Mind Internals

Parenthood - Life's powerful change agent

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 04:03:00 +0000

It's wonderful how parenthood can change our perception of life.

I remember myself being very aggressive and angry in my early twenties (interestingly, not so much during my teens). Now when I look at myself, I see a much more mellowed down person who sees people differently - especially when I look at young parents and small kids of my son's age.

It's really a wonderful realization that life brings upon us - that perceptions change based on how you look at people, things and situations.

We lower our defensive gaurd and start emphathizing the same people, things and situations which otherwise would have seemed insignificant or maybe even irritating.
Just extend this concept further more and it can do wonders for you in terms of handling people and situations in a more positive way.

For example, driving used to be a stressful experience for me and I can feel my blood pressure shooting through the roof for the irresponsible, impatient and chaotic driving. But nowadays, for example, when a young biker cuts across my car irresponsibly, I try to visualize him as my family member - as my brother or my grownup son - and boy it completely changes the way you react to this situation. I feel sympathetic and maybe even feel worried for the person instead of my usual self where I grip the steering even harder and imagining revenge on him on ways which may seem psychotic.

This concept of seeing a complete stranger as one of your kith may sound crazy. It's hard.. Very hard.. But not impossible. Once you start seeing the benefits of this and with practice, it becomes second natured behavior.

Now, you can apply this in an office setting as well to become a more understanding boss and/or colleague.

Initially, being understanding with colleagues was conflicting for a performance and task oriented person such as me. I thought softening the image of folks reporting to me would affect my ability to get things done. But then it dawned to me that the same perception-change approach cab be useful here too, with a slightly different way of thinking.

If you imagine that it's your responsibility to make your colleagues better than what they are now and take them to a different level than where they are now, it not just makes you look at them in a more emphathic and understanding way, but also at times be tough with them - just like how you would be with your son when he refuses to take food or study, because you know it's good for them though they don't seem it that way right now.

Well, coming back to the topic of parenthood, I am thankful to life for having given me this experience and perception.

Book Reading!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 28 Apr 2012 09:35:00 +0000

Off late, I have started reading more of eBooks than the physical ones. Especially, reading on Kindle for Android on my LG Optimus Black.

I wasn't able to spend too much time reading either because my kids distracted me or I used to return so late that everyone is sleeping and I can't switch on the lights.

I had been resisting reading on kindle for Android as I was biased about getting the reading experience only on a physical book.

I couldn't have been more wrong. Form of the read content - physical or electronic - doesn't matter. What matters more is the content itself.

I think going forward I will be slowly migrating to eBooks! Carry your library in your pocket and less physical clutter :-)

SlideIT keyboard for Android

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 09:22:00 +0000

If I were to ask you how else you would type without really typing on the keyboard, you may think hard and finally say you will voice dictate.. Thats the way Apple is taking us with Siri.

It's going to take some time before we effortlessly speak to our phones. But if you had thought there was no other way, then you need to think hard again in innovative ways again.

Please welcome SlideIT, the fun and in some aspects the easier and faster way to type.

In fact, I have been typing this post using there SlideIT keyboard! I love swiping my finger across the keyboard to type the text you want.

The concept is simple, all you need to do is connect the letters forming the word and SlideIT is smart enough to complete the word for you. The prediction is very impressive. And when you are unable swipe, you can always type like in a regular keyboard.

I am thoroughly enjoying typing in it for some time at least in this new way.

Now, some annoyances are, you'll have to remember where the keys are located in the keyboard. Second is, you can type only in one hand, which is quite obvious, but you'll have to use your index finger to type while holding the phone in there other hand, which makes it inconvenient to type while driving and similar situations!

Watch this video to see the typing in action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=229U0ZYPum8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Go ahead and try it yourself!

# tweetit

Blogger app on Android

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 13:06:00 +0000

One of the reasons I found for writing less on my blog is due to the unavailability of my laptop.

I had two laptops and both are broke now.. My 2 year old broke them. Even when I had them, It was used by my family. I do have an iPad, but again the same case.

I was thinking about the resolutions I had made this year (My resolutions for this year deserve their own post later) and I just realized how miserably I had failed in the one where I had promised to write at least one post a week.

The last I wrote was around 11 months back.

That was when I thought "hey, anyways my online life has moved to my android smartphone.. Why not just use it for blogging as well!"

But long blog post are not easy on a smartphone. Smartphones are definitely useful for micro-blogging such as twitter and Facebook updates.

I found that there is an app available for Blogger and just installed it to give it a shot.

In fact, I am writing this post using it.

The app is descent enough. Doesn't have a lot of editing options though.

For example, I still haven't figured out a way to enter images between text.

Also, doesn't show my existing labels.. I will have to type them manually :-(

Definitely not easier to type long post on a smartphone. Thanks to the SwiftKey keyboard, some of the typing pain is reduced by prediction and auto-fill.

Still I think PCs are best for regular blogging.

Now let me post this to see how this shows up in my blog!

Declutter your Harddisk using WinDirStat

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 20:23:00 +0000

With every passing month, you add so much digital clutter in your computer that it becomes an impossible task to clean up your hard disk. Forget cleanup, just trying to find out what really is eating up your storage space itself becomes a huge task.

I ran into a similar situation and that's when i decided to attack the problem no matter what.

Initially I used the most dumbest way of finding out what really was eating up space - right-click->Properties at all top-level folders under c-drive and then further drill down in a similar fashion.

I thought I will quickly identify that one folder that really is eating up space. It took half-hour to realize how scattered all my files (photos, videos, music, installables, pdfs, documents, etc.) were.

I was wondering how easy it would have been had this been Linux - just run the "du" (disk-usage) command and figure out whats eating up

Ah, thats it.. install cygwin and that will let me run this command. But it really wasn't worth installing hundreds of MB of cygwin data just to analyse disk usage. So, I started searching for a standalone windows based tool that will give me disk usage stats, which led me to this post in lifehacker which introduced me to WinDirStat.

Its one of the best system tools that I have come across for the windows OS, which lets you visualize your hard disk. And what a nice way of visualizing your hard disk - elegant and brilliant.

Hover your mouse pointer on top of one of these colored blocks and the status bar below will show the filename along with its complete path. And click the block to ready locate the file and do whatever you want, including deleting this file from your hard disk.

Its an amazing tool to start visualizing your hard disk and start attacking all that clutter. Btw, I also found this tool useful for locating some long lost videos, mp3s and jpegs.

