Yet another way to save money for startups ..-SharePoint Alternative From Google

SharePoint Alternative From Google - Google Sites

Google today launched a MS SharePoint alternative to its google app bundle of
services . You can create intranet , wikis ,teamsite in minutes in google sites . It is well integrated with other google apps product like mail ,documents etc . The best part is the basic version is free and the premier version is pennies as compare to excessively expensive microsoft sharepoint .

It amazing to see that how we can manage a complete IT infrastucture for a small company using google product . I have personal expereince in setting up basic IT infrastructure for some small companies with no notable cost . There are so many services like email , documents hosting , mailing lists , dashboards ,now a CMS etc you can use for free with no cost . They have all the Postini offerings at a very negligible cost .This saves a lot of money and time for us . Best part is that you dont have to be a geek to setup and use all these services .

I would really like to see a workflow management system or service from google in their nexst update or service offering .

It is interesting to see how google is slowly digging to micorsofts enterprise space .Utimately google wants to eat into the huge enterprise software space that MS have enjoyed a monoply for quite some time now .

As long as these services doesn't cost too much I am happpy to use .

Yet Another Life saver for Startups and Small Businesses

cloudtools - Google Code

Yet Another Life saver for Startups and Small Businesses .

Infrastructure cost are going down for Startups with open source software and Amazon web services getting popular now you don't have to pay huge amounts for server hosting or getting expensive hardware for your IT environments.

With Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) now you can deploy , test and even host your Java EE apps on Amazon servers . You can run your apps on Tomcat servers with MySQL Database .

Amazon Webservices are still new and have some major barriers (No SLA ,Persistence DB,IP changes )for entry as mentioned in Info Q blog

Tool developement around the amazon ec2 has already started in the community . One of such tools which makes your life easy is EC2Deploy cloudtools - Google Code.

Here you can see how to deploy a JEE app

With Amazons Pay for what you use ...starups can save a lot of money on IT infrastructure .They have many flexible plans to choose from depending on your needs . Details

So the days of servers cramped in a bedroom or office spaces for startups may be with virtual and cloud computing .


I think there will be many more apis and frameworks around EC2 as it gains momentum in the community .


Vishal

is Browser Back Button Broken on Digg.com ?

is Browser Back Button Broken on Digg.com ?

Whenever I try to use the browser back button it always gives me a fatal error . Now comeon ..its digg the web 2.0 website...this shouldn't happen .


Vishal

Who Needs Micorsoft Office Apis and code access Anyway ?

Microsoft Realizes Open Source or Do they ??? Who Needs MS Office Apis and code access Anyway ?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7257411.stm

I think Microsoft is realizing the end of proprietary and monopoly software is near and the survive it needs to open up . But is it too late for Microsoft for spin the open source buzz word .Is it just to please the european antitrust regulators ? Or it is a cunning move by MS to expliot the open source software developers and community .

The big question is microsoft with its history of proprietary ,closed and monopolized software will able to embrace open source software culture . Its difficult to digest sudden change in their philosophy . Yes it is when I read in details about their announcements . They are just opening up apis for the office suite for developers for "interoperability" .So its just a move towards complying to the antitrust spanks from the EU . If I understand there legal lingo ...they are going to charge royalty fees for use of these apis in third party extensions .

So they still don't get it that Open source is a beautiful culture of openness and innovations where all great things are created by a sense of community and collaboration .

Anyway...the interesting point is do we really need the MS Apis and code access ? With the all the Web 2.0 office applications and open office catching up.... are there any developers want to contribute to MS office applications.

The only application I miss is Excel . I think all the other web based spreadsheet applications will take a long time to offer all its features .

more analysis on the announcement
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/licenses.mspx
http://www.opensource.org/node/257
http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/archive/2008/02/20/microsoft-takes-next-step-in-delivering-interoperability.aspx

This Can Happen only in India Crowds flock to monkey 'wedding'

Crowds flock to monkey 'wedding'

The First "Java Champion" in India | Indic Zone

The First "Java Champion" in India | Indic Zone: "Harshad Oak has been selected as a 'Java Champion' and happens to be the first one in India.

About Harshad Oak:

Harshad is the author/co-author of (3) Java books: Pro Jakarta Commons; Oracle JDeveloper 10g: Empowering J2EE Development; and Java 2 Enterprise Edition 1.4 Bible. He is also a Oracle ACE Director for Fusion Middleware and was featured in Oracle Magazine. He has been a technical presenter at industry conferences: Jax India 07; IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology; ApacheCon Asia; Oracle Java Guru Theatre at JavaOne.

