Me and My Views

50 Programs for software engineers looking for jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 11:48:10 PST

Loops and Variables

Write a program to swap two numbers without using an additional variable.
Solution : vb.net
Write a program to find the biggest number in n numbers without using arrays.
Solution : vb.net
Write a program to find the second biggest number in n numbers without using arrays.
Write a program to find the smallest number in n numbers without using arrays.
Write a program to find out m * n without using the * operator.
Write a program to find out m / n without using the / operator.
Write a program to find out m ^ n without using the ^ operator.
Write a program to find out m % n without using the % operator.
Write a program to find out the average of n numbers.
Convert a number in String format to integer - Number entered as "1234" should come as 1234 and "1234a" should come as an error.
Write a program to find the factorial of a number.
Write a program to find out 1+2+3+4+...+n
Write a program that sums up the digits of a number until it is a single number
Eg: 2748303 = 2+7+4+8+3+0+3 = 27 = 2+7 = 9
Write a program that accepts a base ten integer number and outputs the binary, octal and hexadecimal representations of that number.
Write a program that accepts a hexadecimal representation of a number and outputs the decimal representation of that number.
Write a program to print all the prime numbers between m and n where m is less than n.
Write a program to find all the prime factors of a number.
Write a program which reverses the numerals in an integer, that is 326 becomes 623

Patterns

Write a program to print the pascal's triangle. The way to compute any given position's value is to add up the numbers to the position's right and left in the preceding row. For instance, to compute the middle number in the third row, you add 1 and 1; the sides of the triangle are always 1 because you only add the number to the upper left or the upper right (there being no second number on the other side).
                                                    1
                                               1        1
                                           1        2        1
                                       1       3        3        1
                                  1       4        6        4    1
   1    5    10    10 5        1
Write a program that prints
                            *
                       *        *
                   *       *        *
              *      *    *    *
         *        *        *      * *
Write a program that prints
                            *
                       *      *
                   *           *
              *       *
         *        *        *      * *
Write a program that prints
*   * * * * * *   *
*                            *
*                            *
*                            *
*                            *
*                            *
*   * * * * * *   *

Arrays

Write a program to find out the median of n numbers.
Write a program to find out the mode of n numbers.
Write a program to sort numbers using bubble sort.
Write a program to sort numbers using quick sort.
Write a program to find the sum of two m x n matrices.
Write a program to find the product of two matrices.
Write a program to find the transpose of a matrix.

Fibanocci Series

Write a program to print the first n numbers of the fibanocci series.
Write a program to print only the first 10 odd numbers in a fibanocci series.
Write a program to print the list of numbers in a fibanocci series that adds up to n.

Strings

Write a program to reverse a string
- "My name is sudeep" should become "peedus si eman yM"
Write a program to find the length of a string.
Write a program to reverse the words in a string
-"My name is sudeep" should become "sudeep is name My"
Write a program to display all possible permutations of a given input string
- if the string contains duplicate characters, you may have multiple repeated results.
Input should be of the form
permute string
and output should be all the combinations of the letters. Here is a sample for the input
cat cat cta act atc tac tca
Write a program that takes an integer and displays the English name of that value. You should support both positive and negative numbers.
Examples:
10 -> ten 121 -> one hundred twenty one
1032 -> one thousand thirty two
11043 -> eleven thousand forty three
1200000 -> one million two hundred thousand
Write a program that takes two arguments at the command line, both strings. The program checks to see whether or not the second string is a substring of the first (without using the substr -- or any other library -- function). One caveat: any * in the second string can match zero or more characters in the first string, so if the input were abcd and the substring were a*c, then it would count as a substring. Also, include functionality to allow an asterisk to be taken literally if preceded by a \, and a \ is taken literally except when preceding an asterisk.
Given a pair of words (the first is the correct spelling and the second is the contestant’s spelling of the word) determine if the word is spelled correctly. The degree of correctness is as follows:
CORRECT if it is an exact match
ALMOST CORRECT if no more than 2 letters are wrong
WRONG if 3 or more letters are wrong
Write a program to read a sentence and calculate the average word value for that sentence. Word value is calculated by finding the average of the ASCII values of all of the letters in a word. Average word value is the average of the word values of all of the words in the sentence rounded to the nearest integer. All letters are upper case. Any non-letter characters are not part of the word in which they are located.
Eg: MY NAME IS SUDEEP
= (77+89)/2 + (78+65+77+69)/4 + (73+83)/2 + (83+85+68+69+69+80)/6
= 83 + 72.25 + 78 + 75.67 = 83 + 72 + 78 + 76
= 309 / 4
= 77.25
= 77
To convert a word to Pig Latin, the first letter of the word was moved to the end (after the last letter of the word) and the letters “AY” were added. For example, PIG becomes IGPAY. Write a program to convert a given sentence to pig latin.
Eg. MY NAME IS SUDEEP.
In Pig latin : YMAY AMENAY SIAY UDEEPSAY

Files

Write a program to find the number of lines in a file new line defined as "\n" and the number of words in a file. A word is defined as two patterns of characters separated by one or more spaces.
Count the number of times a word occurs in a file - the word and the location of the file are inputs to the program.
Write a program that will merge two files and give an output of 1 file.

