Technical Tales

Leaving BlogSpot

2005-11-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

Hi All ..!

I have moved to a new space at in my domain http://dsmrk.com/

It is blogspot where I started my first writing online and I have one more blog other than Technical Tales here with blogspot at Rain Drops I have done a total of nearly 100 posts here in blogspot. I had a good time writing in here.

Let me hold and gain more momentum to write there in my new blog

Cheers and Best Wishes to Blogger

Love,
Ranjith

TypePad Exceeeeeds Customer Expectations ..!

2005-11-16T00:10:00.000-08:00

That was a nice offer for the TypePad users from the company ..!

We at Six Apart understand that you pay for TypePad and expect to receive superior performance in return. At times over the last several weeks, we have not provided that type of experience. We also know that some customers have been more heavily impacted than others. Therefore, we want to give you the choice of how Six Apart should compensate you for any inconvenience we have caused.

While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience I mainly found the service acceptable last month.
Give me 15 free days of TypePad.

The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month.
Give me 30 free days of TypePad.

The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month.
Give me 45 free days of TypePad.

I really wasn’t affected at all and feel I got the great service I paid for last month.
Thank you for your offer, but please don't credit my account.

We’d also love to hear any feedback from you about your recent experience with TypePad, and what we could have done to better communicate the situation and what we were doing to fix it.

The customers of TypePad will be more happy and motivated to use their service.

Cheers !!!
Ranjith

Ajax-S - Presentation

2005-11-13T21:12:00.000-08:00

Ajax-S is a pretty cool presentation built on the same lines of the S5 Presentation. This presentor as against the S5 uses simple xml files at the back end for the data holding and a xslt parser driven by javascript at the front end. Supports the necessary fileds like

Page Title
Heading
Sub Heading
List - ordered
Paragraph
Text Formatting and
images also

with the help of simple xml tags.

Robert says :

The idea came to me because I wanted a lightweight slideshow based on HTML, CSS and JavaScript, but I also wanted to separate the data of each page from the actual code that presents it. Therefore, I decided to move the data into an XML file and then use AJAX to retrieve it. The name AJAX-S is short for AJAX-Slides (or AsynchronousJavaScript and XML Slides, if you want to).

Naturally, one of my inspirations for creating a HTML-based slideshow are from Eric Meyer and his S5. However, I wanted to take it one notch further, to make it more flexible and also usable for people with no HTML knowledge whatsoever. Another motivating factor was to just transform the data for the current page, as opposed to creating all the HTML needed for all the pages when the page is initially loaded. A leaner end user experience, basically.

It only works in IE 6 and Mozilla-based web browsers as of now. This is because of the need to do on the fly transformations on the client, which means the necessary support forActiveXObject or XSLTProcessor has to be there.

Top Ten Design Mistakes - Web

2005-11-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

What is required when you design your web pages. Following are some ten mistakes which needs to be fixed to have you site recognised. Me to have to work on them to make sure I am little perfect.

1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service

Check out for the complete article at the website - useit

Cheers - Ranjith

On line Word Processor

2005-10-18T01:46:00.000-07:00

World is moving more to the web. In the upcoming days one must be able to work on a OS - Browser.

Zoho Writer - On the same line is an alternative for the word, an online tool to write, edit documents. It can do much more than the word bound to the OS. On its way to collabration, it provides sharing of documents with permissions.

Try writing your documents online and collabrate with your friends.

Make life simpler on the Web.

Cheers
Ranjith

Most Mispelled Word

2005-10-02T02:36:00.000-07:00

Here are the list of 100 most mispelled words listed

Mispelled

What do you want to do ?

2005-08-27T05:00:00.000-07:00

Here are some of the questions that asked on how to determine what do you want to do ?

* When do you feel at your most motivated?
* When do you get lost in activity or thought and lose all track of time?
* When do you feel alive, focused and engaged?
* What is the common thread between smiling at the rain, enjoying the earth in your hands, playing a sumptuous feast and playing with your child?
* What is the focus of all your 'flow' activities, the pivot around which they turn, the outcome to which they all drive?
* What is your non-negotiable dream, so precious that so far you have told no one about it for fear it will be compromised?

