Venkatarangan's Blog [வெங்கடரங்கன் வலைப்பதிவு]

Tamil Internet Conference 2009 in Germany

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 17:27:29 GMT

As Vice-Chair of INFITT I am pleased to announce that the next Tamil Internet Conference TIC 2009 will be held in Europe, at the Institute of Indology and Tamil Studies of the University of Cologne in Germany during October 23-25, 2009. Tamil Internet Conferences of INFITT are major events for computer professionals and Tamil Diaspora working in the area of Tamil Computing and Tamil Internet. Tamil Internet Conference 2009 is the Eighth in the series, with earlier ones held in Singapore (1997, 2000, 2004) , Chennai (1999, 2003), Kuala Lumpur (2001), and San Francisco (2002). Interested participants are encouraged to register online at http://www.infitt.org/ti2009/

தமிழ் இணைய மாநாடு 2009 பத்திரிகையாளர் சந்திப்பு: இவ்வாண்டின் தமிழ் இணைய மாநாடு வரும் அக்டோபர் 23ம் தேதி முதல் 25ம் தேதி வரை ஜெர்மனியில் நடைபெறவுள்ளது. உத்தமம் அமைப்பும், கோலொன் பல்கலைக் கழகமும் இணைந்து நடத்தும் இந்த சர்வதேச மாநாட்டின் விவரங்களை பகிர்ந்து கொள்ள டாக்டர் மு.ஆனந்த கிருஷ்ணன் (அண்ணா பல்கலைக்கழக முன்னாள் துணைவேந்தர்) பத்திரிகையாளர்களை சந்தித்தார். மா.ஆண்டோ பீட்டர் மற்றும் நானும் உடனிருந்தோம்.

மாநாட்டில் அளிப்பதற்குரிய கட்டுரைகளை இந்த ஆண்டு ஆகஸ்டு 15க்குள் http://www.infitt.org/ti2009/ என்ற இணையதளத்தில் பதிவு செய்யலாம். வல்லுநர் குழுவால் தேர்ந்தெடுக்கப்படும் கட்டுரைகள் மாநாட்டில் விவாதத்திற்கு எடுத்துக் கொள்ளப்படும்

Twitterக்கு தமிழ் சொல் என்ன?

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 16:15:35 GMT

What do you call in Tamil new technology trends like Twitter, Tweets and Micro blogging?. Today in a press meet where I talked about that these trends are catching up amongst Tamil writers, I was asked this question. I come home thinking and guess what I receive a Tweet from Dr.Na.Ganesan (NASA, USA) with the answer in his blog post, as if he has read my mind.

முனைவர் நாக. கணேசன் நான் துணை தலைவராகயிருக்கும் உத்தமம் என்ற தன்னார்வ அமைப்பின் வட அமெரிக்கா தலைவராக உள்ளார், ஒருங்குறியில் மிக தேர்ச்சிப் பெற்றவர். என் ஐயத்திற்கு அவரின் விடைக் கீழே (வள்ளுவரிலிருந்து உதாரணத்தோடுக்கூடிய அவரின் அருமையான விளக்கம் அவரின் பதிவில் இங்கே):

Twitterer என்றால் "சிட்டு”
Tweet என்றால் "சிட்டி"
Microblog என்றால் "நுண்பதிவு"

ஆஹா. என்ன அற்புதமான தமிழ் வார்த்தைகளை கொடுத்துள்ளார் முனைவர் நாக. கணேசன் அவர்கள், அவருக்கு என் நன்றி. இது போல எனக்கு பிடித்த எளிமையான அழகான தமிழ் தகவல் தொழில்நுட்ப சொற்கள் சில:

செல்பேசி - Mobile Phone
வலைப்பூக்கள் - Blogs
வலைப்பூ - Blog
பதிவு - Blog Post
இணையம் - Internet
கணினி / கணி - Computer

Benefits of Windows 7 over Windows XP

Sat, 27 Jun 2009 08:52:40 GMT

Today in one of the groups I am a member, there was a question on the cost benefits of Windows 7 over Windows XP. In these recessionary times, everything is about cost and RoI. No CIO is interested to spend on an upgrade just for technology sake. With that background this was an interesting question, so I set out to answer him, which I have reproduced below.

The first answer for such a question is that any new version of any software product improves “productivity” by XY%, where XY are dependent on how you feel on that day.

Jokes apart, in my opinion I think the upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 saves cost by the following:

Productivity, certainly. Common tasks are easier and faster. For example with the built-in Windows Search, finding documents really saves you time. And for techies tasks like IPConfig /Renew can be done from GUI itself
Avoid recreating lost documents. Built in version-control and transaction file-system in Windows 7 (Vista has this too)
Avoid bandwidth costs by some Spammers using your Windows XP as a SpamBots or Zombies with better stateful firewall (Inbound and Outbound) in Windows 7 (Vista has this too)
Data Theft, Security and reinstall time spend with UAC in Windows 7 (Easier to use than in Vista)
Less power consumption through better sleep/hibernate support
Save time by building web standards Web Applications with built-in Internet Explorer 8.0
Save time and cost with built-in CD Burning, DVD Maker (Vista has this too)
My personal favourite is an enhanced System Restore (life saver) and time saved with fixing a rogue software install (Vista has this too)
A superb Windows Backup (this alone is worth every dollar of Windows 7). Third party products purchased separately for Windows XP store in proprietary backup file formats, where as Windows 7 (as in Vista) uses open VHD file format. This VHD files can be mounted and read/write natively in Windows 7
Built-in hardware enhanced virtualization free – Windows Virtual PC, which helps you to continue to run older applications
Save time with the more powerful task scheduler (so you don’t need to keep your machine switched ON or be there to run a program)
If you are a games developer, Windows 7 saves time by better 3D hardware accelerated graphics support/DirectX
Built-in applications like Snipping tool to take screen shots and so on (Vista has this too)

Microsoft has published a "Windows client features comparison chart" between Windows XP SP3, Windows Vista and Windows 7 here.

Yahoo! showing Google favourite Icon in IE

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 08:37:13 GMT

Recently I came across a problem from one of my friends. Whenever he browses to Yahoo! in Internet Explorer it was showing Google's favourite icon (Favicon) in browser address bar. He was confused. I then found the answer to the problem, which I am giving below.

When you navigate to a site, IE downloads the favicon and caches it in the temporary internet files folder, where the this favicon will be assigned a unique name and mapped to its URL. So for example, if you navigate to www.bing.com, IE will download the favicon from http://www.bing.com/favicon.ico and cache it as favicon[1].ico somewhere in the temporary internet files folder, and map it to http://www.bing.com/favicon.ico.