Linked Lists
Note : The format for the node should be a struct containing an integer value, val, and a next pointer to the following node.

Write a program to find out the length of a linked list.
Write a program to find out if the linked list has a loop.
Write a program to print a singly linked list in reverse.
Write a program to reverse the entire linked list in place. By in-place, I mean that no memory can be allocated. The resulting code should be function that takes the head of a list and returns a the new head of the reversed list.
Write a program to implement push and pop functions in a linked list.
Write a program which can insert a new node at any index within a list. The program may specify any index in the range [0..length], and the new node should be inserted so as to be at that index. The index is calculated as the position from the beginning of the linked list.

Startup Saturday - Hyderabad

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 11:45:09 PDT

The saturday before last, I was invited to give a small informal talk at Startup Saturday (SS). SS is organized by the Headstart Network Foundation - a non-profit organization focused on creation of a startup ecosystem in India. The following video gives a clear idea about what Startup Saturday is all about.

This meeting was held at LaMakaan and there was a very interesting mix of attendees. There were a few students but a lot of attendees were from either those interested in starting up or those having just started up. There were also a couple of reporters of startup related websites. There were some members from angel investor organizations or incubation centers like the IIIT Incubation Center.

The theme of the session was registration, compliance & finance for early stage startups. Every month there is a theme and experts are invited to talk about that theme. It started off with each of the attendees giving a short introduction and then there were a couple of sessions given by a Chartered Accountant and a Company Secretary about the theme. The format is quite informal and interactive and there are a lot of questions from the participants.

After this some startups were invited to talk about their ventures and their experiences in starting up. The startups who spoke were

Inforica - Founder- Sudeep D'Souza
Luminart- Founder- Prabhu
Acuvate- Founder, Amitesh Anand
HuSys.net- CoFounder, Kalyan

Again the discussion was lively and interesting with a lot of real world examples and experiences.

After this it was all about networking and exchanging business cards to continue networking beyond the event. I was asked how the startup environment now is different from how it was 6 years ago and the answer is that it is events like this that make it so much easier to startup now with information so easily available so readily.

I would advise anyone who is planning to startup or has just started up to attend this event. I hope more companies that provide services also attend so that startups are aware that there are experts out there to hep them quickly startup.

Startup Weekend - Hyderabad

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 07:32:09 PDT

It all started on Thursday when I saw a post on one of the blogs announcing that there was going to be a Startup Weekend being hosted at ISB in Hyderabad. Something in that article triggered my imagination that it would be a fun event to attend to understand and feel the start-up ecosystem. With a lot of encouragement from the home front I was all game to go. I went ahead and bought 5 tickets to the event and then started to ask all my friends and colleagues asking them who would like to come for the event and the 5 tickets disappeared fairly quickly.

To tell you a bit about Startup Weekend, I copied a paragraph from Annkur's post, one of the organizers about startup weekend

"Startup Weekend is this 54 hours madness that brings together business folks, developers, designers and jack of all trades like me to build a startup over a weekend. Ones with an idea pitch it, voting follows and teams are formed organically. These teams have to come back with a product / prototype / demo / whatever by Sunday evening and present to the judging panel. In march, Startup Weekend, which has as of today done over 100 cities and 250 action packed weekends, came to India."

Day 1: The first 14 hours - Product Concept, Team Formation, Branding and Technology Identification

On Friday afternoon about 2 hours before we were to leave we had no idea what we were going to pitch. So we called everyone we knew into a room to help us brainstorm and come up with ideas to pitch at the event. After about an hour we settled on 5 ideas and then used the next hour to narrow down the ideas to 3. We all then jumped into the car and started our 30 min drive to ISB. It was here that we finally gave shape to our ideas and wrote a pitch for each one of them.

On completion of our registration we had pizzas and a lot of coke to set the right mood and then it was onto the pitches. While having our pizzas we got talking to other participants there and this kind of got us in touch with other participants that can become team members. It is important to take this networking session very seriously and meet as many participants as you can. It is during this period that you can introduce your self to everyone present there and also get to know about them as this can influence the team formation as there is not much time later on if your idea is shortlisted.

We all stood in a line and started to make our pitches one after another in fairly quick succession and it was down to the voting. The results were announced and since there were some ties we had 15 ideas that were selected and out of the 3 ideas that we pitched 2 got selected, Park-e-mon and Feriwala. We quickly formed into our teams and the Park-e-mon team consisted of 4 members Krishnamraju (Developer), Jeevan (Developer), Shahnawaz (Sales and Marketing) and Sudeep (Team Lead).

Soon after forming the team it was all work from then on. We had to decide on the MVP (Minimum Viable Product) i.e. the least amount of functionality that can be coded on a weekend and that will show the functionality of the application being built. At the same time we had to fill up a brief description of the product and also submit other paper work like the team details and stuff. We closed the day at about 2:00 AM with a clear idea of what was our product and the division of tasks for the next day. We had a mobile component and also a web component so each developer took one, the other two of us came up with a product validation strategy and branding which we had to complete before 11:00 AM the next morning, this included coming up with a survey, presentation demonstrating our product, name of the product, logo and buying of the website URLs and shortlisting one or two potential clients to meet and check the viability of the product in the market.

