I have been using the default Audio system (Alphine) that came with my Honda city for last few years, I have done no customization or fitted any other accessory to the car. Unfortunately the Alphine default system doesn’t support USB or iPod connections. After I bought my iPhone I was feeling the need to have this connection option. So after procrastinating for a long time I went out recently (in June ‘09) and bought a new Audio system. It was a Pioneer FH-P6050UB double DIN system for Rs.15,750 inclusive of two Sony speakers and installation in two cars (putting the old Alphine system in my other car) from RadioWare House, Wallajah Road, Chennai. I was looking at other options – an Alphine double DIN but that supported only iPod, no USB connection, that would be too restrictive.
The Pioneer one I finally decided on had the USB connection support prominently shown, but for iPod/iPhone the box said you need a special cable but the seller didn’t know what that cable it is. I took a chance and bought it – it turned out to be fine. The cable was none other than the default USB cable used in iPhone for charging and connection to PC. If you have a iPod/iPhone I highly recommend this system. Excellent Audio quality and nice functionality.
சென்னை நேப்பியர் பாலம் இருக்கிற இடத்துக்கு அருகே நரிமேடு என்று ஒரு குன்று இருந்தது என்றால் நம்ப முடியுமா?
மவுண்ட் சாலை (இன்றைய அண்ணா சாலை) பளிச்சென இருக்கும். கையை வீசி நடக்கலாம். சைக்கிளில் செல்லலாம். போக்குவரத்து நெரிசல் கிடையாது என்றால் நம்ப முடியுமா?.
இந்த மாதம் சென்னைக்கு 370 வயது (22 ஆகஸ்டு 1639ல் ஆங்கிலயர்கள் இங்கே நிலம் வாங்கி அதற்கு அடுத்தாண்டு புனித ஜார்ஜ் கோட்டையை இங்கே கட்டினார்கள்), இதை முன்னிட்டுப் பல பத்திரிகைகளில் சென்னை வரலாறு மற்றும் பல சுவாரஸ்யமான தகவல்கள் வந்து கொண்டுயிருக்கிறது. இதில் எனக்கு பிடித்தது சென்னையின் பிரபலமான மூத்தவர்கள் தங்கள் நாபகங்களை தினமணியில் பகிர்ந்துக் கொள்ளும் தொடர். கீழே சில கட்டுரைகளின் பக்கங்கள்:
Read in The Hindu few days back about an exhibition with display of British era items in Lalit Kala Academy, Greams Road Chennai – this place is near the Greams Road-Pantheon Road traffic signal, few hundred metres away from Apollo Hospital. The exhibition (free entry) which runs till tomorrow (August 30) features a collection of what the British have left behind – furniture, personalities and their ideas. The items in display are from private collection of Steve Borgia (chairman and managing director of INDeco Hotels). Today I took my son in the morning and we spent a good part of a hour looking at the various items on display. The organizers have done a fine job of neatly categorizing items, clear sign boards for every item, provided handy cards which explained the items and had many volunteers who were happy to explain the significance of the items on display.
The exhibition had quite a collection of interesting items – Twin blade fan (first in this part of the world), first metal lunch box, a old coin-based shooting game for kids, picnic set, camera, printing press and more. See the entire photo album here that I took today. Some of the items (like the Fridge which runs on Kerosene oil) I had seen earlier in their Swamimalai resort during my vacation there few years back.
While seeing the display, I was called to talk in Tamil for 30-seconds about the exhibition by Big FM Radio, which I did. Overall, an interesting hour spent, please take your kids to it.
I like the TV series – Star Trek. I find the episodes involving (imaginary) alien civilizations interesting as they offer a nice introspection in our globalized world without the baggage of reality. I first watched the series when HBO India started to air the Voyager (Captain Janeway) series and Next Generation (Captain Jean-Luc Picard) few years back.
Today I watched the recently released movie version of “Star Trek”. The first half of the movie is little boring but the second half picks up speed and maintains the usual momentum of a star trek story. Worth to watch in a DVD for star trek fans that’s all.
