Archive

Using Windows Desktop Search in your Enterprise

I am sure most of you would have tried one of the free desktop search applications like Google Desktop Search, MSN Desktop Search or Copernic. These work great for home users and for those who have all the files in their laptops/desktops. For those in Enterprises where most of the corporate data is stored in central file shares or in Sharepoint servers, till now there was no convenient way to search both Desktop and Enterprise data. Recently MS released the free Windows Desktop Search for Enterprise that does everything the MSN Desktop Search does plus has the ability to search Sharepoint sites and File shares.


Configuring this can be little tedious – my good friend and Sydney RD Adam Cogan has written this good guide on doing it, check it out here.

Kumaresh Prasanna passes away


Kumaresh Prasanna


Today was a shocking day for all of us at Vishwak – at 8:45AM we lost to fate, one of our coworker “Kumaresh Prasanna“, aged 29.  He was being treated in Malar Hospital and was fighting for his life last two weeks.


Being a true team player, Prasanna was always there to help others with a smiling face.


Please join me in praying for his soul to rest in peace and to give his parents, brother and friends strength to overcome this.


Losses like this makes us appreciate how fleeting is our life…

Two sides of an Interview

If you thought attending Interviews are tough and being on the other side of the table is easy – think again. It is equally difficult doing an interview. 


Heading a company I am made to conduct many interviews. The interviews are for positions ranging from Dev Leads, Project Managers, Accountants to BDM’s.


For all of them, irrespective of the role I have my standard questions aimed at knowing their Attitude, Presentation, Communication, Job Experience and most important their Trustworthiness. Each of the roles have to be quizzed on their respective topics – for some of them like Sales/Marketng in which I have no formal education, I prepare by talking to experts on the subject or reading on the Internet / Books / Magazines. This reading is not for me to pretend that I know the subject, but to get a first hand feel of the candidate after which they can be referred to an external/internal expert on the subject before hiring.


When doing these interviews I find many times candidates come less prepared. With demand for IT Professionals increasing day by day in India, candidates seems to take interviews easily – especially when you are starting your career I always recomend people to take your interviews seriously, come prepared for it. After all it is a small world, you don’t know you will meet again or where. So if you are less prepared you can leave a lasting impact that you will regret. Recently I found this good article about “How to Answer These Tricky Interview Questions by Kate Lorenz” in MSN, check it out.


For candidates taking a new job can turn out to be rewarding, but it always carries a risk and anxiety. Similarly for a company hiring a candidate is also risky as well - they spend so much money, time and effort in every interview and the interviewer is equally or more keen in finding a candidate quickly. So I suppose the risk balances!

Govt. of India to develop Indian Language browser

As per this news Mr.Dayanidhi Maran Hon’ble Cabinet Minister for IT and Commn have announced yesterday that Govt. of India is developing free Indian Language Browser software in next 3 years. Though I don’t see any value in Govt. spending its money just to develop UI in Indian languages (many already exists both from Open Source and from Microsoft), I welcome the subsequent idea. This browser software will be able to translate English based web content (WebSites and Pages) into any of the 13 Indian Languages – this feels a big void that exists today. None of the biggies (including Google or AltaVista) or any Open source project have so far concentrated on this need. Only very few percentage of our population understands English, but majority of the web content is in English and this will be a big blessing to them.

 

I pray for this effort to be successful – there are too many technical challenges in converting to Indian Language.

Plaxo – Access your outlook contacts anywhere

After been hearing about Plaxo.com service for several years; ignoring tons of update requests I keep getting from my contacts using Plaxo – finally two weeks before I have started using Plaxo. The main value I saw in the free service – was that by installing the Plaxo Toolbar in my outlook, I can sync up all my contacts, calendar, tasks and notes and access them anytime by logging into Plaxo.com using a web browser.