Day 2: Hours 15 to 40 - Market survey and Development

The next morning while the developers were hard at coding the product, we spoke to a couple of mentors that gave us very valuable feedback about the product. There were altogether 5 mentors that were present the whole day but we had time to talk to only 2 of them. After this the business development team went out to meet some potential customers. We met the owner of a construction company that builds commercial spaces, an architect and the parking administrator of a large mall. After having met them the idea fine tuned itself into a truly promising product that can be taken into the market. The business development team touch based with the developers who promised to have the product completed which finally happened at about 5:00 AM in the morning.

Day 3: The final 14 hours - Presentation, Fine Tuning and Pitches

After a few hours of sleep it was the start of Day 3. We all headed back to ISB, while the development team was fixing all the final issues in the product the business team worked on the presentation and the video that was going to demonstrate the usage of the product. We were done by about 4:00 PM and the pitches were to start at 5:00 PM. A few practice runs and it was time to make our pitch which went well. The pitches were all well managed. You were given 2 min to setup while the previous team was answering questions and then your 5 minutes started as soon as the previous team was done. On completion of the 5 minutes, there is 2 minutes of questions where the judges and audience were free to ask any thing. How to ensure that you make the best of the pitches

Ensure you are ready for any eventuality, during our pitch the internet was very slow and so we could not show a live demo but our video bailed us out. So have a back up plan to show the demo.
Practice your pitch and ensure that it does not cross 4:30 min. It will finally end up being 5:00 min.
Check out all the connections before hand and do not let the members of the team doing the pitch operate the laptop, unless there is no other option.

Once all the pitches were completed it was time to announce the results and our team the Park-e-mon team came first. It was a nice surprise as there were some very nice product ideas that were very well presented. On the whole the learning experience was amazing and also the opportunity to interact with so many different people in an environment where you are all thrown together and forced to work on an idea and this brings out the best in everyone.

Deccan Trails - Outdoor adventure fun

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 12:39:22 PDT

As part of the office picnic we went to this outdoor adventure fun place that is about 75 km outside Hyderabad near Vikarabad called Deccan Trails. Its a camp site that is situated on the edge of a forest and it's about 40 acres of fun and activity. We reached there at about 4 in the afternoon after driving through the heaviest rain that I have seen all season so far. The road was good and the drive there very nice.

We were welcomed with some mint flavoured lime juice and some hot pakoras that tasted very good. The rest of the evening was spent monkeying around on the rope ladders and the nets and swinging on the numerous swings there until we finally started a game of football in the light drizzle. The evening was spent enjoying the serene calm fresh air until it was time for dinner that consisted of a very homely meal. There was a bon fire started to add to the lovely evening. Music is not allowed as it is close to the jungle and it disturbs the peace of the place.

The sleeping arrangements consists of tents that are setup quite wonderfully. There are 2 community tents that consist of 15 beds each and there are some 2bed and 3bed tents that have an attached toilet and bath. There are cots and mattresses in the tents with lights and fans. After a restful night the morning started early with some hot tea and a long 5 km trek through the jungle. This trek set us up perfectly for the breakfast that was simple and nutritious.

After breakfast it was off to try out all the adventure games such as walking the burma bridge, balancing planks, tight rope, rock climbing and zip lining. All fun games that can tire both your hands and legs fairly quickly. There are other games such as archery and table tennis. The setup again basic and rustic but fun at the same time.

After some nutritious lunch where the meat is given out in measured portions it is time to say bye and leave the place so wanting to never go back into the hustle and bustle of the city that is just a few minutes away.

The good things about the place is the games, the setup of the tents and the general conduct of the activities there. The not so good things of the place is the toilets, they can do with some improvement. The mattresses and pillows are hard - so those not used to sleeping on hard pillows may be advised to carry their own. The kitchen and dinning area can do with some improvements - there are a lot of flies and ants around and those not used to the outdoors will find it a bit uncomfortable.

On the whole a great place to go - I will surely be going back there soon.

Chowmahalla Palace

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:46:50 PDT

About a week ago I was going around the old city when I chanced upon the Chowmahalla Palace just next to the Charminar. The entrance to the palace is very unassuming and boring but once inside the world is so different. Lovely gardens, beautiful buildings and well done up interiors when just outside the palace is the hustle and bustle of Charminar. The palace belongs to the Nizam's of Hyderabad and gives you a very upclose and personal view of their lifestyle and their history. There is a lot to see here and you can get all the details of what there is to see on this wikipedia web page.

I would advise everyone who is visiting Hyderabad to visit the Chowmahalla Palace. It should be a must visit even before one goes to Charminar, Salarjung Museum, Qutub Shahi Tombs or Golkonda Fort. That is how highly I rate the visit here. The history of Hyderabad through a lot of old photographs is captured on the walls of the palace. There are very few people that visit this palace and that adds to the whole unhurried charm of the place.

Below are some photographs that I took during my visit to the palace.