I have joined the rest of the world in posting common happenings in YouTube. Handling the camera for this 20 seconds itself, took me good amount of persuasion of my wife, so not sure whether I will post any more of these.
Video Description: Every year few days after the Ganesh Chathurthi (Birthday) celebrations, the clay idols are dropped in to water well or sea. It is a common tradition in many parts of India. The video shows me dropping the idol in our water well.Since the idols used in houses are made in clay with no chemicals added it is environmentally friendly too.
Technical Details: This video was recorded with Flip Ultra HD camera and I used the new “Windows Live Movie Maker” (WLMM) to edit the video and publish it to YouTube. You read it correct – WLMM now supports MP4 formats and a direct one button upload to Google’s YouTube.
Free is the new book by Wired Editor “Chris Anderson”. His earlier book “Long Tail” was an acclaimed work that is quoted in almost every conversation with the word “Web” in it over last few years. This book’s title though had the potential to capture the same level of imagination, unfortunately doesn’t.
First, Chris Anderson should be congratulated for handling such a controversial topic like “Free”. Each of us have our own understanding of the word, how it works, whether it works or not and so on. In trying to answer these questions he has done a good job. He writes his findings on “Free” from history, culture, marketing to economics. He does a great job of explaining how “Free” became popular in modern days, its power and potential. He does a fine job of categorizing various near-zero business models and how they work with examples. He clearly disambiguates English word “Free” into “Gratis” (free of charge) and “Libre” (freedom), often people confuse between the two, especially in the software world. His re-quote of “Information wants to be free” is certainly true and thought-provoking.
Where he falls flat is in his generalizations and in his examples of success stories. For examples he repeatedly points only to Google and in few cases of open source software & Web 2.0. I am unable to shake off the feeling (of-course unfounded) the book could a PR campaign sponsored by the Mountain view chocolate factory (thanks Register UK for the term) Google. For me, Google certainly is not the epitome of “Free”, it makes its money by selling advertisements for hard-cash and that’s not free. Wikipedia and FireFox would have been more befitting candidates, but probably Chris Anderson felt obligated to Google – as he was using their free Google Docs to write this book (as he says himself). To be fair to the author, he does quote in two places where Microsoft offers “Free” through its BizSpark program and Internet Explorer. I also fail to understand how he says Apple through its iPod wants content to be free so that it gets paid for the device. iTunes through the sales made from iPod and iPhone are the big money earners for Apple and it is not free!
The other area where I disagree with him is on what seems to be his attempt at equating “Piracy” to “Free”. “Piracy” is stealing, plain and simple. Though many of us may be guilty of the crime (knowingly or unknowingly) to various degree, it can’t be praised or supported. If in China music piracy is rampant, then it is the mistake of pricing, distribution and education. It is certainly not that people there will not buy Music. If Hulu.com and CBS.com today are making some money out of their advertisement driven site it is because the money from advertisements comes to the producers who made the shows, not to the pirates and other video sharing sites. If everyone in the world moves to “Pirated” version of watching TV shows from YouTube, then soon there will be no new professional TV shows to watch. Google too is very much aware of this threat, that’s why it is trying hard to woo producers into building legal channels for them on its site and share revenue with them. The real question is whether this money alone will be sufficient for producers to compensate for their investments. Even in the example the author begins his book, MontyPython group deciding to put their clips legally free in YouTube – they too made their money by selling legal versions of their CDs and DVDs. If their entire collection is made “free” in YouTube HD then how will they survive to make new episodes. The author leaves us with many of these questions unanswered.
A disclosure: I listened to the Audio book (unabridged) version that was offered free of charge by Wired from here. The e-book download seems to be time-limited (for a month and that’s over) and geography limited (US only) from here. Though I got the entire book free as an audio book, this limited free distribution of the e-book seems to be more a 20th century free, than the 21st century free that the author preaches throughout the book. He should have known better, he says repeatedly that “Free” is the most powerful marketing tool ever invented and he should have known to handle it with better for his book.
