Google, Live Search and Yahoo! have all  been supporting Unicode text searches for years. Using them you can type a tamil word in Unicode and search. Google also gives you a Tamil User Interface if it detects your Browser Language setting to be"TA" or "TA-IN".

The constraint in using them were, you needed to have a Tamil IME pre-installed in your machine. Microsoft provides its IME for Tamil free with Windows XP, Vista and more through their BhashaIndia Website, my favourite has always been my good friend Malaysia Muthu Nedumaran's Murasu Anjal due to my bi-lingual typing, Apple bundles Anjal now with its Tiger OS and above, Fedora Core 6 bundles a free Tamil IME. But inspite of all this, if you need a no-install way to use Tamil search here is a new site that is build on top of Google API that allows Tamil Unicode input through English typing. Check it out.

This Monday I saw this article in Dinamani tamil daily on few incidents of Chickenpox in Chennai and around. One of my co-workers got infected few weeks back. Though I have been vaccinated against it in Childhood, when I checked my family doctor he recommended me for taking a booster injection. Though there is a strong religious mis-belief about this disease in South India, scientifically it is caused by Varicella-Zoster Virus. If you have been infected once by the disease, or have been vaccinated you will not get it again.

When I went to my doctor on Monday, he decided to administer first a Combo vaccination against Hepatitis-A and Hepatitis-B. Earlier you needed two seperate injections for Hepatitis A and B, now the single dose cost Rs.1200 or so in private clinics. Before you jump into conclusions on why my doctor recommended me to take it - I will say it myself, the disease is commonly caused in developing countries through contaminated food/water and affects the liver. For effectiveness you need a booster every 3 to 4 years once.

Since you cannot take ChickenPox vaccination also on the same day, my doctor administered that (Okavax) vaccination on Wednesday. This costed Rs.1400.

So if you are in this part of the world, and can afford the vaccinations, it is highly recommended to take them.

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.

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.