Dialogues in the dark

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:29:33 PDT

A few days ago I went to have dinner in the new themed restaurant "Dialogues in the dark" which is located at Inorbit Mall, Madhapur, Hyderabad. Having read about the restaurant at the website and a few reviews in the WOW Hyderabad magazine I was quite excited. So gave them a call to make a reservation and was told that I can choose either a non vegetarian meal or vegetarian meal.

We arrived there at about 8:00 PM and paid for our meals which needs to be done in advance and it costs Rs. 750 per person all inclusive. Any cold drinks (no liquor is served) purchased in the restaurant were to be paid for after the meal. We were then asked to deposit our mobile phones and any other bags we were carrying in the locker there. We were then escorted to the door and then handed over to a visually impaired person who guided us into a pitch dark place. It is incredibly eerie when you walk in first as you cannot see anything not even your finger if it is a centimeter from your eyes. You are guided to your seat and the table is already set when you get there.

You are then served a 4 course meal starting with soup, a starter, a main course and a dessert. The meals are served slowly and there is a lot of time for one to munch on their food and wait. The meal itself wasn't much of a surprise, to put it simply there was tomato soup; chicken nuggets for starters; biryani, romali roti, dalh, chicken curry and some stuff i never even found on my plate; a custard kind of a dish for dessert. The food is eaten completely by touch and feel. There is cutlery to be used but again one has to feel for it. After a while you get a comfort in where everything is and then it becomes quite easy. The water is served in bottles and one can order from a variety of soft drinks to be had with the food.

Since the restaurant is completely dark you do not know how many others are there in the restaurant or how far apart they are. The two tables next to us seemed to be quite close to us as we could hear all the conversations quite clearly.

The experience was interesting for just the one visit. The food was not exciting - with the first taste we knew what was on the plate. The food was not very tasty. The chairs were quite uncomfortable. One interesting thing is that there is an verbal interaction going on between the people as no one knows who is there and how many people are there. The noise levels are quite high - conversation is quite loud and animated.

What in my view will make the experience more exciting? All the food should only be bite sized helpings - they should feel the same but when you put it in the mouth each bite tastes different. There should be a surprise element in every bite. Serving regular food does not really enhance the experience. The chairs should be super comfortable so that when you sit in them it should feel like you never want to get out of it. The music at times was a bit loud - the music should be very faint in the background.

On the whole an interesting experience for that one time and its worth going there to understand what happens when one of the senses is taken away.

Ooty once again

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 22:47:14 PDT

Having visited Ooty the last time in the rainy season with a lot of the activities not operational we decided to go back to Ooty this time in the summer. The weather was great - bright sunshine with a cool breeze blowing. We had a couple of showers in the evenings but that did not dampen any of the fun, in fact it added to the whole experience of being at a hill station. The only downside of this trip was that it was quite crowded as against the last time we went there. But again as long as we spent most of our time in a secluded resort we did not experience much of the crowds except when we went into Ooty town.

We wanted to travel by the Nilgiri mountain railway train from Mettupalayum to Ooty but this was all booked up well in advance and we tried almost 2 months before our travel date for tickets on this train. So plan well in advance if you want to experience this train ride.

We spent about an evening in Ooty town doing shopping this time and there are quite a few good things to be bought in Ooty. Top of the line is chocolates, spices and oils. There are a lot of shops selling chocolates but the most famous among them are Modern Bakery near the Botanical Gardens. There is a good selection of leather goods such as wallets, jackets, shoes and handbags available. Warm clothes are not too expensive too.

We got to do a lot of adventure sports this time such as trekking, rock climbing, horse riding, zip lining and rappelling. We did all these at the farm stay Destiny.

India finally wins the world cup

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 11:59:14 PDT

And I was there right through it. Through all its ups and downs.

And my advise to all those leaders out there is take a leaf out of Dhoni's notebook and start leading your teams from the front by stepping into the firing line. We need a lot more leaders like him.

Mantra of successful apps - Simple yet engaging

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 21:15:25 PDT

I have been downloading and playing quite a few games lately and I started to wonder what is it that makes these games so addictive where as there are a million other games that just come and go. What I realised is that the key to the successful games such as angry birds, ninjump and so on is to keep it very simple so that it is easy to learn and start playing yet keeping it just hard enough to keep you engaged to try again and again as you always feel that you are just there.

I tried to extend this same idea to some of the applications that I use and I found that there is a similar trend. The applications are very easy to learn and become useful in a very short span of time yet they are feature rich to make you want to come back and use them every time.

Its the same for the android and apple devices - they are so easy to use they do not even need a user manual but there is so much available on the market place/app store that there is never a boring moment as you can go there and find something new to keep you engaged.

For all the app designers out there the idea is to keep the entry barrier so low that the user feels interested to try it out but then it is important to subtly introduce features to the user that will keep the user engaged and interested.

Motivation at the workplace

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 04:35:27 PST

IT companies have a reputation of paying very well but they still suffer from very high attrition. Why is that so? I was watching some videos on youtube and came across the one below that validates my thoughts. Motivating employees is not just about paying them well...

