Just finished upgrading to Movable Type 3.2 from 2.4 (close to 2.5 years old!). Works like a charm — wohoo!!
Upgraded to Movable Type 3.2
April 13th, 2006Yahoo! Mail Beta crashes FireFox
April 10th, 2006I just tried the new Yahoo Mail beta, which makes my FireFox 1.0.4 crash (consistently). Here are couple of screen captures.
Crash screen
Post-crash screen
Good thing is that they are able to detect that something did not work!
Timestamp Right Now: Going down into the annals of history as 1,2,3,4,5,6
April 5th, 2006This post is timed for 1,2,3,4,5,6 which is the combination of time and date right now.
Simply read in the following order of date format hh:mm:ss MM/DD/YY, the time right now is 01:02:03 04/05/06
Update:Just saw other people talking about it (Scoble and Boing Boing)
How big companies can innovate
April 3rd, 2006After seeing all sorts of grand ideas, I came out thinking after ETech 2006; small startups and going-to-be-next-big ideas executing on the forefront of technology. Mostly missing were large companies (except, Microsoft, Yahoo and Google) who are going to buy these startups in 2-3 years for at least 5X/10X their current valuations.
Big corporations always miss the opportunity initially but then they spend millions of dollars on acquisitions. Most of these young companies are backed by venture capital and are funded to the north of just $1m on an average. A recent report cites that median price of these acquisitions are somewhere between $50m. That’s whopping.
How can the big companies execute on the new ideas? Simple — play by the same book as VCs play. How?
1. Pick at least one fresh idea every month and invest a total of half-a-million dollars for the next 12 months on each one, nurturing the idea to a private beta. You can even code name these project as Project Jan06, Project Feb06, etc. 🙂
2. I’m 100% sure; at least one of them would either be bankrolled into a full product or rolled into a feature in the existing product line.
3. Analyze after 12 months and start at #1 again
Here is the worksheet:
12 ideas, $0.5m each = $6m + $1m for an oversight team and a board consisting of a few people = $7m/year.
Median price of an acquisition = Cost of a missed opportunity = $50m (2005 avg.)
One single idea bankrolled into a successful product = Guaranteed funding for the next 50 new product ideas.
Etech 06: How to get a Full throttle WiFi connection
March 8th, 2006Lot of people at Etech this year are grumbling about the poor WiFi connectivity. The keynotes in the main conference room are packed except that people are working (Working keynote session?!!). Even in the lobby the signal is low.
However, if you stick around the periphery of the hallways and the lobby, the signal becomes 100%, especially, if you are sitting below one of the large portraits/signage in the hallways. Looks like the access points are hidden behind them! I see a blue cable trying to take a peek while I blog this.
[Etech 06] The RSS & Atom cat-fight: Did you have a premonition?
March 8th, 2006I’m sure Tim Bray had a premonition that a war of words is going to start after his “Atom as a case study” presentation. I hopped into the ballroom, expecting to learn a little bit more about Atom (which I was avoiding for a long time) — but, it looked like an open declaration of war, kinda “KMyA”. It did reach a positive note during the later half of the session, which was informative (When to use Atom? RSS? etc.)
The session started as an open criticism of RSS. Dave Winer (sidenote: Don’t know, but seldom hear about Dave presenting at conferences like this) the man behind RSS picked up and shot back at O’Reilly, Tim & Microsoft.
I heard by reading a bunch of blogs that Tim Bray said some unkind things about me and my work at his Etech presentation. This is what happens when you try to create a monoculture; it has to demonize those who have differing opinions. That’s why O’Reilly conferences so lack substance, because they always only present one side, the side that Tim has invested in.
In the session Tim brought up the fact that RSS has failed (sic.) because of it’s non-rigorous specification. The point being missed here — the charter of RSS was to have modules; wherein it could be extended as desired. On one side, there is openness, collaboration and extensibility and then on the other tight control by a working group. Making both to co-exist can be impossible. Analogy: You can either be Microsoft (tightly controlled Windows APIs) or you could be Linux (derive and add your own flavored logo).
Funnily enough, in his presentation, Tim had a cute photograph of two kittens fighting under the toilet. Note sure if that’s Atom vs. RSS or Dave vs. Tim, after what’s being talked about in the blogosphere. Hopefully, its the former and not otherwise.
FeedBurner might be happy seeing this — maybe they will come out with their own canonical model!
[Etech 06] The RSS & Atom cat-fight: Did you have a premonition?
March 8th, 2006I’m sure Tim Bray had a premonition that a war of words is going to start after his “Atom as a case study” presentation. I hopped into the ballroom, expecting to learn a little bit more about Atom (which I was avoiding for a long time) — but, it looked like an open declaration of war, kinda “KMyA”. It did reach a positive note during the later half of the session, which was informative (When to use Atom? RSS? etc.)
