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Nov. 9th, 2008

weRead - what's new?

Ever since I blogged about iRead back in April, a lot has changed. We have introduced tons of new features, and there is really not one place where we have captured all of them.

So this is my attempt to describe the features to our readers.

  • iRead is now called weRead and we have partnered with Lulu
    This post from our official blog has more details.

  • We now have a destination site
    You don't have to login to Facebook or some social network to access weRead. You can directly access your bookshelf from our destination site. If you have already used weRead in Facebook or one of the social networks, you can link your account and access the same account from the destination site.

  • Connections - find people like you
    This Facebook feature allows you to find people who have similar book tastes like you. You can look for people of a specific gender, people in your network and people in specific age groups.

  • We now have friend activities in the homepage
    We now show activities from your friends on weRead in the homepage. This helps you keep track of which books your friends have been reading, and if they have participated in any discussions.

    Activity of friends on weRead


  • Book discussion boards
    This is the place to discuss with your friends and network about your favorite books, what you liked, what you didn't like, why someone should or shouldn't read a book.

  • Author discussion boards
    If you want to discuss about a specific author, talk about what works of an author are good, or what you would expect his next book to be like, this is the place to do it. Check out the latest discussions here.

    AC Discussion Board


  • Author profile claim
    Are you an author? Then you should be on weRead. weRead makes it ultra simple for you to setup a profile and interact with your readers. Writing a new book? Want to know who might like it? Want to get suggestions from your readers? Want to promote your book on various social networks? Start here

    weRead for authors


  • New catalogs
    We now have catalogs from Amazon, Google and OCLC integrated into weRead. This means you have a whole range of books to choose from. More catalogs are coming soon.

  • weRead is now available in multiple languages
    weRead is now available in 6 different languages - English(US), English(UK), German, French, Spanish (on Hi5 only) and Portuguese (on Orkut only). We have more languages being added soon. Want weRead in a local language? Help us translate weRead here.

  • We now have limited previews of books from Harper Collins and Google Books and full preview of some books from Gutenburg
    This will give you some sort of a 'bookstore experience' by allowing you to preview books.

  • See how a book fares in your network
    Curious to know how a book has been rated by people in your network? We now give you near realtime statistics about a book - how people have rated the book in your network, how many people own the book, how many have marked it favorite etc.
    Find who has read a book in your network


  • Readers now have a profile page which displays their bookshelf
    Each weRead user gets his/her own personal page that they can then share with their friends, bookmark, etc. In order to set up your own profile page, link your account from Facebook to our destination site and click on the "Profile" link in the top blue bar. Check out my profile page here.

  • Readers can showcase their bookshelf in their blogs and other sites
    Want to advertise your bookshelf in your blog? It's simple! Go to your profile page and then click on 'Take weRead with you', get the code and put it in your blog. You also have some customization that you can do before you get the code. Check out a demo here.

  • The Facebook Wall application allows you to post information about books, write reviews etc directly from the Facebook Wall.
    You can now chuck a book at your friends directly from the Facebook wall. Go to your Facebook profile page: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php. Under the Wall tab, you should see the Books iRead option. Clicking this opens a dialog that allows you to pick a book from your shelf or search for a book and chuck this at your friend.

    Facebook weRead Wall application


  • Similar authors
    Under every book detail page, we show similar authors that will help you discover authors who write books similar to the one that you are viewing.

  • Mis-spelt searches
    weRead now has builtin suggestions in case you make a misspell some work while typing your query.

  • See more like this
    We have launched some kind of a 'Stumble upon' feature. When you are viewing a book in weRead, you will see a button 'See more like this', clicking which, takes you to a random but related book.

  • External integration with OCLC
    We now power the OCLC related books and reviews.

  • We have also moved to bigger and more powerful servers, which means a better user experience for all our readers.



As you see, we have been busy! We have tons of new and exciting features lined up and we promise to provide feature updates as frequently as possible. A lot of these features revolve around making weRead a truly social application.

