Anil Sharma

Gmail box full ! Now what ?

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 00:44:00 -0800

Well, a 7 GB mail box is not enough for some people. My official email ID on Gmail (Google Apps) became full and some mails started bouncing. For the past 5 days, I've been struggling with issues probably unknown to many Gmail users. I'm sure many users will reach there some day, so it good to aware.

a) When your mail box becomes full, Gmail doesn't send you a warning email ! That's the least you would expect. Instead, it just starts bouncing mails.

b) When your contacts warn you that your mail box is full, what do you do ? You hurriedly log in and start deleting your mails. I deleted about 1000 of mails from inbox, spam and trash, but for next few hours, Gmail kept showing that my box was 99% full and it wouldn't reduce. After few hours, it automatically reduced to 94%. That means, when you delete messages from trash, Gmail is 'probably' storing your mails somewhere else before it deletes from your account. That's not comfortable to know

c) Ok, so I have 13000 + mails in the inbox. I want to delete say 800 selected ones. How do i do it ? That's where the pain begins. You see, Gmail was built with the philosophy that users should never be required to delete mails so the options for deleting are very poor. I can't delete all email that are say more than 3 years old. I can't list all email by the size of their attachments so I could delete the heavier mails first. I can't reach emails numbered between say 8000 and 9000 - that'll take me hours as I have to start and click through pages from the newest or oldest mails.

d) I figure a good way to delete unwanted mails would be to search for mails with a common topic and delete all of them together. Even that's not smooth. Suppose I search for all mails that have say [forums] in subject line and it shows 200 mails. Now I get 20 pages of such emails. I select the mails in the first page, then I click the option to select all the 200 mails. Now , I don't want to delete 1 of the 200 mails - but you can't do that !! The moment you unselect 1, your selection of 200 reduces to just the first out of 20 pages !!
So here I am, staring at the possibility that I might have to spend hours to manually delete mails.
I've highlighted these issues to Google also. I'm not criticizing Gmail, I still love it and I think it's still the best email service.
I'm just hoping somebody somewhere will somehow bring these things to someones notice someday !!

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Why Apple beats Dell

Thu, 25 Feb 2010 07:38:00 -0800

I've had the experience in dealing with computer hardware for 15 years now.In these years, I've used, sold, recommended and experienced the life cycles of HP, Dell, IBM (Lenovo) and Apple products. One difference I've noticed with Apple is that their products are NOT designed just for competitive sales, they're made to be useable. They decide the pricing after all the required quality and design parameters have been met. The other companies make products to compete in prices and features, not usability.

Here's a Forbes article that aptly describes why Apple beats Dell, and probably other vendors like Lenovo.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/23/dell-computer-apple-markets-steve-jobs.html

In technology, its not just about prices and features, its about design, usability and a lot more. Unless brands get it right and innovate, the chances that they will remain forever is low.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Open letter to Paypal business head - blocked services in India

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:48:39 -0800

Dear Farhad

This is in response to your post - https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/02/an-open-letter-from-farhad-irani-on-the-situation-in-india/

Hundreds, maybe thousands on Indians, particularly young people from the IT software industry are dependent on Paypal for receiving payments from abroad. After few years of service, Paypal faces some issues with RBI and it suddenly decides to stop all payments and withdrawals to bank accounts. You must currently be holding thousands if not millions of dollars that belong to people in India.

It raises several questions about the whole way in which the issue is being handled and the ethics at work :

a) There is NO official information on paypal.com/in about the difficulties you are facing. Why are you hiding the issue from customers ?

b) People who initiated withdrawal processes 15 days ago have neither received their refunds, nor has the withdrawal process been stopped.

c) You have sent no email to customers informing them of the situation.

You are casually mentioning about a major issue like this in your blogs instead of making all your customers aware about it.

Is this a way of trying to make your blogs popular or are you trying to help customers here ?

Further, even the responses in the blogs are vague.

Looks at some parts of Anuj's post ( https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/02/update-on-paypal-situation-in-india/)

" 2. When will personal payments be turned back on?