There is also a tree-map view and file types view which are visible by default. The file types view is really useful as it tells you what type of file is occupying how much. In my case, clearly all the videos, mp3s and jpegs were eating up all the space. All I had to do was back them up in an external hard disk.

So, go ahead and clean up that clutter.

PS: I read later that WinDirStat was inspired by KDirStat which is the KDE-Linux version of the same tool. Cool! :)

#tweetit

Great Opportunity!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 18:20:00 +0000

I had a rare opportunity to meet the Verizon Senior Leadership team, on Feb 7th 2011, which comprised of Lowell McAdam - President and Chief Operating Officer (and a CEO-to-be :)), Roger Gurnani - Chief Information Officer and Bob Toohey - President, Verizon Business. Also, accompanied them was my Verizon Data Services India - Managing Director - Mr. Rahul Saxena.

I think this was once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet all the big guys in one place, given the fact that we are 8000 miles away from the headquarters. It was a honour to meet Lowell whom I have been watching closely in our internal quarterly webcast and other videos.

Our present Chairman and CEO - Ivan Seidenberg is a charismatic personality and has been my favorite. In my view, he represents a fatherly figure and a living legend who started his career as a cable splicer's assistant, who grew up the ladder through his hard work and personality.

So with Lowell to take over Ivan's spot in future, I was trying hard to understand and like this man. My initial self-made impression of this man was not that great. But I was dead wrong.

As I am hearing more and more of Lowell, I am beginning to like him. He seems to be a very principled person and very process-oriented too. He rolled out the Verizon Credo and I see the genuineness in his message and in the way he is driving the Credo at every available opportunity. Lowell is charismatic in his own sense and has a good sense of humour. He is a mechanical engineer, so can find him using lot of mechanical analogies (such as.. "there is always a higher gear.."), which is great :).

So, Lowell, I have bought into you. I am glad Verizon is in great hands and poised to boldly go where no one has gone before (remembering Star Trek ;))

Well, my meeting went flawlessly. All the preparation (mostly mental), on what I wanted to talk and how I wanted to take them through the floor, finally proved fruitful.

After my meeting, I rushed to the Townhall, which was organized in our Cafeteria and was expected to overflow, to grab a seat. As expected, it was wonderful speech by Lowell. He has promised to come back again and I hope I am around by that time.

DISCLAIMER: I usually stay away from my office related topics and this is probably the first one and hopeful is the last one. I had to write this because of my excitement and as an evidence to the fact that I met a great leader. All views expressed here are my own and I solely take responsibility for whatever is expressed here.

Catching up, forever!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 22:07:00 +0000

Just as I was opening up some two dozen blogs/articles into separate tabs in my browser (Firefox, but occasionally jump to Chrome), I was beginning to wonder how this has become an endless routine for me. Not that I dread doing this. In fact, i am a tech news junkie and would like to keep myself updated with as much latest technology and its related business news as possible.

Well, I wasn't this way earlier and there is a whole background on why I became such a tech news junkie. In the early years of the last decade, I was young, unmarried and had a new job. As like most youngsters then, I was upto date with the latest technology and gadgets more as a means of keeping in touch with your friends. But as i was aging (lets just call it maturing ;)) and with a marriage and my first kid and with growing responsibilities at my job, I was moving moving away from most friends (except for the very few whom i keep touch on phone) and thus also losing touch with latest happenings in technology.

Another reason, that to some extent that really had kept me away from the web was the social web explosion. It was just too stressful for me to keep up with friends (constantly responding) on a constant basis. At that time, Orkut was the most popular in India. So someday, I had subconsciously decided to unplug myself from the net, of course with some conscious support from the above reasons ;).

Then one fine day, while talking to some of the youngsters, I was realizing how much i was like them and how i had lost track of technology. So during the last half of the previous decade, I decided to come back with a vengeance, with a thirst for knowledge on latest happenings. Once I started, I was really hooked to it till date. Since then, i think i am fairly updated with everything that's hot and buzzing in the blogosphere. With confidence I can say that i belong to the Mavens category (with reference to the book from Malcolm Gladwell)

Staying up to date does eat up lot of your time. But as long as you have a passion for it, you will not notice it.

Over a period of time, i have developed unique ways of catching up with information and organizing it for later use and sharing. That in itself deserves a separate post in itself.

But I was thinking it might be a good idea to share some some news/blogs/articles links that i really liked, every week. Of course i keep sharing them real time through twitter and facebook, but posting them into blog on a weekly basis will help others to come back and take a look at it when time permits. Anway, still considering.

Now that I have satisfied one of the resolution points for this year (keep blogging at least one post per week) :)), I am hitting the bed.

#tweetit

Feeding my blog post into Twitter

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 20:24:00 +0000

Well, this is cool! Now I don't have to worry about manually sharing a link to my detailed thoughts (blog post such as this) into social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

My problem was I hadn't taken effort to figure a way to tweet my blog post, automatically. But once something is tweeted in my account, it naturally propagates to Facebook.

From what I know, Twitterfeed is the only available service for sharing your blog post into social networking sites.

So, this is how it works. You create an account in Twitterfeed (if you have OpenID, you can use that as well to login. For example, I used my blogger id to login into Twitterfeed). Then you specify the RSS link to your blog. Twitterfeed regularly pings this RSS to see if something was published new. If yes, then it will post it to Twitter, Facebook and other services.

I have configured Twitterfeed to post the title of the blog post following by a shortened url to the same (Twitterfeed uses bit.ly).

Also, I have put a filter in place where in only those blog posts which have the keyword #tweetit will be published to my twitter account. Now that i have specified this keyword, this post will be automatically tweeted into my twitter account. This will ensure that i can have some control over what is pushed to twitter and what should be pushed.

Learning Python is worth after all

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:55:00 +0000

I started flirting with Python late last year. I have been learning it at a snails pace, slow but steady. To make sure I keep the focus, I have learning Python as one of my resolutions this year.

Was wondering if I was wasting time learning Python while I could be focusing on tons of other stuff.

Man, I am so glad to read that Python won the TIOBE Programming Language Award of 2010. Some consolation that I am not wasting time.

On a different note, some ask me as to why I want to learn a programming language being a Senior Manager. Well, my answer is, being a senior manager doesn't mean that you shouldn't be a techie/geek. And also there is a wrong notion of one moving away from technology or software engineering as you grow up the ladder. I don't believe in that and I don't think one will be successful in the long run that way (again success is perceived differently by each one of us).