By the way, you can get some quick updates on weRead in our Twitter page.

Happy reading!

PS: Features and feature names are subject to change.

Sep. 15th, 2008

Who do we believe?

As information is becoming cheaper everyday and as we are getting access to more and more information, I see one problem. There are certain 'well known theories' which are being proved to be untrue. Also of how 'facts' are generated when in fact it had never really occurred. These are things that we studied during our schooling as 'facts'.

On one side, this is a good thing. It makes you question everything you read or hear and not just accept things blindly. But on the other side, it makes you feel, well, then, what do we believe?

Wikipedia is a classic example of information accuracy and the arguments around it. Do you trust Wikipedia? Take an example of a controversial article - say Scientology, or about Crop Circles, or say the Nazca lines. Would you believe what Wikipedia has to say? Well, isn't there a slight possibility that the theory is wrong, especially when there are mathematicians, archaeologists, physicists or historians who subscribe to either sides of the controversies.

What if a vast majority of the people actually believe something that is actually not true? Wasn't the earth believed to be in the center of the solar system and that the sun revolved around the earth?

Here are some things that I came across in recent days:
1. The theory of evolution and the theory of Intelligent design.
2. The Sphinx mystery - is Sphinx older than it was initially thought to be and does it have connections to mars?
3. The Aryan invasion theory - did it really happen?
4. Global warming a myth?
5. Aliens and UFO's - has anyone really spotted them?
6. Man landing on the moon

Well, the list is endless. If you look for information on any of these, you will see tons of information that can convince you either ways.

Not all of us are mathematicians, not all of us are theoretical physicists. Nor do we have the time to verify every single 'fact' we come across.

So the question is how do we believe what we read and who do we trust and believe?!

Aug. 5th, 2008

It's official - Lulu partners with weRead

So finally the news has been made official.

Lulu today announced partnership with weRead (iRead).

Lulu is a platform that enables wanna be authors, musicians and other creators to bring their work directly to their audience. Publishing is free, and the lack of middlemen means that the freedom lies in the hands of the creator. Lulu was founded by Bob Young, co-founder of Red Hat and an extremely successful entrepreneur. Lulu is the world's fastest-growing provider of print-on-demand books.

With this partnership, there are several exciting things that we are looking at.

With weRead, Lulu users now get a simple way to make their creation available on all popular social networking sites and promote their work. As for weRead, users get a much larger catalog of books, some of them which are not available anywhere else.

Well, this is definitely just the tip of the iceberg and we see several other exciting things ahead.

News about the partnership from the Lulu site:
"Lulu (www.lulu.com), the world's largest marketplace for individual, educational, and corporate authors and publishers to bring their books directly to market, announced today an alliance with weRead (www.weread.com), the leading social networking application for books where readers can easily discover and recommend books to their friends on social networks and therefore, the world."

Over the next few weeks, you should see several new features on weRead. There is one theme that we are concentrating on - make weRead more social, which is why we thought it makes better sense to name it weRead rather than iRead.

The future now looks promising!

Jul. 15th, 2008

Getting Rosegarden to work in Ubuntu (Gnome)

I am one of those many people out there who had trouble in getting Rosegarden to "sing" in Ubuntu under Gnome Window Manager. Finally after trying a lot of permutations and combinations, I got Rosegarden to work. I made this post to share what I did so that others don't have to go through the same trouble I did!

So let's proceed.

Required software


Rosegarden requires some other applications to be installed in your system. So before you fire up Rosegarden ensure that you have the following:
  1. qjackctl
  2. qsynth
  3. rosegarden
If you don't have any of these you could execute this:
$ sudo apt-get install qjackctl qsynth rosegarden fluid-soundfont-gm


Ok, now we have everything we need. Let's proceed to the configuration steps:

Start the Jack server


(Somehow not using sudo gave me problems)
$ sudo qjackctl &


Jack Audio Connection Kit setup


Click on Setup
Here are the settings I used:
Setup - JACK


Start the Jack server


JACK Audio Connection Kit


Start the synthesizer


$ sudo qsynth &


QSynth setup



MIDI Setup


Qsynth: Setup - Midi


Audio Setup


Qsynth: Setup - Audio


Soundfonts Setup


Qsynth: Setup - Soundfonts


Start rosegarden


Ok, it's time to fire up Rosegarden.
$ sudo rosegarden &


Configuring Rosegarden


Go to Settings - Configure Rosegarden.