Personal payments to and from India will be suspended for at least a few months .....

3. When will local bank withdrawals be available?

Customers should be able to withdraw their funds to a local bank within the next few days... "

How many days are few days and how many months are few months ?

Here's the ridiculous one from https://www.thepaypalblog.com/2010/02/personal-payments-and-local-bank-transfers-in-india/

"During this time, customers can still make commercial payments to India but merchants cannot withdraw funds in Rupees to local Indian banks."

Interpreted correctly, this means "Please continue paying Paypal but Paypal won't pay you".

Why do you want to keep receiving funds when customers can't withdraw ? Why don't you suspend all services till you've cleared all pending payments ?

Services like Paypal are the backbone of web, when they fail, not only do they cause short term problems, they cripple the trust of many people in new age systems.

Situations like these may arise with any company (Toyota is experiencing one now) but can be handled better, you and your team are not setting the right example.

I hope to see immediate action, including official notices, and transparency in this matter.

Regards

Anil Sharma

http://blog.anil.biz

Permalink | Leave a comment »

How do I donate ?

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:49:00 -0800

Most of us are financially stable or at least comfortable without knowing it. While our needs are met, we want more.

This video on the value of Rs. 500 to different people is a good example of what I'm talking about.

I have often wished to find a way to financially assist those in real need. However, the idea of contributing to an "NGO" or an agency that assists people in need has never appealed to me. For one, I don't know what's being done with my hard earned money. Next, their costs of operations are often bloated to cater to needs of management. Also, their integrity is in doubt.

Have you found a good way of donating so that those in need and those for whom you intend it to be, really benefit from it ? Please reply here : http://blog.anil.biz/how-do-i-donate

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Japanese Art - Truly Incredible !

Sat, 20 Feb 2010 00:31:00 -0800

Stunning crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan.

But this is no alien creation - the designs have been cleverly planted.

Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or dye.

Instead, different colours of rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown in the paddy fields.

As summer progresses and the plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to emerge.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Smaller works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan. The farmers create the murals by planting little purple and yellow-leafed kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed tsugaru roman variety to create the coloured patterns between planting and harvesting in September.

The murals in Inakadate cover 15,000 square metres of paddy fields.

From ground level, the designs are invisible, and viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to get a glimpse of the work.

Rice-paddy art was started there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that grew out of meetings of the village committee.

Closer to the image, the careful placement of thousands of rice plants in the paddy fields can be seen.

The different varieties of rice plant grow alongside each other to create the masterpieces.

In the first nine years, the village office workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount Iwaki every year. But their ideas grew more complicated and attracted more attention.

In 2005 agreements between landowners allowed the creation of enormous rice paddy art.

A year later, organizers used computers to precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties that bring the images to life. The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori village of Inakadate, 600 miles north of Tokyo, where the tradition began in 1993.

The village has now earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry and this year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horsebacks, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall. Napoleon on horseback can be seen from the skies, created by precision planting and months of planning between villagers and farmers in Inkadate.

A Sengoku warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds of thousands of rice plants; the color's created by using different varieties, in Inakadate in Japan.

More than 150,000 visitors come to Inakadate, where just 8,700 people live, every summer to see the extraordinary murals. Each year hundreds of volunteers and villagers plant four different varieties of rice in late May across huge swathes of paddy fields. Another famous rice paddy art venue is in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture. This year's design shows the fictional 16th-century samurai warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives feature in television series Tenchijin. Fictional warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife Osen appear in fields in the town of Yonezawa, Japan.

And over the past few years, other villages have joined in with the plant designs. Various artwork has popped up in other rice-farming areas of Japan this year, including designs of deer dancers.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Ecstasy !

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 08:43:08 -0800

Many years later, not only did i get to see our old family car, I got to drive it for the first time !

This 1946 Morris has been in our family for years now. It was purchased for $100 from an ex-royal of Rajasthan. When I was a little kid, the family used to go for an annual vacation to our ancestral home in Rajasthan. For many years, the car was there unused in the garage and one on such visit, probably when I was 10 , we went out for a drive in it. All I remember was pushing the car more than being driven in it !!

