27 April 2006

Any Ideas

Do any of you readers have an idea as to how to go about collecting money for charity ? Well the point here is that i have managed to plan up for the Road Trip. Now that the planning part is done, i would like to see if i can put together some money for some charity organization. Question is how do i start ? If i ask someone saying "I am doing this trip can you support some charity?" i get a neat and clinical response "You must be crazy to cycle all the way to madras". So any ideas ? you can send across a mail or post up a comment !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 3:46 PM 2 comments

26 April 2006

Scoop

As usual Indian Express is back at it, giving some scoop news. This is one more !
For those who want to read this article right away, here it is !

Is Maran arm-twisting Tatas?
Wednesday April 26 2006 07:51 IST

CHENNAI: MDMK leader Vaiko’s allegation that Union Minister Dayanidhi Maran has been pressurising, even threatening, Mr Ratan Tata virtually to hand over Tata DTH [Direct to Home] project to his family may end up as more than just an allegation by a political rival during an election campaign.

Inquiries by this website's newspaper lead to the conclusion that Dayanidhi Maran has a lot to explain which he seems not inclined to.

The this website's newspaper sent a list of specific queries relating to the allegation to the secretariat of Ratan Tata.

Within hours, came a cryptic, but profound, response from a Tata spokesperson: “We do not wish to make any comment.” The queries were pointed and contained serious allegations.

“Yet the Tatas did not deny any of the allegations, but merely chose not to comment on them. In effect, by not denying, the Tatas have actually confirmed the allegations in substance.

As for Dayanidhi Maran, when contacted at Coimbatore where he was on his election campaign, he evaded a direct reply when this website's newspaper asked him whether the allegation that he had put pressure on Tatas to grab the Tata DTH project was true. Instead, he spoke disparagingly about Vaiko.

The this website's newspaper inquiries indicate that the matter is likely to snowball into a serious issue as it concerns the most respected and ethically most upright industrial group in India, the Tata group.

The case that is emerging against Dayanidhi Maran is briefly this. The Tata group is in alliance with the global giant Rupert Murdoch’s Star TV for the Direct to Home [DTH] TV project. DTH broadcast carries the connectivity to TV at home without any cable through a set top box that sits on the TV. The value of this project runs into thousands of crores.

The Tatas presently hold 80 per cent of the project and Murdoch 20 per cent. The Maran family has acquired a DTH license. But there is a rider to that. Under its terms the Sun TV cannot hold more than 20 per cent like the Star TV cannot hold more than 20 per cent in the Tata Sky project. It has to find a partner for 80 per cent and also investment of thousands of crores!

Since the future belongs to DTH,Sun TV desperately needs to own DTH connectivity. That is why the Maran brothers, both Kalanidhi who runs Sun TV, and Dayanidhi who runs the ministry that is directly involved in DTH business, seem to have got interested in the Tata-Murdoch project.

This website's newspaper inquiries reveal that Kalanidhi Maran telephoned the Tata group chairman Ratan Tata and asked for a meeting. In the meeting he sought 33 per cent share in the Tata-Star DTH project with management rights. He demanded that Sun TV be given the shares at par, regardless of the real value.

This meant he not only wanted partnership but also at a huge concession. He also demanded to be included as promoter along with Tata and Murdoch.

Shocked by the brazen demand, Ratan Tata told him that it was Tatas’ project and they had no intention of parting with it to anyone. It was then that Dayanidhi Maran intervened.

Dayanidhi had meetings with Ratan Tata in which he began pressing him to part with the project. This seems to have intensified the struggle. Dayanidhi also contacted Rupert Murdoch himself and asked for 33 percent partnership, which the shocked global media baron politely declined.

Meanwhile, meetings took place in which the Marans began claiming that the executives of Tatas and Star TV and also Murdoch and his assistant at Hong Kong had accepted to give 33 percent partnership to Sun TV. These claims later reportedly proved to be false.