2005 Singapore Identity Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 05:50:00 PST

2004 Singapore Identity Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 05:39:30 PST

Changing Education Paradigms

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 05:25:19 PST

Deciding on the type of education for your child is a hard question. During my days of schooling there was only one type of education and that was focused on rote learning and the cane. But now the life and times are so different. The world has changed; the times are different; the different ways we are exposed to information is mind boggling.

Do we change with the times and give our children something different from what we had. During my school days there was nothing else to do other than go to school. There was no TV till I was in the 9th class. There were no computers till I was in college and there was not much activity to do as I was brought up in a small town – there were no malls, no activity centers, no zoos, no museums and frankly no parks worth going to. We went to school, did what we were told, learnt by heart what we were thought, wrote our exams, got caned if we did badly and the circle continued year after year. But in the end we all turned out fine leading comfortable lives due to the education we got.

But if we fast forward to now – I ask myself is it enough if I put my child in this same kind of education system so that she has a secure future because this system worked for me. But will it be enough? The needs in the future may be different. The tools available may be different. The skills required may be different. Following the same kind of education I had might not be enough to help her cope with the future. But the question is what kind of education will help her cope?

The video below talks about a similar problem with the current education system and is very interesting to understand the roots of the existing education system and why the author thinks that the current system will not work in preparing our kids.

Understanding Money

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:13:18 PDT

This is a beautiful article about "Money" - What Truly "Wealthy" people know about money.

There are some excellent thoughts in this article and one of the aspects in that article which I want to talk about is the formula

Wealth = Value Provided by Y * Number of Entities that Directly Value Y

(Where Y is the product, employee or subject generating wealth).

The key aspect for wealth in this formula is the value that is provided. At an organizational level or a individual level it comes down to the same thing. If you want to make money you need to have something that provides value. At an organizational level it is the value of the intellect the organization holds. If the organization does not innovate and keep ahead of the intellectual curve it will fall away and stop providing value. It is same for the individual - if the individual stops learning and stops innovating and keeps ahead of his peers in his ability to provide value then his wealth disappears.Once there is no value nobody needs the organization or the individual and that's when all wealth - financial, mental and physical disappears.

The Number of entities that directly derive value will automatically grow based on the amount of value you provide to them and the bandwidth you have to manage them. When you provide true value the entities that seek that value tend to find you faster than you wish for.

So the bottom line is to introspect and understand if each and every one of us at an individual capacity and an organizational capacity provide value. If we do, we will automatically become wealthy - financially, mentally and physically. If not overnight it will happen in time.

Yourschool - Create a website for a school in less than 5 minutes

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:41:29 PDT

Yourschool.in is a product that we have conceptualized and developed. The idea is to be able to provide a school a platform to create a fully functional, interactive website in less than 5 minutes. We have achieved this by incorporating the following into the product

There is no installation to be done. Just register your institution on the website.
You do not need to have any technical personnel to operate the website. All you need to know is basic computer knowledge and you will be able to post content about your institution.
You can use the site from anywhere 24 X 7 and update the content as it is completely on the internet.
No need of high bandwidth dedicated internet connection from your institute to operate the website. Broadband connections with a minimum of 256 kbps is enough to operate the website.
You can change the information published at any time by yourself thus giving you complete control over the website with no dependencies.

Some of the features provided by the website include

Change content on the website by yourself. All the information published on the website can be changed easily by the school administrator without having to interact with software developers.
Provide logins for teachers and students. Each teacher and student can get his/her own login to the website. Unlimited number of logins can be created.
Dynamic Photo Albums to showcase the activities and the facilities in the school. Unlimited albums and photos can be uploaded directly from your computer.
Messages can be sent between parents and teachers. Using the messaging within the yourschool.in
Post news about the school that is displayed on the homepage.
Publish Documents and newsletters on the website. Choose whether the document should be publically accessible or only for logged in users.
Change how the website looks by choosing a theme from our wide range of templates available. We continuously add new themes to this library from which you can choose.
Publish a school calendar on the website with the list of holidays and events of the school.
Visitors can send enquiries directly to the school from the website.
Class Timetable - Publish the class timetable so students and teachers can refer to the class timetable any time
Send SMS Greetings on birthdays to students, teachers and support staff of the school - An automated message goes out to the registered mobile of the user on their birthday.
Send Bulk SMS Messages to all the users.

We have started a twitter feed where we are finding out when admissions are starting for various schools in Hyderabad. Follow us on Twitter. To learn more visit the website http://www.yourschool.in or visit our blog http://blog.yourschool.in. All kinds of feedback would be greatly appreciated so that we can truly improve this product so that schools can create a more informative and up to date presence online.

Social Web - Changed for the better

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 11:29:13 PDT

A few months ago I wrote this article Social Web does not work for me. Life has changed with regards to my social networking since then for the better. Some examples include

Started to tweet a lot more and people have started replying to my tweets. So there is a nice conversation going on.
Met some old friends on Facebook who i lost complete touch with over the years.
Met business acquaintances on Linked In and have successfully executed business with them.

What has caused this change? Initially it was a challenge. My initial challenges were

What do i post about ?
Why would anyone be interested in what I wrote about ?
Why is nobody responding to what I posted ?
Is anybody reading what I wrote ?
How do I get more friends ?