Now if you somehow remove this favicon file from the temporary internet files folder, without removing the mapping to its URL, then the cache entry http://www.bing.com/favicon.ico will point to a non-existent file. Now say you navigate to http://my.yahoo.com, and IE downloads the favicon from http://my.yahoo.com/favicon.ico to the SAME favicon[1].ico file in the temporary internet file folder, then the cache entry http://www.bing.com/favicon.ico will be mapping to the yahoo favicon.So the next time you go on http://www.bing.com, IE will query the cache and incorrectly think that the favicon for this site has already been downloaded and is available on file. It will load the favicon[1].ico for http://my.yahoo.com, and hence the wrong favicon will be displayed.

Ordinarily you cannot remove a file from the Temporary internet files folder without also removing the file’s mapping. But you can do this by running the del /s command in command line or possibly by using 3^rd party cache cleaning tools. Note that cleaning your temporary internet files folder through IE or the Internet Options Dialog will restore everything back to normal.

Saravana Stores, Usman Road, Chennai

Wed, 10 Jun 2009 18:56:00 GMT

Saravana Stores in T.Nagar, Chennai is certainly a big success story of retail in India and comparable in their low price strategy only to Wal-Mart of USA. I visited the “பிரமாண்டமாய்” store as it is called in Tamil after their popular launch TV ads few years back. I went with my wife and kid today evening as we wanted to buy a wall clock as gift for someone in the family. We dreaded the thought as the service in their stores are known to be bad to non-existent, and parking is impossible for miles around the store. Yet we braved it as we were looking for variety at a good price and nothing comes close to Saravana Stores for that combination.

Today was a normal working day so we presumed the crowd won’t be much – how wrong we were!. All the 7 floors were packed with people on every square inch, and each floor had over 100 of their staffs which made the place more crowded than it needs to be. If someone is brought blind-folded here they will certainly think some free distribution is going on here. You couldn’t see any item for more than 5 seconds in an aisle as you have to keep moving to give way to passing traffic. The management will do well for its customers if they remove one or two aisles in each floor to give more moving space.

All said, the varieties they have stocked in every item is as wide as it can get, it was incredible. Can you imagine, they have a whole floor in the annexure building for School Bags alone. If you consider Big Bazaar (BB) to be there competitor then BB will have only 20% of the variety Saravana Store has. After a 30 minute unforgettable shopping experience we came out in one piece. My 6 year old son being the most happiest of all – with 4 toys on his hand. I was happy too, as I spent only Rs.50 per toy against 10 times of that if I had gone to any other toy store in the city.

Update to XBOX 360 AC Adaptor story

Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:12:00 GMT

This is an update to the earlier post on my experiences with getting my XBOX 360 US version work in India, it was basically how I got a 220V Power Adaptor for XBOX 360 in India.

There are two options to get a 220V (India) Power Adaptor for your XBOX 360:

The XBOX 360 220V Adaptor I was using stopped working, may be because of the frequent voltage fluctuations in Chennai for last few months. Hence I went back to Ritchie Street and bought a new one. This time I made it a point to note down the shop name for benefit of others (and may be for myself again) as this was most asked in the comments I received for the earlier post. I purchased a new XBOX 360 220V Power Adaptor (without warranty) for Rs.2500 + VAT from "Shah Trading Co.", 15, Narasingapuram Street, Off. Mount Road, Chennai - 600002; Phone: 044-2841 5874.
After this, I contacted Microsoft Support in India and asked whether they have a solution now?. Surprisingly this time around, they right away offered a solution. They asked me to go a near by service center in Chennai and drop the original 110V (USA) power adaptor. Within 20-30 days of doing this, I received a replacement of a new 220V power adaptor absolutely free. Great service by Microsoft, keep it up. You can contact Microsoft support in India at toll-free 1800 102 1100 and select Option 7 for XBOX support. Please keep your XBOX 360 Serial number, original purchase invoice handy with you when you call and request them for a replacement to make your XBOX 360 US version to work in India. Considering that officially XBOX 360 support is available only in the region you bought I was lucky to get this replacement in India. I feel this replacement offer is a nice gesture by Microsoft and note that it is available only for original XBOX 360 accessories (not third-parties made).

HOME – Documentary Movie

Sat, 06 Jun 2009 11:59:00 GMT

I just now watched this documentary movie “HOME” by Director Yann Arthus-Bertrand (a french photographer and world renowned environmentalist). The full movie is available in HD Quality free in Youtube from yesterday till 14th June 2009. Don’t miss this opportunity to watch this must see movie.

I came to my office on a Saturday today so I can watch the movie in High Definition (HD) with the high-bandwidth that is available in the office – the privileges of being the CEO :-). The quality was amazing, unbelievable it was playing over the Internet. Like I mentioned last year when I watched “Casino Royale (1967)” in HD from Hulu.com, the availability of these high quality content over the Internet is now becoming more and more wide stream than ever. These compel me to predict that in next 10 years we will see the end of distribution of entertainment content (movies and songs) in any physical form – it will happen much faster than the best of Internet evangelists have dreamed of and it will happen even in developing countries like India at nearly the same pace.

Coming back to the movie “HOME”, the documentary chronicles how life on earth came into existence 4 Billions years back, how we humans came into existence 200,000 years back and how we started farming 10,000 years back. This background helps you to understand and appreciate the destruction we are making on our planet, after the discovery of OIL and our dependence on it. The movie emphasizes the fact of how all organisms and the Earth are linked in a "delicate but crucial" balance with each other, and how no organism can be self-sufficient. I really liked the fact, the movie didn’t end with a pessimistic note of all being lost on climate change, but on a positive note that worldwide change is happening (though in pockets) and we can reverse the trends.

Journey to the center of the earth

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 20:46:15 GMT

I purchased the DVD of this movie during my US trip last year, but never managed to get interested to even open the case. Today evening I had few hours to kill, so went and saw this movie. The DVD is two-sided you have the normal 2D version in Side-A, and the 3D version in Side-B; and it ships with 4 pairs of 3D glasses to view.

"Journey to the center of the earth" is a 2008 version of the story inspired by the book by "Jules Verne" (the famous science fiction author who wrote classics like Around the world in 80 days). The 3D experience right in your home was awesome. I have read the original novel in my childhood and I had then enjoyed it thoroughly. The movie's story line is weak and the movie could have been taken much better especially with such a powerful background theme. Several glaring gaps exists - how come they don't get burned on their way down and then way up accelerating at tremendous speed; how is there a gravity in the center of the earth?

