Sunil Jagadish

Goodbye 2009!

2010-01-01T00:00:00.001+05:30

6 years and clicking

2009-08-30T14:33:00.004+05:30

My Canon S2 IS is now 6 years old and it still works! Off-late, it started complaining of a 'Error 18' every time I switched it on. I looked up on the internet and tried out some of the tricks mentioned in various blogs, but, all in vain. For a few weeks I just gave up trying anything else. Today I re-charged my 2700mAh batteries and switched on the camera and refused to work. I came across CHDK (Canon Hack Development Kit) and installed it on my SD card and started my camera with it and now there seems to be no 'Error 18' any more! Long live my S2 IS!

If any one is aware of a complete firmware upgrade for S2 IS, do let me know.

PS: Yes, it feels a bit weird coming back all of a sudden from no where and making a blog post :-p

Changing lanes

2009-07-09T16:27:00.004+05:30

My profile page in the Yahoo! Labs website :) which will soon be gone given that I've moved on to a different group which works on Yahoo! sponsored search. It has been a couple of weeks into the new team and has been a lot of learning, reading, trying-out-stuff kind of activities. I'm looking forward to continue doing some cool stuff. I'll miss working with Rushi, Narayan and Shiva.

Gift a Tree!

2009-07-01T08:14:00.003+05:30

I am very happy after reading the announcement that Yahoo! will plant a tree for every employee's birthday! This is in association with an NGO - TreesForFree.org What a nice way to celebrate one's birthday!

This is open not just to corporates, but, also to individuals. Visit the site for more details and Gift a tree today!

Hussain Sagar Lake

2009-06-01T20:24:00.002+05:30

The Hussain Sagar lake, Hyderabad, viewed from the famous Eat Street.

Swift - Slides & Donuts at a beach

2009-04-22T01:54:00.004+05:30

Ankith, Sharath, Sreenath and I just got to know what we can do with a Swift on a beach:

Looking forward to the next version ;-)

Melukote

2009-03-11T19:39:00.008+05:30

Last weekend, I drove to Melukote. Melukote is a nice place, primarily known for it's temples. One of them being the Yoga Narasimha Swamy temple, which is on the Yadugiri hill. The view from the top floor of the temple is amazing. The evening sunset is a pleasant sight to witness. The temple is open all day on Sunday and on other days, it is closed for about 3 hours in the noon.

Directions from Bangalore:
On the Bangalore-Mysore highway, watch out for sign boards indicating Melukote, after crossing Mandya town, where you'll have to take a right to get into Pandavpura taluk. Melukote is about 35kms from the highway.

More photos here.

Gandhi's belongings

2009-03-07T08:21:00.004+05:30

It was a rude shock to read this -
"We procured Gandhi items through Mallya: Govt"

In today's time of degrading economy and lot of needy people in our country, who, don't even have basic necessities, was the $1.8 mn really justified? Would Kingfisher and United Spirits employees be more proud of their jobs? It is a mere show-off and election time hype. Imagine how many needy people could benefit if the same money was used for a more noble cause. Lucky & clever Mr. James Otis!

Ambika Soni's statement:
“We were working on several options to get the items back. This is a victory for the UPA government.”
Looks like madam isn't aware of the current GDP figures. What kind of an achievement is this?
Does she think people will vote for the current Govt. just because they bought back Gandhi's belongings?

Barcamp Bangalore 8 @ Yahoo!

2009-03-05T20:19:00.002+05:30

Yahoo! Open Hack Day is back

2009-01-21T11:36:00.001+05:30

Airtel trying out 3G in Karnataka?

2008-11-28T22:27:00.002+05:30

For the last few weeks Airtel signal strength has been very poor around my residence (Bangalore). Today I observed a total black-out of signal and then wow! my phone detected a 3G network (the regular GSM sticks indicating the strength weren't there any more). I tried to make calls and connect to internet on my phone, but, it wasn't working. After an hour or so, I was back on the 2.xG network. I really hope Airtel switches to a 3G network soon. Can't wait to take advantage of my new Nokia E71 :-)

Distribute and Conquer

2008-11-11T10:35:00.002+05:30

The new mantra - Distribute and Conquer
(shameless plug- phrase coined by me :-D)

Go the Hadoop way - http://hadoop.apache.org/core/

Having a few hundred nodes at your command, waiting to do your work is a Godly feeling.
You don't need a mega server farm to run hadoop. You can install it on your home desktop. All you need is JRE.