When Tata and Murdoch refused to oblige Dayanidhi and Tata wrote a letter to him saying that shares could not be given, Dayanidhi got upset. He reportedly threatened Tata that he would finish off their telecom project and subsequently his office promptly began withholding all normal clearances to Tata Telecom.

The minister ought to have known that since the telecom sector was beset by cutthroat competition, the withholding of ministerial approvals would impose huge costs and losses on Tata Telecom.

Evidently, that was the intent. Yet, despite all the pressures exerted, Tatas couldn’t care less and stood their ground.

The this website's newspaper had also sent queries to Kalanidhi Maran who heads Sun TV, Peter Mukherjee who heads Star TV in India and also Rupert Murdoch through his second in command in Hong Kong.

While others chose not to respond, the substance of the telephonic response from Sun TV was that when it already had a DTH licence why should it put pressure on Tata to grab their DTH project. This answer lacks credibility in view of the condition that Sun TV cannot own more than 20 percent of the project.

The specific queries addressed by the this website's newspaper and the cryptic response of the Tata office which speak volumes are captured here: The this website's newspaper wrote to the Tata office:

‘‘We understand that the pressure is on and that Tatas have resisted it so far and have also decided not to give in. We also understand that Mr Dayanidhi Maran has told Mr Ratan Tata directly that he will finish Tata Telecom and has also ensured that all normal clearances to the Tata group are withheld, so that the group’s telecom business suffers vis-a-vis its competitors.

We want to know whether this is true in substance.

We also want your clarifications in regard to the following:

Did Mr Kalanidhi Maran meet with Mr Tata and tell him directly to part with 1/3rd ownership of the DTH project.

Did Mr Peter Mukherjee of Star TV and Mr Ishat Hussain of Tata group meet with Mr Kalanidhi Maran in Chennai and tell him that it was not possible to offer any shares at par and the maximum that the Tatas could consider was to offer 20% at fair valuation?

Is it true that Mr Kalanidhi Maran got upset and spoke to Mr Tata in an inelegant language?

Did Mr Dayanidhi Maran speak to Mr Tata and advise him to offer 33% share in the DTH project to Sun TV?

Did he threaten Mr Tata that he would destroy the Tata telecom business?

Has he stopped all normal clearances of Tata Telecom?

Did Mr Kalanidhi tell Mr Tata that Mr Rupert Murdoch and his assistant in Hong Kong had agreed for 33% at par which was found by Mr Tata to be untrue?

Did Mr Dayanidhi Maran talk to Mr Rupert Murdoch for the 1/3rd share for Sun TV and threaten him also if he did not agree?

Did Mr Rupert Murdoch tell Mr Tata that he had not agreed for any share and that he had never come across any minister in any part of the world asking for ownership shares for himself?

Did the Tatas approach the PM and is it true that the PM has promised justice and has constituted a committee of secretaries to handle Tata-related matters.

Did Mr Tata write to Mr Dayanidhi Maran that he would not be able to offer shares in the DTH project?

Is it true that the Tatas are not talking about it openly because it is not their way of doing business or handling politics?

It is in response to these specific queries that the Tata spokesperson responded cryptically, but significantly with his remark: ‘‘We do not wish to make any comment’’ which is in itself a profound comment.

The critical aspect of the Tata reply is that they have not denied the facts mentioned in the queries addressed to them. Now that Tatas have not denied, it is for Dayanidhi Maran to respond. But, will he?

Posted by Unknown at 2:57 PM 3 comments

22 April 2006

1click Blogging

Thumbspeed guys were giving a talk on 1ClickBlogging. You basicaly download a client onto your mobile phone which is a smart phone and which also has a camera (warning: you need a series 60 phone) and if you take a picture, you can immediately add it to your blog. Your mobile also needs a GPRS data connection. I somehow think that this can kick off once the client is available across all mobile phones ! For which they need to open up their client which they add to the mobile phones ! But overall i found it pretty intresting. As Chris was saying, it makes a good case for citizen journalism !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 3:08 PM 0 comments

Lunch!