Configure Rosegarden - General



Configure Rosegarden - Midi


Ensure that the connections are right in Jack Audio Connection Kit (Connect):
Connections - JACK - ALSA


Connections - JACK - Audio


Play one of the sample files and you should hear music!
Rosegarden


Troubleshooting


In case your Jack server is not running, you might want to execute this command and then start the Jack server:
$ sudo /sbin/alsa force-reload

Apr. 20th, 2008

Big fish, small fish - my personal experience of working in a startup

It's been about 3 months since I joined Ugenie.

Having spent about two and a half years in IBM, which is a mammoth on any scale, and working in Ugenie now, which has a really small employee strength, what changes do I see?

I guess most large organizations have similar characteristics, so instead of naming IBM in the rest of my post, I will just mention it as 'Big Fish' to represent all large organizations. Again, I guess nothing is unique about my feelings of Ugenie and most startups have similar characteristics, so I will call it 'Small Fish'.

If I look back into the days I spent at Big Fish, I have mixed feelings. There are quite a few things that I have gained, but some that I had to lose.

The immediate change that I saw in Small Fish is the rate at which things move. Ideas emerge by the minute, and are implemented within a couple of days or for ideas taking more time, a week. More time is spent in getting things done than on planning and processes. Long term goals are perhaps goals for the month and I guess there is no point thinking about a year down the line or anything on a similar scale! The 'tomorrows' or 'over the next week' are replaced by 'now' and 'today sometime'. There are lesser 'meetings' and they are short. You definitely don't need a calender for your meetings.

The second change I see is how large organizations spend lots of money on infrastructure and how startups tend to save on every penny. I remember the ultra modern conference rooms, the posh pantries/wash-rooms, the money that was spent on things like events, all hands, yearly gifts, interior decoration, posters talking about "X" day (replace X with Innovation, Mothers or something like that) etc, I could go on. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying Small Fish does not spend on its employees, but every penny spent is done so cautiously.

And now let me delve into the differences in terms of:

Breadth/Depth: I guess one of the reasons that made me stick to Big Fish is the breadth of technologies on offer. Every day, you would come across someone working on a project that you never knew existed or you come across a page on the Intranet that excites you. Every day, you keep widening your breadth of knowledge.

Things are different in Small Fish. Small Fish offers the much required depth.

I remember someone telling me of how there needs to be a balance between the breadth of our knowledge and the depth in some specific field. This is like the letter 'T', with the top horizontal line representing the breadth and the vertical line representing the depth.

Ownership: I don't see too much of a difference here. While in Big Fish, I used to own the components I developed and I was responsible for timely delivery of that component and ensuring that the consumers of my work are kept happy. Things are similar in Small Fish, may be with minor differences. The ownership here tends towards the whole of the product/application than just the component you own. (This is closely related to the Roles/Responsibilities observation below).

Priorities: Back in 2005, when I was working on product development, there was a phase where I found it difficult to prioritize my tasks. There were a bunch of bugs to fix, there were some mails to respond to and there were some bug databases that I had to update and it seemed like all of them had the same priority.

If I compare that period with the present, I would say it's quite similar. There is more work than anyone can handle, there are some things that only you can do and the deadlines are sometimes impossible to meet because of various technical/non-technical issues.

However I seem to be a bit more comfortable in my present position than I was back in 2005. This could be attributed to the fact that I have two and a half years of experience behind me now or to the fact that I am in a startup now and it is normal for everyone to have their plates full.

