After nearly 4 years with an out-of-box theme from dasBlog, I managed to get one of my designers to do a new design for my blog. Do you like this new design?. Please post your comments.

If you are like me who moved to Windows Vista early, the two biggest pain areas you would see are Outlook 2007 performance and time taken to do file copy operations. I will never go back to Windows XP but Vista should have done better on these two day to day areas.

What used to take like few seconds to copy from your hard-drive to a USB thumb-drive (or vice versa) in Windows XP, takes several minutes (or even hours as estimated by Windows Explorer) in Vista. Now with Service Pack 1 for Vista RTMed finally, help seems to be on the way for file copy problems. Microsoft is claiming over 50% to 1000% percent improvements in file copy performance. RTM bits are not yet available for download, so stay tuned for a world-wide verdict on this. In the meanwhile if you like to understand the under the hoods technology on how file copy works in Windows XP, Windows Vista and improvements in Vista SP1 read this indepth article from Mark Russinovich

My wife keeps complaining that I am not creative in my gifts to her. So for our wedding anniversary last November I wanted to gift her something out of the world. What more can be more befitting than few "Acres" of land in Moon as a gift.

Few weeks back I read in Ananda Vikatan magazine about sites in the Internet for you to buy lands in the moon. So I went to one of the sites LunarRepublic referred in the article. The site is supposed to be run by a Society based in USA which aims to promote moon exploration and space science. The society is not owned or sponsored by any government so its legality is definitely in doubt. According to a UN resolution, no nation or individual has rights over moon so technically speaking your claim over land in moon may not be valid in future. All said, I found the idea interesting and the idea certainly novel for a gift, so I went ahead and bought two "Acres" of land in Moon in an area called as Bay Of Rainbows (Sinus Iridium) at Rs.2940 (~ USD 32/Acre) in my wife's name.  Today I got the certificate from USA brought from there by my co-worker coming to India.

I am going to give this to my wife in the evening and I am keeping my fingers crossed as to whether she will feel happy for this gift (or) I am going to get it royally from her for wasting Rs.2940 on something close to being a rip off

Registered claim of land in moon

Satellite image of the land I bought in moon

Anyways, the certificate (shown above) and the satellite image make me feel I got my worth for the money I paid!

Update: When I gave it to my wife, it was more of an anti-climax. The response from her was neutral & cold. I wish I had used the money on some "worldly" items.

Just like last two years, this year too I will be going for Mix '08. Now in its third year, MIX is a good opportunity for hearing about cutting-edge web technology, creative and business strategists all in one place and in an informal style. That's why I think it is worth for me to spend few thousands grands and a travel that will take me half-way around the world to attend Mix in Las Vegas.

It was told earlier that Steve Ballmer alone will be doing the keynote this year, so I was left thinking so it will be only "English" & "Business" talk with no new technology announcements. In a way of addressing my concern, Microsoft yesterday announced that Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie will join Scott Guthrie on stage as a keynote speaker at MIX08. Ray is expected to outline Microsoft’s progress card on their investments on the web platform, Silverlight & IE. Stay Tuned!

I finally finished reading the book "It happened in India", the reason I am saying finally is because that I have been reading this book for nearly 2 months but managed to complete the last 30 pages only today. The book is kind of an auto-biography of Mr.Kishore Biyani on the story of Pantaloons, Biz Bazaar & Central retail stores.Let me say at the beginning, I am a little biased in favour of Indian success stories - apart from being an Indian, the reason is because I feel there is a dearth of good books on Indian business stories.

The first thing that you notice when you pick the book is a close resemblance of the title It happened in India with Made in America (Sam Walton's classic book). When you start reading you will continue to see the unmistakable resemblance in the presentation format as well. The chapters are presented in a fashion of first person voice intertwined with quotes from various stake holders (business partners, employees & friends of the author). While reading the first few chapters this resemblance put me off a little as I thought Kishore Biyani had nothing original to say. Only after I finished nearly half of the book I realized how mistaken I was, the chapters starting to get interesting and the experiences outlined are very much India specific and original. Definitely Kishore Biyani and his team have to be congratulated on their exciting journey in the world of Indian retail and for brining many of the now common innovations. I was happy to read in pages 116-199, Kishore Biyani quoting Chennai's own Saravana Stores as the inspiration behind their Big Bazaar venture. He writes on how his team camped in Chennai visiting Saravan Stores every day for weeks in understanding their merchandise mix and pricing. The book tapers off towards the end where the author starts talking about his personal philosophies & beliefs on business.

Overall, a good book to read at an attractive price of Rs.99 (~USD 2.5)

I have a Nikon D80 camera and for best results I like to store the photos I take in Nikon's Raw file format (.NEF). The problem with this format is that very few programs know how to handle it correctly & fully.