Deep inside my heart, I still prefer being a techie/geek.

Drastically reduce email clutter - disable social network notifications

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 21:36:00 +0000

Ever since i started my quest to declutter, especially my obsession to win back my mail box from the digital clutter, I have come a long way.

But in spite of this, I recently realized how much of email clutter you can stop from entering your mail box by just disabling email notifications from your social networks.

For me, disabling email notifications in LinkedIn and Facebook alone stops at least 10-20 mails reaching my mail box.

And I am sure there are other such places like Twitter, Orkut, etc. where you can disable notifications as well.

But assuming you have this weird obsession to receive every notification by mail, then you can probably opt for a week digest assuming that options is available.

Retrospection - Year 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 20:10:00 +0000

With a new year and a new decade starting, its a good time to think over what i want to achieve personally this year.

But first, its time for some retrospection.

I did come up with a list of resolutions for last year 2010. I din't make it public (no special or secret reasons though). But thinking about how well I fared with respect to my resolutions for last year (2010), I feel good because I fared pretty well. I was able to achieve most of what I wanted.

I think I did good in the following areas:

Eat regularly and eat healthy

Thanks to the cook that my wife hired (my wife works too..)

Have a fixed number of beverages per day

Far better compared to before. There were times when I used to drink 15 - 20 coffees a day. Its 4 -5 now!

Read the best selling books every month

I've read lot of best sellers in 2010. You can see the list of books i've read in my LinkedIn profile

Keep myself updated with the latest happenings in the technology industry

Well this is the culprit which kept me awake until early morning hours. This led to me failing bad with the first point mentioned in the list of things that i could not keep up with, mentioned below.

Make full use of library

Yep, borrowed lot of books from the library.

Declutter anything and everything

To add to it, i dint just declutter, but i got more organized now, especially got very organized with my mail inboxes.

Stay close to projects, people and meetings/calls
Track every penny being spent

While i was good at that, not reflecting weekly on it made this just a mundane chore. So I stopped tracking my expenditure in the last 3 months of last year.

Enjoy doing household chores and use it as means to relaxation

I think I was off the mark (did bad) in these areas:

Sleep early and give sufficient rest to my body
Try to meditate and pray
Try to start walking early mornings
Maintain my assets in good condition by regularly servicing them
Weekly reflect on the spending and budget
Keep in regular touch with close friends and relatives

As you can see from the list above, most of them are habitual changes that I've been wanting in me and not really an end goal in themselves. So for the things that I've fared well in, I will continue doing them. For things that I missed, I will try to get better at it this year and I will add few more things for this year.

On a whole, I feel good about what i've achieved. I probably achieved many more things and improved my character on different aspects. For example, I think I have much more emotional and mental discipline and patience.

Last year, was also a year of lot of learning on the professional front, not just on the managerial and leadership aspects of my work, but also what I always love to do, getting handson on the technical front. Though to a small extent, i did some amount of perl programming and started learning Core Javascript and Python. In fact, this year, I intend to become an expert in Python.

I know this year (2011) is full of challenges both on the personal and possessional fronts. I believe, every human challenge hardens ones character, if the challenges are taken in a right spirit. I am ready to take up these new challenges and I hope this year value adds to what I am today.

I am still working on my list of resolutions for this year. I have a rough draft, but will publish them once I have finalized it to some extent.

Flirting with Python.. Sorry Perl!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 26 Dec 2010 22:08:00 +0000

Off late, I've started flirting with Python while my conscience still pricks me while i love Perl.

With this guilt, i did Google for others trying out Py after a long span of perl programming. Two popular post on python vs. perl were of some solace for my flirtatious behavior - Why Python? by Eric Raymond and Python vs. the Perl programming language.

Quick check of the TIOBE index also indicates that Python is more popular than Perl. Some more solace ;).

So far, not much of even light coding done in Python. Just been going through some tutorials in python.org. I directly started with 3.1 version.

I will really know if i like Python or not when i try out a small script for a coding standards compliance tool that's been in my list of to-dos.

Otherwise, feeling good to blog after a long time..

Writing this out of my love for you.. Microsoft!!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 19:02:00 +0000

Yeah! I am saying it. I don't mind saying this because as far as i can remember, a good part of my computer experience has been on windows operating systems.

And I love these guys. For what people appreciate Apple for their iDevices, was the same love i share for Microsoft when it comes to their operating system.

Beg or steal.. these guys pretty much set the standard for what the graphical UI you and i know that is today.

Of course, they are commercial and they are not open as Linux.. but that doesn't make them evil. But i do know instances where these guys showed their dark side (killing Netscape.. which again i think is back in a different avatar as FireFox) for which i hate them a lot.

Most of their products right from Windows OS, Office Suite, Exchange/Outlook, etc. (hope this not the entire list :)) ) have set a different standard for usability and convenience.

Ok.. So why am i telling all this.. its because i am concerned about the direction in which they are heading. But again, what am i concerned about here.

The concern is that i am not sure if I am ready for any other products apart from the ones mentioned above, for my day to day use. Comeon folks, Apple iPad is much more closed than Windows, Google wants me to use web a lot and Linux is still not ready for mainstream retail use.

I have been techie enough to be branded as a geek. I have built my own distros of Linux and hacked stuff. But still i love Microsoft's products for the sheer pleasure of using them. The difference is that of being a TV Electronics repair guy and the same guy watching TV at the end of the day sipping hot coffee!

You might be wondering what the hell is wrong with me while Microsoft is still here doing just fine. Believe me.. Microsoft is still here.. but i am not sure if they are ready for tomorrow.

Well the trigger for this post was this post here by Russell Beattie - The end of WIMP and rise of Touch. This trigger was backed by a slow build up of frustration on Microsoft's misfirings with their products' strategy.

These guys have lost focus on some of their products. The most important of them of all was Internet Explorer. Having killed Netscape, it was the end of fun and of course business. With literally no competition until FireFox and Chrome actually munched away a good portion of the browser pie. This was too much of a oversight on Microsoft's part.

Browser is the window to a whole new world of connectedness. Children of this generation take this one product/application for granted.

How could you lose sight of a product so important and waiting until guys like Google and Apple to actually catch up with you!!