Further author narrates how our mind will swing over the selection of what we do based on the following criteria

1. What is needed ?
2. What we are good at ?
3. What we love to do ?

Really worth reading the article at link

Get The Most Out Of Your Meetings ..!

2005-08-24T12:07:00.000-07:00

That was a great piece of 10 points for the people who happen to attend or conduct more meetings in their official life.

Some that most attracted me are :

1. Have a Leader for the meeting - most requried one
2. Invite people who will get something out of it
3. Give Freedom to leave the meeting if they feel it unecessary to attend. - taken from the comment
4. Set the time limit and stick to the agenda - Dont intrude into others schedules by prolonging the meetings.
5. Start on time - Dont make people wait to loose their interest to move into the meeting.

Have to read these points at :
Get the Most Out of Your Meeting..

Cheers - Ranjith

Jerry Wilkinson’s Ten Tips for Highly Effective Business Networking

2005-08-23T10:51:00.000-07:00

Jerry Wilkinson (VP Sales at Merrill Corp. and former NFL standout) stopped by yesterday to share his thoughts with the attorneys at my firm during a training session on building a personal network. Most engaging! He left me some tips he’d jotted down and now I’m sharing them here:

Jerry Wilkinson’s Ten Tips for Highly Effective Business Networking

1. Be you…authentic. Authenticity always has an audience.
2. Find like-minded people in the business arena where your expertise meets an need.
3. Do what you love and love what you do and you’ll never work another day in your life.
4. PMA (positive mental attitude) is like a magnet. There is so much crap in the world, that most people truly enjoy being around optimistic people who see the glass as half full.
5. Take it personal, make it personal. If you don’t then you won’t really have a relationship (with clients or contacts).
6. Send handwritten personal notes.
7. Be a resource. The power of brokering education, information and fun cannot be understated.
8. Timing is important. Being timely is everything.
9. Visibility is key. Join organizations that you really have a passion for (Boy’s & Girls Club of America, YMCA, Advisory Councils, et al).
10. Leave the jerks to the competition. Is the revenue really worth the pain?

Thanks to Bruce for letting me know this

Are You still not a great Blog Reader ..!

2005-08-21T09:40:00.000-07:00

If you are not a so called blog reader by now, You will be missing a lot of things happening in the cutting edge of the world.

Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk, puts in his blog a very long time back in his blog on why and how you can do it very easily. Also he puts some of the good blogs to start with.

How to Get Into Blogs, 101

Get hold of a reader and make yourself travel at the last step of the technology.

Ranjith

Tom Peters on Presentation

2005-08-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

Tom Peters list his 56 points on how to make a great presentation.

These points are worth reading

Hppy Presentation..

Ranjith

For Entrepreneurs

2005-08-18T10:53:00.000-07:00

If you are entrepreneur and looking for some leads around to lead you through, you can check out the following links. I am yet to read them of my own to get some ideas to be known.

EntreWord and the blog of The Kauffman Foundation

Cheers - Ranjith

Came Back ..!

2005-08-18T10:51:00.000-07:00

Was out there to my native and the water falls and sea shore around my home town with my friends - The Mannars for a long week end trip of our Independence Day..!

Sorry for a long break here on the blog..

Ranjith

Do More

2005-08-10T14:02:00.000-07:00

7 Ways to Get More Done was a nice post by By Jon Gordon in which he stresses on following points for doing more..!

* Go to Bed early and Wake Up Early
* Know Your Priorities and Write them Down
* Focus
* Create Mini-retreats
* Let Go of Negativity and Self Doubt
* Let Go of Attachments and Expectations
* Delegate

Rush Hour and Marketing

2005-08-03T14:50:00.000-07:00

Bruce Allen writes at Marketing Catalyst, What Rush Hour is Teaching Me About Marketing

This clearly says how we can move ahead in the market with the internal and external influences around us. He compares it well with the Traffic around us.

1) I can control only my Car
2) I can drive no faster than the cars around me
3) I can monitor the Traffic around me and change lanes to catch a faster flow.
and much more.

Ranjith

Sling BOX -- Bring your TV to Office ..!

2005-07-31T11:00:00.000-07:00

Sling Box That was really a great Idea of seeing your news in your mother language and your channels when you are on the fly anywhere in the world...!

