After the raindrops....

wake up at very late hours...

complete the morning activities, for the sake of doing it...

just swallow the delicious food wihtout enjoying Mom's love and care in it..

promise to get the medicines in the evening for Papa..

drive to office in an hectic traffic

swipe the access card to mark the attendance in office..

plan,discuss, argue and implement new bugs..

digg and read about the new technology that is coupled with solar energy for the evolution of mankind!!!

call and say Hi to Brother who live at the same house, but leaves for work before I wakeup and goto bed before I reach home..

scrap Happy Birthday in Orkut to a firend who was the room-mate for 4 years in the college...

call Mr.Doe and fix the earlier mistakes in the work...

at regular intervals fill the stomach with all possible junk foods

praise the technology camera view of Sanfransisco... (Google Maps)

call her to say we will not be able to meet today..

ask computer for help to solve even the simplest mathematic equations...

remember the old friends to forward the mails forwarded by another friend..

Get exhausted,leave office at late nights, only to see the drops of water on the bike seat..

Hmmm...... it had rained in Chennai today!!!!

am I missing something in life????

Google Gadget Ventures

Are you a Google Gadget Developer? Then there is a good news from Google.

Inspired by the grand success of iGoogle project, which was developed by third party software developers, the search-engine company is planning to provide grants and seed investments to gadget developers and gadget-related businesses.

Google's anouncement in their Official Blog is HERE.
Web page for the Project is HERE.
... and they do have a FAQ, HERE.

All the best friends.. [;)]

PS: The eligiblity criteria says this is only for those who have developed a Google Gadget in their Google Gadgets directory and generates at least 2,50,000 weekly page views.

iPhone from Apple

Its June 29, 2007. All Apple fans all over the world are eagerly waiting for the launch of the New iPhone from Apple. The excitement equal to what happens here when a Rajinikanth movie is released.

Here is a short video on the features in this phone:



.....whether the iPhone meets all its expectations or fall a victim for its own hipe... time should say..

Orkut and Work...

Today when I was checking my e-mails, there was a message from Some X whom I never knew.This person X introdueced themselves as a recruitment agency and the mail was about few job openings at Bangalore. First I thought it was just another sort-of-spam-mail but only when I read the requirements for the job openings, I realised I was completely wrong.

The job openings were for people with few years of experience in a domain (to be more specific knowledge in a framework).Our current company had been working on this framework for more than a decade. Though I am no way associated with that domain/technology, (we do have a plenty of products/technologies) I was wondering how did these people target that mail to me.
That particular mail was sent from an Orkut account. So that gave me a clue how this would have happened.

That person X, somehow must have known that our company is working in that particular domain and when their Client asked for resources with experience in this particular technology, X had browsed through the profiles of all members in the orkut community for our company and only then had sent that mail to me (us!!!)

I really like the idea how they had found the target resources and have done this mail campaign. Very nice and effective idea to use Orkut for better produtivity in work.

Khooooool!!!! (chumma trying to imitate thalaivar [;)] )

Rich Dad Poor Dad

My reading habbit has always been limited to small articles in Newspapers and magazines. Books has always been a nightmare to me. I have never read a single book completely!!!

Yesterday, when chatting with one of my friends, he referred a book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad" by Robert Kiyosaki. He said this is one of the best-selling books even after almost 7 years. The way my friend spoke about this book created some interests in me.

image from: images.contentreserve.com

Today, while browsing the Internet after the day's work, I went to wikipedia to read more about this book. My friend must be right.

Here are some of the quotations from the book that was quoted in the site:

"Physical exercise improves health, mental exercise improves wealth, laziness destroys both."

"A true luxury is a reward for investing in and developing a real asset."

"The only way to get out of the "Rat Race" is to prove your proficiency at both accounting and investing, arguably two of the most difficult subjects to master."

"I have mentioned before that financial intelligence is a synergy of accounting, investing, marketing and law. Combine those four technical skills and making money with money is easier."

"Most people are poor because when it comes to investing, the world is filled with Chicken Littles running around yelling, ‘The sky is falling. The sky is falling.’"

"Many of today's youth have credit cards before they leave high school, yet they have never had a course in money or how to invest it, let alone understand how compound interest works on credit cards."

Very short yet highly motivating messages!!! I guess the book should be more interesting.

Small things aren't really SMALL

Are you are a programmer and having a similar thought as this, in your mind:

"I m not doing anything worth in the application. I m assigned tasks that are of less significance in the software"

If Yes, then I do have something to share with your friend.

There is nothing called as less/no significant feature in a software. Every bits and pieces contribute to the software. Things that appear to have lesser significance, will be of great use to the Users.

Think about the small Start button in the Windows. It realy appears to be very simple. Designing its color and layout would have been a simple task. But whats happening today?

This small button is one among the most widely used UI Components in the World Today!!!!


The same applies for that small text field in the Google Home Page. When designing, the code for this small text field would have been very simple, when compared with the complex search algorithm that was running at the background.

and today this simple text box is the window for all of us to search the Internet!!!