There has been a steady downfall in terms of their product quality and usability since IE6. I guess a bit of branding change with a serious effort to revamp their technology should do the trick of winning back customers.

With Companies like Apple and Google who are changing the rules of the game by winning customers over by bringing in disruptive technologies (examples: search and iPhone) which have great usability and performance, its time for Microsoft to start taking its products seriously.

The next most important product of all, Microsoft Windows Operating System. Windows has not been doing well since XP. Vista has been good for me though, but a lot of things had gone wrong in Vista too. Customer Expectations, bad PR and negative press/blog coverage did take its toll. Though i haven't used Windows 7 myself, i do hear great reviews from the blogosphere and that its usability is same as, if not better than, Apple Mac OS.

But as Russell Beattie has mentioned in his post, the future is moving towards Tablets which obviously will use touch as the preferred (or the only) interface. I am not confident that Windows is ready as a tablet OS.

Again, I don't think its too late for Microsoft. If it can regroup and focus correct, it can do a great job of coming with a tablet version of its OS. Look at the Apple. I came up with a totally different UI and Usability for its iPad. That should be the approach for Microsoft as well.

The next biggest goof up was with Windows Mobile. In all practical sense, there is no way Microsoft can do anything about it now, unless and until it was do something as drastic as giving away its Mobile OS to OEMs for free and think of a different business model around it.

Guys @ Microsoft.. you are making mistake after mistake and I hope you correct yourself soon. Again i am big fan of your remaining products (though I stopped using IE for many years now).

I know you guys are doing a lot to get things back on track. You are doing good with your Office suite. can see that you are regrouping in terms of your developer languages and tools. But do it fast and get your products back on track.

Back again after a long break with a new Look'n'Feel

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 01 May 2010 18:42:00 +0000

Back again after a long time. I really haven't had time to post in this blog. Also, for whatever time I do have left for browsing, most of my thoughts and comments are flowing in the form of my status updates in Facebook and Twitter.

Especially with my discovery of Yoono (addon for Firefox which lets me post/share comments on FB and Twitter at the same time.. also lets me share a site instantly), I have been liberated even more in terms of sharing my thoughts and opinions on the stuff that I like.

So looks like my chances of venting out my thoughts is going to be even more on FB and Twitter!

But nevertheless, my passion for writing has never diminished and my heart still longs to write on my blog(s).

I've decided to give myself a breath of fresh air by changing the boring default skin to something much more attractive and thus motivating myself to come back here often and consequently to post more.

I am loving this new look'n'feel.. and i hope folks visiting my blog like it as well.

My (nightmare) experience moving from a Commercial Antivirus to a free one

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 07:17:00 +0000

The McAfee Antivirus (AV) subscription in my laptop expired. So I decided to try a Free Antivirus for a change, especially with news media and bloggers claiming that Free Antivirus software is as good as the established commercial AV software.

On searching the internet, I could understand that AVG Antivirus was standing out in all the reviews.

Also, in download.cnet.com was on top of the chart with 1.7 million downloads.

Naturally, I went ahead and installed AVG Antivirus. My experience with AVG-AV was very short-lived - probably for 6-8 hours.

The experience was quite normal. There were no performance lags.

But I continued searching for more information on Free AV and for more justification/consolation for using AVG-AV.

Thats when I came across a review about Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE). It was news to me that Microsoft has a free AV and even better, one of the studies claimed that MSE was as good as or in some cases even better than other established free and commercial AV. You read more about this study here and here.

I was pretty convinced with MSE and I thought I would rather go with a Microsoft product than with AVG-AV.

Now is when the trouble started for me. I started uninstalling AVG-AV. The uninstallation seemed to proceed well half way through and after which it was stuck for a very very long time. After much waiting (close to an hour) I decided to kill the uninstallation from the task manager.

After that, I checked to see if AVG-AV was still working or was it screwed by the uninstallation. It was fine. Thank God I thought.

I gave a second shot at the uninstallation and this time it was successful and I was prompted to restart the computer to complete the uninstallation.

On rebooting, I got a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) and the system rebooted instantly. But to my shock, the laptop wasn't booting into Windows Vista and it again rebooted. This happened again. Thats when I realized the seriousness of the trouble i was into. The thought of losing all the data because of my experimentation with AV was stupid and shocking.

After coming out of the shock, I decided to choose the repair option during windows startup. It took a loooott of time to boot into the repair mode after which I got my next big surprise. It was asking me to insert the windows recovery mode CD and then proceed.

Thats when I was cursing myself for having procrastinated so long from creating this Windows Recovery CD.

Luckily, after trying the System Recovery option (without the Windows Recovery CD) which took around 10-15 mins, the system rebooted and then booted back into Windows Vista normally.

It took a lot of time. I was trying to recover my laptop from 12.00AM to 3.00AM and then slept for sometime and then again from 8.00AM to 9.00AM.

Thank God! the laptop recovered. And what a lesson it was 1) Never ever kill an uninstallation of an Antivirus software halfway through (but to some extent AVG-AV was to blame for taking so long to uninstall). 2) Always burn the OEMs Windows Recovery CD and have it handy with you for any such recovery.

After my system recovered, my installed Windows Security Essentials. WSE has been a good experience until now. Just like AVG-AV, WSE's performance has been good.

One thing I really liked about WSE is its simple user interface. Its beauty is in its simplicity. Other AVs that I have used such as Norton, McAfee and AVG-AV are intimidating for a layman user (of course I don't belong to that category.. self-appraisal :)).

And I am happy to have discovered some free AV options. I have one more laptop whose Norton subscription expires couple of months from now, after which I am thinking of installing Windows Security Essentials in that too.

Hello, World!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 05:00:00 +0000

Again, I am posting here after a very very very long time. Nowadays, posting has become more of Hello.. Hi There.. Posting after a long time and stuff like that.. :)

The fact is, the work has multiplied multiple times. But that should never be an excuse.

Anyways.

Btw, one of the reasons i see for hesitating to post something in my blog is my laziness to go all the way to my blog service provider and then login and then writing a post. So i decided to explore ways in which I can post easily. As I can see, I see two options: one, to use ScribeFire addon from Firefox (posting this from ScribeFire) and the other option is a Blogthis extension in Chrome (which i haven't explored yet).

Hoping to post more of my thoughts in here. I've also thought of what I would be posting next in this blog. I am planning to post my experience trying to run Moblin 2.0 inside Windows Vista using VirtualBox virtual machine.

