Here is a presentation that had me cracking in splits :-)) . Back since 2005 almost every web 2.0 startup had but one cliched statement to make :- "Google is making us an offer". And this VC company has the balls to tell the story as is. Highly recommended....

Wishing all the indian geeks and technology companies a very happy diwali. May this diwali bring all the success to your technlogy interests and business ventures, notwithstanding the economic downturn.

Apparently google uses a tool called Mondrian developed by the creator of python for code reviews. This inspired the development of an open source web based code review tool, rietveld and its hosted on Google code projects. Compelling reason to try Google App Engine.

"In addition, I hope it will serve as a practical tool for the Python developer community, and hopefully for other open source communities. As I've learned over the last two years at Google, where I developed a similar tool named Mondrian, proper code review habits can really improve the quality of a code base, and good tools for code review will improve developers' life."
                             -----Guido van Rossum, Python creator and Google employee

Well Rietveld is based on Google App Engine and it can be hosted only on Google Servers ( Yuck !!).

Guido van Rossum was kind enough to correct me that there is a way to port Google Apps to pure Django. For those who still think its a lot of work ReviewBoard remains an alternative.

Interestingly why does google want  you to host your code on its servers , so that its easier for them to acquire you. They already have your source code !! and you cant fool them with your buzz words.
  

Have fun walking your blog , your site,  whatever ! .

Itunes hogs resources. Period. The only compelling reason to use it is my ipod. Now winamp has a plugin for ipod. I still use winamp 2.xx because of its small size. For the ipod support alone , it could be worthwhile to upgrade to winamp 5. Coming to think of it winamp 5 is still a lot heavier than its 2.xxx but lighter than all the other music players.

Iterestingly there is Songbird which is developed of  mozilla code base .IPod support other than on windows is a little broken. But has a ton of features and going by Firefox should'nt kill your laptop.

Huh  I was wrong. Check requirements.....Windows XP : 512 MB RAM , what the heck for ? Dump it.

A desktop App should use a plugin based architecture. Running basic app with bare minimum features should be cheap. If user wants to throw in the kitchen sink then his system deserves to be trashed. Coming to think of most of the apps developed today with the latest tools turn out heavy even if the app has nothing great to offer. And thats why VC 6.0 is still sweet, hell even GTK is lighter.  Check out Reaper with all the works still comparatively light.  Reaper screenshots : coolio.

Over the years, I have been a parallel user of Visual Studio and JDK since its 1.1 days. But looking at the last couple of releases , Java seems to be accumulating more FAT at a faster rate than any other SDK. Java does not need to compete with rediculous language features with any other language. Its plus is portability and that's where the argument stops. and dont they say 'Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. '

Here is a story from Google, on why the world needs another browser ?. I am not convinced nor are several other users like me , who find no reason convincing enough to dump Firefox. I did a few comparisons on loading / rendering times of a few web sites and sure chrome is just a little faster but not noticably to millions of average users. Apart from that I also found chrome to break at few sites which IE / FF rendered fine.  The only thing for now chrome introduces, is the pain in the *!@  for developers who have to fix issues on chrome for apps they have already developed.

Gurbaksh Chahal is 25 , has'nt had a formal education , started out when he was 16 almost with nothing and is worth 340 million today. Every couple of years you hear a story that installs the beliefs that yes its possible  your dreams can come true but only you have the Gumption and steel nerves to execute your thoughts in to action.

At 16 he realized what he want to do , dropped out of school and started  ClickAgents, an advertising network focused on performance-based advertising. Two years later, on ClickAgents was sold for about 40 million.

His next venture in 2005 was called BlueLithium , which focussed on behavioural based advertising which he sold to Yahoo last year in an all cash deal for 300 Million. Along the way , he did also create 'MingleNow' a night-life focussed social networking site which yahoo shutdown after acquiring BlueLithium

"Financial rewards follow if you make the right decisions on where to exploit your passion and energy. Remember – just keep your ego at bay. Life’s all about execution, making the right choices, and focus…' -chahal

Poisonous Programmers :- A nice read on the kind of programmers you DONT want on your project. Its also a nice one for people who want to earn themselves a reputation for being positive contributors to a project.