Roles/Responsibilities: I would say there is no such thing in a startup. While in Big Fish, we had clear responsibilities and having completed those tasks, we could consider our job done, in Small Fish, things work differently. There is no such thing as 'my responsibility'. Or if you really want to put it in terms of that, you would have to say, 'everything is my responsibility'. While many people don't like that, I see every such occurrence as an opportunity to learn and I really enjoy it.

Opportunities: There is no dearth of this in Big Fish or Small Fish, but there is a difference. In Big Fish, you need to search for them or understand that 'x' is opportunity knocking at your door, while in Small Fish you would just take it up, without perhaps realizing that it was an opportunity.

Social network: Well, if we are talking of getting to know more people with diverse personalities and skill sets there is really no end to how many people you can connect with in Big Fish. This is severely restricted in Small Fish. I remember having some technical discussions with people who have significantly more experience than me in Big Fish and I should say the things that I learnt then are things that you don't get to learn from a book. This has definitely added to my experience. It was about 'learning from the failures/experiences of others'.

Smaller fishes tend to have a younger crowd. So while the teams are dynamic, the number of people with more experience than you and with diverse skillsets is limited. This has nothing to do with the actual people in Small Fish, but is rather because of the size of Small Fish, which, because of its very nature is small.

Awards/Recognition: Frankly, there was no dearth of it in Big Fish. But on second thoughts, other than the monetary rewards and the benefits of the actual work that you did to earn the award, do these awards really matter to the rest of the world?

Other activities: This is severely restricted in Small Fish. Big Fish invests a lot on employees. So every day you hear people being on training or attending some conference or even having gone abroad to learn some technology.

Processes: If you ask anyone working at a startup, especially someone who has worked in a large organization before, I guess one thing they would mention is the processes. What is my take on this?

I would say there needs to be a balance. While on one side too many processes is definitely going to be time consuming and a pain on the employees, having a well defined process would mean that everything that needs to be taken care of is actually taken care of. So if Big Fish is tending towards one end of this spectrum, Small Fish is towards the other end, with the best point being somewhere close to the middle.

So people ask me, do you think it was worth it?
Well, no doubt about that. I guess you have to lose some things to gain some things. And the things that Small Fish offers it's tough to expect that from Big Fish and this, to a major extent, holds the other way round too. Now having had enough experience in Big Fish and no experience in some Small Fish, I would say, yeah, it was worth it and I am glad I decided to join Ugenie.

Now remember that these are my observations and I could be wrong in terms of how various Big Fishes/Small Fishes work or even in terms of the Big Fish where I worked and the Small Fish where I currently work. Also my own opinions might change as I gain more experience at Small Fish and compare it to my experiences in Big Fish.

Apr. 19th, 2008

iRead - a social book discovery revolution

It has been a while since I thought I should write a review of iRead.




iRead is a social book discovery application. It has been quite successful on Facebook and has a very large userbase. Currently iRead has a total install base of about 1.4 million users, mostly from Facebook.


So what do we mean by social book discovery?


iRead is not just about maintaining a bookshelf online. It tries to bring the social aspect into picture.

'social'?
iRead depends a lot on your social network. You can share your bookshelf with your friends, learn what your friends are reading and what their reading tastes are. You can discuss about books in various book clubs. You could participate in Quizzes or even add your own. You can find out how compatible your reading tastes are with other people in the network.

iRead does not require a separate registration. It is available right in your social network. (As of now the application is available in Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, Hi5 and Bebo.) So when we are talking about friends, we are talking about your friends from the network where you are using iRead. So if you use iRead in Facebook, you see your Facebook friends in iRead, while in Orkut you see your Orkut friends. Many a times, all it requires is to just add the application to your profile.

'book discovery'?
For one, iRead provides recommendations based on your reading tastes. Then there are various other mechanisms by which you can discover new books to read.

Let's explore some.

Several ways to browse


* You could first start off by searching for books and adding them to your bookshelf. This helps us learn about your tastes and recommend books that you may like.