About SUN's Java Champions project:

Founded in 2005, the Java Champions project is a community of influential thought-leaders who have a passion for Java technology. The concept behind the Java Champions program is to build a somewhat informal but select grouping of Java technology leaders from different areas of the community including professional developers/architects, academics, authors, consultants, and other influencers. Sun wants to engage with these community leaders to give them the opportunity to provide feedback on technology ideas and directions for Sun."

Einstein, Newton displayed autistic traits

Einstein, Newton displayed autistic traits: "Einstein, Newton displayed autistic traits"

Really ??? This is interesting .

At least for Einstein as I have some books on his life I think there was some special sense he had to think beyond the boundaries of conventional wisdom. How do you think he solved the mysteries of universe by seating in a patent office .


Vishal

Cricket in India goes Frenzy .....Will Indian Premier League take off ?

With the Indian Premier League saga starts with the so called auction of players was interesting to see the League culture coming to india . Dhoni was the star of the show and he went for 1.5 mill after starting at $400k .Parthiv Patel sold for $325,000 in the auction.Who the hell paid for this guy . I wouldnt pay a penny or paisa rather for that crap . I cant believe they raised $800m in TV rights for these games .It more like a business than a sports in india now . I think with the economy growing more and more firms will ride this marketing bandwagon .

All the big names are the owners like Vijay malliya who already owns the force india F1 team , shaaruk khan ,mukesh ambani, preity zinta and juhi chawla ...when the heck these girls became interested in cricket?.

But I have mixed feelings about this league . On one hand it will be exciting to see cities competing among each other and a mix of national and international players playing for each city. Other hand there will be no sense of national zeal in supporting your country in the match . I never found a match with players from different countries very exciting . Some matches which were organized for fund raising and stuff were pretty boring .or may be I am used to the stereotype matches amoung different countries. But I think the county cricket model is already working in england although I never watch those matches . You can never say this is in india and indians are crazy about cricket . The crowds can make even a dull match exciting. and more importantly these will be 2020 games which are sure far more exciting then the 1 day matches.

The interesting part would be seeing ricky pointing under sourav ganguly's captiancy . I dont how these guys will work with each other if they are rivals in internationally .


But i think cricket didnt needed any more publicity in india . It is already the most popular and unfortunately the "only" popular sports in india . I would love to see such leagues for hockey and football in india .




TOP 10 WINNING AUCTION BIDS
Mahendra Dhoni: $1.5m (Chennai)
Andrew Symonds: $1.35m (Hyderabad)
Sanath Jayasuriya: $975,000 (Calcutta)
Ishant Sharma: $950,000 (Mohali)
Irfan Pathan: $925,000 (Mohali)
Brett Lee : $900,000 (Mohali)
Jacques Kallis: $900,000 (Bangalore)
RP Singh: $875,000 (Hyderabad)
Harbhajan Singh: $850,000 (Mumbai)
Chris Gayle: $800,000 (Kolkata)
IPL teams so far:

Bangalore
Rahul Dravid (capt)
Jacques Kallis (SA): $ 900,000
Anil Kumble (Ind): $500,000
Cameron White (Aus): $500,000
Zaheer Khan (Ind): $450,000
Mark Boucher (SA): $450,000
Nathan Bracken (Aus): $325,000
Dale Steyn (SA): $325,000
Wasim Jaffer (Ind): $150,000

Calcutta
Sourav Ganguly (capt)
Ishant Sharma (Ind): US$950,000
Chris Gayle (WI): $800,000
Brendon McCullum (NZ): $700,000
David Hussey (Aus): $625,000
Murali Karthik (Ind): $425,000
Shoaib Akhtar (Pak): $425,000
Ricky Ponting (Aus): $400,000
Ajit Agarkar (Ind): $350,000
Umar Gul (Pak) $150,000

Chennai
Mahendra Singh Dhoni (Ind): $1.5 million
Jacob Oram (NZ): $675,000
Albie Morkel (SA): $675,000
Muttiah Muralitharan (SL): $600,000
Matthew Hayden (Aus): $375,000
Stephen Fleming (NZ) $350,000
Parthiv Patel (Ind) $325,000
Joginder Sharma (Ind) $225,000
Makhaya Ntini (SA) $200,000

Delhi
Virender Sehwag (capt)
Manoj Tiwary (Ind): $675,000
Mohammad Asif (Pak): $650,000
Daniel Vettori (NZ): $625,000
Dinesh Karthik (Ind): $525,000
Shoaib Malik (Pak): $500,000
AB de Villiers (SA): $300,000
Tillekeratne Dilshan (SL): $250,000
Farveez Maharoof (SL): $225,000