Until then, bye..

Decluttering - My relentless effort so far and tips!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:26:00 +0000

I have been consciously trying to optimize and enhance the way I work/live - both professionally and personally.

One of the things which proved to be an eye-opener for me is the fact that clutter (digital, physical, mental and any form for that matter) plays an important role in bringing down one's over all productivity due to various reasons.

Below are forms of clutter in my life and how I have been tackling them lately (again, the below are specific to me and not many people might have them in their life):

- Digital Clutter in the form of over-flowing mails: I have a separate huge blog post saved in the drafts at the time of this writing. While I really want to spend quality time explaining to you on how to manage your inbox (in a different blog post later) , I would like you to be aware of the ill-effects of overflowing mails. While this may not be a problem for many of us, it did prove to be a huge productivity sucker in my case.

Mail inbox, both personal and official, are the easiest to become cluttered. You can blame that on technology for having brought this kind of ease in delivering information.

The ill-effects of digital clutter is that, applications such as email clients become a burden over a period of time, rather than being a tool which enhances your professional and personal life.

Solution: First of all, do a clean up once to archive and delete all your old mails which are older than 2 months.

Second, unsubscribe from newsletters and mail groups which you haven't been reading for the past 1 month.

Third, Set rules to sort your mails into different folders (or flag them accordingly) to enable you to process the least important ones quickly. When you clear the least important ones quickly, it has 2 advantages - one, you gain immediate confidence due to the fact that you cleared a bulk of your mails real quick. Two, you have cleared the least important ones, so you do not procrastinate reading the important ones by going back to the least important ones (you have none now).

Fourth, you don't have to read every line in mails which are the obvious BAU (Business-As-Usual) mails and mails in which you are copied as a part of the group. You can right away mark them as read.

Fifth, you don't have to respond to a mail using a mail. Some conversations are easily solved by picking up the phone and using your chat software.

Lastly, use a different email account for subscribing to newsletters and for registering at different websites.

- Digital Clutter in the form of a crowded PC Desktop: I bet this a problem for most of us. Desktops have become a convenient way to access the most important files, folders and applications. But it has also become the most convenient place to dump most of the temporaraly files, folders and application shortcuts. To some extent, the application developers are responsible for this confusion.

Though some may argue that dumping as much they want in the desktop enhances productivity, I always believe that it is a source for confusion, iritation and worry for many. Simple analogy is a usual physical desk of yours. Given a choice for your physical desk, how many of your would choose to have a clean and empty desk as against a crowded desk with all the documents spread on it. Thats the same case for the PC Desktop.

Solution: First step: Start to clean up your existing desktop. Create a folder called Desktop2 and dump all the files and folders into it. This is the most quickest way to clear the clutter. Then delete all the unwanted application shortcuts. If you haven't clicked on a shortcut in the past 1 month, then there is a slim chance that you would do that now.

Then make sure you create one or two folders to store the temporaray files and folders that you may access very often.

Next step is to make sure you are consicious about not saving folders in the desktop directly. Make sure you save them in the one of the folders you have in your desktop.

I usually have one folder in which I dump all my files and two text files - contacts.txt and to-do.txt.

- Digital Clutter in the form of SMS: I hope, at least off late, agree with me on this. I receive on a average at least 20 SMS advertisements. Some times, even more. And on top of that, I also receive at least 10 more SMSs because I have subscribed with my bank, shop or some online service (Google, Twitter, etc.) to receive them.

SMS becomes a problem over a period of time, especially if you have a phone which does not allow you to easily delete your SMSs. For example, my low-end Nokia phone allows me to very painfully delete SMS on at a time.

Solution: First of all, unsubscribe your self from all the services where you had chosen to receive the SMSs. Second, block the unwanted sms by calling your phone operator and asking them to block numbers which are spamming your sms inbox. Third, if you have a more sophisticated phone, then you may install a free sms spam filter software. Fourth, don't ever disclose your phone number any website or in the back of your cheques or other physical forms. The second one (cheques) is the most common place for spammers to pickup your numbers.

- Digital and/or Physical Clutter in the form of multiple sources of Information: I have had this problem of thousands of news articles from hundreds of RSS sources cluttering my RSS News Reader (I use Google Reader).

That apart, you would have subscribed for a newsletter from lots of news sites. This especially does dual harm. Not only does it clutter your inbox, but also forms a part of information clutter.

Another more common form of clutter is multiple magazines and newspapers. They tend to easly clutter your living room and tables.

Solution: If you have been reading news from a particular site, then you are not going to read them any time in future. You go ahead and remove them from your RSS news reader and/or from your list of favorites.

Unsubscribe yourself from all the newsletters that haven't read for the past 1 month. Again, your wouldn't be reading them anytime in future.

Lastly, try to stay with one particular website and/or newspaper and/or magazine and see if you are able to read/consume every bit of information in it. Most probably, that should be good enough for you to know. Also, remember, most of the news sites and papers repeat the same news. So if you have read it here, then you wouldn't want to be reading it in a different from to finally realize that you just wasted your time.

- Digital Clutter in the form of social networking: No No.. I am not saying not go on Facebook! Social networking is required and sometimes encouraged... especially in these days where life has become hectic and our chances of physically networking has become slim.

But what I am saying is that, you don't have to be network with the same friends in multiple different sites such as facebook, myface, orkut, twitter, etc.

Again, this may not apply for everyone, but it did apply for me :). I had and still have a major problem consolidating so many different social networking platforms.

As of today, I am available on Facebook (relatively active), Twitter and LinkedIn.

Solution: Consolidate. Try to join the social networking site where most of your friends/colleagues are. Invite them to join your social networking site/group.

If you still have to leave a status message in 2/3 different sites where your friends are divided, then try using a software which can do this in one shot. For example, I leave my status in Facebook and Twitter in one shot using TweetDeck.

- Digital Clutter in the form of multiple email accounts: I had around 7 to 8 different personal email accounts with different providers. Again, this may not be the case with everyone.

As of today, I have 2 active accounts and 2 more less active ones as backup.

Solution: No big deal again. Just consolidate your multiple accounts into 2 email accounts. One is for your real communication with family, friends and colleagues. Second one is for subscribing to newsletters (if you absolutely need to do that) and using them to register at different sites. Usually you don't have to worry about consolidating your multiple email accounts. If you don't access them for some days/months, your account automatically gets disabled and your mails cleared :)).