The Slingbox is a compact and elegantly designed, state-of-the-art electronic device that connects to the back of your TV. It redirects, or “placeshifts,” the TV signal from your cable box, satellite receiver, or digital video recorder (DVR) to your computer or laptop of choice, no matter your location — so long as you have a high-speed Internet connection. This utterly unique device will transform the way you watch TV. Whether you want to watch your soaps in the laundry room, or catch the big game during a conference call, or watch your local news from China, the power is now in your hands.

Check out the know how section to learn more on the technology used on this product. It changes the way we watch our television...

Project and Stategies ..!

2005-07-31T10:23:00.000-07:00

I was reading some of my subscriptions from Knowledge @ Wharton. I got one of the links on the Startegic Management , where they sighted the reasons for the Failure of the project as below. The core of all the reasons are the process of execution of the project.

1) Movement of our focus from one objective to another over a period of time.
2) Communication of the common goal to everyone clearly.
3) Execution of the plan with the strictness.

Five Key reasons for Getting the work done are :

1)Develop a model for execution.
2)Choose the right metrics
3) Don't forget the plan
4)Assess performance frequently
5)Communicate

Google Code Jam - 2005

2005-07-26T11:19:00.000-07:00

Google once again anounces code Jam for the year 2005. Check out the following link for the details. This time Google, I believe Google has increased its prizes to a bigger money.

Google Code Jam - 2005

All the Best...!

Ranjith

Write and Thing clearly with a easy learning..!

2005-07-23T09:39:00.000-07:00

I was going thru the presentation on how to write clearly , Think More Clearly and Learn Complex Materials More Easily of Michael A. Covington.

That was a good presentation that runs a pretty long for around 97 slides but it is worth reading. Some of my learnings from it is...

1) Writing , Thinking and Learning are all related and connected.
2) Writing is a very easy job and make sure you follow the following ways that will increase ur presentaion :

a) Plan your Writing - What, how and for whom.
b) Draft What you want to write - First Sketch.
c) Revise after your drafting - Improving it further.
d) Editing - Spelling Grammar and Typos
e) Formatting - Layouts, Colors and Fonts...

Some of the thicker points are :

Reduce the number of words you write to express a thing.
Keep your formating simple and conventional ..!
Write your words keeping the reader of the same in mind and not urself first..!

This is all about Writing...

Will follow up with the Thinking stuffs tomorrow.

Cheers - Ranjith

How to Write Software

2005-07-22T11:18:00.000-07:00

Got the following quote from 37 Signals Blog and it was really nice that made me post it here ..!

“Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts. This requires not that the writer make all sentences short or avoid all detail and treat subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.” -The Elements of Style by William Strunk Jr. 1959.

Cheers Ranjith

Buzz Metrics and Blog Readers Types

2005-07-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

I was reading through BuzzMetrics blog on Is BLOG going to be an industry term?.

A circulation of Questions on the following manner :

a) Read blogs every day
b) Read blogs occassionally
c) Know what a blog is but dont really read them
d) Have heard of a blog but don't really know what it is
e) Never heard of a blog til right now

And the results were :

1) only 6 % falls in a
2) 13 % answered e
3) 50 % answered c and d

Continuing he says around 2/3 of the people who said that they dont know blogs were reading blogs without knowledge. But Every one here starts at the level of e at the start up and goes forward towards a when we set people and the term blog as X and Y axes. I moved up in the same layer. May be some of the b, c and d may overlap or may be done at the same time. Also people now has started writing blogs like a website and no wonder these things will overlap and 2/3 of people reading blog without knowing what it is ..!

Cheers - Ranjith

cantfindongoogle - A great Idea ..!

2005-07-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

That was a great website by Wayne Radinsky. But the site's was there for a long time before it has came out.

I was pretty curious to know what will be his internal search engine which he is going to use for the internal searches as the number of posts on this site is increasing to the order of 30s per day..!

Wayne : Don't you think you need an internal search engine?

Great and Good Efforts Man !!!!

Thanks to Steve for pointing me at Google Doesn't Know it all

Cheers ,
Ranjith

Blogosphere - The Size is growing ..!