Another interesting fact in the software developement is, at times, the user satisfaciton is inversely propotional to the effort that was put for developement. This might sound funny but it is the truth.

You would have spent days and nights coding for a complex module. Then had done some very simple Ajaxified wrapper for that complex feature. But later, this simple wrapper would make make the software awesome to the user.

When a most important feature in the software fails for some unknown exception reason, a very simple informative error message to the user, can win his trust for your product.

Bits and pieces make a software. Only if these pieces are perfect, Great software can be made.

Then.... to be honest, I really don't know why am I writing this now - may be to pass away the lazy friday evening session.

why to worry when this small post could bring a great change in you!!! [;)]

images from:
www.microsoft.com
www.googleguide.com

Dream Boy - Dream Girl ????

In yesterday's episode of Vijay TV's "Neeyah-Naanah", they were discussing on the topic - "Dream Boy - Dream Girl".

Some of the observations in the women participants:

• Most ladies(IT professionals) wanted their partner to earn more than 5ok INR/month.
• Most ladies dont like baldness at young age (atleast for few years after the marriage)
  

Accepted! Nothing wrong in their opinions. But men are the real sad things here.

When we have beautiful hair on our head, our salary will not be anywhere near 50K. When our salary reaches 50k, half our head would have gone bald (with some additional courtesy from Chennai Water)

For the benefit of our poor segment, it would be better if they modify any one of the criteria.. [;-)]

Personal Expense Tracker (New Software Idea)

At times, few software ideas flash in my mind and thanks to my laziness, ever after that they will always remain just as useless ideas within me. This is one such small idea for an Online Software Service.

I hope posting this here, might atleast help someone , who is searching for a Great Software Idea [;)] - or atleast an academic project.

Let my little idea bring a Great spark such a friend [;-)]

Problem
We work hard... We get paid... We spend that.. and the end of the month most of us are left with just few hundreds of our earnings in our hand. Most of us really dont know where the money had gone???

Solution
This is one of the most common problem everyone of us face.How nice it would be if we have a system to -

• Track our expenses,
• Generate necessary reports,
• Help us to identify the stream where we spend lot,
• Plan the monthly budget/investments,
• Regular alerts for credit/loan payments,
• Track Group accounts,
• and lot more.....
  

Well there are few online services providing a good solution for above problem, but the one most common problem, in this model is Data Entry. It is really impossible for anyone to manually enter each and every expenditure into the application. One will not always have access to the computer, while spending.

One possible solution, from the user himself, is to make a note of all expences through out the day and later enter them into the software. Making this as a regular habbit depends on the individuals.

Another possible way to enter data is through SMS from mobile phones.

Today mobile phones are everywhere. SMS rates are being slashed down everyday. So the users can send SMS in some pre-defined format, something like shown below, to record their expenditures:

EXP [AMOUNT_IN_NUMBER] [DETAILS]

Learing such pre-defined format of SMS will not be a big problem - I assume. Also considering the popularity of Web-SMS services like Twitter, etc - people wouldn't mind sending messages when their problem gets solved.

Such SMS based data entry will be of great help for Group Expence Tracking - something like organizing a college culturals, an unconferrence, etc - where a member would just send a SMS for the expence and later attach the voucher, when connected to the internet.

However, we do have a big problem here. It is really unfair to expect people to spend money (i,e.the charge for sending SMS) to track their daily expences.

A simple solution for such users:

• SMS bills can be paid by sponsors
  
• In turn these users will get minimum number of SMS ads everyday.

Knowing the expense habbit of the user, sending the most appropriate and not-so-annoying ads through SMS will not be an hard task. At the same time such model shouldn't be a spam distributor.

Well this is just a rough sketch of the idea in my mind with its own pros and cons. Suggestions from like-minded friends can definitely refine the idea.

images from:
adss.com.ua
www.neowave.com.my

Simple ways to make some Quick Money in the Software Industry

I am not really happy to talk about this bitter truth about the software engineering profession.

One of my friends works in a software company for the past 2+ years. All these years his appraisals were just oK - infact very low for a employee like him. So finally he decided not to work anymore for the pea-nuts and started his job hunt. Offers started coming his way and finally he settled for one that paid nearly one and half times his current pay.

On a fine day, he informed this to his manager. Only then the manager realised how valuable my friend is. Now he is ready to pay nearly 50k/annum more than the new offer.

How sad???

Its sad because... two years of service, dedication, passion and blah.. blah.. blah.. (whatever I can say about my friend) didn't get him the recognition from his current employer. He had to get a certificate (so called offer letter) from some other third party to get what he deserved for his current work.

How come now, they are ready to pay this huge amount? Might be, this is what is called as Management steps to minimize attrition of a valuable resource.

Whatever it may be.. now my friend knew the very simple (..yet the best) way to make some quick money from his current employer

1. Just complete the minimal task, expected from him.
2. Improve the technical knowledge i,e. prepare for the job inverviews.
3. Get back with a better offer during the appraisal period.

image from: www.stphilipsumc.org