My suggestion will be to give this movie a miss!

She's the One

Sun, 31 May 2009 20:04:26 GMT

After nearly a month I watched a movie yesterday, when in the afternoon today while browsing TV channels aimlessly I caught this movie in Star Movies . It was a 1996 Romantic Comedy movie "She's the One" starring Edward Burns & Jennifer Aniston. The story is about two Brothers, Mickey and Francis their tribulations of love, betrayal, and family. John Mahoney appears as the brothers father, who I have seen and enjoyed in his performance as the Dad in the popular TV Comedy sitcom Frasier - as usual he was brilliant.

Overall, I will rate the movie as a "Okay" to watch movie.

இருள் என்றால் என்ன?

Fri, 29 May 2009 20:53:45 GMT

இந்த வாரம் ஆனந்த விகடன் பத்திரிகையில் சத்குரு ஜக்கி வாசுதேவ் அவர்கள் ஒரு பெரிய விஷயத்தைப் பற்றி மிக அழகாகவும் அதே சமயம் மிக சுலபமாகவும் எழுதியுள்ளதைப் படித்தேன். அந்த விஷயம் - இருள். என்ன ஒரு பொருத்தம், இன்று காலை தான் எங்கள் யோகா வகுப்பில் எங்கள் ஆசிரியர் இருளுக்குள் கவனம் செலுத்திச் செய்யும் ஒரு தியானத்தை கற்றுக் கொடுக்க துவங்கினார்.

சத்குரு ஜக்கி வாசுதேவ் கட்டுரையில் கூறுகிறார்:

“உயிரற்ற இருள் சவம் ... உயிருள்ள இருள் சிவம்”
“இருள் தான் எல்லாவற்றுக்கும் மூலம்”. இருள் என்பது இயற்கை, வெளிச்சம் தான் செயற்கை. Coincidentally modern day science also talks high about the significance of Black Hole & Dark Energy in Big Bang theory.
என்னை மிகவும் சிந்திக்க வைத்த வரி: “குரு என்பவர் இருளை விலக்க வந்தவர் அல்ல, இருளை விளக்க வந்தவர்!”

Automated Exam management system

Fri, 29 May 2009 20:42:20 GMT

Recently in Television news I saw a news about Anna University Coimbatore implementing a complete automated Exam Management system. They seem to have implemented online solutions to manage all the phases of examinations in an university. This includes Question Paper Authoring, Hall Ticket printing, Secure Question Paper delivery and Evaluation of answer sheets.

In all this, what caught my attention was the Answer sheet evaluation process. Normally when you think of automation, you tend to think of students taking the test in a computer (CBT like model). But here, the tests are taken by students with traditional paper/pen; after which the answer sheets are scanned by a back office operation; then each examiner sitting in their own college/university can login online, see the answer sheets and evaluate. This saves lot of costs incurred by each of the examiner travelling, lodging, venue and more.

Good luck to the university for success of this scheme.

TechEd India 2009 and my session

Fri, 15 May 2009 19:32:00 GMT

After a gap of few years, I am happy that Microsoft premier event "TechEd" is happening again in India. For many of the regular speakers in the event, TechEd India is an annual ritual that we enjoy and look forward to eagerly. It gives a rare opportunity to meet, interact and network with brilliant participants, to hear what they are working on currently and how they are using Microsoft technologies in real life.

When the organizers told me the venue is Hyderabad I was at a loss - why on earth anyone will hold an event in Hyderabad at the middle of peak summer?. After few minutes of reaching the venue "Hyderabad International Convention Centre" I understood why. The Convention Centre was great, with world class infrastructure and I guess the best in India for years to come. And commuting to and from the new Hyderabad Rajiv Gandhi International Airport was not bad either. Though it is far from city, the roads are not that crowded like in Bangalore. I reached from Airport to City in about an hour and while returning from Hi-Tec city to Airport through the new ring road it took less than 45 minutes. The ring road named after Rajiv Gandhi (like many other things in Congress ruled AP) was good, they allow only four wheelers (cars and vans), trucks and two-wheelers are not allowed to ply in the road to prevent accidents. I couldn't say the same pleasant things about Paramount Airways - which delayed my return flight by some 4 hours (8:30PM flight took off at 12:30AM).

This year, I presented on Windows Azure - an overview session where I covered the need for Azure, Azure fundamentals and few demos on using Windows Azure.

What IT industry can learn from Politicians?

Mon, 11 May 2009 15:39:00 GMT

This is election time in India so politicians are in limelight, let us talk about them too. Before this global economic melt-down it was fashionable for Indian IT Czars to give suggestions and advice to our politicians and ministers on how to run the country. Recently in an IT event in Chennai I heard about what the IT industry can learn from Politicians. After all, Indian Democracy is older than the IT industry and Politics is as old as the time the second human (or women) was born in the world.

Politicians always play to their galleries. Politicians are the greatest social people, they ensure they constantly appear in the media – good or bad doesn’t matter. Keeping in touch with your audience is very important.
Politicians ensure they get themselves to the most advantageous position.
Politicians have no un-necessary historic baggage - No EGO & No Emotional attachments. This helps them to undo and redo ideologies/alliances on an ongoing basis.
Politicians always maximize their value. Look at what an MLA/MP/Minister earns during his tenure compared to what he/she invested during the campaigns. Politicians are also the biggest risk takers in that sense, because Elections are events where winner takes all.
Politicians realize and understand their weakness.

பழமொழிகளின் உண்மையான அர்த்தங்கள்

Sat, 09 May 2009 10:23:53 GMT

நேற்று எங்கள் யோகசன வகுப்பில் பேச்சுவாக்கில் நான் ஒரு பழமொழிச் சொல்லப் போக அது இந்த வலைப்பதிக்கு காரணமாகிவிட்டது. நடைமுறையில் இது போலச் சொல்லப்படும் பல பழமொழிகள் திரிந்து அவையின் உண்மையான அர்த்தங்கள் தொலைந்துவிட்டது என கீழுயுள்ள உதாரணங்கள் மூலம் எங்கள் யோக ஆசிரியர் கௌதம் சந்த் தெளிவாக்கினார்.

