Archive - December, 2007

Dev’s Birthday & My first video

December 9, 2007 in Uncategorized with 1 Comment

Dev, one of my colleagues had his birthday and we had a surprise for him. Here is a quick video we came up with.


Funny Birthday Bash – Dev From AdventNet – Click here for more home videosIt was fun spraying him and even making the video. Alex helped with the script and the whole theme.

Cameras used were the Nokia N70 (thanks Vinod) and N73 (reason for lack of clarity). The movie was edited using Windows Movie Maker. It is a pretty neat tool – easy to use. It has some really neat effects. But if you are using it, make sure you have lots of RAM or making a very small video without many frills (effects, transitions, audio and titles). I had to export portions of my movie separately and then join all those parts to get what you see above.

Uploading it to the web was a nightmare. Tried 3 times on Google Video but somewhere after 2 hours, the page would time out. Metacafe was fairly faster and more user-friendly. Anyways, it is finally up. Hope you enjoy it.

Happy Birthday again, Dev!

Differ with me and let’s change the world

December 6, 2007 in Learning with 1 Comment

I had a discussion today about a client requirement with one of the developers at work. I was thinking we could just build it for this customer and get it over with. I didn’t really see many other customers wanting this. But my developer friend mentioned, “if we build it into the product, our customers will find ways to use it”.

That’s the funny thing about technology. It may be built for certain scenarios. But there is no way, we can consider all use cases. The differing perspective sheds new light.

Today a network that was built for the US defense department in the 60s has transformed the way we communicate, listen to music and shop. Twenty years ago, I had to go to a store to buy a record (on tape). Today, I can download the songs from the Net or just order the CD online.

The Internet was not designed with all this in mind. But differing perspective brings new ideas and is transforming our world every moment.

G.P.S., don’t lead me to the quiet waters!

December 6, 2007 in Technology with 1 Comment

Technology brings in unique problems. G.P.S. systems that are supposed to help people find the way cannot tell you which is the best route to take, considering the vehicle you are driving.

Britain found trucks, directed by these navigational devices, stuck in the small villages spread across the country. These devices are supposed to tell you the shortest route you can take but does not consider the size of your vehicle or the size of the road!

And now residents of those villages have found a simple solution – take them off the map. You can read the full story here.

Picture Courtesy: NY Times, Danfung Dennis for The New York Times

Music Search Engines

December 6, 2007 in Music with 1 Comment

A whole new genre of search engines – for music. And the best part is that you can listen to the music on the site itself (even though the music does not reside on their servers).

Seeqpod, Songza and SkreemR are some examples. Both Seeqpod and Songza have neat interfaces and lets you play the files, which I think is pretty neat. Seeqpod allows you to even save your playlist and embed it in your site, like this one below.


SeeqPod Music beta – Playable Search

Insightory – Management Repository

December 3, 2007 in Web 2.0 with 0 Comments

InsightoryJust read about Insightory – a knowledge sharing and collaboration website. You can upload and share original management content, read others’ and comment on them. Quite an interesting idea. In fact, they want to be to management knowledge, what Wikipedia is to general knowledge.

The idea is simple – you upload documents or presentations and others can tap into your knowledge. They have a viewer with which you can view the document or presentation right on the page itself. And if you like it, you can even download a local copy of it. You can share documents with friends and even start a discussion with your own gyan.

They have a contest running with prizes ranging from $100 to $3000. You can find more details here.

One key difference between Insightory and Wikipedia is that you can edit any document on Wikipedia but not on Insightory. Of course, if you allowed people to edit them, then you run into copyright issues. Also, most management ideas are just philosophy or theory. They are not facts. So it may not be really practical to have a Wikipedia-type interface.

We will have to wait and see how this comes up. Wishing them all the best!