* When searching, you could either enter the name of the book, or its author, or if you know the ISBN, you could enter that.

* If you want to just browse through the application you could start off by looking at what other iReaders are doing. The home page shows the most recent activity in the network.

News feeds on homepage


* So let's say you find some interesting book. Just click on the book and you are taken to the book details. Here you get to know how many readers the book has, how many reviews people have written for the book and get some instant user reviews and an editorial review. You can also find out similar other books.

Book details for Da Vinci Code


* If you see that the book is interesting, just click on the 'See All' reviews link. This will display all the reviews for the book. Read the ones you like and you will soon learn what the book is about.

Book review page for GEB


* Since there are multiple ways to reach your data, your reviews are never buried. So even if you are writing a review for a book, that already has a thousand reviews, you can expect your review to be read by other iReaders.

* If the book interests you, you might want to check out other books by the same author. Just click on the author's name. This will show all books by the author. You could also click on the small icon next to the author's name to search for the author in Author's corner. This will give you other details like the profile of the author, what others think about the author, how many fans the author has etc.

Authors corner


* Author's corner is a forum for readers to interact with their favorite authors. So if you are the author of a book and are looking for a forum to interact with your readers, this is where you should be. Author's corner allows authors to maintain their profile, and also learn about their readers' expectations.

* While reading reviews, you might find that the review from a particular user is very interesting. You might now want to look at this reader's bookshelf. Many a times, I have found this to be a good mechanism to discover new books. You can get an assurance of how close your tastes are by looking at the number of common books amongst you. Ok, now you might want to look at other reviews by this reader.

* You could also contact the reader by leaving a wall post/scrap.

* You may also want to check out who among your friends is on iRead and what they are reading. Click on the Friends link in the header. If you want to know about your friends' reading tastes and they are not yet on iRead you could invite them to add the application.

Friends reads on iRead


* For selected books, you could even browse inside the book. A lot of out of copyright books are available for free online viewing. Some other selected books are available for limited preview.

Other features worthy of mention


Take your reads with you


The top header on iRead

So what if you are in all these networks and want to use iRead everywhere?
iRead has a feature to import your bookshelf from Facebook to Orkut, MySpace and/or Hi5. Once imported, you will see the same bookshelf in all the networks. However the friends shown to you depends on the network you are currently in.

Import books from other sources


Import books from other sources

If you have been maintaining books in some other place, you may want to try importing books using the import books option. The link to this is found below the search box.

Add a book


Can't find a book you want to add to your bookshelf? You can add it to our catalog. The link to add a book is found below the search box.

So what's more?!

Happy iReading!

Disclaimer: I work for Ugenie and am part of the iRead application development team. The views expressed here are my own and not necessarily those of Ugenie.

Dec. 23rd, 2007

Random thought

"There are some points in your life, when you have to just let your brain on auto-pilot and work on intuition and co-incidences than on logic and reasoning."

Dec. 22nd, 2007

2007 - a recapitulation

Warning: Some bit of self praise ahead.

Nearing the end of yet another successful year. The year 2007 has been one of the 'longest' year in my life. With milestones achieved and several noteworthy events in both my personal and professional life, I should say, this perhaps could not be better!

Here are some important milestones/events in the last year (in no particular order):
  • Learnt car driving and also got my 4 wheeler license. This was pending for a very long time.
  • Part of the organization committee of the Web 2.0 conference organized by CSI Bangalore. I also delivered a talk on Enterprise application of Web 2.0 here.
  • Attended swimming classes, another thing that had been pending since a long time.
  • Tried my hand at cooking (could have done better).
  • Got myself an iPod Nano.
  • Delivered several talks and conducted hands-on workshop in colleges mostly on Eclipse.
  • A few solo bike rides including the ring-road trip (This got more traction than I had expected with casual readers noting this more than my other entries!).
  • Went to a few places and clicked a lot of photos.
  • Guided a successful intern project.
  • Eclifox release in alphaWorks.
  • A few awards, papers and recognitions.
  • Several other professional achievements - which unfortunately I cannot mention here.
  • Last but not the least: experimented with my hair style and got a whole bunch of comments from family and friends!

