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First of all here are the sys. requirements: Macromedia Flash Player 6 r79 IE 6 compatible browser with Javascript enabled The IT manager - overworked and underappreciated. You know the story. Back in school, always the last to be picked for football, but the first one they ran to when they accidentally deleted a homework assignment. Not much has changed since then. But the fact is it takes a special skill set to manage an IT department. As IT manager you need to monitor industry trends and administer mission-critical resources for an entire company. At the same time, you have to manage increasingly tighter budgets - finding ways to do more with less - and possess the people skills to oversee staff and run interference with top decision makers. ...

The year is just getting started, and that can mean only one thing: It’s time to reflect on the most shameful, dishonest, and just plain stupid tech moments of 2003.

I forget where I read this recently, but it stuck to me. Humans are failure machines, we are not success machines. We fail all the time and almost all the things. And it is only through this “weeding” process we get the feedback for the failures and learn how to correct them and then do better. Well … at least the smart ones learn to how to correct them.

Yes it is true and it is very cool! Mainsoft has a product called Visual MainWin for both J2EE and Unix and Linux platforms. You can have your ASP.NET applications (using ADO.NET) deployed on a single J2EE platform. Please note, this is not really “calling” any web services that are running on Java. How does it work? Well for one you can check out this flash movie (and it surely is amazing!). But basically they wrote an IL compiler that takes the IL generated by .NET app (i.e. ASP.NET in this case) and converts it to Java bytecode which then is run “natively” on a J2EE platform. ...

Unfortunately, I am not one of the lucky guys with a smartphone, but for those who do have one, Lutz Roeder, released the code and the binaries for Digger (a copy of Dig-dug from the good ol Dos days) for the Smartphone. It needs the Smartphone 2003 and .NET CF.

Incase you did not know, but this blog runs on .Text with minor tweaks to the code. When I run this in the W3C Validator , I get 61 (wow!) errors back. If you examine the results of the validator some interesting things emerge. Here is a listing of the issues I found: ...

If you use VS.NET then you must read the fun facts to get the most out of the IDE. This is not new, but had forgotten about it, till I stumbled upon it again recently.

Though, this has been possible by google for a bit, most people did not know all the power of google. Here are some of the things you can do: Area Code Maps Package Tracking ( FedEx , UPS, USPS) Flight Tracking Info Vehicle Info Patent Search FAA Plane Registration UPC Codes [FCC Equipment IDs]( http://www.google.com/search?q=fcc B4Z-34009-PIR) There is also a calculator which in addition to the simple things (such as addition, multiplications, etc) can also calculate the sqrt, trigonometric functions (sin, cos, etc.), ln (logarithm base e), log (logarithm base 10), factorial, etc. Want to see some binary multiplication ? ...

Ergodex has made what it dubs as the “ The World’s First Totally Personalizable Input System ”. They have a pad with a sticky surface that connects via usb to a computer. You can then stick the keys to the surface as you like. You can “record” macros and assign them to keys and can be executed at one touch. ...

The first computer designed and produced in India is now for sale in the country. The Simputer has been developed by scientists and engineers at the Institute of Science in Bangalore. The handheld device was built to help people to afford to have their own computer and access the internet. It comes in three versions and can be used to surf the web and send e-mails. The basic model has a 206Mhz processor, 64MB of memory and uses the Linux operating system. The price will be around €190. ...

Mercury News is running a story on how India’s second-largest software company, Infosys Technologies, announced Thursday that it is expanding operations in Fremont with a new management-consulting subsidiary to advise technology companies on shipping software-development work offshore. My question is, do they need to promote offshoring? Isn’t there enough action on the offshoring front?

Waaah… so Microsoft is clipping Longhorn and pushing out the release. There have also been rumours of pushing WinFS to Blackcomb (which would be the server version of Longhorn). Also. some rumours of a new version XP which would have a newer version of Media Player with a built-in online shopping piece akin to iTunes. When Longhorn does ship (as of now in 2006), it would be the biggest gap in Microsoft’s history between OS releases - almost half a decade, that in the IT world is an era. ...

Interesting article on GMSV. Typically, the only way to get a good look at Microsoft’s source code was via leak or the company’s “Shared Source” program. No longer. On Monday, Microsoft released some of its code (the Windows Installer Xml (WiX) toolset ) under an open-source license, and posted it on SourceForge . Rob Mensching, the Microsoft employee behind the unprecedented code release, commented on it in a post to his Web log. “After four and a half years of part-time development, the WiX design (and most of the code) matured to a point where I was comfortable trying to release it externally,” Mensching explained . “So, last October I started looking for a means to release not only the tools but the source code as well. I thought GotDotNet was the place. However, at that time, none of the existing Shared Source licenses were flexible enough to accept contributions from the community. Then, in February, I was introduced to Stephen Walli who was also working to improve Microsoft’s relationship with the Open Source community. Fortunately, Stephen was much farther along than I and had the step-by-step plan how to release an Open Source project from Microsoft using an approved OSS license. Today, via WiX on SourceForge, you get to see the results of many people’s efforts to improve Microsoft from the inside out. I’m not exactly sure what is going to happen next but I’m sure there are quite a few people who are interested to see where this leads. Personally, all I hope is that if you find the WiX toolset useful then you’ll join the community and help us improve the toolset.” ...