- Physical Clutter in the form of bank and credit card statements: I receive so many statements, from Banks especially, that I had lost interest in reading them entirely. Since, I realized that some of these letters are important, I use to conveniently stack them away at multiple places - my home desk, side tables, office bag, etc.

Over a period of time, you realize that you have so much clutter everywhere because of these statements.

Solution: Go green! Now a days, banks give you an option of going green by choosing to receive statements in your email inbox (of course, banks want to cut down the cost by saving paper and shipping charges). Just go with this option. Receiving statements in your mail is very convenient and reduces your physical clutter a lot.

Don't procrastinate processing these statement: Reading them immediately and either tear them upfront and file them if you really them. Filing them is better than stacking them away in different places without even removing it from the envelope.

To be continued.. (I have so much to write but I can't wait to share this with you immediately. Will keep updating this post).

Reduce your email clutter - how to catch up and conquer your inbox!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:32:00 +0000

The below post had been sleeping in my draft folder for half a year. On reading this draft post, I realized how much it would be useful for folks who really need a hold over their emails. Enjoy reading this post. And ahh.. I am not posting about Moblin and ChromeOS as promised.. sorry :)

By the way, I am not a productivity guru. All thoughts expressed below are from my quest to conquer my email client. I hope this will be useful for you too!.

---------------------------------

First of all, email overload may not be a problem for everyone. But if it is problem managing your inbox and unread mails, then this post, I hope, should bring you some hope and relief.

If you are what I was many months back, then you must be opening your email inbox everyday with a heavy heart and with doubts on whether you would be able to finish reading all your emails today and with even more doubts on your ability to reduce the number of 2000+ or even more unread mails (staring at you in bold numbers next to the inbox icon).

While you open the inbox with the above mentioned doubts, a separate thread of thought appears to race in your mind on whether there are any important mails from the past that you might have missed reading. Even for the ones you had time to read partially, you must have flagged them for later reading and action. Your mind is worried about clearing those read mails but flagged in hundreds.

What a mess it is.. with your mind already stressed by the thoughts of digital clutter and your inability to catch up with the email overload day after day.. everyday. Things could get worse if your mail client is an unfriendly one such as lotus notes (and/or) you are a manager with a huge team to manage (and/or) your job requires you to interact with many other cross-functional teams (and/or) your a news and information junkie (and/or) many more obvious and unobvious reasons unique to your situation.

Apart from guilt and unproductive use of time, another major problem with not clearing your inbox is that your mind creates this illusion of work overload and that you never have time to spend for yourself/your family/your projects/your colleagues/etc. The email clutter gives you an illusion that you always have a lot to do. But the fact is, at the end of day when you learn to manage your inbox, you will find that whats needed of you from your mails is manageable and that you could complete your work and still have time left to do things that you love. After all remember that email is an enabler at work and is not the sole purpose of why you go to work.

I was in the same state until I decided to take control of the situation rather than going with a day to day flow of work and worrying thoughts in the background about your email clutter and your inability to catch up.

Today I have a clear inbox at the end of day. I am not stressed by the digital clutter. I am able to reply to mails that are important and that need my immediate attention. I am able to spend more time on things that matter, after I have started saving time because of my ability to finish clearing my inbox sooner (time saved is time produced :)). Of course, I am still in a learning phase where I keep trying out new techniques and trying to master the ones that work for me. Refining my skills to manage digital clutter is an ongoing process for me, but a very interesting and fun-filled experience/experiment at the same time.

So here is a list of recommendations that have worked for me and I hope the same should help you rule your mail (phrase that I came up with ;)) and maintain an empty inbox.

Be responsible - Choose to have it or leave it: Choosing to not have a mail id may not be a option for most of us. But, if you choose to have a personal email id and if you are not able to manage the inflow of mails, then decide for yourself if you wish to continue having this email account.

But if you do need to keep your email account, then you also need to take up a personal responsibility to give the care and attention it deserves. You need to make a personal commitment to yourself on not abusing this email account by either spamming others and not abusing yourself by allowing unwanted emails (which you may never read) to keep accumulating day after day.

Make a resolution to make the best use of this modern day tool and use it to your advantage to enable you in you day to day life.

Consolidate your email accounts: Again, it is best for you to consolidate your multiple email accounts - personal and official - into just three email accounts, one of your personal work, the second for your official usage (which most of us should get from the companies we work for) and finally a personal "subscription" email account (will talk about the third one very soon). Remember, your email id is your personal and unique trademark and it is best for you to have just one for your personal use.

And the reason why I recommend having a personal and official one is for obvious reasons. You don't want your personal emails from cluttering your official inbox and prevent you from focusing on what's important at work. There are exceptions to this where you may still want to forward some really important ones from your personal email account to your official email account. Will talk about it below.

Reduce your information inflow: This is one of the first and most important steps you may want to do, before you start decluttering your email inbox.

First of all, go ahead and unsubscribe yourself from all these sites where you have registered your email id to get updates on products and their promos. You may find it hard to do this step because of your fear of losing out on important information. But if you haven't been reading mails from these subscriptions for more than 3 weeks, it is highly unlikely that you will ever read them too (except for once in a while when you see some eye-catchy subject in it).

Don't get disheartened about losing out on information. That's where the third email account - the subscription email account - comes in handy. Go ahead and subscribe yourself again using your third email account (if that's absolutely required, else I still wouldn't recommend subscribing to it if I won't read the mails for more than 3 weeks).

For those of you who cannot/do not want to have a third subscription email account and do not want to unsubscribe from this newsletter, try this simple trick. Create an email rule which marks these subscription mails/newsletters to mark then as unread and then move to a different folder dedicated for this newsletter. For those having Gmail account, you will do the following - mark these emails as read, label them appropriately and then archive it.

Some other ways of reducing information flow is by disabling email notifications from your social networking sites like facebook, linkedin, orkut, twitter, etc. They do add to a lot of email clutter. When you do visit these sites on a daily basis and if you haven't been reading these email notifications, then why have them enabled in the first place!

One other way of reducing information flow (this applies more so for your official email account) is by removing yourself from mailing list/groups. Again, apply the same rule.. if you haven't been reading these mails for more than a week, then you probably do not need to be a part of this group. So go ahead and remove yourself from such groups. As I said before, you still can choose be a part of these groups, but just add your subscription email id to these groups that you feel you need to be part of, no matter what. When it comes to your official email account, the only option left for you, in case you still want to be a part of these mailing lists/groups which you never read mails, is for your to setup rules to move them appropriately to relevant folders. I will talk about rules in a short while.