Oh ya lunch sucked :-( I hate ladie's finger (ya only the vegetable :-( ) and there is no other place to grab a quick bite in this vicinity !!
There was a cool session with Chirs Messina, Tara on the origins of barcamp and why people are here to attend barcamps and stuff !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 1:52 PM 0 comments

Tazzaa Again

Tazzaa was not stale (Tazzaa means "Fresh" in Hindi) ! It was pretty good to hear to Arjun's talk again !! And im not saying anything more about it ! Just wait and watch. Ya rhe best part about this site is that, it is india-centric ! Way to go Arjun ;-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 12:16 PM 2 comments

Podcasting for Schools ?

The idea proposed by Sathish and his friends here seems to be creating a podcast (Podshaaala) for various lessons and lectures and search them interactively. Most teachers do not also have any kind of computing resource. How to record their lectures ? The search across the podcasts is based upon some kind of tag. There is some kind of suggestion saying you can record it on some media (CD's ?) and have students download it. Techniques for recording what is being written on the blackboard is also being discussed. The impetus of the talk was more on getting data from the audience on what needs to be done and the possible directions for it. One possible way (suggestion from my side)is to check what this "Gyan Darshan" channel is using. This is because, they transmit via satellite and they cannot afford to be data intensive. Having done some work with satellite broadcasting, i think that might give some clues. There are also a few feedbacks from the audience that podcasting might *not* exactly be the bridge between teachers and students !! The need here is to also look at what the OpenCourse Ware from MIT is doing in terms of course distribution !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:57 AM 1 comments

Tara Hunt's Presentation

Pinko marketing seems to be the new way to market your product to gather the attention of a wider audience, so seems to say Tara Hunt of Riya. I think Arjun'a Tazzaa seems to be precisely doing that !
Now of to watch what Sathish has to say about podcasting and schools !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:35 AM 0 comments

Scrum - A New Approach to software Design

Scrum seems to be a pretty intresting software design methodology for small teams. And typically, the team size for product development is pretty small indeed !
As Pete was saying, it gets all the shit up to the top ! And the cool part is that it gets the team to commit to doing something !
Muthu had my laptop all this while so the live update is kind of getting delayed !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:55 AM 0 comments

Live From Bangalore BarCamp

Folks;
This blog will try to cover live the events/talks/un-happenings in bangalore barcamp. Stay Tuned for more. There are four make-shift conf rooms where people are going to talk about a lot of stuff. Here is a must attend session tip. Do not miss Arjun's Tazzaa talk !
And Sathish (ya ya my younger brother) is also giving a talk.
That's me at the BarCamp. Pic courtesy Alexnader Muse.

Stay tuned for more updates
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:44 AM 0 comments

20 April 2006

Road Trip

The Date : 6th May 2006
The Place : Bangalore
The Destination : Madras (chennai)
The Distance : 350km
The Mode of Travel : Pedal Power.
The Estimated Time : 2 days ( 10 hrs of cycling per day approx )
The People (As of now) : Kribs and Yours truly. You are welcome but please make sure you will not get caught in the "Last man in the trek" syndrome. (Which means that because of one person the whole team has to reduce its pace).
I dont know how good MTB's will be for this trip, but im going to use my "Hero Hawk".
The reason why it is bangalore to madras is that we can take advantage of the down slope. Probably some time down the line, a madras to bangalore trip can be done. That would need some real pedal pushing on the second day when you hit the slopes !
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:38 AM 6 comments

18 April 2006

Moving On

I guess it's time to get a real move on ! I have finally, after months and months of procrastination, got myself a bloglines account and added those links which i do read once in a while.
Hmm and it does feel quite nice ! As someone in the Madras Barcamp told me, i am not moving out from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 :-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 6:36 PM 0 comments

17 April 2006

Firefox memory usage

Perhaps the most visible crib against firefox is that it hogs up too much of memory and it does not free it up and all kinds of stuff.
For my part, i tried recompiling with maximum optimizations to see what can be done.
I tried it for different kinds of hardware and operating systems.
For windows : Use the optimization flags Oxs -G7 -GA -GL -arch:SSE2 for a pentium 4 system. Most importantly *do not* build a static build. use the options "ac_add_option --disable-static" and "ac_add_options --enable-shared". vc7 compiler is prefered.
For Linux : if you are using pentium then use "-O3 -m32 -fomit-frame-pointer -mtune=pentium4" and do not forget to use the disable-static and enable-shared options as specified above. If you are using amd then change the mtune flag appropriately.gcc4 and above is prefered.

