Monday 4 December 2006

Apple iPhone... new buzz

The rumors of iPhone has been out for sometime now, and Kevin Rose's podcast on the iPhone is a good one. Just caught this on TechCrunch.com and liked the way Alex tries to squeeze out information from Kevin. The link of the blog at techcrunch.com.

Some of the information are slide-out keyboard, 2GB and 4GB flash RAM sizes, and innovative dual-battery design. Dual-batter, one for mp3 and the other for phone is a pretty innovative design.

You have to really watch this videos to see how Alex pulls out information on iPhone.

Sunday 19 November 2006

Snap Preview Anywhere (TM)




“Snap Preview Anywhere is a tool for site owners to provide a sticky and informative experience for your users. And it's free!”

That’s how Snap starts with the description of its new product or rather web base tool “Snap Preview Anywhere”. (I have used SPA in this blog. The snapshots you'll see on the links are SPA preview)

A simple to implement tool, SPA(Snap Preview Anywhere), is a great addition to the Snap search Engine. It gives an insight or preview to the links on the Snap search results so that you can verify if it is actually what you are searching for or is just a spoof site. To further their innovation they have now provided a free service where you can use the service to let a user in your site view any pages linked from your site.

This free service provided by the Snap I would presume is to act Google. The simple funda of this free service is you tell Snap that you are here in the internet and take my snap rather than Snap doing that on runtime when your link is shown on their search result for the first time. But, they are providing a cool tool so it’s great.

Someone said “Great things should always be free” and that’s what is happening these days, especially after Google. (I am a Google fan..:)).

And the best is the implementation part, you just have to add some javascript within a page’s head tag and the rest of the hardwork is done by Snap itself. Simple isn’t it, well, then try it yourself.

I am an avid reader of Techcrunch.com and I read about this tool in Techcrunch.Com. Link to the artcile posted on Snap Preview Anywhere.

Thursday 16 November 2006

Commitment and IT

Recent developments in my company have left me thinking. I am a supermonkey so I can think but I hope I think right and good for “my future”.

Well, I am working at company XYZ (it’s a software company; we are so called the software architects, sounds better than programmers). It’s a small- medium sized company and was doing well until few months back.

What happened few months back? Few key players in the company left and started their own company. Starting up a company, being an entrepreneur is good but pitching on your ex-company’s employees and pitching on your ex-company’s projects is bad. And that’s exactly what happened.

This whole scenario has now led to the ultimate question, “Are the employees committed”? It is right for the company to know whether a person it is hiring or an employee, is really committed or not. But it is foolish for a company to expect an employee will be there forever for an average salary and that too in IT sector. (For a programmer 3 to 4 years in a company is “forever” and that’s a fact.)

It is right for a company to know an employee’s commitment, why, because it’s investing money and time on him. More so, my company has been open to one’s capabilities and has given enough room for one to excel. I have no two thoughts on that. But it is still foolish for a company to expect an employee to stick with it forever. For god sake, this is IT company and we are programmers, it’s a small-medium company and pay is average, we are not in Japan and this no Japanese company; and I am confused as of now what to do.

Wednesday 15 November 2006

Inside the triangles

Sitting on a revolving chair with my legs on my working desk and laptop on my (ofcourse) lap, I find two triangles when employees like me start their routine work at 9:30 am and try to finish their so called work at 6:30 pm. (Though I have been lucky enough to be where I am right now. No strict timing, no restrictive responsibilities and ample of space for improvement, what more can an employee expect from a small-medium company.)

First triangle, the corporate world, where money and time matters and second triangle the problem (here am referring to the tasks at work).

Someone has said “When there is a problem, there is an opportunity for solution” and well, has said it right.

Why the triangles are stupid? The corporate ones, they are always stupid. For them ledgers and balance sheets are more important . For them an idea or innovation is a mere step to bigger bank balance to an already huge one. Their only question to a problem is, will solving this problem yield me the dollars.

The problem. We create problems in order to simplify our lives. We tend to simplify the way we sit, eat, communicate, and a whole lot of other things that leads to problems. Why do we do that? May be because we think, and may be because, as Isaac Asimov writes in his book “A guide to the Universe”, humans are super monkey.

So, my purpose of this blog is to write about my thought on the triangle concept which may not necessary revolve around the ones I have mentioned above and would also be writing about my views on other blogs or articles relation to the stupid triangle concept.