Last but not the least, be responsible and make sure you do not send out unnecessary emails to bigger groups. Basically, limit your email communication as much as you can (to the most important mails).

Declutter (Cleanup): The best way to clear your inbox is by sender's name and then deleting all those subscription emails/newsletters, email notifications from social networking sites and the mailing lists/groups. This should bring down the size of your inbox by many folds.

The above step will ensure that you do not push all the unwanted emails from getting archived and thereby preventing your archives from getting cluttered.

The next step, once you have cleared your obvious clutter in the inbox, is to archive your inbox to move all your mails older than 2-3 months old into the achieve folder. The achieve file varies depending on the email client. If its Gmail, then you just archive your conversations. If its your Lotus Notes or Outlook, then you move the files from the server to a local archive folder.

One tip here is to have separate archive files for every year.

Rule your mail: Do you really utilize the power of your email client to increase your email productivity. You are not being effective with handling mails if you are not using rules. Also,you are not being effective if you are not using rules in a smart way.

For me personally, this has been one big reason - using rules effectively - for taming my inbox clutter and being effective day in and day.

I was experimenting with rules for quite some time and then one day due to divine inspiration :) (actually its common sense) I struck upon the success formula for the perfect set of rules (these are perfect till I find anything more useful :)).

Important point here is to categorize mails into separate folders/categories while not moving them from the inbox. What!! categorizing into separate folders/categories without moving the mails into separate folders!!! You've heard it right.

Traditionally, rules have been associated with 'moving' mails into different folders. But believe me, that is the most ineffective way of managing mails and a bad way of using rules. In fact, you are better off maintaining all your mails in the inbox without using rules. Well, let me explain

Have you ever realized as to why we like Gmail a lot. Yes, its faster, it uses AJAX and has other new improvements such as keyboard shortcuts (my favorite). But I bet, deep inside your heart, you like it because it lets you categorize your mails using labels (and also using multiple labels). Labels let you categorize your mails while the mails are still in your inbox. You can also see them as separate folders by filtering it with a specific label name.

And I am saying, this is the same strategy that you should also use for any mail account - your office or personal; lotus notes or ms outlook.

Another reason for not moving your mails from your inbox is to let you easily sort your Inbox in a conversation view (which follows a particular mail thread). But if you have moved some mails of that conversation/mail thread to a different folder, then you really don't get the complete picture of the conversation.

For your personal mail account, you anyways achieve the categorization using labels, if you are using Gmail. If you are not using Gmail, I beg you to ditch your existing mail accounts and hop on to Gmail. Apart from labels, its has tons of other good features - keyboard shortcuts, chat integration, docs integration, skins/themes, to name a few.

So if you are already using Gmail, then setup rules for as many mails as possible. Try to label the mails you are using automatically using rules. While you can have specific labels such as "Google", "Citibank", etc. try to label your mails in a more generic way as well. I will talk more about setting up rules in a short while. Let me finish off how you can categorize your mails without moving them in separate folders in Lotus Notes and MS Outlook.

In Lotus Notes, I am not sure how many of you have discovered this, but instead of moving a mail to a specific folder, copying it to a specific folder acts just like labeling in Gmail!!! That's good news isn't it :). So say, I copy an unread mail into a folder. The mail is available in both my Inbox and the folder to which I've moved it. But the best part is, when I do any action on the mail, whether in Inbox or the folder - like reading it, marking it as read, flagging it, or deleting it, the action also reflects in both Inbox and the folder to which you've copied this mail.

Now again, trust me, will explain to you how this feature is helpful, in a short while.

In MS Outlook, I guess, the only way you can achieve categorization (without moving mails to specific folders) is by upgrading to MS Outlook 2007. But if you are already using MS Outlook 2007, then you are in luck.

So in MS Outlook 2007, the categorization feature is called Categories :). They are also called as color categories. This is same as the labeling that you do in Gmail. So needless to say, its very easy and efficient way of categorizing your mails using multiple categories. More than me explaining to you about categories, you can read this article here to know how categories work in MS Outlook 2007.

At this point, I am not aware of how other mail clients or online mail accounts support categorization or labeling (for example, in Mozilla Thunderbird or Yahoo Mail), so I going to stop about categorization here.

Categorization or labeling is just the first of the two requirements towards effectively managing your mails. You have to know "HOW" to categorize/label/filter your mails in order to be effective. So let me explain the "How" of it.

The way you categorize/label your mails is as follows.

Important Mails: Mails from bosses or other important people (not more than 5-6 people), else this category/label gets cluttered easily.
Meeting Invitations: More applicable for your office mail account. You many want to quickly review and accept the meeting invites.
Mails requesting your approvals: Again, more applicable for your office mail account.
Mails in which I am marked in 'TO'
Mails in which I am marked in 'CC'
Mails in which I am marked in 'CC' explicitly, but also a mailing group has been copied in 'TO' or 'CC'
Mails in which I am neither marked in 'TO' or 'CC', but indirectly copied as a part of a mailing group
Least Important Mails: Mails from groups or communities that you have subscribed yourself to. If you have any of these mails, then I recommend subscribing them on your subscription mail account, but you cannot avoid if you have access only to your Office mail account.

In the above rules, you can combine rules 6. and 7. if you want to.

So setup your rules in Gmail, Lotus Notes or Outlook 2007 to categorize the mails you receive in the above way. The 'How to setup rules' in your mail client demands a separate blog post in itself. I am not covering that here and i am assuming that you will be setting up your mail rules to categorize the mails into the above 7 or 8 categories.

By the way, after setting up the rules, you will notice that there are still a very small percentage of mails that don't fall into any of the above categories. That doesn't mean that your rules are not perfect.

Trust me, the ones that don't get categorized into any of the above are usually not that important mails and you can keep them for reading at the last.

Process your filtered mails: The job is only half done by segregating the mails into the above categories.

As I had mentioned earlier, the really important mails that demand your attention is far less that you could imagine (but if that's not the case, then you need a serious lesson in unplugging yourself and prioritizing your work and personal life. No amount of mail management will prove helpful). So everything else in your inbox is a form of digital clutter which just sucks energy out of you by making you take some action on it. In the process of cleaning up the digital clutter, you get so tired that you lose interest and energy in replying to the mails that matter the most. More importantly, clearing your inbox becomes more of a dread.