தவறு: களவும் கற்று மற (Learn Theft as well and then forget it)

சரி: களவு கற்க மற (Forget to learn Theft)

தவறு: ஆயிரம் பேரைக் கொன்றவன் அரை வைத்தியன் (One who has killed 1000 people is a half-doctor)

சரி: ஆயிரம் வேரைக் கொண்டவன் அரை வைத்தியன் (One who has 1000 herbs with him is a half-doctor)

Maya bazaar play by Surabhi

Sun, 26 Apr 2009 15:36:38 GMT

I heard few days back in RadioOne FM station, RJ Suchi say about a Mythology play "Maya Bazaar" to be performed by a 124-year old group "Surabhi". And it contains excellent special effects on stage. My son loves the story of Ghatotkatcha (after watching the film), so I decided to take him to play "Maya Bazaar" today at 3:30PM. Booked the tickets online. The group Surabhi is an entire performing family (everyone on stage and back stage are related and from the same family) and are experts at rope & pyro techniques and other special effects. You can read more about them and the synopsis of the play in the brochure they gave from here (PDF) .

The play was in Telugu language (I don't speak Telugu), still it was very enjoyable. They had over 50 artists (as young 2 or 3 years to very elderly) perform brilliantly on stage. The special effects were awesome, especially considering today's viewers are used to 3D Graphics, Movies, XBOX and more. The notable scenes with special effects were a garden (with real water fountain), fireworks from Arrows, Rain to quash the fire, Bed floating on air, Narada coming down from sky, the famous eating scene with laddos flying, birds flying, an eagle hunting a fish, dual-screen - hide and show Hero/Heroine at the same time and many more.

The play shows only today (two shows) in Chennai. If you get a chance to see this play next time (may be in Hyderabad) don't miss it.

Installing Windows 7 Build 7000 in MacBook Air

Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:46:00 GMT

Few weeks back I decided to repave my Laptop (Macbook Air) and go with Windows 7 Build 7000 (yes I know in few weeks we will have RC :-) ). After fixing few issues with drivers and boot camp, I am overall happy. Occasionally Windows doesn't shut-down gracefully, when it happens you got to force switch-off (which in MBA means holding the power off button for few seconds till you hear a POP sound).

The basic installation of the OS (Windows 7) is similar to doing it for Vista using Boot Camp. You start with Apple Boot Camp CD 1 and proceed from there. My installation was dual-boot configuration - having both Mac OS and Windows 7. Once Windows is installed , you continue with the devices installation which can be a little tricky. Below are few issues I faced before I could get everything working fine.

In Mac OS, you can select one of the OS to boot into after a restart. Unfortunately Mac OS didn't show the Windows 7 installation. Nothing to sweat. When you switch ON your machine you need to keep holding Alt (option) key till you the see the boot options. Here you can select Windows 7.
In Windows 7, initially for some reasons Boot Camp icon didn't show up in System tray. I had to run it from C:\Program Files\Boot Camp\kbdmgr.exe. I found it useful to update all Apple software then it seems to have got fixed.
Audio (Sound card) didn't get its driver installed correctly. MBA has a Realtek HD Audio, so I went to Realtek site and downloaded the latest Vista driver (R 2.22) from here or here. The site is designed a little counter-intuitive so be patient.
If some devices like in-built Camera didn't get installed correctly, go to device manager, update driver and point to the BootCamp CD.
I have a HP Photosmart C6288 Printer (part of HP Photosmart C6100 series). The default setup from HP will fail to install as it couldn't find either Windows XP or Vista. To fix this, right-click on the setup program (AIO_CDA_Full_Network_enu.exe). Then use the "Troubleshoot Compatibility" option or select properties and the compatibility tab:

Set the compatibility mode to Windows Vista
Set the privilege level to "Run this program as an administrator"

I have a Tata Indicom Plug2Surf USB data card. To install this, first time when you run the setup, Run it as Administrator. Even then when you run the application it will not detect the modem. You will need to ignore the application and create yourself (manually) a dial-up network connection. Customize and follow the instructions from this blog post (which talks for Huawei card though), skip the portions specific to Huawei, but it gives the correct username/password phone number to dial, etc.

For PDF creation, I was using CutePDF which doesn't work with Windows 7, so I went with PrimoPDF (free).

For Antivirus, I went with my good friend Kesavan's - K7 Computing Antivirus which works fine in Windows 7.

You should be all set by now, as for me (as seen below) all the devices are working fine. Eagerly waiting for Windows 7 RC.

iPhone and iPhone Apps

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 19:47:38 GMT

One of the strengths of iPhone is the now famous iTunes store, which helps you buy applications/music/movies/TV shows seamlessly. Lot of companies have tried the concept (which is not new) as old as 10-15 years back, for example Microsoft has tried it multiple times (Zune, Windows Player) in the past. The winning difference has been the flawless execution and the simplicity that Apple has delivered. Apple has managed to satisfy both ends - with their clout they got the big media companies to sign uniform pricing's and they also made it easy to get the casual developer on-board. The formula from Apple was simple - you make the application, we manage the hosting, delivery, installation, payment gateways, legal/taxation, etc. The developer gets 70%, Apple gets 30% - a neat deal for both parties. And Apple's new iPhone OS3 is pushing the envelope much further - check out this cool preview of iPhone OS 3 or here in YouTube.

Few months after my purchase of my iPhone, I searched for some applications. I found thousands of applications in their store, but I was looking for something that will be useful for me and not clutter my phone. A phone for me primarily is for Voice, SMS, Camera, email & web browsing (in that order of priority). I was not sure on the number of applications that will be available for India - as so far many of the American companies have avoided dealing with copyright/licensing/taxation trouble for India market. They feel the trouble is not worth for the size of the Indian market for these (how wrong they are). Traditionally Indian mobile users have not followed the global trend (and other advanced Asian markets like Korea and Japan) in purchase of applications, games, music & movies, but that I think is due to content for their taste not being available. Since iPhone store is one of the biggest USP's of iPhone and buying apps is not popular in India is probably a reason for iPhone being sold only 20,000 units in India since its launch.

In iPhone store I found a plethora of apps to be bought for India, there was no shortage - I have tried few iPhone apps and the shopping experience from the phone was seamless. No punching of credit cards (you do that when you create your iTunes account in the web) and no multiple confirmations/redirections/instructions. You click on buy, then install and you are done.