For firefox on both windows(xp with service pack 2) and linux (suse 10.0) ( pentium as well as amd), with 10 tabs {one has a java enable website and one has flash emabled website ) and flashgot extension, the memory does not cross 50mb for a 512 mb system. For the record, both IE and opera have the same memory usage. The memory values were obtained using the task manger for windows and "top" program in linux.

In case the reader is aware of any website that is heavily java enabled or heavily flash enabled which hogs memory while browsing with firefox, please send across the link and i shall see what happens in my build.
Also in your url box type "about:config" and set the following options browser.cache.memory.enable to false
browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:37 AM 0 comments

14 April 2006

Stuff

Rest in peace Dr.Rajkumar. From whatever i have read about you, you do seem to be a real trailblazer. (no i am not going to comment upon the rioting or whatsoever. It is a part of the mob psychology. So shall leave it at that.)
I did see a demo of a cool piece of technology that has a uniplex voice and video capability. The software looked pretty cool i must say !!
Shall digg into it further and post some more links on it shortly.
Update : This is a link.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 1:33 PM 2 comments

09 April 2006

Adel - Design

Adel starts off his talk emphasising that this is *the* talk that will make or break our Web2.0 app. Of course he combines it with his usual sense of humour !! And he goes on to mention that design is all about interfaces, color and typography. There is a need to evangelize your product ie., to sell your blog or site. And
Indian Railways site seems to be the most used. And it is the most ugliest. And he suggests to read a few books on design. Specially, "The Art of Innovation" by "Tom Kelly" and a few more. Finally he signs off saying that he will try to redesign some website and show how it can be made intresting. The last talk is on contributing for Ubuntu and i shall
post about it later as the laptop has to go now ! That's all for live update now folks. Thanks for whoever joined in.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 4:59 PM 0 comments

Misc Post

I bunked one talk on ruby to roam around general. The upcoming talk is by Adel on Design & Web Applications.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 4:11 PM 0 comments

PodBazaar Talk

Ram gave a online talk from california on what Web2.0 is and things on AJAX and Mash-ups and stuff. He is a part of This company, which gives an podcasting publishing platform and this was used to build PodBazaar. Except for flash, they seem to be entirely open-source. And surprise surprise, they use common lisp !! And they needed just 8KLOC exluding some libraries. Javascript has limited multimedia capabilities. That is a known aspect right ? ;-). And learning from our past and previous innovators is another of those good viewpoints that he gave during his talk. Coming up next is a talk on rich ruby applications.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 2:53 PM 1 comments

Amit on Designing Web Applications

He gave a talk on his tool called mind canvas which is a mash up of online surveys, online games and data driven statistical methods. Card sorting seems to be a method for user experience surveys and used to classify things into various categories. He used the example of an Ice-berg. 7/8th of it is under water. And we dont know about it ! So we do need to know how to see and view things. This product dwells more on obtaining user responses for surveys when we want to launch a product. As he says Web2.0 has made the user more aware of his/her product and now it does not make sense to have the producer waiting for user to give back feedback. The requirments for software (Web2.0) are now a series of iterative feedback and no rigid rules and procedures ! Thus Death, Taxes and Design Changes are the only constants in life :-). Pretty intresting session. Somehow i kind of think that these sessions add more value than just technical sessions. As he says, Ideas alone are not anything. It is the execution that matters !! Coming up next is a live conference from california on the background of podcast.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 1:44 PM 0 comments

Post Lunch Talks

There are now two tracks as the number of presentations has increased ! ;-) Now isn't that real music to the organizers ears ? I think it is !! Seems there is a Quiz today at 4pm and as Kribs says, it is cash rich ! And Amit is scheduled to start shortly with his presentation on making web applications.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 1:42 PM 0 comments