Now coming back to processing the mails that are categorized like above, you can right away start with the most "Important Mails" and "Mails in which I am marked in 'TO'". This is what matters the most.

For me, personally though, the count of unread mails sitting next to the Inbox icon/folder and staring at me is what causes lot of distraction. So I always start from the bottom - "Least Important Mails".

I quickly mark these mails as read using keyboard shortcuts after glancing through the preview window. The advantage of this is that, you quickly process all the unwanted mails and thus leaving your mails with only the important ones. I don't worry about not having missed anything else.

Trust me.. try the above way of categorizing your mails and processing them and I promise you that you will have a zero inbox and you would have not missed/procrastinated on important mails.

This has worked for me for close to a year now and I am able to maintain my inbox with zero unread mails. This has been a great boost for my workplace productivity and enhanced the way I work.

Don't procrastinate: And more importantly, any amount of rules will not help you if you are going to procrastinate responding to mails. Again, procrastination is a topic in itself. But please make sure you respond to mails as soon as you can. Be aware of your procrastination patterns.

If you think you have been procrastinating replying/responding to mail for quite some time, then it means that there is a bigger problem that needs to be addressed. Your fear and reason for procrastination has to be addressed first.

Limit unnecessary communication, Use IM or Phone: This is the last bit of advice i have for you. The more you limit your email communication, the better you would be able to achieve what you wanted from that communication.

A simple Instant Messaging ping or a phone call will do the job. But again, sometimes you may still want to mail someone for accountability and documentation reasons, which is fine. But don't over stretch your conversation in the mails.

I hope, the lessons I've learnt from my own experimentation to be more productive in managing my mails will help you. Let me know your thoughts.

Getting back to blogging!

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 20:33:00 +0000

I am trying to get back to my blogging. Has been a long time since i have updated my blog. Especially after my recent travel to US, I never had a chance to update anything here.

And I can understand why folks are finding it hard to blog and are moving to other forms of expressions such as facebook and twitter.. its quick and easy and on the fly (doing it from any where). I myself have been at least updating my facebook status weekly. But never had the motivation to come down here and post anything lengthy.

But again I miss this blogging lengthier posts... and i guess i still love blogging as compared to facebook, orkut and twitter :).

GoodReads.com - Nice site for book lovers

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:06:00 +0000

I just enrolled myself in this site.

Very nice site to share your views on books with like minded readers.

Visit the site to know more about it!

I just wrote a very short review of a not so great book - "The Davinci Code" in this site.

The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The storyline is unique, interesting and fast moving. Its gets slow though later in the book.

View all my reviews.

Back again after yet another brief break

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 17:02:00 +0000

And this time my break was due to my travel to US. I had good fun this time around as I had taken my wife and kid along with me. Also I had rented out a car which really helped me going around places.

Some reasoning I have been procastinating blogging.. though I have this passion for blogging.

I am determined to continue blogging like before.

Mac mini server farm :)

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 17:42:00 +0000

Wow!! I dint know there are server farms that use Mac Mini.

Refer to the photo in the article in AppleInsider on why Mac Minis are here to stay.

Each one of those small boxes is a cute Mac Mini PC from Apple. Really surprising to know what people could do with such a small mac.

Even more surprising, from this article, is that information that Las Vegas alone uses atleast 10,000 mac minis in its various hotels and casinos and mostly for video surveillance.

For instance, here in Las Vegas, I know there are at least 10,000 Mac minis running in the different hotels and casinos on the strip," said Brian Stucki, who owns and operates the Mac mini colocation service. "Many are used for video security points. Certain casino companies use Mac minis in each of the slot islands on a casino floor to manage the backend. I know of one nationwide salon franchise that uses two Mac minis for each one of their stores."

Blackberry Storm - My thoughts

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:25:00 +0000

I had been waiting to publish this post on Storm ever since its user guide had leaked on the net and lots of post started appearing on in the blogosphere. And now news is out that Verizon Wireless is launching it.

I think, the phone looks amazing and I have seen the video of the Storm in action (look at the video at the end of this post) and its impressive.

My personal take is, Verizon+Storm is going to be more successful at the enterprise level (and that really matters) because of Blackberry's reputation and acceptance in businesses across the world. I think many agree with me.

One of the biggest concerns with using smart phones (which are naturally glued with a camera - phone manufacturers never care about folks who don't need a camera) nowadays is that we need to carry them to our offices and camera phones a big NO NO. But what I came to know from one of the person in my office (not very sure if thats true) is that the camera on the Storm (and other blackberry devices) can be controlled from a central location. Wow!.. organizations are going to be OK with that and i am double OK with that too. I can't do that with iPhone today.

Talking about Storm and iPhone, here is an article comparing both.

And on an separate note, it seems that Blackberry is also launching an AppStore.. heard of app store some where.. :).. thats what everyone is launching nowadays.. Apple iPhone, Google Android, et al.

Alright, enjoy the video..

Update: Oct 29, 2008
Check out this post in GigaOM - Why BlackBerry Storm Is An iPhone (and G-1) Killer. Reiterates my thoughts.

How many of you know about Knol (Google's Wikipedia)?

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 20:00:00 +0000

I knew about this site many months back. In spite of this being a Google site/service, it never was compelling enough to be remembered/revisited.

You can check - Introduction to Knol - to know more about it.

Interesting Read - Similarities of current economic crisis to the crisis of 1870s

noreply@blogger.com (Anonymous) — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 19:43:00 +0000

I found this article an interesting read (The Real Great Depression).

Though many claim that the current economic crisis is the biggest one after The Great Depression of 1929, most of us mistake the current economic scenario to be same as The Great Depression (that includes me - or maybe just me :)).

Then I came across this article which explains this misunderstanding and also gives some interesting insight on an other great crisis of the 1870s which in many ways, as the article proves, is similar to the existing one.

I found this article interesting. What is also interesting is the point that author makes about the shift in economic power from Europe to America (eventually leading it to its current state) and also hints that the same might happen again and that the power may shift to countries like India and China ;).

Isn't everything coming together.. what say.. Abdul Kalam and other great minds in the recent past claimed that India would become a superpower in the next 20-30 years. That would be great.. isn't it ;)...