Happy Diwali!

2008-10-30T07:46:00.002+05:30

Happy Diwali!

Yahoo! India Maps rocks

2008-10-22T22:07:00.003+05:30

How much will it cost me to take an auto rickshaw from Jayanagar 7th Block to BTM Layout?
If I am walking from Leela Palace to Embassy Golf Links Business Park, then, which route should I take? What if I were to be riding a bike?

Throw these queries to Yahoo! India Maps and look at what you get.
You can view maps in local languages too.

Travel smart with Yahoo! India maps - http://in.maps.yahoo.com

Identifying genuine Indian currency notes

2008-09-10T12:05:00.005+05:30

As you would have read in the news, unimaginable number of fake currency notes are in circulation. Apart from Govt. putting in efforts to solve this mess, we have to be careful when we are transacting. Don't wait till you get yourself in a fix and then wonder what to do. Know how to identify genuine currency right now - http://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/ic_banknotessecurity.aspx
The different denominations we have - http://www.rbi.org.in/Scripts/ic_banknotes.aspx
It is better to transact online as much as possible.

On a lighter note:
"Go green" - is that the motive of who ever is behind all this mess? :-D May be they are trying to promote online banking.

1 year at Yahoo! !

2008-09-10T09:47:00.003+05:30

Today, I complete 1 year as an FTE at Yahoo! :-)
The journey with Yahoo! started from early 2007 when I started off as an Intern.

Yahoo! is treating everyone in Leela Palace, today, on this occasion.
Please do join the celebrations - http://bangalore.yahoo.com/bigthinkers/event_sep10_08.html
;-)

Light 'em up

2008-09-05T09:30:00.004+05:30

EXIF
Camera: Canon PowerShot S2 IS
Lens: 36 - 432 mm equivalent
Focal length: 11.1mm
Exposure: 0.8 sec
F-stop: f/8

Post-processing: Midtone adjustment (-100)

Google Chrome

2008-09-03T07:26:00.008+05:30

http://www.google.com/chrome has just come in at the right time when I was getting frustrated with Firefox because it has been eating up my RAM like crazy. It goes beyond 120MB many times! I downloaded Chrome right-away and soon found that Hotmail doesn't load in Chrome! Does Hotmail consider Chrome to be a primitive browser when Google claims it to be something totally new - http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/?

PS: Yahoo! Mail works absolutely neat in Chrome :-)

Update:

Thanks to Chrome for now taking away 20MB x k from my system RAM, where k = number of tabs opened :-(

Yahoo! dances

2008-08-06T09:55:00.004+05:30

I just love this video which is now on the Yahoo! corporate blog - http://ycorpblog.com/2008/08/04/and-now-we-dance/ wherein all Yahoos including the CEO, President and many others dance with Matt Harding, to the tune of a lovely Bengali song called 'Praan' (meaning Life) composed by Garry Schyman and sung by 17 year old Palbasha Siddique.

Long live the spirit of Yahoo!

Don't miss the scene of Jerry and Sue doing their dance steps :-)
I know you won't miss the Google sign board :-)

Seventymm - Pathetic movie rental service!

2008-07-29T23:07:00.011+05:30

How do you like the idea of subscribing for a movie rental service to watch movies, which is supposed to be a recreational activity, but turns out to be a sick experience?

All you need to do to get the DVD/CD you want to watch is send a request through a website (which rarely works) and also call up a "so-called" customer care and tell them that you haven't received the movie(s) and again call them to tell that - "Damn you, you've sent me the wrong movies!". After all this, a "senior" person comes on the line and apologizes as if that person's sole responsibility is to apologize (Chief Apology Officer?) only to find that they shamelessly send you a wrong DVD the very next day.

"Systems are down" syndrome! - Thanks to IT; banks, insurance companies and now even movie rental companies have a new reason to quote when things aren't working.