But i kept posting and just writing about what I thought people would be interested in reading and slowly I gathered friends, followers and acquaintances. Then the conversations started to happen the connections started to be made and the whole thing suddenly started to turn around.

What did I learn in my journey on the social web ?

Be careful about what you post. Think about what would your friends and followers would be interested in.
Try to make sense of what you are posting each time as not everyone may be part of the conversation you are having from the beginning.
Do not accept every friend request that you get - it becomes unmanageable very quickly.
You will find your friends and your friends will find you eventually - do not spend hours and hours seeking them out.
Try to make what you post sound relevant - do not just post anything that comes your way.
Have fun, do not look at it as if it is a job to do.
Its nice to have the social media applications readily accessible like on the mobile phone - you never know where you might get a thought you want to post about. Once the moment passes its hard to recreate that thought.
Do not get discouraged by the initial lack of response. Unless you have posted something the application will not have enough to let your friends find you.
Do not post about anything you will not say in public.
Always keep reviewing what you have posted from time to time and delete stuff from your time line that do not sound relevant or meaningful.

Problem solving skills

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 17 Oct 2010 10:45:12 PDT

We have been on a recruitment drive for the last month or so and its been quite a frustrating experience. Our recruitment process for junior developers involves a written test, technical interview and a HR interview. We have found a lot of candidates have cleared the written test and are able to answer technical questions with regards to definitions and syntax of programming languages. They do this with ease and its a very text book like answer. If you wander into the domain of making them think by twisting a regular problem slightly they are taken completely by surprise.

I think this is due to the way we are taught in India. We are very good as long as one does not deviate from the bookish suggested approach of understanding and solving anything. We are taught how to "by-heart" everything even if one does not understand it. For example, my 4 year old daughter is forced to learn Hindi poems each 4 lines long even though she does not know what the words in the poem mean. All you have to do is give her the cue word and the rest of the poem flows out fluidly. And this has been my experience in the interviews as long as you stick to the tried and tested questions you will get very text book like answers.

From our experience we have realised that its easier to train a developer that can think on their own and can look up a million resources on how to write the program once they have identified the solution. If a developer cannot think of the solution on their own then you end up helping them to come up with the solution and also helping them to solve it which takes up a lot of ones time. Also it is very hard to teach someone how to think. It is relatively easier to teach them how to program or the syntax.

Ooty : The queen of hill stations

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 08:27:23 PDT

It was almost 12 years ago that I visited Ooty as a student from college staying in rustic run down dormitories for a couple of days and doing the regular sights that had to be seen by every tourists visiting this wonderful hill station.

It was so different this time - we stayed in 3 different resorts in different parts of Ooty. It all started with taking the flight from Hyderabad to Coimbatore and then the lovely drive up the hills that took about 3 hours to do with 34 hair pin bends that brought nausea to the strongest of stomachs. But at the end of the drive we arrived at Kingscliff to the most wonderful view of Ooty from high up in the hill.

We then had lunch in the award winning restaurant at Kings Cliff called Earl's Secret. A beautiful restaurant serving fine dining that makes everyone feel special. After some trekking around the hotel and some shopping at Charring Cross it was time for drinks and dinner which was served in the Bar Room of this resort with a real crackling fire place. Having never seen a real crackling fire it was wonderfully exciting.

The next day started off with a trip across the hills to Destiny that is a farm stay. Its about 45 min by car from Kings Cliff. If the ride through the hills is exciting then the last 500 meters on the jungle road in an army truck is the icing on the cake. Once you reach there - you have so much to do one does not know where to start. We started with the walk around the farm seeing the stables, the cow shed, the horse riding track, the duck pond, the fishing tank and then all the fields with carrots, herbs and strawberries. Then in the night there was a bon-fire with barbecue and then there was disco night.

The next morning after a lovely buffet breakfast with a lot of stuff cooked from the produce of the farm we went on a trek through the jungle to the lake that is adjacent to the farm. It was a beautiful walk through very rustic mud roads that were slushy from all the monsoon rain. The 10 km walk gave us an opportunity to view some of the best views i have seen in my life. In the afternoon we witnessed rain for the first time and the whole valley looked so different. The night ended with some Karaoke, Disco and a crackling fire place in my bed room !!!

The next morning after breakfast we started off to the next resort called Sherlock. Based on the Sherlock Holmes theme the resort is tastefully decorated with wonderful views of Ooty town. One can just sit for hours in the lawns with a laptop (what i did) just watching the view and ignoring the laptop sipping on some nice hot Nilgiri tea. In the evening we trekked on a hill called Tiger Hill. Again the most beautiful views to assault the senses mixed with a fragrance of Eucalyptus was just the right mix to not want to go back home. One more crackling fire place to finish our 3 day stay in Ooty.

Having thought we saw everything we woke up the next morning to a fog filled valley with visibility down to a few meters. Just another facet of this wonderful hill station that makes us want to go back and visit it again and again.

These 3 hotels are run by The little Earth Group. They are small, homely and tastefully done up hotels that bring back the British Raj with a wonderful modern twist to it. The wonderful food, the crackling fire places, the wood paneled walls of Kings Cliff, the views from Kings Cliff and Sherlock, the farm experience at Destiny makes one want to come back again and again and there were so many guests who were repeat customers. Its not surprising that these hotels are among the top hotels in TripAdvisor.

