Raison d'être

Forgive me lord - for I've sinned

2011-11-13T01:38:00.001+08:00

It dawned upon me earlier this evening that tomorrow is the Bangalore Ultra......... THE Bangalore Ultra - and I'm not running in it!!!!

I started my long distance running 'career' by running 25K at Ultra 2009. Since then I've never looked back!

But last 2-3 months have been super hectic, with the startup, with my better half in Singapore and all the

travelling in between. So my running has been going down all the way.

It all started when I realized I would be missing the Kaveri Trail Marathon in Sept due to my US Trip. I did not even

I also realized that I registered for the Singapore StanC (Full Marathon, mind you, no less!) back in July - but I'm in no shape to

run even half that distance on 4th Dec.

There was so guilt in my heart that I had to do something about it. So I changed in to my running gear, went to IIMB and ran

a quick run of 6km.

Hopefully I'll be back in running form next year.

Real Acad Learning

2011-04-25T14:52:00.001+08:00

'Porcupine' strategy: Remember how the porcupines survived the Ice Age?

During the Ice Age many animals died because of the cold. Seeing this situation, the porcupines decided to group together, wrap up and protect each other. But they hurt each other with their thorns, and then decided to stay apart. Now, they started to freeze to death again.

So they had to make a choice: either vanish from the face of the earth or accept each other's thorns. They wisely decided to stay together again. They learned to behave courteously, overlooking the small wounds that closeness causes, because the most important thing was the warmth given by the other.

This week, let's remember the porcupines when we face difficulties working together in our teams.

Credits: RealAcad

Runners High

2010-10-30T11:10:00.000+08:00

Our south bangalore runners - arekere, puttenahalli and bannerghatta road runners!

Reduce-Reuse-Recycle.

2010-10-24T22:45:00.001+08:00

Reduce-Reuse-Recycle

Disciple: "Oh my teacher! While you are so much concerned about the world and others; why don't you look into the welfare and needs of your own disciples too?"

Buddha: OK… Tell me, How can I help you? "

Disciple:"My attire is worn and is beyond the decency to wear the same. Can I get a new one, please?"

Buddha found the rob indeed was in a bad condition which needed replacement. He asked the store keeper to give a new robe to wear on. The disciple thanked Buddha and retired to his room.

Though he met his disciples requirement, Buddha was not al l that contended on his decision. A while after he went to his disciple's place and asked him…

Buddha: "Is your new attire comfortable? Do you need anything more?"

Disciple: "Thank you master. The attire is comfortable. I need nothing more."

Buddha: "Having got the new one, what will you do with your old attire? "

Disciple:"I am using it as my bed spread."

Buddha: "Then… hope you have disposed off your old bed spread."

Disciple:"No… No… master. I am using it as my window curtain."

Buddha: "What about your old window Curtain?"

Disciple:"Being used to handle hot utensils in the kitchen."

Buddha: "Oh…I see… Can you tell me what did they do with the o ld cloth they used in Kitchen"

Disciple: "They are being used to wash the floor."

Buddha: "Then, the old rug being used to wash the floor..???"

Disciple:"Master since they were torn off so much, we could not find any better use but to use as a twig in the oil lamp, which is right now lit in your study room..."

Buddha smiled in contentment and left for his room.

Reduce

Recycle Reuse

If not to this degree of utilization, can we at least attempt to find the best use of all our resources – at home and at office…??? It becomes imperative in the critical time of Recession…

Best marathon

2010-02-15T15:35:00.000+08:00

Had a great experience running the half marathon at auroville.,, will
return next year as well...

iPhone - A failure in India

2009-04-05T04:57:00.004+08:00

iPhone - the most talked about phone of the last 2 years, failed to make any impact in India. The reason for this can be summarized in one statement probably.
The iPhone is a 'data intensive' phone and operators in India are anti-data.
I think everyone agrees with the first part of the statement.
The whole iPhone experience 'lures' people to do more and more browsing of the internet from their phone.
Companies like AdMob get a significant share of their ad-revenues from iPhone browsing which is skewed when compared to iPhone's overall market share in mobile phones.
Coming to the 2nd part - anti-data means that operators in India DO NOT want their subscribers to use GPRS heavily.
When the whole world economy is slowing down - the indian mobile market is
STILL booming to say the least.
In Jan '09 - India added 20 mn+ susbcribers ( in a month!) - that is more than 4 times the population of Singapore!