Nov. 26th, 2007

Internship 2008

I had been to SJCE last weekend to conduct internship interview for the current final year engineering students. The turn-up was much less than expected. We went quite late this year and many students were already offered projects in other companies. Also we had a cut-off of 70%. About 40 students took the written test. We short-listed 13 and ended up selecting 3 students. All 3 were from Information Science. We had expected 120 students to turn up and we were planning to select 9-12 students.

Congratulations to those selected. And a suggestion to those who were not: It is not the number of companies that you are placed in that matters, nor is it the pay. It is your fundamentals that will take you a long way. Don't blame the company if you are not offered a quality job. Ensure that you have what it takes to get one.

Nov. 5th, 2007

Twittering at twitter.com

Many a times, I feel like blogging about my thoughts on something, but not necessarily composing a whole blog entry around it. It is easier to do this at a site which is meant for micro-blogging. So here goes:

I have started twittering at Twitter.com.

Stay tuned in both places or use SuprGlu to get one place view of all my web-activity.

Oct. 27th, 2007

Locating the Friends Apartment

I was watching Friends for the umpteenth time. Whenever they showed the apartment, I used to wonder if it still exists and if so what it looks like. So here I was Googling for 'Bedford Street' (I had seen it in one of the shots of the apartment) and then looking around in Google Maps.

After a bit of searching, and using the wonderful 'Street view' in Google maps, I located it!

Friends Aptmt on Google Maps


Here is the link.

Sep. 28th, 2007

Workshop on Eclipse in VIT, Pune

I was part of a team of three (myself, Sayeed Sanaullah and Gaurav Bhattacharjee) from ISL, who conducted a one day workshop on Eclipse in Vishwakarma Institute of Technology, Pune.

We had 3 theory sessions and about 3.5 hours of hands-on sessions. We covered the following topics during the theory and practical sessions:
* Introduction to Eclipse
* Plug-in development in Eclipse
* RCP application development in Eclipse.

The response was decent and I truly enjoyed the day, although at the end of the day it left us really tired.

This workshop was conducted as part of the IBM Technology Day series that is being conducted in various colleges in India. This is the second time I am being involved in a IBM Technology Day.

The very first IBM Technology Day in India was conducted in SJCE, Mysore in April. This was a 2 day workshop with about 7 speakers from IBM Software Group, Systems Group and Global Services. There were students from 7 colleges in and around Mysore who were part of this.

Sep. 17th, 2007

Lecture on Eclipse in VTU Edusat

I delivered a lecture on "Introduction to Eclipse and its usefulness" in VTU Edusat, a distance learning program of VTU. This is the first time I am delivering a lecture in VTU Edusat.

Here is what I liked about the program:
* Excellent use of technology to reach distant colleges in Karnataka.
* Currently Edusat has cast more than 3000 lectures. All of these lectures are available to the students if needed.
* There is good industry backing. This can help bridge the gap between industry and academia.

There are some things that will hopefully improve:
* It is more of a monologue right now. So there is absolutely no way of knowing the skill level of the students and tweak the lecture.

Hats off to the guys behind this mission. This is a good first step; however there are things that can improve. If you are part of University Relations in your company, do join the Edusat program and make a difference!

Sep. 9th, 2007

Sankey tank - sunset


Sankey tank - sunset
Originally uploaded by Buzypi
I had been to Sankey Tank today to experience the sunset and also click a few pictures. The photos can be viewed here.

Aug. 12th, 2007

A very productive weekend

With 5 movies and a solo trip on my bike around Bangalore on the ring road, clearly, this is one of the most productive weekends ever! :)

Movies I watched:
  • Cast Away
  • Forrest Gump
  • Road to Perdition
  • Insomnia
  • Whole Nine Yards

Marathalli junction

And now about the trip:
I was bored. That is when this thought came to me that I could go round the city on the ring-road. I had planned a similar trip around the Mysore Ring road during Engineering, however the road was not yet complete.