Last week, I visited the house after 18 years for a wedding in the family. Not only was the car there, it had been fixed so that we could drive it ! It was sent to the garage for over a week to make the engine work.

I did drive it ! Less than a kilometer, in which too it shut down or stalled about 5 times but it was pure ecstasy ! The steering is stiff, the engine make loud, stuttering noises and you can smell the fumes inside the car. None of the dials work and the brakes just about manage to stop the car. However, this car is more fun to drive than any other I've ever driven, not just because its a 1946 Morris but because a lot of childhood memories are associated with it.

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Understanding Clients !

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 10:10:27 -0800

I wish understanding clients was an easy job. I also wish clients would be more understanding. Neither of my wishes have come true very often, at the same time, business continues to expand, which makes me think there is a way around.

These thoughts come into my mind on a day I spent with two different clients. For both, I'm working on complex software projects to create custom information systems that meet their requirement. To do this, our teams have met several times, many design ideas were floated, mockups prepared and changes made as per their requirements. All steps of pre-defined SLDC (Software Development Life Cycle) is being followed, project plans are regularly updated etc.

In the first case, it's becoming impossible to understand the clients. They keep shifting their goals, they're hesitant to confirm or not confirm decisions and there are unexplained delays in providing inputs from their end. There is a tendency to finally accept what was being proposed at the beginning but after much delay,debate and discussion. I had a strange experience today when one of their senior team members openly accepted in the meeting, after being cornered, that he had never spent time on the project and had no idea about what work had been done. This, after extending the deadline for over a month and half ! It lead me to say that our team couldn't wait for his inputs, which anyways hadn't been worthwhile. Instead of supporting the project teams to move things forward, the clients team decided to focus on this non-issue and wasted another opportunity to progress the project. It's impossible to guess what they want !

In the second half of the day, I spent time trying to make the other client understand the large picture. They are clear about their requirements, we understand them well too but they don't want to provide the required time to complete the project. According to them, they need the project ready in two weeks when it will take over two months to complete. There is no shortcut possible and increasing manpower allotment to the project won't reduce the timeline. They have no choice but to give us the time, however, instead of understanding, the client chooses to further complicate the situation by bringing forth additional requirements and ideas ! In this case, I need a way to make the client more understanding.

I've handled situations like these before. In both the situations, the first step is to refuse to give up. I won't let these clients go unsatisfied, I can't change their levels of understanding and I can't say no to their requirements. The way around is to use a combination of some powerful tools - time, hard work, smartness, bright ideas, patience and persuasiveness. The projects will go through and these very clients will be our top salesmen, its just a matter of time.

The only thing that will remain unresolved will be understanding clients !

Permalink | Leave a comment »

Starting a blog now !

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 00:57:00 -0800

A lot of changes happening in the year 2010, hopefully for the good !

First off, I have one email address . In the past, I've always managed to be strangled with free email ID's from yahoo, hotmail, in.com etc for various reasons. Its nice to be able to reduce the time required to manage the spam and lists in all of them and to know your own email ID explicitly.

Next, I've finally booked a domain name for myself - anil.biz ! I've done if for so many people, companies organizations and entities that I never got around to getting one for myself. Another reason I could never decide on the domain name was unavailability of a short simple name meant for me. Now I need to plan what to do with it :) . Wordpress or Drupal, Pixelpost or Moodle, lot of thinking required here !

Then, to get my world together. Business contacts, personal contacts, friends, family ...to separate a list of over 1000 people and still remain connected with all. Not easy. I'm also updating my profiles on all social platforms, Linkedin, Facebook, Myspace etc and slowly picking up twittering all over again. I was one of the first batch of twitterers till I got bored of it over 3 yrs ago...but using platforms like tweetdeck etc, its so easy to manage all this now !

Also, it's late in life to start a blog but I'm finally doing it !

Anil

Permalink | Leave a comment »