Aswin and The Surprise

Aswin like the previous student speaker seems calm composed while talking in front of such an audience ! This seems to be site where you first need to register to get your mails to your mobile. The developers claim they use encryption so that they dont see your mails. You also need to download a software onto your mobiles for this purpose. Moyeen is also a co-developer for this project. And as usual and expectedly, this does not show attachments. USP's seem to be that it does not download mails to your mobile and can aggregate from different e-mail providers. And guess what ? These guys use our software, His and Mine. Now that is *indeed* a surprise !! And we have an internal chatroom called Gabbly which is pretty much cool ! Lunch is up folks.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 12:51 PM 1 comments

Podcasting

Podcasting from a user perspective is what was being dealt with by Sujatha. What is cool is that this was a live talk from skype. Man chennai is tech savy or what ! Live conversations from around the world !! The bandwidth could have been better, but well :-(. And there was a cool piece of statistic that said that about 100 iPod's are sold every minute (for the last quarter of 2005)! Narrowcasting, Time-shifting, Portability and Personal Publishing make up the four pillars of Podcasting. As she says, podcasting makes it easy for anyone with an opinion to make it heard, reviewed and commented upon !! And finally some fundas (gajabhuja? ;-)) on how to create decent podcasts and stuff. Aswin one of those student geeks is coming up next. He does seem to be a pretty techie guy! Let's see what he is talking about on !! E-mail on mobiles aggregated from different e-mail services.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 12:30 PM 0 comments

Atul's Commonsensical Insights

Taking computers when they are on the move ? AT&T found that they were able to save a million dollars when people worked from home during one of those inclement weathers. Atul started off with a neat introduction on what is big and what is not in the realm of computers with some cool comparisons with wrist watches and wall clocks. And for movie buffs like me there was a neat example he gave on why cinema is being beaten by home theatres. Availability is the keyword he says. And most importantly the advantage with small form factor devices is that you dont need to display *all the information* but
only the *desired information*. There is no more scope for innovation or change in the desktop which we see today. HP it seems produced touch screen enabled vectra PC's almost twenty years ago ! A mindset change is needed not in the minds of the users but in the minds of the developers !
The best part of the whole talk is more on the commonsensical approach rather than technological approaches. And Vamsi from Viamentis sitting to me is using Ubuntu 5.10 with w-lan on a IBM thinkpad R51. That's pretty cool as i see lots of guys using linux !! The live skype talk with Sujatha is coming up next. She is going to talk about it from a user perspective.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:05 AM 0 comments

Office and Stuff

Prathul does seem calm and composed while talking to an audience. Now that is the advancement in today's college and school kids that im talking about all along. The awareness is on the increase ! I dont use much M$ office in any case so i would not know much of what he is talking about :-) Something on codename "Ribbon" and stuff. And Rajesh from Zoho is also a Linux user ! Mandriva is his distro. There was of course a lot of lampooning about microsoft and stuff. Did not listen much as i dont use it in any case. Looks like they are integrating photoshop into office ? Good or bad ? Only time will tell. Coming up next is Atul with his talk on mobile computing. And guess what ? He runs *Linux* on his laptop !!
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:32 AM 1 comments

BarCamp Day-2

We are onto the day 2 of the barcamp chennai and we are just now testing out skype or a few presentations later in the day live from california on podcasting by Sujatha. Stay Tuned for more updates. The first topic of the day is going to be an Introduction to Office 2007 by a Microsoft Student Partner Prathul.
PS: The Water-Melon Juice in the university canteen close to the Ramanujan Computing Center rocks man. And so is the sambhar ;-) Do sample it if you are here.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:10 AM 1 comments

08 April 2006

UI Experience

Muthu starts off then ! xDesign is the abbreviated form of UserExperience Design it seems. He says designers need to feel the user. That is so very true after seeing the Motorola SLVR L7. Mental model is how the user *thinks* it should work. And he also spoke on how to integrate the design process into SDLC itself. Things like gathering user requirments and subject matter interviews seem pretty cool. Oh ya bring on some examples man ! The iPod example of golden ratio is pretty cool and the gmail example of contextual e-mail search are pretty neat ones i say. 80-20 rule of design principle. How is it that almost all things have some rule or other ?
And we are closing for the day. Looks like the Video-Conference from Hyderabad did not work out coz of some bandwidth issues. Guys are giving it one last try. Let us see what happens.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 4:27 PM 1 comments

Zoho - Another M$ competitor ?