A nice snippet for people who dont have the time..

"No, wait...it's actually time to debug, rewrite, or redesign your system, and your priorities should be to proceed in that order - not the reverse, as so many cowboy programmers prefer. "Oh, the program froze again. Can we take two years, with a team of 10, to do this right?" No! Too often people decide that a bug is unfixable without a rewrite just because they enjoy writing new code more than they do fixing old code. Unfortunately, these are just the types of people who should not be writing code at all. "

 --ACMQueue 

Its been a while .. about close to 18 months of 18 hrs a day, 7 days a week of sheer rush, excitement, energy, toil ,sweat and blood, living life bit by bit on the edge , working on one of the coolest stuff that has a chance of making history. With my dwindling role in my current project moving forward ,Its time to emerge out of the adventurous trance which kept me blinded to the world and kept me away from myself.

Hello L.J, I missed ya. It feels nice to be back. Being back to L.J is like being back to myself. This blog gets a third Life. More posts coming up.

...Need I say more.

"And programmers, as I quote Larry Constantine in my book, programmers are programmers because they like to code — given a choice between learning someone else’s code and just sitting down and writing their own, they will always do the latter"

Programmers Dont Like To Code - As misleading as it may sound, Jonathan Rentzsch tries to explain what he means by the statement.

I posted this link at my work place to see what my colleagues thought and Raj Madhuram a colleague , a frequent contributor to Eclipse, flamed Rentzsch's view.

Makes up for an interesting read. ...And my opinion thus...


Coding is a form of problem solving. There are people who get gratification out of problem solving; the mode and means of doing it may be different. If a code did not solve a problem, I doubt if any body would want to code. Any piece of code is supposed to solve a problem.

Write assembly code if only need be or else use Python if it gets yours or someone else’s job faster. After all, software is for making people’s lives easier. The faster the better.

Programmers don’t value a language by means of its libraries. Programmers choose languages based on their capability to solve a particular problem faster, a lot of it depends upon the libraries it supports in most number of cases if not in all the cases.

A programmer’s valuation is important to another. Software is a team effort and with out respecting the valuation of another programmer the Open Source would not have been able to harness the power of hundred’s of talented programmers. No SIP, no Firefox, maybe no Eclipse

Programmers do code for the heck of it and will rewrite code for the fun of it. As long as it is not at the expense of somebody that’s great. The ACM for instance. This is important bring out great programmers and nurture talent

I have been pondering over a lot over the next phone I should buy. My last phone a Blackberry was a company given perk that I had to leave with the company since I switched to a new job.
Loved the blackberry , great value for money.



I acquired the p990i. Have it for over a month now and love it. The wifi works, the push and pop email works , great pictures , good sound , nice video capabilities. No complaints so far and yes I the like QWERTY keyboard and think its a plus. A slightly old model now, but still the best Smart phone , I could find.

Goosyc is a service that lets you sync your mobile with Google calendar. They have a long list of supporting devices.

Talkplus walks its talk with a kewl demo. Way Cool
TalkPlus Demo : Call to echo123 from a mobile without a Skype client


"TalkPlus demo : Call to echo123 from a mobile without a Skype client" on Google Video

"The video is uncut, no editing at all, including about five seconds in the beginning of Jeff Black, TalkPlus CEO and founder, warming up. The call is from an unaltered mobile phone. You will see the Jeff send a text message and automatically download a Java program. That app shows his Skype address book, and he clicks on Skype's echo123 acount. For those who don't know it, echo123 is one of Skype's first test accounts. It doesn't have a SkypeIn number, so you couldn't fake access by dialing a PSTN number that forwards to echo123. TalkPlus doesn't have any access to Skype's private SIP gateways. So this demo shows that TalkPlus customers can dial any Skype user by their Skype name. It also shows that TalkPlus has engineered a server without Skype components that talks to the Skype network as if it were a Skype client using Skype's own language. It will scale to thousands of simultaneous sessions. TalkPlus has no plans to license this technology or turn it into a product. They built it to solve their customers' need to talk with millions of Skype users. Jeff demonstrates that Skype's protocols have been reverse engineered, and proven demand for a "headless" or "naked" Skype server."