The apps I use regularly are two (both free)- TwitterFon and Skype (recently released). I also bought a Tetris game for $4.99. Regarding the apps, I found TwitterFon to be very convenient to use, I am finding myself twittering more when I am outside the office - waiting for something in a queue or participating like y'day in a boring session for CIOs by IBM India. About Skype for iPhone it is great to note that in India it works over both Wi-Fi and 2G connections. The quality of Skype calls using iPhone is great and the convenience of speaking with a mobile phone anyday for me is better than a headset or holding a USB Skype phone.

Things every business going online should note

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 17:56:39 GMT

I came across this article by Krishna Kumar of DARE India magazine on “19 mistakes online businesses make”. A well written article with good compilations of points that every business going online should note. It talks on most common assumptions that are wrong about doing business online. It demystifies some of the common myths that traffic is infinite, Google Adsense will make you a millionaire, Technology is everything and so on. I especially liked the points where it talked about server sizing and need to plan for adequate man power – which are something we tell our customers all the time.

The Pink Panther (2006) - Rented it from iStore

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 17:35:32 GMT

I always enjoy watching Pink Panther cartoons, but didn't knew they made a movie inspired by it. The other day my friend Dr.Satheesh mentioned about this movie "The Pink Panther (2006)" and how hilarious it was. Since I had iTunes installed on my machine (as I have a iPhone) I thought I should check out the famous iStore experience and buy the movie through it. Unfortunately my Apple account (since I have an India SIM for iPhone) didn't show me any movies. It seems there are very little items to buy in terms of music, movies, TV shows for rest of USA. So I used my US Credit Card and created a new account. Unlike Hulu.com and Amazon VOD services which restrict any activity for outside USA IP addresses, Apple allows you to purchase from iStore if you have a USA credit card and billing address. iStore presented two options - either to purchase the movie at $9.99 (too expensive considering I can buy the legal VCD/DVD in India for nearly half of that price) or rent it for $2.99. I selected to rent it. And I should say the whole experience was fabulous, any novice computer user can do it easily. After the purchase movie downloaded (nearly 1GB in high quality) seamlessly. The quality of the movie playback was great.

iStore rental has a limitation, the movie is available for 30 days from purchase and from the time you start playing it first you only have 24 hours (this could have been improved by increasing to 2 or 3 days). About the movie itself it was hilarious, a great comedy and a must watch. Steve Martin has done a fine job - his body language, dialogue delivery especially where he learns to pronounce "hamburger" was brilliant.

Ad expenditure in India to grow 6.4% in 2009

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:36:04 GMT

At Vishwak, we believe on the potential of the Internet and the innovative advertising that's possible in Web to keep the Online industry growing. Yes, the slow-down is affecting this industry too, much worse than expected. Still countries like India, Indonesia and China are showing reasonable growth even in this recession climate. And the online Ad industry is very different that it was in the Dot-com days. Today we have seen for many of our customers in Vishwak, their online revenues constitute 10-15% (the variation depends on how successful is their sales and new products team) of their overall revenue. For many of them their primary media (Newspaper or TV) currently yields majority of their revenues but that's been affected by this slow-down. If you take by medium, globally advertising expenditure in Internet is around 11% today.

In a recent forecast released by Zenith Optimedia, a unit of the Publicis Groupe S.A., the global ad spending is likely to slow by 6.9% to $453.2 billion. Ad expenditure in India is likely to grow at 6.4% growth (down from 18.9%). The internet is the only medium we expect to actually attract higher ad expenditure in 2009, thanks to its accountability and innovation in ad formats. We forecast 8.6% growth in internet expenditure in 2009, down from 20.9% in 2008. New formats are enjoying greater growth (29.8% from Internet video and rich media, 29.7% from internet radio and 11.9% from podcasts), but these represent only 12% of US internet expenditure between them. Once a modicum of confidence returns to the market we expect the growth of internet advertising to pick up again, to 11.3% in 2010 and 15.3% in 2011. We expect its share of the ad market to rise to 14.6% in 2011, up from 10.4% in 2008. However, in recent years the number of sites on the web has increased about twice as rapidly as internet ad expenditure, most of which goes to a handful of big players. A number of internet companies that have based their business model on advertising may find their model unsustainable now that credit is drying up.

Another report, this one from eMarketer reinforces this by predicting that online ad dollars will jump about 5% by 2013 (see the above chart). "The spending shifts predate the recession," says David Hallerman, eMarketer senior analyst. "But the current economy is reinforcing the new advertising models—and making them more permanent". "Digital marketing offers compelling benefits, especially for cash-conscious companies," he continues. "Marketers can more readily measure the results of Internet advertising than with most traditional media. This produces more-efficient advertising and higher ROI, which in turn pushes traditional media to compete with lower pricing."

Building faster web sites

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 09:33:54 GMT

There are lot of performance improving tips out there in the Internet on how to speed up web pages. Recently I came across these references and tools that will be useful.

Steve Souders from Google presents "Even Faster Web sites"
YSlow from Yahoo!. A firefox add-on that analyzes web pages and tells you why they're slow based on the rules for high performance web sites
More website optimization tips here
Webpage performance analyzer here

Trip to Vandalur zoo

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:10:46 GMT

Last Sunday I went with my son to Vandalur zoo (Arignar Anna Zoological park) near Chennai. It is about 25Kms from Chennai city on the NH45 national highway (the same road as Chennai Airport, Tambaram railway station) and driving there is easy once you cross Tambaram. There is ample car parking available inside the zoo premises. The Chennai suburban electric train service is another way to reach there with the station at walking distance from the zoo.

The zoo charges for entry are Adults: Rs.20, Children: Rs.10 and for Photo camera: Rs.25. You can see many varieties of animals, birds, fishes in the zoo. The zoo is situated on a large forest land with lot of space for each animals, so the area you need to cover is quite huge. There seems to be lot of vacant areas with no animals and the overall animal count seems to be low compared to the area of the zoo. You can cover the entire zoo in multiple ways:

by walk
by renting a cycle (just after the entrance in front of Hotel Tamilnadu)
buy a ride in the electric golf-carts (you need to wait for this in a queue)
buy a ticket in the zoo tours (in motor van or trams, these are to be booked in advance for the same day)

We went there in the afternoon (in the scorching sun, which was not a good idea) around 1:30PM. By the time we went options 2,3,4 were not available for us - so we took the trip by walk. We saw the animals near the entrance (Monkeys, etc.), then the birds and so on.