Charles is talking up about zoho creator, a cool app from Zoho We had a demonstration of zoho creator and he copied and pasted data from an existing excel sheet to this software. Can this be used as a replacement for M$ office suite at homes ? I guess yes, as most home users *do not* need the advanced features of Word.So the bottomline is this : M$ office suite is having some web level competition not just from companies outside india, but also from inside india. They also have Zoho Write and i remember someone telling me that this was better than writely which google recently acquired. But that is independent perception for you ! Muthu is coming up next with some UI design and stuff.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 4:04 PM 1 comments

NPL

Suman's a bit tech heavy talk on NPL and visualization of code as a movie and not as a novel as he says it just came to an end. It's a tea-break folks. And there are plans to skype up with hyderabad folks where a barcamp is also underway.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 3:26 PM 0 comments

No Not Yet Another News Aggregator

So if you want to know something about your local "macchan's" as Arjun calls them you can head over to Taazza. And he is showing a demo of their main site. And it looks pretty impressive too !. "Meme" of theme based news filtering seems to be the USP of this news aggregator ! And ya they do have news already tagged into various categories and you can blog that or add it to deli.ci.ous !! And there was a pretty decent demonstration on Bird-Flu with wikipedia links. Now that was indeed cool ! Seems that you can search down to a particular district in a particular state of india. No im not putting up pictures showcasing how it works and stuff coz putting up pictures is a big pain here man !! Finally Suman is coming up next.
Update : Arjun also mentioned that we are the first folks to have a demo of his stuff. Now that is pretty cool !!
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 2:09 PM 0 comments

Post Lunch Stupor

We all talk about barcamps. But why does chennai have only Tasmac bars ? So asks Muthu. And the lunch was pretty good. Post lunch session starts now with a talk by Arjun which is a news aggregator site. There were some intresting lunch time nuggets like why dont the billion dollar companies in India pool up some money and do some venture funding for poor but idea filled guys like your truly ? ;-) Oh yes im determined not to fall asleep !!
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 1:46 PM 0 comments

Narain's Talk

Beta does *not* mean half baked in Web 2.0 sense. That is pretty true. And yes all along whatever i had been claiming, that software is moving towards services is close to coming true. Is Technorati better than Google Search ? Web 2.0 is all about people, people, people so goes Narain. And building a Web 2.0 app does not seem all that difficult ! Does this mean voice and video on Gmail chat ? And Narain closed it with saying he will meet all of us at Web 3.0 :-) Oh Lunch is ready and so the updates will come up after that.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 12:19 PM 0 comments

Little Disruption

Since my laptop was offline for a few moments, a little delay in live blogging and the live blog's size has reduced :-)
Narain who runs his own company is following Balaji's talk now. And Narain is talking about Web 2.0.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 12:18 PM 0 comments

Talk Replacement

Suman's talk got interrupted coz of some technical glithces and Vijay Anand of that rrrr's and hhh's (American Accent dude :-)) is giving his next presentation on Infrastructure Networks. Something on transparency and everyone paying taxes. And collecting information from all places for this infrastructure network. Contact him if you have any more doubts man !! Suman is coming up next (I think my laptop will work!)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:51 AM 0 comments

MyToday What Happened

Vinu has a news aggregator kind called mytoday. And it is something akin to craigslist is what it looks like. And Vinu reads his blogs on his mobile ! This thing looks intresting. And BTW we were supposed to have two rooms and parallel sessions, but as of now we are on in one room !! And we now have Firefox up and running as Vinu's site does not open in IE (we are not surprised are we ??) Suman is coming up with a programming language called NPL and a highly technical talk with a screencast. Of course i am not going to upload the screencast :-).
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:16 AM 0 comments

VoiceSnap-What happened in that talk.