2005-07-19T11:33:00.000-07:00

I was reading Stever Rubel's post on the blogosphere size where he points to the size of blogoshpere is on the increase and Technorati says it is seeing around 900,000 posts per day.

Rubel also points to the spam blogs and posts. As I read through the post of Sifry , he says that around 80,000 has been created each day.

The ratio of the Number of posts done to the number of blogs created every day is not showing a very good sign of a healthy blogosphere.

One beauty of blog reading is not pushed it is only pulled which can keep us away by ourself from reading such spammers.

Let us wait and see the growth..

Ranjith

Boosting Windows XP Performace

2005-07-18T01:49:00.000-07:00

Here is a write up of ten points from a site which has a lot of interesting articles that can help you technically.

I was looking at boosting my Windows performance which landed me here

Some ten tips for XP Performance

Cheers - Ranjith

Recruiters Read ur blog ..!

2005-07-14T12:39:00.000-07:00

I got this link from the recriting.com

Are Companies looking at ur blog before they recruit ?

I made a post some times back Are you ready to run in this Era ??? which is a link to Joe Kraus of jotspot and his first question to any guy attending an interview is nothing other than Do you have a Blog.

On seeing both of these things I feel like recruiters down the line will read your blog with or without your knowledge. You may be traced for if you can write a damn good Blog..

Lets wait for the answers ..!

You dont have to click ..!

2005-07-05T01:09:00.000-07:00

I had never used a site like this. I was just reading thru seth's blog where I got the following URL:

http://dontclick.it/

The site was so amazing and It really made me think wild on the site..

Great work ..! Great Job ..!

Guys of Dont Click ..!

Are you a PM ?

2005-07-03T04:59:00.000-07:00

Check out this post if you are a product manager ..!

That was a great post from Ken Norton of JotSpot on hiring Product Managers...

I dont see much more to write over him. May be I have to read it one more time..

the post

Are you ready to run in this Era ???

2005-07-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

Joe Kraus puts three questions to identify the people for a start up company.

1. Do you have a blog?
2. What's your home page? (He prefers people who have created their own home page.)
3. Do you contribute to an open source project?

These questions sounds good for the current era. As everything moving on the web today. It is becoming a mandate to hold these things.

Do you have a blog ? - From the previous world of Word of mouth, it became the word of Blog today... A good blogger has a great relation ships built around him to spark all word of Blog...

Creativity comes from the home page has to accept that. Since It took me a lot of time to customize a very simple page of mine mixing up some of the templates to create my blog page.

Will the whole world of software goes out as a open source ? The answer to this quesiton answers the third question...!

Customizing Blogger ..!

2005-07-02T05:21:00.000-07:00

It was a very long time schedule of me to make my page look better in the blogger. I do a couple of more blogs where to I have to sit and do some tinkering work to get it fixed. I am not that much smart in CSS. But I managed a bit and did some work for 4 hours to get this page done. At last I failed to make the bottom margin to 0 Px due to the fact that blogger put a bottom margin on rendering the page at run time. My Quote too is on the fly. I have to decorate the same tooo....

I took some mix up of some of the templates and used some of the images from different templates. Blogger should give some options to upload my own images on to the blogblog.com page of atleast all the images should be visible or listed in this page so that I can crete some of my own templates by myself.

This is some thing I felt on the customisation on the Blogger...

Lets wait for some more customization to be open by bloggerrr...

Cheers - Ranjith

Is Mobile phones a competitor ?

2005-07-01T11:27:00.000-07:00

The article on the Tech Beat talks about how you can pay some of your payments using your mobile phones and things will get reflected in your following telephone bill. As a example the article suggests an donation you pay to a charitable institution.

Subscribers simply need to send a short-text message to a 5-digit short code to donate 25 cents a day for 31 days. That donation will appear on their monthly wireless bill.

Also olga suspects or expects mobiles to do some work that a bank supports

In fact, I think it's quite possible that cell phone companies could, eventually, become banks, keeping customer money, helping users pay bills and to pay for purchases. Check out this story, describing the various financial transactions that wireless service providers already enable in other parts of the world.

The Third Leg ..!

2005-06-30T22:07:00.000-07:00

Some time back I wrote on the fifth wave that is happening around the IT Industry.