Windows: If you want to view the files in Windows you need to install the plug-ins from Nikon, which installs the appropriate DLLs into Windows. With that in place you can open and view the files just like JPGs and GIFs in Windows Explorer. But in Windows Vista (Windows Photo Gallery or Live Photo Gallery) there is no option to convert the files from NEF to any other formats.

Adobe: At my laptop I use Adobe Photoshop Elements 5.0 and this has no plug-ins to open NEF (Nikon Raw) files, so I can't use the batch file conversion option of PS Elements. At my work PC I have Adobe Photoshop CS3 which supports opening of NEF format, but its batch conversion doesn't support conversion to JPG. I can't record a new action to do this, because in CS3 the RAW files are opened with a popup window (Camera Raw) which cannot be controlled through actions. I am able to convert individual files using Camera Raw of CS3 but batch conversion of multiple files (Nikon Raw files) at once doesn't seem to be possible with Adobe products out-of-box. 

Picasa: Google Picasa supports viewing of Nikon Raw files. Picasa also has the ability to convert the files to JPG while uploading it to Web. But it doesn't seem to have the option of converting a folder containing NEF files to JPG files and store them locally.

Irfanview: Finally, I turned to an old favourite of mine. Irfanview, this is a free software that allows viewing, editing of multiple file formats and supports slidesshow creation. I downloaded the base product and its plug-ins extension. With the plug-ins installed, Irfanview was able to open NEF files and using its batch conversion applet I was able to convert in seconds all my NEF files I had into JPEG files.

இரண்டு வாரங்களுக்கு முன் பொங்கல் விடுமுறையில் இந்தப் படத்தைப் சத்யம் திரையரங்கத்தில் பார்த்தேன். இந்தப் படத்தைப் பற்றி ஒரே வரியில் சொல்வதானால் இப்படி சொல்லலாம்:

“அதிக பொருட்செலவில் அழகான ஒளிபதிவில் முழுவதும் மலேசியா நாட்டில் எடுக்கப்பட்டுள்ள மிகச் சுமாரானப் படம்”. 

ரஜினி நடித்த பழையப் பில்லா படத்தை நீங்கள் ஏற்கனவே பார்த்திருந்தால் தயவு செய்து இந்தப் படத்தைப் பார்க்காமல் இருந்து உங்கள் பணத்தை மிட்சம் செய்யலாம். இயக்குனர் விஷ்ணுவரதன் ஒன்றைக்கூட மாற்றவில்லை - சுத்த ஈ அடிச்சான் காப்பி.

நான் கொடுத்தக் காசுக்கு ஒரே ஆறுதல் - கறுப்பு உடையில் நயன்தாரா அழகாக வந்து போகிறார், சண்டை காட்சிகளில் வேகமாக செய்து அசத்துகிறார்.  எவ்வளவு யோசித்தாலும் இதைத் தவிர வேறு ஒன்றும்  ஞாபகம் வரவில்லை.

I have been a member of an organization called INFITT from its inception around 2000. INFITT (International Forum for Information Technology in Tamil) a global, non-governmental, non-profit organization registered in California, USA. In Tamil known as "உத்தமம்" (உலகத் தகவல் தொழில்நுட்ப மன்றம்). Its main objective is to promote Tamil computing worldwide by bringing together professionals of Tamil IT, enthusiasts, Research Scholars and ordinary Tamils, so that Tamils can enjoy the benefits of all IT developments natively in Tamil environment.

Over the years I have participated in various working groups and activities of INFITT. Last year I was nominated as Chair to WG02 (Working Group 2 working on Tamil language related items with Unicode) and as Interim Vice-Chair. I am happy to write that now in 2008, we have successfully completed our elections at all levels (General Council and Executive Council) in a professional & transparent manner. I am honoured by the members for electing me unanimously to serve as their Vice-Chair for the period 2008-2009. I would like to thank all the members and Chair Dr.Kalyan for this honour through this post.

I just finished reading Men of Steel by Vir Sanghvi. Vir Sanghvi should be appreciated whole-heartedly for two things - first for writing a very needed book that compiles the stories of India's most successful business leaders and second for writing it in a lively, enjoyable format. The book is a result of compilation of Vir Sanghvi's articles that appeared on Hindustan Times Mumbai HT Leadership series and so each of them are not more than 2000 words.

The book covers well known people like Ratan Tata, Nandan Nilekani, Azim Premji, Kumar Mangalam Birla, Sunil Bharti Mittal & Vijay Mallaya. Apart from that about people I knew very little before - Bikki Oberoi, Uday Kotak, Rajeev Chandrasekha, Subhash Chandra & Nusli Wadia. It was revealing. Every aspiring Entrepreneur in India should read this book once.

One spelling mistake that caught my eyes - Airtel's Chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal was spelled wrongly with his middle name as "Bharati". See the screenshots below - the left is from the book (wrongly given in that fashion throughout the chapter) and on the right is from their website.