Humor: Introvertster

Introvertster is an online community that prevents stupid people and friends from harrassing you online - its hillarious ! - a spoof of Friendster. Check out the people under the section entitled testimonials.

Signs that TiVo is becoming mainstream

More signs that Tivo has moved out from the 'early adopter' market to the general population: USA Today announced that they will publish TiVo data in their Life section

Eclipse (Java IDE) in the news

Recent articles on the Eclipse breakaway from founder IBM:

Sun urges Eclipse to unify Java world

New age dawns at Eclipse

I just hope that Eclipse remains free and they keep the momentum going. Eclipse is definitely my favorite IDE for development in Java - primarily because its $Free$ and so feature rich (with all those available plugins) - I don't see any reason why anyone would want to $buy$ tools like Borland JBuilder.

Free-software guru meets Indian president

Finally I see something different coming from news related to New Delhi. The Free Software Foundation founder, Richard Stallman met India's president A.P.J. Abdul Kalam to discuss "the ethical issues related to the use of proprietary software". Kalam had spoken out in favor of open source intiatives and the need for India to get out of proprietary software solutions. Its nice to see that we finally have a president who understands technology and has the ability to voice out concerns related to it. Kalam, before becoming president headed the evolution of ISRO’s (India's NASA) launch vehicle programmeand later took up the responsibility of developing Indigenous Guided Missiles at Defence Research and Development Organisation as the Chief Executive of Integrated Guided Missile Development Programme (IGMDP). In India he is synonymous with missle technology and making India part of the 'nuclear club'.

Play Your Tunes Away From Home

This WIRED news article talks about a service called Muse.Net from MediaCore. It allows you to Play Your multimedia files Away From Home. I wonder how they are doing financially .....

Update: I did a small search and found the MediaCore's co-founder Robert Lord's homepage. According to the site, MediaCore has been acquired by Yahoo!

Warrants against Kalam, Chief Justice

This is probably one of the most interesting articles regarding corruption in India that I have ever seen. An undercover journalist in Gujrat managed to bribe his way through a lower court to obtain
warrants against Abdul Kalam (President of India) and the Chief Justice. All for just Rs. 40,000. Thats outrageous!

FAX SPAM ! What will they think of next ? - door-to-door salesmen ?!

I got this mail from a friend today morning:

"I got SPAM in my FAX. grrr! How the hell did they get
my fax no? I have to call a toll free number if I want
to be removed from their 'Database'."

This is outrageous! I'm getting email spam, text message spam and now FAX spam ?!? Thank goodness the government took some action against telemarketers - once of the reasons why I decided against getting a landline at home was to avoid them. Fortunately there was always some regulatory measure against telemarketer calling up cell phones. When can we start seeing some strong International regulations against other forms of spam ?!?

I've always promoted people not to buy products that are advertised using these means. Stop buying products from companies who advertise their wares via marketing companies who use spammers to distribute ads. I mean this not only for body part enlargement products, but for regular products such as telephone services and other consumer goods as well! Hit them at their source of income. Only if people start voicing thier concerns and taking actions such as this can we see a solution some day.....

Corporate Blogging - Motorola a case study

I've set up an internal blog within my organization, Motorola Labs - my next move is to try to get more people within the organization to start using it. With all the reading people do within my group, I can see it becoming an invaluable repository of information related to our areas of research - All this under the assumption that people actually adopt it. I hope the idea that feeds from the blogs can actually be syndicated to anyone (with a valid corporate username/password) within the organization - even product groups with interest in areas we work on, will make it more sellable as a publishing medium.

Its finally my turn to see if I can make the fat elephant dance !

Managing Startups

Via E M E R G I C . o r g, Heidi Roizen, a managing director of Mobius Venture Capital recommends to CEOs of startups:

Most of the successful companies from my generation of entrepreneurs did not find their success in their original business plan. But a great team with a deep understanding of a particular market usually finds the seam to mine over time. You just have to know the difference between evolving and wandering.

It’s lonely being a startup CEO. You are comrades with your co-workers but you still have to stand alone at times. Many, many tough decisions had to be made over the last few years. I think a great coach helps the entrepreneur think through the decisions and come up with not only the best decision but the right way to execute it as well.

My advice to CEOs is to hire the very best, act as if your life depended on every person you bring on your team, and put a ton of cycles into finding, referencing, recruiting, and retaining those people.

Every firm has its own challenges and opportunities, that is what makes this fun—and also risky. But all of them have much in common: hire the greatest people you can, be paranoid about the competition, listen to your customers, develop a business model that makes sense.

Humour: Terror Alert Level

I tend not to post on politics here. No disrespect, but I found these links to be simply hillarious:

Def Con Alerts
Terror Alert Level

Mobile Game - Dot Kamikaze - The name/objective sounds hilarious

I just saw the ad for this game by Animobile - Dot Kamikaze. I thought I'd post it since the whole idea of the game seemed hilarious to me (including the name):

Here's your new list of objectives: 1) Defy middle management, 2) Defeat your CEO, 3) Liberate your cubicle-mates. You are outside the box... you are Dot Kamikaze!

The game's like an interactive 'Office Space' - on the mobile - on steroids :-)

Just a lot of hot air ? Air powered cars

I was watching the preview of next week's CNN NEXT. They'll be talking about the new air-powered car from e.Volution. Pretty interesting concept. According to the BBC article (linked earlier), it's going to cost 1.5 Euro for a whole tank (of compressed air) - I guess thats around $2 - heck I'd love to get something like that if it can drive as well as my Volvo S40 - it beats the $20 I pay per tank for gas now.

BTW, for the engineer in you, check out the 'HowStuffWorks' for details on how the car works.

ARCHOS - Cinema to go

ARCHOS - Cinema to go - they say that this is the world's first portable Video recorder and player. I can understand the need for portable audio - but video? But with the addition of the camera feature (AvCam 300) - it makes it more like a digital camcorder with extended storage.

I'd be interested in knowing how popular these get to be.

Lawmakers urge Indian firms to hire in States

Another strange turn on events due to BPOs - the US is urging Indian companies to hire more ppl in the US.

Jesus! BPO has even come to church

An interesting article on how Churches in the western world are 'outsourcing' Mass intentions to churches in India. "The main reason is the lack of manpower and hectic schedules in churches in the West.". Quite interestining to see how the call center/IT sourcing phenomenon is diversifying into other avenues....