There are adequate number of resting area (shades) provided for sitting and relaxing, Toilet facilities are okay. The zoo severely lacks in food courts and cafeterias. Inside the zoo area there are a Aavin ice-cream booth, a small snack shop and in the entrance a restaurant Hotel Tamilnadu owned by Tamilnadu Government. After spending nearly two hours walking, we were tired and hungry - we wanted to get some snacks and my son wanted to eat a 'dosa'. At that time we were half-way inside the zoo, we walked all the way back to the entrance and went to Hotel Tamilnadu hoping for some eatables. To our utter dismay the restaurant was in bad condition (water stagnating on the floor), people having arguments with the billing counter staff (only one for a crowded zoo) and non-availability of any food. They don't seem to be serving Dosa/Idly or any other light snack - only rice items, veg and non-veg biryani's which too had ran out very soon. This re-enforced my general view that Governments (that too in India) have no business running a service industry, Hotel industry is a great example of that and you can add Resorts, Airlines to that list. We decided to cut-short our trip and came out of the zoo. The parking lot attendant helped us by suggesting a "Hotel Sangeetha" which was on the other side of the national highway, just opposite to the zoo. We drove down there, had some good Dosas and Fruit-Juice, came back re-energized.

We came back on time (had to buy the entrance ticket again) for our Lion Safari tour. We managed to book this ticket (advance booking for the 4:30PM tour) for the Lion Safari tour. The whole tour lasts for about 20 minutes and runs every hour twice. You are taken in a special caged van to a special enclosed area inside the zoo where lions are free to roam. The vehicle you are in goes very near to the Lions who are oblivious to our presence inside the van. If you are visiting Vandalur zoo don't miss this tour.

If you wish to see the entire zoo, you will need a full day (nearly from dawn to dusk) to cover it. Keep a good pair of walking shoes, sun cap, drinking water, food & eatables.

Movies and real science

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 20:35:00 GMT

In last month TED conference, Pattie Maes' from MIT & Pranav Mistry demonstrated a wearable device. It's a wearable device with a projector paves the way for interaction with our environment. The device which they call "Sixth Sense" enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data. A very exciting idea which opens up boundless possibilities if lives up to its claim.

One of the uses of this device they show is a live video (latest on the relevant headlines) being projected in the newspaper in your hands. When I saw this, I was reminded of a old Tamil movie - Pattanathil Bhootham (released in 1967). In the movie there is a scene where the "Genie" shows (then) latest movie songs on top of the movie's advertisements that is in the newspaper.

What was a dream and thought super-natural 40 years ago is now a reality. Exciting to look forward to the reality of the coming decades.

Video links:

1.The clip from Pattanathil Bhootham (பட்டணத்தில் பூதம்) Tamil Movie released in 1967, showing the idea of videos being projected on a newspaper

2.Full movie Pattanathil Bhootham (பட்டணத்தில் பூதம்), free and legal from Rajshri.com

3.Sixth Sense demo by Pranav Mistry (forward to the minute 6:30 for the newspaper demo)

Copying VCDs to PC

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 19:48:00 GMT

Recently I purchased some old Tamil Movie VCDs, I wanted to copy them to my PC so that I can carry it in my Zune player or to my Digital Media Centre in my house. When I tried to play one of them, it played very well on my DVD player but not in my PC (Windows Media Player or VLC Player). In PC they played only with Nero Showtime software. After some digging, I learned these are VCDs which have been written with 800MB of data - more data than normal 700MB CDs and many applications may have difficulty in reading them. I tried copying them using XCopy/Windows Explorer/Robocopy and all of them failed. I found a free software IMGBurn from the authors of DVD Decrypter that allows copying & recording of many types of CD/DVD images to Hard Disk & recordable media.

I used Imgburn's "Read" option to read the contents from the VCD and copy it to my hard-disk. By default it copies the file as *.bin, but you can rename it to *.mpg, after which Nero Showtime can play it. You can also create image of the disc into ISO files for backup purposes. Once copied I imported the files to Adobe Premiere Elements to convert them into WMV format which created the entire 1.6GB Movie to a 1.2GB WMV file (if you want to use the movie with iPod/iTunes use the export to MPEG4 option.

Disclaimer: I have given the above suggestion only for legal usage of content that you have purchased and have a right in your country for making backups.

Guindy Children's Park

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 17:51:00 GMT

I have been delaying my promise to take my son to a "Zoo" in Chennai to see animals for few weeks now. Even though today was a Saturday I had some office work to complete (accounting related to be done before 31st March 2009), I completed them in the first half and returned home early. I took my son and we both went to "Guindy Children's Park", the Children's park and the Snake park (same campus) are both part of "Guindy National Park" situated in Adyar. The Guindy National park along with the adjacent IIT Madras campus and Raj Bhavan as seen in the Map here gives Chennai the much needed lung-space with greenery.

The last time I went to the park was when I was in school and I hardly remember from that visit, so I was not sure on how good the Children's park will be. Whether there will be enough parking for cars, will it be too crowded, opening timings, etc. Anyway I decided to go and check it out. I should say I have been pleasantly surprised - there was enough parking (even on a saturday), though there were lot of school excursions we never felt crowded as the place was big enough to accommodate all. The parks seems to be reasonably maintained, with few places you feel the authorities (Tamilnadu Forest Department) could be doing a better job at cleanliness and animal care. We did notice new name-boards and fences and more being built by workers.

The parks close by 6PM with the last visitors to be allowed at 5:30PM, we went to the Children's park first by 4:15PM so we had a comfortable visit to both the parks and was out around 5:45PM. The parks are open on all days except Tuesday. The entry fee for Adults in both Children's Park and Snake's Park were Rs.5 each; with the Snake park alone charging for Children that too only Re.1. To see the animals (Hyena, Deers, Peacocks, Birds, Monkeys and others) in the Children Park it took us only about 60 minutes (we went slow and never rushed anywhere) and the next 20-30 minutes in Snake's park. The Children's park has animal enclosures and a large area for kids to play.

Saravana Stores maintains the only available food-stall/canteen with a limited offering - Popcorn, Juices, Cold-Drinks, Ice-Cream and some snacks. I recommend you wear a comfortable walking shoes so you can walk the full park easily and a cap for the summer days in Chennai. Remember to carry Drinking Water with you. The rest-room facilities are not that clean and are limited in number (we could see some new one's being built) so please plan accordingly.

Overall, if you are in Chennai I recommend a visit here. If you are visiting Chennai, I will suggest you go to Arignar Anna Zoological Park (a.k.a. Vandalur Zoo) which is 30Kms from Chennai and to Chennai Crocodile park in ECR Road (my earlier post here on Crocodile Park).