My recommendation: If you are in the Internet/Software business then this book is a must read, but for others you may want to think twice before opening your wallet to buy it. You may want to listen to the free audio book like I did
படம் திரை அரங்கைவிட்டுச் சென்றுப் பல மாதங்கள் ஆகிவிட்டது, ஆனால் இன்று தான் நான் பார்த்தேன் – கொஞ்சம் லேட் தான். வில்லு விஜய் பிரபுதேவா காம்பினேஷன். போக்கிரியால் கவரப்பட்ட எனக்கு, இந்தப் படத்தின் மேல் ஒரு எதிர்ப்பார்ப்பு. எதிர்ப்பார்ப்பை மிக குறைவாகத் தான் பிரபுதேவா புர்த்திச் செய்துள்ளார், இன்னும் யோசித்து செய்துயிருக்க வேண்டும். போக்கிரியில் ஜெயித்தப் பல விஷயங்களை அப்படியே பயன்படுத்தியுள்ளார், அதனால் பல இடங்களில் பழையச் சோறு வாசம்.
சொல்லும்படி படத்தில் ஒன்றுமில்லை. விஜய் ரொம்ப உழைத்துயிருக்கிறார் – நடனக்காட்சிகளிலும், சண்டைக்காட்சிகளிலும் அவரின் உழைப்பு தெரிகிறது, திரைக்கதையில் இன்னும் கொஞ்சம் கவனமாக இருந்திருந்தால் படம் நன்றாக வந்திருக்கும். படம் பல இடங்களில் ஆங்கில ஜேம்ஸ் பாண்டு படங்களையும் உள்ளூர் அர்ஜுன் படங்களையும் நினைவுப் படுத்துகிறது. பெரிய அளவில், வெளிநாட்டிற்கு எல்லாம் சென்ற கதை கடைசியில் பலத் தமிழ் படங்களைப் போலவே ஒரு பழைய கோவிலில் முடிவது சப்பென்று போய் விடுகிறது.
தமிழ் சினிமாவில் எல்லா நாயகர்களுக்கும் எம்.ஜி.ஆர். மேல் பக்தியிருக்கலாம் தப்பில்லை, ஆனால் அவரோடு ஒப்பிட்டு/அவர் செய்ததையேச் செய்யக் கூடாதென்று என்று தான் புத்தி வருமோ?. வில்லு – அம்பில் கூர்மையில்லை, மொக்கை!
I have written in the past about lack of Tamil unicode rendering support in all popular smartphones (iPhone, Windows Mobile, Nokia). This week one of my colleague who uses a Windows Mobile 6.0 (HTC branded) phone showed me SkyFire browser. SkyFire is a free mobile browser that uses a proprietary proxy server technology to encode all Web contents (Text, Images, Videos, Flash, Silverlight) at their server that gets rendered in the Mobile client. Because of this technology the individual device limitations don’t affect their ability to render any language.
(Mobile IE not able to render Unicode Tamil)
(Windows Mobile running Skyfire displaying fine Unicode Tamil web pages)
SkyFire is a great technology and seeing Tamil being rendering seamlessly makes me happy. But I am sceptical on the success of SkyFire – First, Mobile devices processing power are increasing every day to support iPhone Safari like true desktop browsers itself without need of a proxy server; Second, I don’t see a viable revenue model on how SkyFire will make money to run the operations especially the high server costs. Nevertheless a cool technology for now. If you have a Windows Mobile give it a try, better than waiting for IE 6.0 in Windows Mobile or WM 7.0
Though we have done lot of Microsoft SharePoint projects, I find it difficult to give a single answer to everyone for the question on “What is SharePoint?”. Depending on who (their job role) is asking the question and for what they are asking it, the answer for the question “What is SharePoint” varies. It is different things for different people. One thing is sure – it has been a very successful product franchise for Microsoft and has been the fastest growing Billion Dollar business for Microsoft.
From a technology perspective it provides Content Management, Document Management, Blogs, Wiki, Rights Management, Workflow, Forms and data capture, Search, a limited RAD (Rapid Application Development) framework and more.