Double standards of going green

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 24 Apr 2010 00:42:40 PDT

We just celebrated Earth Day and Earth Hour. I am for these two concepts to try and save the environment. A lot of organizations are going green and i had an opportunity to see first hand how one organization is going green and the double standards within that organization in implementing this.

Let me recount my experience. There were no paper/plastic cups at the coffee/tea/cold drink/water dispensers. When i looked around i found coffee mugs and then realised that we had to use those to drink anything. A very noble idea to save paper and the environment - but what about water. In a city like Hyderabad where water is a problem i was observing that each time someone drank from those mugs they would wash it and then again wash it after it has been drunk from. Now you might wonder why was it washed twice - the reason is the person who used the mug washed it because he used it. The person who was going to drink from that mug washed it because he did not know if the person who last used it washed it. So with the intention of saving paper are we wasting other resources.

Next we were to have a meeting to discuss a document. We were 4 of us in the meeting and since there was no projector/computer in the meeting room there were 4 color print outs of 20 pages each that were taken just for that meeting. I do not need to elaborate any further on the possible number of trees that must have gone into making those 80 pages for that 1 hour meeting. The meeting after ours too there were quite a few of them holding print outs which only shows that almost everyone that goes into that meeting room ends up taking print outs for the meeting. How can one save paper in this situation. Every conference room big or small should have a computer monitor/projector from which users should be able to remote desktop their own machine and open the document that is being discussed.

My point is it is important to go green and think in that way for all organizations. But there is no point implementing it in only certain aspects of the organization. Every function of the organization should be thought through and a unified approach implemented to truly go green. It is only when such a unified approach is implemeted with every member of the organization on board with what is being done and the effects of their efforts will such initiatives really be effective. Otherwise it is only on paper and words but not in implementation and real effect.

Another thing that I have noticed is that the more affluent the country/city/organization/individual the more environmentally damaging they are. But it is these affluent sections of society that do the most preaching about being green. The poorer sections of society anyway do not have the money to be environmentally damaging in a big way so there is no point really preaching to them. So it is the affluent members of society that should seriously introspect the way they live their lives and implement going green in their own little ways.

Awesome Indiblogger meet

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:34:27 PDT

It was great to be back at the Indiblogger meet after more than 2 years. The meet was held at the Fortune Select Manohar hotel near the Begumpet Airport and it was great to meet some old friends that i got acquainted with in the last meet and it was nice catching up with them after so long. I also got to meet a lot of new friends and learnt about their interesting blogs that I am sure to be busy reading over the next few days.

The meet started off on time with some entertaining videos on a mystery blogger who wanted to come all the way from Germany to attend the blogger meet - the Indiblogger ice breaker spoof is always very entertaining. After that it was the 30 seconds of fame where each participant in the bloggers meet could introduce themselves and their blog. There were a lot of interesting bloggers with a mixture of the young and the old, the quirky funny bloggers to the serious bloggers. There were bloggers who blog about stories, dreams, inner voices and a lot of other varied subjects.

After this there was an interesting session where each of the participants were given a chart to wear around their neck and anyone could scribble anything on the chart. This was a wonderful idea to collect blog address' that one can then go through without the fear of forgetting the address of the blog. This went on for quite some time but the time just flew during this session as i was meeting a lot of interesting people and getting to know them better.

The quiz that followed was very informative and interesting. Came to know about a lot of things which included Fake Steve Jobs and one red paper clip. This was followed by some lovely food and enjoyable conversation.

Thank You Indiblogger team for a well organized event. Hope we don't have to wait another 2 years before we can have another meet here @ Hyderabad.

The Khan Academy

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 20:32:21 PDT

There are a lot of universities that have made their courses online which usually involve a professor taking a class and the class is recorded and published on the internet. These are usually complex courses that are long and very involving and it takes time and patience to complete them.

On the other hand there are courses for school children which are usually custom paid programs that cost quite a bit. These programs are delivered via custom programs for children to watch and learn.

I came across The Khan Academy which has videos for teaching children Math and Science and has a lot of videos related to banking, finance, investing, venture capital funding and so on. All these videos are done by a single person Salman using paint as a whiteboard and with him explaining the concept. The wonderful part is the simplicity of the whole delivery mechanism and the effectiveness in using this delivery mechanism to teach a concept.

All the videos are free and are available on you tube. Happy viewing and learning.

Being passionate Vs Making money

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 04:32:55 PDT

Over the last few days I have been having interesting discussions with my friends on being passionate in what we do versus having focus on the money aspect while doing things. Here are my thoughts on the same.
I belive that one needs to be passionate about what one does. There should be an excitement while thinking about what one is doing. What this does to the person is that it makes them enjoy what they are doing and it also ensures that they feel responsible for what they are doing. This automatically leads to a better product and a more caring service. This all sounds so wonderful but there is a downside to this just having passion and doing things may not result in short term monetary rewards but almost always there are long term monetary rewards if the person sticks to their passion right through the ups and the downs. Also during this time the person is enjoying what they are doing and this keeps them motivated and happy.