Convert your old Cassettes to MP3

Fri, 27 Mar 2009 19:31:45 GMT

Part 1

If you are like me who grew up in 1980s, you will no-doubt have a huge collection of old Audio cassettes (Tapes) that contains your childhood favourties but now lying somewhere collecting dust. Today you should be lucky to be having a cassette player in working condition to play them. A decade back I started hunting for my favourite albums/movies and managed to buy most of them as Audio CDs or MP3 CDs, but I still long for digitising my old tapes so that I can listen to them where-ever I want. So few years back I bought an inexpensive cassette player which has a stereo speaker out (1/8" TRS Jack in USA or 3.5mm miniature EP Jack in India, which is the standard type used in your iPod, Computer speakers) . To record involved four steps:

I connected the Speaker-out from the player to Line-In in my PC using a standard 3.5mm Stereo Audio Patch cable like the one shown below. The audio quality depends on the quality of the cable and the pins used, so buy the best looking one or a branded one that you can find in your local electronics store.
Recording quality turned to be good, but to set the correct volume level in the player and Mic-level in PC was tricky. That part took me few hours to set it right, too high the volume in player then you can listen to the audio in your PC speakers but nothing gets recorded and too low the recorded song can't be heard while played back.
Setup Line-In as default "Recording Device" in Windows. This can be done in Windows Vista by Right-Clicking on the Speaker system tray icon (bottom-right before time) and selecting "Recording Devices". Then in the dialog (as shown below) that appears Right-Click and select "Set as Default Device". You might want to double-click on the Line-in Icon and adjust the audio-levels for fine-tuning. If everything is working well, then when you play something in your player you will see the bars on right-hand side of the Line-In row moving up and down.
The software used to record took some experimentation as well but was easier. I settled down with using the free Windows Media Encoderto record the songs as WMA files and then converting songs that I needed in my iPhone alone to MP3 files using Nero WaveEditor. I was not comfortable with directly recording into Nero WaveEditor or the free Audacity equivalent. If you are using Windows Vista, you can also try the in-built Sound Recorder as well that now supports durations longer than 60 seconds but it doesn't offer the level adjustment controls found in Windows Media Encoder.

That's all it takes to record your tapes as WMA/MP3 files. You are now good to throw-away your cassettes.

Part 2

Part 2 of this story happened about six months back when during my trip to USA in June '08 I had purchased a device to make the conversion easier. The device was ION Audio's Tape2PC. I saw it online and ordered through Amazon for $130 or so. The device claimed to make it easier for converting the tapes to MP3 using bundled software and the USB connection (so no cable hunting). I presumed the software does auto rewinding to beginning of cassette, identifying each track automatically and auto-reverse once one side of the tape is over, so that we don't need to baby-sit during the entire tape.

After I got back to India, I never found time (or the interest) to set up this device until last Sunday. That's when I unwrapped the box, connected the cables and without a moment's thought switched the Power-ON. I got the display lights for a second and the device went blank. That's when it stuck me that the device was 110V and I connected to 220V (in India), and the power supply inside the device should have got burned . Next day I gave the device to my local Electronic Repair shop (Rajam Electronics, Station Road, West Mambalam, Chennai -33. Phone: 044-2474 0106) to fix it. They diligently worked on it, fixed it and gave it to me today. They charged me Rs.400 (USD 8) towards their service charge and for replacing the 110V transformer to 220V and few other components that got burned. I brought the device home and plugged in, Windows Vista promptly deducted the device as a USD Audio CODEC and it worked just fine. The burning episode was a blessing in disguise, now I don't need to keep connecting every time a 220V-110V Step-Down adaptor.

The device turned out to be a slight-disappointment. The audio quality was great due to the USB interface, but the software functionality was limited. No Auto Track Identification, No Auto-Rewind, No Auto-Reverse - you need to baby sit throughout the cassette play time, no escape from that. The in-built software (EZ Tape Convertor) does make it easy to mark each tracks, tagging easier and moves automatically the completed tracks to iTunes. You can find a detailed product review of Tape2PC from UK's PCAdvisor here - I suggest you read it before you decide to buy this device. My opinion is that if you don't mind spending few minutes extra for each cassette and you don't have that many cassettes then you can safe yourself some money by not buying this. Instead go with my alternate method suggested in Part-1 of this post.

Twitter?

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 18:13:54 GMT

I am not active into Twittering. Frankly, I didn't get the idea of it for quite some time after its launch - even after I created a twitter account two years back. But over the last few months I am seeing more buzz around twitter than ever before. For me it is becoming to be an interesting tool as I seeing more use for twitter as a professional business tool. Marketing agencies using it to follow it buzz around their products, business houses using it for networking and so on. Today Microsoft's PR agency Waggener Edstrom released a tool "twendz" a new tweet-analysis tool. Few months back there was this blog post on the CEOs around the world who are twittering.

With all this around, I dusted my twitter account and have started to use it. Let us see if I do it with some discipline and at least the same frequency I do my blogs (of course tweets are supposed to be quick tiny updates unlike a blog). You can follow me on twitter here.

Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:41:30 GMT

I read a review of this book in Business Week and purchased the book some months back. Over last two weeks I finished this book - Once You're Lucky, Twice You're Good by Sarah Lacy. The title made the book appear to be an interesting read on how the web 2.0 businesses have fared compared to the ones that came up and died quickly in the dotcom burst.

On reading the book, it turned out to be a coverage of the story of Jay Adelson (Revision3), Kevin Rose (Digg), Max Levchin (Paypal and Slide) and Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and passing coverage of Marc Andressen (Netscape), Ben & Mena Trott (Six Apart), Chad Hurley & Steve Chen (YouTube) and of Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn). At the end of the book, I felt I have learned little about the business of these companies than I know before reading the book. The book is more about which restaurant in the valley is frequented by these people and their VCs, their likes and dislikes and so on. Though the author has tried to show the individual/human side of these people, it somehow iconizes them more than ever. If you are living in the Bay Area and want to have topics to discuss (and names to throw in between) in the Tech party circuits this book is a must-read, for rest of us I will rate it average..

The Author (Sarah Lacy) is a reporter on startups and venture capital in Silicon Valley and writes a biweekly column for BusinessWeek and co-hosts Tech Ticker on Yahoo! Finance.