The Microsoft’s site for SharePoint doesn’t make answering this question any easier, it says “Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an integrated suite of server capabilities that can help improve organizational effectiveness by providing comprehensive content management and enterprise search, accelerating shared business processes, and facilitating information-sharing across boundaries for better business insight”. After few words my head has started to spin – this definition is nothing but a boring soup of all possible technology terms that Microsoft has managed to find. This didn’t help, so let us throw it outside the window.
Till now the elevator pitch for SharePoint I have managed to come up with for answering this has been to say “Connecting People and Information”. This was inspired by the Microsoft .NET initial days messaging that vaguely said Microsoft .NET is software for connecting people, information, systems, and devices. Today I came across this short video that introduces SharePoint in Plain English, finally a good job by Microsoft marketing on this.
When it comes to Antivirus products I prefer to only use specific brands known to me. I look for three parameters in a good protection product:
Protection (Detect and protect against latest threats, we have to take their word in this)
Performance (not slowing the machine)
Ease of use (normally an antivirus should be invisible)
My first choice for individuals will be K7 Total Security. It is the fastest and the least intrusive Antivirus out there.
In our office, we have been using Symantec Endpoint protection for several years. Our system administrators love the central deployment & management. The entire Antivirus client, the updates can be remotely done from the central server, without touching physically the individual clients.
When I got my Windows Vista x64 Desktop few years back, I went with Norton 360 v1.0 as I got a good deal then. And it offered an online backup of 2GB free with it, which was an added advantage to have safe backups for ultra important files. Over the years I have stuck with Norton 360, though at times it has given me problems with Firewall configuration. Symantec support has been good, whenever I had issues I could reach them by email or web site or their online chat. The first time not able to find their phone number, I wrote a letter to their singapore office with copies of my purchase invoice, CD serial number, etc. – and I promptly got a call from their Bangalore office in few days with a solution to the problem. Once there was a problem at their end, they apologized and gave 30 days extension in the subscription as a token gesture.
One recurring issue for me with the the product (especially Norton 360 v1.0 and v2.0) has been that at times in one of the 3 PCs I have, it will suddenly refuse to get Live Updates – a quick uninstall and install will fix it. Recently I was prompted to update free (my subscription is valid) to their new version Norton 360 v3.0. This version contains their newly optimized version of their core engine that improves on speed. Though Norton Antivirus is a leader in protection its sore point was its drag on resources. This new version is supposed to have improved on that. I downloaded and installed the new version, it did an in-place upgrade pretty smoothly. I disliked the earlier interface of Norton 360 v2.0, now in v3.0 they seem to have made it more streamline and configuration settings are easier to find. Overall I will recommend this product.
In Norton 360 the online backup and how it handles the backup sets was always a mystery to me in v1.0 and v2.0. In v3.0 they have given many new interface options to see what is being backed up, where and when (in fact the UI tabs are named with the same words as shown below). Using the new interface shown below (accessed from Home->Backup-Backup Details->Manage Backup sets) I figured out that I had over 3 years of backup taking nearly 5GB of storage which I can get rid of and reduce the online storage size.
After using the option (delete previously backed up files shown in the bottom left of the screenshot above) I realized you can only delete by selecting individual folders and files; not the entire backup set. I wrote to Symantec support and they promptly responded back with this option. It turned out even that was less optimal.
Accidentally I discovered that there is an integration of Norton backup to Windows Explorer. You can use Windows Explorer to navigate to “Computer\Norton Backup Drive\Backups on Secure Online Storage”. There you can see all the backup sets, you can right-click and delete the one you don’t want. It takes a bit of time, but it works and is much easier than the product’s user interface. As always, be careful when you are deleting backups.
The content of this site are my own personal opinions and do not represent my employer's view in anyway. In addition, my thoughts and opinions often change, and as a weblog is intended to provide a semi-permanent point in time snapshot you should not consider out of date posts to reflect my current thoughts and opinions.
The Pioneer one I finally decided on had the USB connection support prominently shown, but for iPod/iPhone the box said you need a special cable but the seller didn’t know what that cable it is. I took a chance and bought it – it turned out to be fine. The cable was none other than the default USB cable used in iPhone for charging and connection to PC. If you have a iPod/iPhone I highly recommend this system. Excellent Audio quality and nice functionality. 