Most of the time I work late hours, so after a long day don’t feel like carrying my Laptop home – but in the morning when I need a contact detail to quickly send an email and I don’t always have my mobile phone synced. Plaxo’s service is perfect for that need and also it also doubles up as a good back-up facility. If you have multiple machines – Plaxo can be used to sync the contact/calendar details between them as well. Apart from this the Outlook toolbar adds some nice goodies like duplicate finder/remover, etc.



Though Plaxo is not a killer app (or) a new innovation, it is certainly worth to keep. I am curious on how effectively this feature set will be met by Windows/Office Live offerings. I will be watching the space, will update here once Windows/Office Live gets released.

Book Release of Mr.Anto Peter

In this year Chennai Book Fair Mr.Anto Peter of Softview technologies, released a book on Graphic design in Tamil. I was invited as a speaker on the event.


T-Mug Visual Studio Launch

T-Mug (Trivandrum Microsoft User Group) had conducted the community launch of VS2005 today. In the full day event, I presented for about an hour on ASP.NET v2.0 overview.



The T-Mug Volunteers did a great job organizing that I had the following to complement them: “Everything was great about the program – The Hospitality shown, arrangements, audience quality and quantity and the venue. Good Luck for all future programs

VS 2005 – Auto Save


When you are programming the most frustrating moments are when your IDE crashes and you lose several hours of work. Since I started programming in the DOS days when this was very common, subconsciously I keep pressing Ctrl-S (Save) every few minutes. I carry this habit even when I work in Excel/Word, even to this day. Even while doing this blog entry (I use Web UI to post) I keep copying the contents in to clipboard every few minutes.


Anyways I noticed a solution for this with Visual Studio 2005 through its AutoRecover option (Tools-Options-Environment-Autorecover). I am just wondering what took IDE vendors so long to do this!


Visual Studio 2005 Auto Save

Mobile Subscribers in India is “76 Million”

According to TRAI (India’s Telecom Regulator) recent announcement India’s mobile subscriber base now stands at 76 Million. I am not sure how they arrive this figure – do they account each PrePaid card as one user (or) a minimum number of days of prepaid user (or) how they handle inactive post paid connections?. Anyways this is an impressive stride considering the fact that 1/3rd (27 million) of this users have been added in last 12 months – with this about 7% of India’s population have a Mobile Phone. The fixed line (which was been around for 100 years+) pales in comparison to this at 49 million.


This places India at Sixth position – China tops it now at 398 Million. India will be at second Position by 2010.  


Mobile phones growth is already showing significant impact in Indian economy. In Agriculture/Farm industry traditionaly in developing/poor countries like India the main problem was lack of access to timely and accurate Information. This Information can be about latest weather, natural disaster warnings, crop trends, market price for crops in surrounding areas, best practices including Insurance coverage, loans and more. Basically bulk of the population was denied information or it was too expensive to reach to them. Mobile phones are making a sea change in this.


I believe it will take years (or decades) for PCs to reach to every corner of India – Fear not, Mobile phones will fill that void and they are already doing it more rapidly than what we realize. Post your comments and experiences on this below.


 

பொங்கல் வாழ்த்துக்கள், வலைப்பூவின் இரண்டாம் ஆண்டு நிறைவு

பொங்கல் பானை
(எங்கள் வீட்டில் (சென்னை) காஸ் அடுப்பு பொங்கல் பானை – 2002ம் ஆண்டு படம்)



தமிழர்களின் எண்ணற்ற பண்டிகைகளுள் படுவிமர்சையாகக் கொண்டாடப்படும் திருவிழா தைப்பொங்கல். அனைவருக்கும் பொங்கல் வாழ்த்துக்கள்.


விளையாட்டாக ஆரம்பித்த என் வலைப்பூ இன்று தனது மூன்றாம் ஆண்டில் நுழைகிறது. எனக்கு மிக மகிழ்ச்சியாக இருக்கிறது. மேலும் பல ஆண்டுகள் தொடர இறைவனின் அருளையும், உங்கள் வாழ்த்துக்களையும் வேண்டுகிறேன்.