This Is Broken , run by Mark Hurst , in my opinion has an excellent way to popularise the customer experience on the web. Not only is it “lmao“ funny, but it also tells you which products and companies to avoid! Kudos to Mark!

Supersizing Rampant in Bangalore The United States is rapidly outsourcing obesity to India and hopes to shed as many as three trillion pounds of unsightly cellulite annually, President George W. Bush announced today. In a speech to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Milwaukee, the President said that since most of the millions of jobs outsourced since he was elected President were extremely sedentary, “Those jobs are now making the people of India fat instead of us.” ...

I think it is time to move back to India now. :) Here is an excerpt “…IBM, the world’s largest IT company, on Wednesday said it would acquire the country’s third largest BPO outfit, Daksh eServices, to add skills in strategic areas. Though IBM did not reveal the deal size, industry sources put the deal at Rs 700 crore (around $150 million), which is almost two-and-a-half times Daksh’s revenues for 2003-04.” ...

Wow, now that is big - especially from me :). But I agree with Bill Hill on this one. BTW, this from slashdot, Microsoft quietly launched Channel 9 , a blog/discussion forum aimed at improving communication with outside developers, on Tuesday. Named for the audio channel that many airlines use to let passengers listen in on crew conversations during flight, Channel 9’s creators state the following in a welcoming message: ‘Five of us in Redmond are crazy enough to think we just might learn something from getting to know each other…Join in, and have a look inside our cockpit and help us fly the plane. ...

WinFX is the next generation of the API Library that is going to be part of Longhorn and would be replacing Win32 as we know it today. There is an excellent reference that covers Whidbey, Longhorn and Yukon for it that can be found here .

For those of us who were lucky enough to be stuck in the Blackout of 2003, the Power System Outage task force has released their report with the causes and the resolutions. If you did not know about the Blackout, here is an excerpt from the report “ … on August 14, 2003, large portions of the Midwest and Northeast United States and Ontario, Canada, experienced an electric power blackout. The outage affected an area with an estimated 50 million people and 61,800 megawatts (MW) of electric load in the states of Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and the Canadian province of Ontario. The blackout began a few minutes after 4:00 pm Eastern Daylight Time and power was not restored for 4 days in some parts of the United States. Parts of Ontario suffered rolling blackouts for more than a week before full power was restored. Estimates of total costs in the United States range between $4 billion and $10 billion (U.S. dollars). In Canada, gross domestic product was down 0.7% in August, there was a net loss of 18.9 million work hours, and manufacturing shipments in Ontario were down $2.3 billion (Canadian dollars)…” ...

Many people have come to me asking what the heck does the Blog name mean? I have the same as my handle on MSN Messenger also and I get the same question there. For the non-techy folks, it is quite interesting that the first thing that comes to their mind is that there is a virus. Hmm, have we rooted this fear so deeply in them now? If so then probably we have failed, but thats another story. Anyways, if you read carefully my handle reads IUnkown [Deprecated]. ...

Ah, good to see that those “sun” guys are finally coming to their senses, and evolving from the dark side. May the force be with them! Now, which is the next company that Microsoft should save? Maybe the one run by this unintellectual (gotta be PC you see) called Larry Ellison. ;)

Though I have never worked for (or at) a “big” Indian software company this is interesting as more and more Indian companies are taking a shelter under various US tax schemes. I am no tax expert and am not sure the legality of this, but this could be a huge “profit” for the Indian companies if it is upheld in court. Does invite the question, do they pass this onto the average joe working their butts off? ...

I did not know this, but the dean of Kellogg School of business is of Indian origin. I think it’s pretty cool. Check out the story here .

A bunch of my friends asked me, what is all the “gibberish” on the test posts that I had submitted to ensure that everything works. I was quite surprised to hear these - especially these are friends who are into custom development on various platforms and technologies. The thought that they have never seen this “gibberish” was quite astounding. So, the “gibberish”, is basically Lorem Ipsum which is sample or dummy text originally of the printing and typesetting industry, but now is used by the Information Architects in all product companies (that I know of). I did not know this, but Lorem Ipsum is from the 1500’s and is not just random text (or gibberish if you prefer that). On the contrary, it has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. ...

A good friend, pointed me to the “The Singhsons” found here who are right out hilarious! I just fell out of my chair laughing. There is sound so be careful if you are listening to this at work. The first person I could think of while seeing this is my dear friend Karan - and I think that is a compliment. *grin* You can read Karan’s blog here . ...