The session started as an open criticism of RSS. Dave Winer (sidenote: Don’t know, but seldom hear about Dave presenting at conferences like this) the man behind RSS picked up and shot back at O’Reilly, Tim & Microsoft.
I heard by reading a bunch of blogs that Tim Bray said some unkind things about me and my work at his Etech presentation. This is what happens when you try to create a monoculture; it has to demonize those who have differing opinions. That’s why O’Reilly conferences so lack substance, because they always only present one side, the side that Tim has invested in.
In the session Tim brought up the fact that RSS has failed (sic.) because of it’s non-rigorous specification. The point being missed here — the charter of RSS was to have modules; wherein it could be extended as desired. On one side, there is openness, collaboration and extensibility and then on the other tight control by a working group. Making both to co-exist can be impossible. Analogy: You can either be Microsoft (tightly controlled Windows APIs) or you could be Linux (derive and add your own flavored logo).
Funnily enough, in his presentation, Tim had a cute photograph of two kittens fighting under the toilet. Note sure if that’s Atom vs. RSS or Dave vs. Tim, after what’s being talked about in the blogosphere. Hopefully, its the former and not otherwise.
FeedBurner might be happy seeing this — maybe they will come out with their own canonical model!
ETECH 2006: Real/Unreal mashups and more
March 7th, 2006Just couple of days (hours?) before the registration closed and the event being declared sold out, I got myself registered for the O’Reilly ETECH 2006 (I really called them and found out that there were only 21 slots to go). The Day 2 was a complete brain awe, with the jaw dropping “pressure-sensitive multi-touch interface” presentation taking the crowd by storm.
The opener on Day 2 had Ray Ozzie talking about a “live clipboard” for the web, where cut-n-paste information from a website goes to the actual clipboard on the PC. The example he showed was a seamless cut and paste of a calendar entry from a website to Microsoft Outlook. Ray’s little prototype hits right on the head and plugs the big gap in the ‘mashup-o-logy’.
Ray talked about “real” mashup in his keynote. I call it “real” ‘coz this mashup does not require a non-techie user to do anything more than install a plugin (maybe this feature will come out-of-the-box in IE7, Ray and his team is already collaborating with the IE7 dev. team).
There were other folks who tried to display some “unreal” mashups using microformats — I don’t really understand why we need a new technology/format viz. microformats — Don’t we already have atom which describes the same things which microformats are trying to achieve? Maybe it’s more? But, that’s what I understood from the 45 minute-4-presentations-4-demos-session.
I call these “unreal” because (a) it requires a geek to do what it is suppose to do (b) it uses some non-standard format to do simple things.
Moreover, Ray envisions that RSS and correctly done “mashup” has the potential of giving the Internet a “Unix pipe” for doing simple tasks on related websites.
I think Microsoft Live Clipboard is a real winner — it’s not about “mashup” of content from just two sites but a chained linkage and that is truly wiring the web.
George Bush in India: The working Lunch Menu
March 2nd, 2006Main Course
Tandoori fish, Mutton kebabs, Mutton korma, Dal bukhara and curried vegetables to be relished with rice and a choice of rotis. The fish has been “fished” and flown from the Western India for the banquet.
Starter
Pineapple with French dressing and Broccoli soup
On the side
Red cabbage and peach melba
Served on the backdrop of beautiful Mughal Gardens.
Tandoori Kebabs, Dal, Rice and still working lunch? Yea, working my mouth 🙂
How I unlocked my Samsung x426 Cellphone and saved $10
February 26th, 2006I had an old Samsung X426 flip phone lying around which a friend needed as a “Pay As you Go” spare phone for his someone. The Cingular store gave us an option and told us, “… if you have an unlocked phone all you need is to buy refill minutes…”.
Nice, the challenge was to get it unlocked. A quick search on Craigslist gave me a “will come to the nearest Walmart parking lot and unlock in 5 minutes for $10” option — The guy said, he would do a Samsung x426 without using any software or a device. That rang a bell.
Here are the steps I followed (collated from multiple sources, courtesy Google):
1. Ripped the battery and Inserted a SIM card from another network provider than the one who locked the phone
2. On power up the phone reported “Wrong Card”. Keyed *#9998*3323# and then selected “Exit”
3. Selected Menu #7 (“Jump to Fail”) which caused a reboot of the phone.
4. On reboot entered *0141# and selected the call button. “Personalization” appears on the screen.
5. The splash screen of the new SIM provider shows up.
6. Anyway, power cycled the phone and called my landline. The phone was now unlocked.
Enough money saved to cover a week’s supply of small cappuccino from the corner coffee shop. Total time spent 20 minutes!
Good use of technology = $10 = free coffee for a week 🙂