Seems the collector in sivagangai, a town and i think district headquarters (?) in TamilNadu uses VoiceSnap for receiving petitions. And this is totally on-realtime technology ie, this is *not* voice chat. This has some more cool features. Check out their websites ! And Adel (to be said out as "Adhil") of good handwriting and some kick-ass sense of humour has made out a piece of paper which says "Its Time" which i hold up to warn the speaker that it is time for the next speaker to take stage. And im on gmail. Reach me on shyamk and if you want to talk live you know where to find me ! And Ganesh says that more questions can be taken using their voicesnap software.
Vinoo of Netcore is coming up with his next talk. He asks for firefox and he says his homeland is chennai :-). I think he instantly connected with me coz for these two things.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:05 AM 0 comments

VoiceSnap is the first talk

Ganesh of VoiceSnap is giving the first talk. There are some cool applications of this piece of s/w. That is coming up shortly. And i am the un-official time keeper. That should deter me from sleeping off, which i have been doing through all my college courses.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:49 AM 0 comments

Kribs and his fundas ?? :-)

Grrr and this post which i posted previously got deleted. Blogger is not all that good for live blogging man :-( That sucks !!
Ok Kribs started off the session with his usual nuggets and guess what ? Lunch is on the house :-) But the beer is not :-(
And Amit says that the real barcamp will be when we get free beer ;-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:24 AM 0 comments

BarCamp Gyan from Amit

Did u know ? Oriely (spelling might not be correct?) publishing had a foocamp and lots of guys were not invited. Ok they felt they needed to be invited. So the uninvited guys just went ahead and organized their own meet ! And hence that was the way barcamp originated.
PS: Coming up is a live podcast or skype from california. And Kribs says that since this is an un-conference, we have not yet tested it !!
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:09 AM 0 comments

Kribs and his fundas ?? :-)

And Kribs is off, with is usual nuggets and his almost unique style of gelling with the crowd !
Oh ya lunch is on the house :-) Will the food be good ?? Kribs says beer is not free ;-)
And Amit (of barcamp delhi) says that is the real barcamp !! :-) (If you get the free beer bozo :-))
Kribs is done and Amit is going to share his experiences of bar camp delhi !! That is coming up next.
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 10:01 AM 2 comments

Live Blogging from BarCamp Chennai

im right now here in barcamp chennai trying to do live blogging. I can cover only track 1 as this has ethernet and i dont have w-lan :-(. Oh ya what gives me the kick is that, so far i am the only using linux :-) Now that *is* something !!
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:47 AM 0 comments

VoiceSnap is the first talk

And the un-conference is on folks. Ganesh of VoiceSnap is going to talk on Voice Messaging. Guess what ? I am the un-official time-keeper. That should deter me from sleeping off when someone talks, which i have normally done through my colleges :-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 1:35 AM 0 comments

06 April 2006

Bugs

How stupid can software designers get ? Check this out. You have these sleek new Motorola SLVR L7 phone in the market. That has supposedly iTunes player {fine print: only in US of A market }. The european and indian versions come with a Java Digital Audio Player.
Whoever designed that deserves a good whack all over his/her body. You play music using that player and get an incoming call. You answer/reject that call and voila!! your music does not resume ! WTF ?? What kind of silly design is that ? One can definitely understand that since it is a Java based player you cannot afford to use up your phone stack space.
Fair enough, take up the mpg123 library, add a few UI here and there and you have a good enough mp3 player that does *not* need Java. Moronic fools they are !
Anyway check out This site if you are facing this problem. That site has a neat and simple solution to it. Download the iTunes player ;-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 2:14 PM 2 comments

04 April 2006

Exceptions

Now This is one of those rare pieces of good news from that slimes of india group !
So this indeed shows that there are exceptions everywhere ;-)
K.Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 12:48 PM 0 comments