Thursday, April 28, 2005

Google Gmail vs Microsoft and the Desktop

Google Gmail is the future of email. Maybe just not email, but how we store information.

I've been trying an experiment. Instead of saving emails and docs locally, I forward the content to my gmail account. The next step is to organise the info through labels. Labels are not to be mixed with folders. A label is like a tag. Combining the search & labels feature makes it very easy to find the info. Google search is a very powerful tool. Unlike navigating to a document burried deeply under some directory on my PC, a search on gmail takes just seconds!

Microsoft has been adding features to Outlook that turn it into an all in one Information Manager.

The shift to online webservices as in the case of Gmail make it easy to store, manage and most importantly retrieve info quickly. All Microsoft has is the Desktop. I think they realize this and are trying to further lock users to the desktop with the upcoming Windows Longhorn which is slated to be released by 2006.

The advantages of web based services are plenty. In such a case the computer only acts as a medium between the user and the web. Apart from the ease of use, this could also mean huge cost savings for users. If the computer crashes, its easy to get on another PC and continue transparently. Most desktop users do not backup their critical data. A crash can result in a tremendous amount of downtime. Not to mention, the time spent in reinstalling the OS, apps and configurations.

It could be only a matter of time, before we login to a google account and begin editing documents or listen to music by simply booting the computer through a GNU/Linux based bootable CD. The possibilities are endless. This would really make on-the-move technology a reality!

Friday, April 22, 2005

Outsourcing on a Cruise Ship off Los Angeles!

[quote]
What if you could outsource to a company that offered the cost savings of an India-based outsourcing firm, but whose facilities were just a few hours away?

That’s the premise of three entrepreneurs in San Diego, who are in the final throes of launching a company that will offer software development off the coast of California—three miles outside Los Angeles, to be specific.

The three plan to buy a used cruise ship and station it close enough for a half-hour water taxi ride to shore, but far enough to avoid H1B jurisdiction. According to CEO David Cook, who was a tanker ship captain before going into IT ten years ago, project pricing “will be comparable to a distant-shore firm.”

By stationing the ship in international waters, the company, called SeaCode, will be able to remain close to U.S. clients while picking and choosing IT talent from around the world—something that tightening H1B visa requirements have made difficult in the U.S.
[/quote]

Read full article here:
http://www.adtmag.com/article.asp?id=10959

Monday, April 18, 2005

Business & IT

Being involved in the IT field, business concepts are pretty new to me. Coupled with Info Systems, it's interesting to learn these new concepts. The business culture is all about creating and managing a Plan. The plan includes everything, from finances to responsibility to coaxing and motivating employees to be efficient and productive.

I suppose without a marketing framework, even the greatest piece of software would'nt stand a chance.

From an IT point of view, one gains a better understanding of the overall picture, why a product needs to be coded a certain way, the kind of users who will be using the product, idiot proofing, profits etc.

Sometimes the two concepts do not meet..and just then your looking at a Kernel Panic! aaarrggg...

Saturday, April 09, 2005

Hitachi - Lets Get Perpendicular

Hitachi storage has revealed this new perpendicular storage based HDD. Instead of reading a huge list of specs, they put together a groovy SWF animation. The characters explain the restraints on current horizontal based disk technology and go on to highlight how parallel works. This is by no means a substitute to a full length whitepaper, but a great way to understand quickly what the hype all about!

Done correctly, snazzy marketing does help in removing the confusion that people generally associate with bits and bytes. Ofcourse, a solid product with consumer demand is needed in the first place. Google and Apple(ipod) are perfect in the field of marketing.

Hitachi Technologies Lets Get Perpendicular

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Search Engine Spiders & Dynamic Content

Spiders and dynamic content just dont like each other. A spider visits a webserver, grabs static content and is out in a jiffy. Even if they do grab some dynamic links, the search result will be buried deeply somewhere in 1 out of n results. I've been exploring the possibility of converting a dynamic link ( ok, not exactly converting, but rather masquerading) into a static one. The whole idea is to turn the content more spider friendly.

Apache powered webservers have excellent features. The 'mod rewrite' rule for .htaccess is just the kind of thing which will make those dynamic links appear as static. There are a lot of tweaks which are needed in the PHP too. But, once that's covered, the spiders are friendly.

The Apache docs on mod_rewrite are a good starter for this kind of an experiment.

Wednesday, April 06, 2005

Hello World!

Today, I finally got down to creating a Blog account. I've been contemplating about this for ages. This weeks BBC's ClickOnline episode on 'Blog Life' was interesting. I guess it was pretty brief with a slightly greater emphasis on the political aspect and implications of Blogging.

This is going to be an interesting hobby as keeping this Blog updated will be quite a challenge!