotmail". So to run the Vishwak Profile I create a Shortcut that points to:"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\OUTLOOK.EXE" /profile Microsoft

Needless to say, the above path is specific to my Vista with Office 2007 machine. To learn on more switches and what they can do read this article from Office Online.

Like I have written earlier Outlook.exe switches can also be used to do tasks that are not exposed in User Interface like cleaning rules, etc.

I had a small accident with my car of 6 months a Honda City ZX GXi today. Thank god, no one was hurt and more important only my car got damaged. It happened while I was driving and about to stop for the Traffic Signal to take the Right Turn in Mount Road/South Usman Road junction.  My son was sitting next to me and was constantly asking me one question or other, there was an Ambassador coming from behind trying to go straight and honking nonstop. Disturbed by the horn sound, distracted by my son's queries I turned back, and the next moment my car banged into the Mahindra Jeep in front of me which had stopped for the signal. The front of my car got hit badly but we felt no impact in the passenger cabin. Since it was my fault, I apologized to the other driver and came home feeling bad for driving carelessly. I am sure Honda will charge me a minimum of few grands of rupees to fix this, let me check with them!

Just like every other year, we had a wonderful Golu (Display of Dolls and Idols) festival celebrated in our house this year. Instead of keeping it in Steps fashion this time we had a linear display.

Navarathri Golu 2007