Yahoo! has released an exclusive Women portal called Shine. You might be wondering why I am writing about a Women site!. It is to highlight a small innovation they have done in the site. Most of the times you use a newly released application or a website you may not be aware of all the features. As a result you will end up using only 20% of the features. To overcome this, Yahoo! in Shine has come up with a good idea of showing "help balloons" the first time. The balloons auto-scroll to various sections below and introduce you (this negates the complexity associated of scrolling to novice users). To top it, they don't show it (by remembering with a cookie I suppose) the next time and irritate you. Check out the screen shots and judge for yourselves.

For last two days my son has been down with fever. As any parent will know it is very difficult to get them retain (without vomiting) what they ate when they are unwell and to make them have their medicines.

My son is now 5 years old and can understand things if told to him in simplified fashion. So today I told him that if he takes his food and medicine, they will combine together as friends and fight with the germs (bad guys) inside his stomach. Since they  are now two against one, the germs will be defeated and his fever will be cured. Luckily he bought into the idea, took his food & medicine. He kept repeating the story to the entire family and that probably gave him psychological comfort as well. Oh what an idea!

Update 1/April/2008: He has recovered and fine today.

I recently finished reading "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho. The book reads like a novel of a story of a Spanish Boy who follows his dreams (or listens to his heart) and finds his love and treasure by venturing into the unknown in the middle east deserts. Nice self-motivating book which is fun to read and as well encouraging. Must read.

Though it has been hotly debated for last several months, I have kept away from writing on the Office Open XML (OOXML) proposed by Microsoft and currently a ECMA standard. With the ISO voting due today I thought let me write my views before the results.

Basically what OOXML means is a standardized file format based in XML for Word, Excel & PowerPoint documents. You have convertors to convert from OOXML to MS Office native formats or to ODF (ISO standard supported by Open Office & Open source). Accepting OOXML as an ISO standard increases the openness of your documents, there by you can safely assume that your grandchildren can open and read the documents created by you today long after the programs that created them are dead and not available. OK agreed, this may not be important for your monthly budget spreadsheets but certainly crucial for E-Governance applications that are used for exchange between different governments and with various departments within them.

Recently India has rejected (which I feel is sad) OOXML. Yesterday I heard the most convincing reason on why OOXML should be accepted by ISO and surprisingly it was not from Microsoft camp - it was from the Editor of the competing standard ODF 1.2. The argument from Patrick Durusau in the article "Who Loses if OpenXML Loses" where he has made several points on how ODF itself will loses if OOXML is rejected. Key arguments to note are on Spreadsheet formulas support and support for legacy MS documents. 

You can track the status of voting from this site.

2/Apr/2008 Update: NewYork Times has reported that OOXML has been approved as a standard by ISO. This is a big win not only for Microsoft, but for consumers and governments as it now provides them with a choice. IBM, SUN and the other open source backers of ODF on one side, Microsoft and its partners on the other side with OOXML will ensure that the document format area is being innovated because of intense competition. Without this choice between ODF and OOXML, this critical technology area would have been left to suffer stagnation and resulted in lock-ins for e-governance applications.

In the corridors of Mix '08, Scott Hanselman (PM, Microsoft and Ex-Regional Director) got hold of me & my fellow Regional Director (Delhi) Vinod Unny for an Interview. The topic was on "Outsourcing" and how it affects both sides of the world - we enjoyed talking on this hotly debated topic, hear it out and post your comments below.

Full Interview: AAC Audiobook (iPod) | MP3 Full Show | WMA Full Show |WMA Low-Fi

Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds.

There was a news item today that India has decided to adopt a new accounting system (IRFS) by 2011. IRFS is presently adopted by over 109 countries including China. I was curious on this move, found two references on the Internet to understand this.

1) Accounting in a global world

2) Debits & Credits of IFRS

This is what I understood: Just like how Technology standards and Protocols are vital for the Interconnected world of Internet to work together, it is equally important in globalized world today to have a common way to report financial's of companies around the world. Without such a standard it brings in huge disparity in disclosure thus creating loopholes to hide facts. All of this affects investor confidence and long term sustenance of the global economy. In short, it is a welcome move provided our government enacts all necessary law framework without delay.