Somehow, Seventymm people who come to deliver DVDs often find their bike tyre punctured because of which they can't deliver a movie

Want to hear what Seventymm customers are saying? Read this, which is their very own forum in which people have "praised" their service to an extent that you won't find a reason not to subscribe to this service (to be read as - fall into this trap).

Sending emails to support@seventymm.com is like shooting arrows in the dark. You just don't know if a human ever read it at the other end. How much ever you scream, shout, cry, there is just no response.

I seriously wonder if it really took $100 million to setup such a horrible company offering such poor quality of service. I also wonder if these investors ever go out to the web and read reviews about the company they are investing in.

After all this and even after reading this, if you think you just can't survive without subscribing to seventymm, then, God save you! R.I.P.

Update:
I couldn't tolerate this any more and tried to find the e-mail addresses of senior execs at Seventymm, but, none of their contact details were disclosed on their website. So, I sent a mail directly to their VC company's execs. Soon after which I got a call from the GM of Seventymm assuring that I will be refunded the money (not sure whether it is only the over-charged portion or the balance of my 6 month rental money which I've paid). The GM did mention a valid point about their company still in the growing stages and that very soon such issues will not happen, which I do understand. The main problem was that they didn't communicate at all. In case of a genuine problem, they should have made it a point to mail me and keep me informed of what is happening. Nevertheless, I hope one fine day I'll be writing a good review about seventymm.

Another update:
I'm getting a refund for the unused 4 months out of the 6 months subscription out of which I've used it for 2 months!

in.com - a new e-mail service

2008-07-27T16:34:00.001+05:30

in.com is a new (at least to me) e-mail service being provided by Network18.

* Very simple interface
* No ads!
* Has mail filters
* Import address book

We are #1

2008-06-09T23:33:00.002+05:30

Yahoo! India - best web portal in the country!
http://www.pcworld.in/india/features/Communications/Web_AwardsPortal/4325504/12
Hats off to all the folks behind this - content management teams, dev, UX etc.

Facebook advertising

2008-05-25T12:12:00.002+05:30

I stumbled upon Facebook's advertising page - http://www.facebook.com/ads/create/. One can choose various demographic parameters based on which Ads will be targeted. The nice part about this is that it shows the target audience size as you choose the values for the parameters. Numbers are always interesting. It is a known fact that not always the user declared demographic information is accurate. This seems to be the case with Facebook too.

Child marriage?! :-P

So, to what extent can one rely on user declared information? The question of trust is their on both sides - how can users trust service providers and how can the service providers trust their users?

By the way, Valleywag had reported sometime that now Bill Gates is "really" on Facebook.

It's your right

2008-05-10T00:41:00.004+05:30

Tomorrow (technically today), is the Karnataka Assembly Elections 2008.
Go ahead and caste your vote!

Prediction by Astrologer Bejan Daruwalla in one of his articlescaught my attention which concludes by saying:

Considering all these aspects, Ganesha feels that BJP looks well placed but they might fail to get the comfortable majority in Assembly and may fall short to dominate the Karnataka's politics.

Update:
I just caste my vote. Some bad practices and defects I observed:

1. While collecting the voting slip, the people issuing the voting slip tried to bias/confuse by telling - "Saar illi eradane booth ge hogi first button press maadi" Translated to English - "Sir, go to the second booth and press the first button". I was conscious of the party I voted for, but, what about those people who innocently get biased because of this?

2. The logos of various parties placed besides each button on the electronic voting machine are printed on a pink-ish sheet of paper in black ink which is a bad idea. Ideally they should have printed the colour logo on a white sheet of paper.

I wonder if someday in future there would be web-based voting system. People who have been delivering long speeches would end up learning about XSS attacks ;-)

Yahoo! India launches Glue pages

2008-05-08T19:05:00.003+05:30

Check out the all-new glue pages pages marking yet another step towards openness. Now, the search results contain not just the vanilla page titles and links, but, also shows up information from Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Images, Wikipedia, Howstuffworks, YouTube, eBay etc.

Sample search: Pizza, Cricket