On the other hand if a person is doing a job only for the monetary aspect of it then this makes it very hard. There are always ups and downs in the monetary side of things. If there is no other motivation other than money in doing a job then the person will find it very hard to navigate through the downs. The downs are inevitable - one cannot try to escape them. Its just inherrent in the monetary cycle. Money also tends to make the person lose focus on the quality aspect of the product and the service. This in turn finally effects the long term monetary gain expected from offering the product or the service.

Its important to have passion in what one does with a focus on ensuring long term monetary gains. Focussing on short term monetary gains and compromising on the passion never works. Having passion while doing things eventually gets noticed and will be rewarded.

Something new to learn always

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 07:01:34 PDT

I believe learning can never ever stop. Everyday there is something new to learn and there are times when you are forced into a situation that drives you to learn even faster. These situations are crisis situations - during this time you always learn at lightning speed and you feel it is the hardest time in your life but the important thing is to stick in there ride out the crisis, do your best and you end up coming out of it a more knowledgeable individual. No amount of make believe scenarios and training can give you the kind of learning a crisis situation gives.

Having significant experience in Software Development and having worked on more than one large project one feels that they have seen pretty much everything. Over the last 15 days I have been through two crisis situations that have made me realise that I have not experienced it all yet.

The first situation involved our servers that were on a public IP located at a data center that hosted our website http://yourschool.in/. I got a call one day from the data center telling me that the bandwidth used by our site was 25 times more than normal in a month. So I immediately went and checked the usage information given by the data center and realised that the only way this kind of traffic can happen is if someone is hacking into the server. So I start investigating this and I sudenly realise that I need to start learning about Firewalls, Ports, IIS Vulnerabilities, IIS Logs, ... to solve the problem.

The second situation involved an application that we built that worked fine in the development environment, Quality Assurance Environment but was crashing in production. We spent more than a week every night in the office trying to debug the problem in production but to no avail. After a lot of persistence and patience and learning from our findings in production we were able to replicate the issue in the development environment. It was related to an issue of deadlocks happening in the database. This time I was forced to learn about SQL Profiling, Deadlocks, SQL Error Logs, CLR Profiling,...

I could have found it very hard to create these two situations in a laboratory environment to be able to learn how to handle it. But after riding through these two difficult situations I have come out feeling like I am a more knowledgeable person now which does make me feel good. So my hope is to never stop learning and the more I learn the more confident and happy I feel.

How life can change in a moment?

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 23:56:08 PST

I was reading a very deep and touching post today on Subroto Bagchi's blog which is about a young girls life changing in a momment for no fault of hers. Its a very touching story that can happen to any one of us.

There have been 2 devastating earthquakes in the last 1 month one in Peurto Rico and the other in Chile. In just a matter of a minute the lives of millions of people changed. Again something that can happen at any time to anyone.

Life can change in a momment for any one of us and it is important that we enjoy and have fun with every momment that we have.There is no point in thinking about the missed opportunities in life or what life could be if only we did something - you are wasting precious time that can be spent just enjoying life.

Social Web - Does not work for me !

noreply@blogger.com (Sudeep D'Souza) — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 14:53:00 PST

First there was twitter. Everyone seemed to have had a twitter account. So I created one too. Nothing happened for the longest time and I unknowingly followed a lot of people who kept dumping me with a lot of junk information. So I then went and "unfollowed" many of them. I then configured it on my mobile phone thinking OK at least this will make me tweet. I tweeted the first couple of days - i then felt stupid tweeting because i wondered, do the people that are following me really care about what I tweet. What if I am just creating a whole lot of junk information out there with my tweets. So I stopped tweeting when I realised I gave some stupid advise on tweeting that goes like "just tweet what ever is in your head. I'm sure there are enough people that will put up with your nonsense, like me". This is not really true is what i now realised. Tweet only if you have quality information to share which your followers care about.

Then came facebook and orkut - I have accounts with all the three but that's about it. Every once in a while someone friends me which makes me login to accept their invitation for the fear of insulting them if I do not accept their "friendship" and then I friend some more people just for the fun of it.

I was all excited when Google came out with Google Wave. They gave me an account with some invitations and I so excitedly handed them out to everyone hoping that they will "wave" with me, but that was not to be. Very few waved with me because we did not know what to "wave" about. Maybe I'm still not yet far enough into the future to understand how to "wave".

Anyway then came "buzz". I again said OK let me "buzz". But then again I had a whole lot of friends that I thought I could "buzz" with, but again I was wrong - my Google "buzz" is as quiet as quiet can be.

So all this got me thinking. Is real time information not my thing? With so much information readily available all over the place are we complicating our lives with all of this. Well I think I am. The catch is that if you don't use any of these tools you are accused of not changing with the times. You are accused of being stuck in the past. Ive been writing this blog since July 2005 and I still find it the best way to express my thoughts. My thoughts on this blog are written, reviewed, changed, reviewed again and then published. Thoughts and ideas should not be like fast food and I think all of the "tweeting, buzzing, waving, wall(ing), ..." is like fast food - you get a few tit bits of value and the rest is junk !