Early this week Apple released their Safari browser for Windows. Safari is a neat, standards compliant web browser and I feel its arrival for Windows is definitely an important step. You might think the usefulness or the need for yet another browser. Look at it this way - with Web becoming ever more intervened with our lifes, innovation in the browser space is super critical. Personally, I love Internet Explorer and I think IE 8.0 will be a technically advanced browser with dominant market share, but still we cannot leave the fate of web to just two companies - Microsoft & Mozilla. Recently AOL closed for good Netscape, of course Netscape has in real terms died several years back itself. This leaves us with only one other credible competition which is from Opera but Opera never managed to garner any significant user base in the PC. So Apple coming in to this space should be welcomed.

While we welcome Apple, their entry has not been without controversies. Mozilla CEO John Lilly has taken serious objections to Apple offering the new browser to Windows users via Apple Software Update which is part of iTunes & QuickTime Player. This means several millions of iTunes & QuickTime Player users will without there knowledge get Safari, there by increasing the surface area of attacks on their PC. I agree 100% with the objections raised by Mozilla CEO on this that it undermines the trust users will have on software. Adding on to this, is Apple's licensing terms for Safari which permits you to install this only on "a single Apple-labeled computer at a time". This is weird considering Apple never makes or sells any Windows PC, so you will never get a legal way to install Safari. While  Register in UK and many in blogosphere are making fun of this, I guess this is more a goof-up and a human error (copy and paste problem) from Apple's legal team and sure to be corrected out in days.

Finally, when I tried to install Safari in Vista x64 I get the following file corrupt error. I tried downloading half-a-dozen times from IE, Firefox, FDM - same error. It installs fine in a Windows XP x86 machine. Seems Apple has some more work to do.

This is a simple tip for MS Excel 2007. When using Outlook 2007/Word 2007 and working on a Table we get the "Design" menu which is very handy to make our tables look beautiful.

When working with MS Excel 2007 I couldn't find this feature (Design Menu for Table) till yesterday. It suddenly struck me that in Excel though everything appears to a "Table", but they are not and we need to explicitly create a "Table". That's it, feature found!

Steps to follow: Just select the cells you are interested in, choose the "Table" menu option from the "Insert" Ribbon bar. Viola. You get the Design Ribbon bar.

By default, when you insert a "Table" in Excel it comes with Data "Filter" enabled. You can disable it from "Filter" button in the "Data" Ribbon bar. 

I have been asked by many of you for the URL to watch the recordings of all the Mix '08 keynotes. Here it is:

The page has an interesting video of MIX08 Keynotes in Hyperspeed, which is a timelape video to see the whole process from bare ballroom through setup, rehearsals, keynotes, and then final teardown after the show. 

Few weeks back I got a phone call in my office number from some holiday club in Anna Nagar claiming that I have won for a free couple pass for holiday in their resorts. I was surprised for one that I am normally never lucky to win anything in a lottery and second I didn't remember entering any draw. On being asked the lady said that the draw was done on purchases made in shops (Nalli, Pothy's, Saravana Stores) in T.Nagar during the holiday season. I started to get suspicious (which I often do get) because I had not shopped in the mentioned shops recently, so I said I will send a messenger with my signed authorization so that they can handover the prize. The lady refused and insisted that I come in person with my wife to collect it. I said I will and disconnected the call, didn't think it was worthwhile to go all the way and that was it.

Yesterday in Suriyan FM Radio, the DJ announced that a recent con plot going around the city was doing exactly this. They call people to say they have won prizes, when they visit to collect it, brainwash them to buy useless items (or) strong-arm to make them part with their jewels and valuables. So Chennai residents be warned don't get fooled by the lure of prizes for competitions you never participated.

இன்றைய தினத்தை மத ஒற்றுமை நாள் என சொல்ல வேண்டும் போலிருக்கிறது. இன்று அனேக மதத்தினரின் பண்டிகைக்கள் நடைப்பெறுகிறது - இஸ்லாமிய மிலாடி நபி, கிறுஸ்துவ புனித வெள்ளி, இந்துக்களின் பங்குனி உத்திரம், வட இந்தியர்களின் ஹோலி. உலக ஒற்றுமைக்காக நாம் அனைவரும் பிராத்தனை செய்ய இதுவே சிறந்த நாள் போல்.