So I started off at 3:25 pm from Indiranagar. I reached the Marathalli junction at around 3:45. My plan was to return to this exact same location and then return home.

Just to give you an idea of the route I took, here are some places I came across during my trip:

Marathalli, Sarjapur road, BTM ring road, Bannerghatta road, Deve Gowda petrol bunk, Kathriguppe, Pantar Palya, Bangalore University, RVCE, Kengeri, Papareddy Palya, Peenya, Tata tea, BEL circle, Hebbal fly-over, Devanahalli (had lost my way), back to Hebbal fly-over, Banasvadi junction, back to Marathalli.

I lost my way thrice during the trip. On one occasion I was on my way to Hyderabad. Little did I realize that I had taken the wrong way from Hebbal. It was only after I reached Devanahalli a good 25 km from Hebbal fly-over that I realized I had hopelessly lost my way!

After having travelled for about 150 km, for about 4 hours 15 minutes, I returned home safe and tired. Wow, that was a memorable journey!

On the way to Devanahalli

More photos in Flickr.

Jul. 27th, 2007

Two down; still going strong

I just completed two years in IBM! It has been an interesting, challenging and rewarding journey so far. It has been my pleasure to work with some of the industry leaders and some of the most unique people here.

I see a blend of skills, knowledge and passion in the people. I have been involved in a variety of projects, which have helped me understand IBM's business and the role of technology better. There is still a lot more to learn and contribute.
Tags: ,

Mar. 28th, 2007

iPod Nano - my new acquisition

What would you prefer? A single gadget which does all or a gadget which does the best in its category?

I got a new 4 GB blue iPod Nano today. Special thanks to my cousin for getting it from Canada.

I was criticized by some for not buying a music phone. Their opinion was, "Why spend 10k on a gadget that does one thing, when you can have everything in one device for that amount?"

Ideally speaking, I would like a single device myself, but then when it comes to quality I better not compromise. I would rather prefer a mobile phone for calls/messaging, a music player for music and a camera for snaps. Too many gadgets? Difficult to manage? Well, not for me.

The nano is perhaps the sleekest it can get; any more sleeker and you will risk breaking it when manipulating the wheel!



iPod has been the best music player available. Hats off to the guys behind its User Interface. If someone is planning a PhD in User Experience, you better work in Apple for a significant part of your career!

Well, as far as the iPod is concerned, I should say it's great! The sound is amazing, so is the battery backup and as already mentioned, the User Interface will leave you amazed as to how simple things can be.

Mar. 10th, 2007

Ananya is 3 years old today

I am turning 3 years old today. It has been a fun filled journey. During the course of the year, Gautham developed interest in photography, and so you will see a steep decline in his technical blogs and photos figuring in many of the entries.

Here is how I am faring:
Journal entries: 195
Comments posted: 285
Comments received: 467

Last year at this time, I had:
Journal entries: 147
Comments received: 353

I along with Gautham, would like to thank all my readers especially those who took the pains to comment here (excluding spammers of course).

Feb. 23rd, 2007

CSI Web 2.0 conference

I delivered a talk today on 'Enterprise application of Web 2.0' in the National level CSI Web 2.0 conference.

The conference saw participation from companies like IBM, Yahoo, Google, AOL, Oracle etc. There were 4 tracks, each with about 4 talks and the speakers were primarily from Yahoo and IBM. There was a wonderful panel discussion on 'Dark side of Web 2.0' and I should say, it was the best part of the event.

I was also part of the program committee and having done Event management while in college (as part of CSI-SJCE), I should say that it was not quite different from the way we used to do it in college, except that it was far more easier to get contacts now, because the enterprises were driving it.

Feb. 14th, 2007

ISL Innovator watch

I received this watch as an award for my first patent disclosure. Thank you ISL!

ISL Innovator watch
Originally uploaded by Buzypi.

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