Hyderabad
Andrew Symonds (Aus): $1.35m
RP Singh (Ind): $875,000
Rohit Sharma (Ind) $750,000
Adam Gilchrist (Aus): $700,000
Shahid Afridi (Pak): $675,000
Herschelle Gibbs (SA): $575,000
VVS Laxman (Ind): $375,000
Scott Styris (NZ): $175,000
Nuwan Zoysa (SL): $110,000
Chamara Silva (SL): US$100,000

Jaipur
Graeme Smith (SA): $475,000
Yusuf Pathan (Ind): $475,000
Shane Warne (Aus): $450,000
Munaf Patel (Ind): $275,000
Younis Khan (Pak): $225,000
Kamran Akmal, (Pak): $150,000

Mohali
Yuvraj Singh (capt)
Irfan Pathan (Ind): $925,000
Brett Lee (Aus): $900,000
Kumar Sangakkara (SL): $700,000
Sree Santh (Ind): $625,000
Mahela Jayawardene (SL): $475,000
Piyush Chawla (Ind): $400,000
Romesh Powar (Ind): $170,000

Mumbai
Sachin Tendulkar (capt)
Sanath Jayasuriya (SL): $975,000
Harbhajan Singh (Ind): $850,000
Robin Uthappa (Ind): $800,000
Shaun Pollock (SA): $550,000
Lasith Malinga (SL) $350,000
Dilhara Fernando (SL) $150,000
Stat Source :BBC



Vishal

More.... More... More.... Frameworks

Wonder how many java web frameworks are there out in the wild . You will not believe there are tons and tons of them. Here are some of them I got from some websites . I am sure that these are only few of them ...I dont think this is a complete list . Do you know any more ? or the place where all the framework are listed .Names of the frameworks are also interesting ...birds ,fruits ,gods,animals you name it and its there ...

How many more do we need ? Are people really using all of these ?

More.... More... More.... Frameworks

Echo Cocoon Millstone OXF
Struts SOFIA Tapestry WebWork
RIFE Spring MVC Canyamo Maverick
JPublish JATO Folium Jucas
Verge Niggle Bishop Barracuda
Action Framework Shocks TeaServlet wingS
Expresso Bento jStatemachine jZonic
OpenEmcee Turbine Scope Warfare
JWAA Jaffa Jacquard Macaw
Smile MyFaces Chiba JBanana
Jeenius JWarp Genie Melati
Dovetail Cameleon JFormular Xoplon
Japple Wicket Helma Dinamica WebOnSwing
Nacho Cassandra Baritus Stripes
GWT


Vishal (no... thats not a framework its my name :)



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"Blog" is not included in the Micorsoft Outlooks Dictionary

I was typing a email in Microsoft outlook .I found a interesting spell check while sending the email . Microsoft outlook was saying that "Blog" is not in dictionary . Can you believe this ?

Can someone please call Mr Gates back to microsoft ?




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The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever : "The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever"

The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever is a title coined by George Boolos in La Repubblica 1992 under the title L'indovinello più difficile del mondo for the following Raymond Smullyan inspired logic puzzle:
“ Three gods A, B, and C are called, in some order, True, False, and Random. True always speaks truly, False always speaks falsely, but whether Random speaks truly or falsely is a completely random matter. Your task is to determine the identities of A, B, and C by asking three yes-no questions; each question must be put to exactly one god. The gods understand English, but will answer all questions in their own language, in which the words for yes and no are 'da' and 'ja', in some order. You do not know which word means which.

From Enterprise Development to Community Driven Development - From a Developer's perspective

As more and more enterprises are moving towards open source software it is important that they also understand the significant paradigm shift that comes with open source community driven software projects and products .It comes with a new culture for the enterprise which some of them might not find initially very comfortable .

Enterprise software development used to be a very close environment with very little knowledge sharing or collaboration across industries or companies . There was very little sharing of code,apis,best practices outside the company . But with the more and more companies going for open source software , enterprise developer(developers working in big companies) have to go through a mindset change from closed environment to a more collaborative and open development setup . With my personal experience in working in both kind of environments , I think its a slow transformation and involves a great deal eagerness and efforts from the teams .

People who are working in a startup or have worked in one already know and can understand exactly what I am saying . They can save their time by skip reading :)

This transformation is not limited to the developers only ,Project managers and business people also play a critical role in this .