With the base growing at such a rapid pace, the network of the operators is getting clogged
with voice traffic. We are seeing 'call-drops' and 'please try again later' situations in the network more and more.
In such a situation, the operator does not want his subscriber to use GPRS which will
clog the network even more - since in 2.5G - data runs over the idle voice-channels.

Moreover, whatever channel is free, the operator wants it subscriber to use it for
voice as he makes more money when the subs uses voice as opposed to data!
No wonder, the operators insanely priced in the phone in the Rs. 31 - 36K bracket
- surpassing even the top-notch Nokia phones.

A report in Business Week claims that there were less than 20,000 iPhones sold in India!

Thats a dismal number for any phone in a 300 million+ mobile subscriber base!

Favourite Books

2007-03-30T00:54:00.000+08:00

I've been wanting to do this for the longest time. Creating
a list of all the books I've read and remembered which is
to say they've left a mark on me -- figuratively speaking.
The list is in no order whatsoever and purely a regurgitation
of some part of my memory stack.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull - Richard Bach
Tuesdays with Morrie - Mitch Albom
Five people you meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
Alchemist - Paul Coelho
Brief History of Time - YRDKTA?
Black Holes and Baby Universes - Collection of Essays by Stephen Hawking
The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene
Harry Potter & the Prisoner of Azkaban - YRDKTA?
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
Fountainhead - Ayn Rand

Will write more as I remember...

The WEb is US

2007-02-27T14:50:00.000+08:00

Good video on how we are changing the web, or the web is changing us?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

YapperNut - another Skype Phone

2006-02-13T10:03:00.000+08:00

I've always been very interested in Skype
related products and have been on the
lookout for something simple and friendly
to use - yet cheap. I think I got my answer.

YapperNut is a product developed by two
stanford guys who were going through the
same pain - using Skype without being tied
down to the phone. The best thing I like
about it is that it is cordless - doubles up
as a normal phone - and for dialling Skypeout
numbers - you can just press ##phonenumber#

the number doesn't need to be registered as a
speed dial number under your Skype . That
means literally -no configuration is needed on
the PC. I am thinking of sending one home to
my parents so that they can call me here in
Singapore for 0.017 euro cents!

I've ordered the product - will write a more detailed
review once I've tested and used it

Cheers!

Low cost International SMS

2006-02-12T15:51:00.000+08:00

MobiSMS has recently reduced their international SMS rates.
Earlier they were using Clickatell as their gateway which used
to cost - 4.4 euro cents.

Now they are charging only 2.8 euro cents!. I don't know how
they are doing it. I wish I can find such a cheap SMS service
for XShare

Anyway, those who do not know, MobiSMS is an SMS service.
After buying credits, you can send sms from their website or
alternatively download their application to send directly from
your phone ( via GPRS).

When I heard about their new rates - I immediately purchased
100 credits (worth 100 SMS) and have been messaging my
friends in India/Australia using it.
They have revamped their website as well. Site is very clean now.

International SMS in Singapore costs 15 cents, whereas with
MobiSMS it is only 5.6 cents - thats 1/3rd the cost - and its
very relaible. There is no appending of any ads in the sms -
I am not sure how they are making money yet. !

2004-11-18T21:43:00.000+08:00

I do not know how many of you have discovered this, but Skype doesn't
maintain central contacts database. Your contacts are stored on your local
machine at x:\Documents and Settings\yourusername\Application Data\Skype
This has 2 implications -
1) Each time you sign in to Skype from a new machine,
or format/reinstall OS on your own machine you need to
keep saving that folder and copying it back in to the right place to
having the contacts or else add all of them one by one again!
( This is like ICQ before ICQ2001 came out.)
Something you can still live with.....
but....

2) Search is also P2P.
When you search for a particular user - Skype scans the contact list
of the users online in your contact list and so on .. recursively.
This means that the person you are searching for, he should be lucky
enough to be in the list of someone online, and someone whom you can
reach in the DFS manner.
You can try this - searching for different usernames gives you different results
at different times of the day.
The other day, I was trying to add a person to my friend's contact list.
The person we were searching for is very much a Skype user, but he unfortunately
existed only on my contact list and I was offline. AS expected, we were not able to
add this person to my friend's contact list and Skype simply cudn't find the person!
We asked all the contacts on my friends contact list to search for that particular
person but no one was successful!
Next morning, I went online on my Skype and asked my friend to search for the same
person, now, again as expected, the search found the person.
Ok. I know P2P is helps in minimizing load on a central server and helps
in scalability - but the least a company can do is provide a central contacts
database - everyone knows how important it is to have one....
Plaxo plugin for Skype?
What sayest thou ?
I'll leave you with that......
cheers!
SB

Successful phone to phone - Image transfer!