If you fear that your network is being spooked , here is an secure alternative to yahoo and MSN . AltME offers secure, persistent, private chat and a colloboration suite of applications to go along with it. All encrypted and 100% secure.

There are many many more photosharing web sites, but these three seem to be the most prominent ones. Flickr has the lions share of users and oh yes, it was acquired by yahoo. Ofcourse, We all know Flickr, dont we ?

Bubbleshare is rumored to be in phase of getting acquired. Bubbleshare provides the same fucntionaility as Flickr but it states 'simplicity' and 'ease of use' as the compelling reasons to its users. I happen to skim through their blog and found this one such feature that has simple usage:

"Easy upload your pictures via your Camera Phone :
1) Login to your account and go to the ‘My Account’ tab.

2) Scroll right to the bottom and click the button to generate your mobile access code. Note the email address you will use to send photos from your phone.

3) Take a snappy picture with your Camera Phone and send it to the email address you wrote down in step 2). Sorry each phone is slightly different so this step will be different on each phone.

That’s it! Email as many photos to the email address as you wish and they will be stored in your ‘My Albums’ list in an Album called ‘Mobile’"

Zooomr has an interesting background.Zooomr is a powerhouse when compared to both the above photosharing applications. It was written by 17 year old kristopher Tate and was termed 'Flickr on Steroids' when it came out. Zooomr also claims to be faster than Flickr. Here is a result of a speed test between the both.

Of course there is a fourth one , Riya which was supposed to be acquired by Google for 40 Million but did not happen as Google pulled out of the deal.Riya is not mainstream yet as they're still figuring what they are doing among so many other photo sharing sites, along with Google's Picasa.Both Picasa and Riya are in to photo recognition.

Though Bubbleshare is easier to use and Zooomr has some kick-ass features , Flickr would still be my choice. Simply because of its wide adoption. Its more likely that I will bump in to the pictures of my old ones,loved ones and lost ones at Flickr that at any other site; for now atleast.

VC's are complaining about the 'lack of details' in startup pitches or rather the presentations startups put up in front of them are not convincing enough. Again usually what the VC's expect is your ability to convince people about a product people dont need. You as a startup founder and the VC's both know that the world does not need another web2.0 app. Venturewoods, has put two such case studies , that says the what-tos and what-not-tos about starup pitches.

#Case Study 1-TracBac
#Case Study 2-MirrorZen

Skype 3.0 is out with some new featues.

On the other hand I just stumbled upon Damaka ( the product sounds indian and its developed by an indian team ). Their product says that its a peer-to-peer ,SIP based, standards compliant VoIP phone. The VoIP phone party just got too crowded. With being peer-to-peer and yet being standards compliant , this is the only product that could be seen as a serious competition to Skype. But with Sip P2P drafts being in its early stages, I wonder how they'v managed to do SIP over p2p or either I understand it wrong.

They recently added an IPTV feature to their endpoint. "A Multiparty , Video Conferencing , IPTV feature". I'd sure like to check it out.

Stud Programmer, Programming God , King Programmer : are the typical terminologies one encounters during his/her colleges days; describing any descent programmer. Ironically, many startups today use the same vocabulary to specify their recquirements. Here are some samples.


"Hot startup is looking for angel members with the following qualities.
You can talk Java/C++/Python 15.99 hrs a day and your colleagues consider you a stud hacker. You can dig undaunted into the most formidable code with nerves of steel and hack another digg over the weekend."

Sounds more like a recquirement for a porn movie.

"Wanted some one for Chief Technology Officer . Must be a technologist at heart and stud in contributing to technology."

Clearly shows the 'fresh out of college' mindsets of the founders. So are you that Fundu, Stud Programmer ??