Specially project managers and the leads have to be top of all the current technological development going around the community . Like if they are using a open source CRM , they have to be aware of the communities out there for the product and what is happening in the communities . They are not expected to know the details of things but at least if they find anything in there interest,they should make the team aware of this .Same is true for the developers also , they have to be on top of whats going in and around the open source community .

There are excellent frameworks and apis written and released every single day . Something you need or about to write may already be available out there. Believe me I find almost 50% of times something out in open source for my requirements. Even if you do not find the exact thing you are looking for you can always extend that to meet your requirement and also give it back to the community .Thats the beauty of open source .

Some of the times i find enterprise developers trying to solve whats already being solved by somebody . Thats because they are not aware of the happenings in the community or may be they want to just reinvent the wheel. You will be surprise that how much time and efforts can be saved by just being informed about open source .

The whole idea of getting a piece of code or product which is not from the great MIO stack(MS IBM ORACLE) , from the wild is scary for some of the folks.

Other thing I found hard to convince team members is to attend and participate in community events for a particular open source product they are using . They have to understand that its not they the old way of doing and discussing things only among the team . Their are tons of developers who are collaborating from outside the their company and they have to communicate with these developers to effectively use the product .

Participation in the forums is very important for developers. Ofcourse they have to respect the company guideline about intellectual property .Its not like the typical IBM support system ,that if anything happens you call the support and die waiting
for them to resolve the issues .Open source discussions forums are excellent place to get your answers for your issues. Thats why you have to be very active in the discussion forums to get a quick response .In fact nowadays the forums are excellent place to find solutions and don't to pay huge dollars for the support .

I also think that as Agile project methodology comes more and more into mainstream software development , the role of open source software will become critical in projects as these two compliment each other . There is whole lot to discuss about the Agile Open source relationship ...may be in other post .

Instead of discussing all the things in lengthy text and bore you to death I will just list down what i think a developer working in a enterprise environment could do for effectively enjoying the goodies of open source .

=============================================

>>Participate in Community Forums.

>>Attend Local Community Events.

>>Subscribe to RSS from open source websites like infoQ, serverside ,hacker news etc.

>>Atleast read one Blog or Article daily .

>>Start a community in your company ,arrange events ,discussions etc for the community .

>>Apart from Wikis Start a technology forum in the company intranet where developers can shares ideas .

>>Wikis can have a list of open source products used in your company and reviews about it .

>>If you have developed something in your project that might be useful for others ...host it as a open source project within your firm and if allowed outside the company so that other developers can make use and collaborate .

>>Start a new open source project with other developers within your company as a parallel project to your existing one . This will give a first hand perspective and will keep you motivated .

>>Organize code challenges in the company .

>>Subscribe to the open source mailing lists ...like some of the JSR have there mailing list where you will get all the latest updates and discussions .

>>what do you think....

These may seem more work at the first glance but in long term they will bring immense motivation , job satisfaction productivity

improvement and generate enthusiasm's among the developers .

Remember Happy Developers Generate Quality Code :)


What do you think should help big enterprises to go open source culture ...??


Please add to list so that It becomes a kind of reference point for developers ...


Vishal

Finally the sun came out in Chicago after 8 days ...Can you believe that ?? ...Global warming ??

Chicago has gone eight consecutive days without seeing the sun, breaking the record for consecutive sunless days set in 1894 according to a report .Till now in February Chicagoans have had just 11 minutes of sun. Reminds me of the horrible movie i saw 30 days of night .please dont even think of seeing it .

Are we in a ice age already ..where is global warming mann ...we need some global warming here . Can I make some connection of global warming and such kind of weather . This year its being really crazy ....the temperatures going from 60 to 20 ....from sunshine to rain ....from rain to snow in a single freaking day . This kind of weather makes you feel dull and sick even if you are not .

You dont really want to get out of your house . Generally I really dont care about the weather but people will discuss it so many times that I am forced to think about it and curse it . Every day the hot topic of discussion is weather ..how much snow ..how low

the temp ...the horrible commute ...blah blah

Is it time now to point fingers at global warming . There are so many natural disasters in recent years . Is global warming responsible ? I am not a expert on global warming in fact I dont even fully understand what are the effects of global warming .But logically thinking the earth should be becoming warmer . Then where the heck is this cold coming from .I know Canada is partly responsible of this freaking cold ..may be they should built a wall on canadian border instead of Mexico JK:)


But seriously I think mother nature is getting furious on us and raising her own voice make us aware . Whether it is global warming or anything else I dont know .


Vishal

Is Martin Fowler Blog turning into a Thought Works marketing Blog ? Just an Observation !