USA "resets" relationships with Russia

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 04:05:46 GMT

My views on international politics (and in India politics) are in general formed based on issues rather than personalities or political parties. I normally refine myself from forming strong opinions on US politics (especially between Republicans and Democrats) on their domestic issues - and of course there is enough to occupy oneself with what's happening in our own backyard (in my case Tamilnadu). On the other hand I can't be without an opinion on USA's international policies, as the world's only remaining super-power their policies affect every one on this planet - including every Indian in some way or other.

Over the last 8 years, I was disappointed with Bush Administrations "Cow-Boy" style of operations especially on all sensitive world issues - IRAQ War, Palestinian cause, Russia and others. One area where Bush administration should be credited by Americans is the way they secured USA "borders" from terror attacks repeating after the devastating 9/11. In a way with the unjustified war on IRAQ they took the "War on Terror" to someone else's backyard and secured their own borders. With Obama's administration I am pleasantly surprised by the reversal of various US International Policies. Today I saw in papers the news about Hilary Clinton presenting to her Russian counter-part a big red "Reset" button symbolizing a new beginning. Though critics can argue this to be a childish gesture, I feel it is a nice beginning and a great symbolic one which clearly communicates the intentions - it makes your foreign policy easy to understand and doesn't require a PhD to interpret.

I just wish this new beginning goes beyond symbolic gestures and moves into substance. There are many important world problems which can be influenced by USA for a possible solution - including ever present ISRAEL/Palestinian issue, Terrorism in Pakistan & Afghanistan and above all the crumbling World economy.

Chennai Trade Fair 2009

Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:16:56 GMT

The annual Chennai Trade Fair that happens in Island Grounds is a popular tourist event. You get all round entertainment for the family here - some shopping, rides, booths and government department stalls, etc.

Nowadays every year I go there to take my son in the Toy Train they have here. This year they seem to have added Horse rides, and few other attractions for kids. The Dora House was a total waste of money - just had two dolls of Dora and flashing lights. Tomorrow is the last day of this years' event, so we finally came here today - there is not much crowd at 7:30/8PM and they are open till 11PM, and we had a good time. We tried coming here last sunday but the parking that day was full and flowing till Gymkhana club, so turned back. In the shopping stalls you get a variety of plastic items, toys, garments, cotton cloths, eatables, spices, herbal oils and so on. This year I saw a book shop too. I forgot to carry enough cash and there are no ATMs inside the fair or near-by, so we had to control our shopping urges which was good in a way. My wife says I did this intentionally!

BTW, this year the parking charges have been increased to Rs.40 (8 times the normal Rs.5 charged elsewhere by Chennai Corporation).

Mr. Bean: The Movie (1997)

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 11:36:39 GMT

Few days back I joined my son while he was seeing in Pogo channel this movie - Mr. Bean: The Movie. The movie is a full length comedy just like any of the Mr.Bean's series. I had a thorough laugh for the 2 hours+ of the movie.

The story is a simple line but was enough for Rowan Atkinson to exploit to his fullest advantage. Bean works as a caretaker at Britain's Royal National Gallery where his bosses want to fire him, but couldn't because the chairman of the gallery likes him. They send him to a Los Angeles (USA) art gallery instead, where he'll have to officiate the opening of the greatest US picture ever (called "Whistler's Mother"). There David Langley, curator of the LA museum invites Mr. Bean to stay with his family and Bean begins causing problems to David's marriage and family. Bean is given a few minutes alone to study the painting for his grand "speech", however, Bean sneezes on the painting and wipes it with a handkerchief, not knowing that it is covered in blue ink. Terrified, Bean tries to fix it but causes more damage.Rest of the story is how during the night, Mr. Bean hatches a plan and restores the painting by keeping a copy. In the climax, Bean is mistaken for a doctor and pushed into an operating theatre containing a policemen, who has been shot. While the other doctors and nurses are distracted, Bean unconventionally retrieves the bullet and saves him. Overall, the movie is a total comedy riot - enjoy it.

அபியும் நானும்

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 06:49:53 GMT

ரொம்ப நாட்களாகப் பார்க்க நினைத்து, எங்கள் கிளப்பில் (TNCA Club) நேற்று போட்டதினால் பார்த்தப் படம் அபியும் நானும். ”மொழி” படத்தின் இயக்குனர் ”ராதாமோகன்” அவர்களின் படமிது என்பதால் எனக்கும் என் மனைவிக்கும் இந்தப் படத்திற்கு நிறைய எதிர்ப்பாப்பு. ஆங்காங்கே கொஞ்சம் ”சந்தோஷ் சுப்ரமண்யம்” படத்தையும் ”கண்ணாமூச்சி ஏனடா” படத்தையும் நினைக்க வைத்தாலும் ஒரு பாசாமான அப்பாவைப் பற்றி ஒரு நல்ல படத்தைக் கொடுத்துள்ளார் ராதாமோகன். இந்த மாதிரி ஒரு கதையம்சமுள்ள படத்தை தைரியமாக தயாரித்த பிரகாஷ்ராஜ் அவர்களை எவ்வளவுப் பாராட்டினாலும் தகும்.

Credit Cards in India will require additional security

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 20:40:00 GMT

Recently RBI seems to have sent guidelines to all banks in India that are issuing credit cards to add additional security measures for online and telephone transactions. Currently most of the online transactions using credit cards require only the card number, expiry, name, address and CVV (printed on the back of the card) – other than address all these information are printed in the card itself. So it is easy for any shop keeper (say in a restaurant where you send your card away from your sight) to copy all these details and use it a fraudulent transaction online. Now RBI will be prescribing that from August 2009 all online credit card transactions will require in to provide additional verification data which is not visible in the card.

Certainly a welcome move from RBI. And probably a pioneering move that central banks around the world will be watching carefully to emulate.

Store Design

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 20:34:00 GMT

In a recent issue of BusinessWeek I came across this article in which Mr.Paco Underhill author of “Why we buy?” talks about Retail store guidelines. He makes few observations which I found to be very interesting:

1. Shoppers use the area just inside a store’s entrance as a decompression zone. They won’t notice signs put there.

2. Americans naturally turn right as they walk further into a store (Which means I guess Indian’s will turn left)

3. Customers respond best when employees greet them about a minute after they enter. (I will welcome this as more often than not I find it intrusive when I see a person greeting right at the door)

4. Some customers can’t deal with choices. Merchants needs to put up signs that says “Our Best Seller” or “Our Best Student computer” or the likes. (Certainly I will appreciate it)

5. Unlike good times, now when shoppers purchase they spend 20% more time in aisles.

6. He says people more often make decisions about what to buy when they’re out shopping, not before. (True with me 50%)