2004-10-02T17:25:00.000+08:00

Life is good. chugging along. In the past few weeks we reached a few signification milestones.
I do not know whether I mentione this before or not- but there is an 'angel investor' who is ready
to "gamble" his money with us =). But he wants to settle all the outstanding issues first.

So since he said that - we have enagaged a firm providign corporate secretarial services. The good news is that they do everything and take of the how it needs to be done. The bad thing is that they are slow... and thats delaying our investment. And that is why I am broke - Yes! Now I get it.. the reason why my bank balance is negative is that they are slow. Ok - Monday first thing - breathe down their neck!

Apart from the biz side - we achieved significant milestone in terms of product development. We succesfully tested sending pictures from phone to phone, even after GPRS disconnections, call coming,
etc. At the end it seems that we need to put a keep alive bit to be sent every 3 minutes or so, so that the NAT running on the operator GGSN never times out and in turn delete the entry in its table.

Yes - finally we managed to perform a phone to phone operation. we are using TCP sockets currently - I do not know how we can optimise that - I don't know whether we should concentrate more on optmising that = or concentrate on thinking of more and more new services for our platform. Well you might say that both are equally important, but you see with limited resources - you need to focus. =)

I guess we'll take up things slowly. for now - we are developing our symbian application =)

so much for DRM

2004-09-12T20:55:00.000+08:00

As a technologist, I keep trying new technology and applications - be it on my desktop at the office or my Nokia 6600 phone running a 32-bit OS ( Symbian) with a 4 MB Memory and 32 MB MMC.

Half the applications which came on the card were just trial versions which I cudn't use after a few days or after usign a few times. Anyway - the applciations
were totally uninteresting to me - so I never thght of paying to use them or to crack their trial version.

Recently I downloaded Photostore ( www.photostore.se) - It is a photo sharing application developed by Sapio AB ( www.sapio.se). I really liked the application
as it allowed me to upload my photographs to an online repository which I could
access from the web. It gave me the option of moving/copying in case I was running out of space on my phone. Good stuff. - Although the sharing parts sucks as I have to share for public and cannot share for just a few of my friends.
Also, when I try to access my repository from the phone it prompts to download all the pics rather than giving me the option choosing which photos to download.

Although, I dun click that many photos from my phone - i was actively using the application just to use my GPRS if nothing else! - although the speeds in Singapore are quite disappointing - only 40 kbps - thats what the telco Starhub says - but the tests which I ran showed only anr 25kbps. I am waiting for 3G

So, 10 days in to using the application - one fine day, when I fire up the application to show it to my friend, it gives me a prompt - "your trial version has ended - please download from handango.com - I was like -= on no i dun want to pay for this .... and THEN - it occured to me - lets try rolling the dat on my phone by 10 days.... and after doing that - when I fire up the application =- VIOLA it starts happily with no complaits.. I was still a bit skeptical - since sucha big company cannot be that stupid in software protection. So I thght may be, when I connect to the photstore - it'll reject my login - but no its true - they are THAT stupid.... they cud've checked the download date from the server!!! but anyway - I hope other software companies are that stupid and this may be a one-off incident.
Will keep you updated with my experiments.
cheers!
sourabh

GPRS IP address Assignment

2004-09-08T17:09:00.000+08:00

These days we are working on a very interesting problem.
We want to establish direct communication between two phones over GPRS.
Its not a problem whe you are sending an SMS/CBS. Things get complicated
when you are trying to open a socket connection directly to the other phone.
because then you need to know the "IP Address" of the peer phone.

In GPRS address assignment is done dynamically - that means a phones IP keeps
changing - how often - I am not sure. So there needs to be a server which keeps
a record of all the IPs of all the phones which are online.

So If Alice wants to send a file to Bob ( excuse me for using the typical names from
computer security - but I love these names! - ) so Alice queries the central server
for Bob's IP. When Bob went online ( opened a server socket connection) it got to
know its IP address and published it to the the central server. Alice gets this IP fromthe server.
The problem is not solved yet.

The next problem becomes more basic one - how is the routing done?
How does my operators GGSN know where to rotue this packet destined
for IP address 203.bbb.ccc.ddd. How does it know whether to send to Vodafone's GGSN
or to send to O2's GGSN or to T-mobile's GGSN.
I dun think it should be an issue because the GGSNs in itself are just just routers in the internet.
We are testing it - lets see how it goes - if it works across operators - then it will rock.
will keep you updated
cheers
sourabhs