I am a great fan and regular reader of Martin Fowler's Blog . But recently I have observed few things about Martin Fowler's specially the last 2 posts that now its more about Thoughtworks , Billing rates ,ThoughtWork Consultants.

Its getting more towards the business side rather then the technical side of the topics . This is just my observation I may be completely wrong it just that I don't feel good if a technical guy starts talking about business and billing rates and that kinda of stuff . There is nothing wrong it that .

Or It may be purely because of the nature of the topics that he had to mention business .

Hope we see new posts with some architecture , Java Ruby , Patterns ,dsl stuff in his posts :)

Vishal

New Exicitng and Easy way to collect and store information from Google

Google spreadsheet have launched a new exciting and Easy way to collect and store information from Google.

This will really help to quickly create webforms to collect sigup information for meetings seminars etc . You can just create a new spreadsheet and create a form to fill in data in the spreadsheet in form of questions and answers .You can send this form or a link to the form to anyone ( they dont have to have a google account to fill in information ) . The questions are stored as column names and the answers are stored as rows . This could really help in quick surveys.

Try it out it very easy !

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-sharing-spreadsheets-start.html

My Fav SuperBowl Ads

Where the Heck is the Iphone SDK ???

Where the Heck is the Iphone SDK .

Mr. Apple promised us a Iphone SDK to be released in Feb 08 . So Feb is here and there is no word on the SDK released .I was eagerly waiting to get my hand down and dirty in the SDk and write some app for my Iphone .Its ridiculous that iphone doesnt have a basic to do app on it . It would be great being able to install apps without the jailbreak crack . There was a talk of being able to sell your app thru itunes to general public . Not sure if this will be possible .

Anybody have a update on the iphone SDk release ????

So Giants are the World (American Version of World) Champions !!!!

So Giants are the World (American Version of World) Champions !!!!

I usually dont follow football much (yeah american football...which is play by hand stupid isnt it )...After last years disappointing superbowl I really didnt planned anything special ..just relaxed on the couch and expected nothing special from the game ....but last nite superbowl i enjoyed ...it was a defensive game and the undogs giants clinched a lastminute victory over the unbeaten patriots . Not that I really care who wins but i always like to support the undogs when india is not playing . Actually I tuned in for watching the new superbowl ads that are aired between the game ..hmmm i will correct myself actually the game is aired between the ads ..I am not exaggerting a penny here .It was literally 3 min of commercials every 2 mins of play .Commercials were good they got be bacoz they pay a huge 2.5 mil for 30 sec ad . I liked the budwiser cheese ad and the US cellular val couple ad ,fedex ,carrierbuilder ads . Another attraction was the celeb performances ..I think most of the people tune in to watch the commercials , live performances and others just because they dont have nothing better things to do. Seriously is you take out the alcohol part of the top fav american sports (baseball , football,nascar)I dont think anybody can watch these sports for long.
The opening performance by keys was good but the halftime show by heartbreakers sucked completely as expected . It was worst than last year prince .

Ok about the game ...see nobody really cares what going on in the game ...its all about the hype and events surrounding the game .I think superbowl is a hypothetical media giant created by coorporate america to make people spend .Not that I am saying there is anything wrong in that ...thats what fuels the economy ...but it has less to do with sports then money .

See again all the discussions about other things .....ok ..giants played a very solid defensive game and their strategy to block the qb tom brady worked perfectly well . I am really not a expert on the game but the quater back is supposed to the captian and he is the one who decides when and to whom to throw the ball for the run ..so he is imp guy and the gaints kept this guy very tight .It was a very simple plan and worked perfect .Eli manning did a great job of getting the ball right in the last minute of the game .It was interesting to watch his brother Pattenmanning watching from the gallery who won the superbowl last year for colts .Mann Manning family must have had a huge party at their home lastnite.

Thats how much I can write about the game :)

Just improving my blogging skills ...any comments from the experts bloggers welcome .

Companies that “don’t get it” become one bigger company that won’t get it :)

My immediate thoughts .....

Is it a act of desperation from Microsoft to go after google ?

Can no.2 and no.3 combined bit the no. 1 ??

Companies that “don’t get it” become one bigger company that won’t get it :)

It would be sad to see MS killing the creative uniquness of Yahoo ......We have seen that MS swallowing small companies lately and coming up with nothing .

How would these companies integrate their platforms .....

How would Yahoo guys fit in the MS work culture ? or is there any :)


What does MS call Yahoo ....Mahoo ...Ysoft ...Mhoo ...XYZ ...:)


more thoughts to come ....what do you think