Subscribing [ via RSS ] will be joining as the third leg with the Browsing and searhing of the Web closing a Triangle...

Check out subscribing

Ranjith

How the market moves..!

2005-06-29T22:59:00.000-07:00

I was reading E M E R I C.org today morning and one of the things that captured my eyes to the maximum is the write up of him from the BBC News. It is good and says where the market moves now....!

BBC News writes:

There are few people in the world who can claim to have invented something that captured the imagination of hundreds of millions of people.

But Niklas Zennström has done it twice.

Skype makes money because a small fraction of users is buying additional services, such as the capability to call from Skype to the telephone network or vice versa.

Not having to make money from every user is not a new idea, Zennström emphasises.

"It is very similar to companies like Google and other internet companies. When you go and search on Google you don't pay for that. But sometimes you click on an advert and Google makes money on that.

"It's the same thing with Skype. Some users are paying for services, but not everyone."

Zennström believes the losers out of this new structure will be the telcos who do not understand that there is a change going on.

"This is a disruptive technology that shifts the industry", he says.

"We have just started, and if you compare the number of people using Skype to the number using a telephone network around the world, we're still just starting.

"And now we're also very much focussing on moving away from the computer into mobile devices, so you can use Skype for free wirelessly."

Where to Start Learning ..!

2005-06-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

This Question needs a very deep thought to be answered..

But here J H writes really a great piece of info which each and every guy who starts his career should look in before he starts reading things for his software career.

languages to start your carreer

He too links his write up to a page which tells you how to be a programmer - A short but toooo lengthy stuff out there check out this toooo

how to be a programmer

Happy Programming ...!

GreaseMonkey UserScript

2005-06-28T11:39:00.000-07:00

Hello !!!

There is a lot of user scripts available in this page for your mozilla....

quite impressed with some of them. Check out so that you can use some..

Scripts

Cheers --- Ranjith

Tech Fifth Wave

2005-06-21T01:28:00.000-07:00

People Started talking about Technologies' Fifth Wave.

When I first started reading on the Tech Fifth Wave on the Tech Beat of Business Week. I just started wondering what are the other waves then.... This guys at Tech Beat have really made it very clear on their presentations.

cheap computers, open standards, and pervasive broadband are creating a new wave of innovation that takes computing well beyond the first four waves: mainframes, minicomputers, personal computers, and the client-server model that led to the Web.

Cheers - Ranjith

Setting Cmd Prompt in Windows ..!

2005-06-20T21:32:00.000-07:00

Every time after I reinstall my windows machine I use to search for this type of things. So putting them in a blog seems to be a good option to share and reuse things...

Ranjith

Open a command prompt from the current Windows Explorer location

Use regedit to navigate to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT \Folder \shell.
Select Edit, New, Key, and enter CmdPrompt in the dialog box.
Double-click (Default), and enter the name that you want to display when you right-click the directory (e.g., Command Prompt Here).
Then, select Edit, New, Key and enter a key under CmdPrompt named command (in lowercase).
Double-click (Default) and enter the path to your cmd.exe program, followed by "%L" (e.g., C:\winnt\system32\cmd.exe /k cd "%L").

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/treeview/default.asp?url=/technet/prodtechnol/windows2000serv/tips/regtweak.asp

Internet Pioneers

2005-06-15T01:26:00.000-07:00

I was just reading thru the details of Douglas about whom I wrote in my previous Blog. I happend to browse into the following site which list some of the internet pioneers of today and some of their deeds.

Read and know about the pioneers .

http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/index.html

The Far thinker of Computers - Douglas Englebart

2005-06-15T01:03:00.000-07:00

Read about Doug Englebart who is one of the pioneers in the internet computer world and he was talking about the online collabration and the conference in the late 1960s which is even before the internet era.

http://www.ibiblio.org/pioneers/englebart.html

Some of the references for todays Douglas :

http://ross.typepad.com/blog/2005/06/doug_englebart_.html

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2005/06/everything_old.html

Got an Answer - Foxy Cash Cow

2005-06-09T02:32:00.000-07:00

When ever I did a search on the Firefox on the small column given for google, the address bar used to append the following string to its constructed URL - &client=firefox-a.
I was wondering for a very long time why this is done on every search.

Atlast I got the answer that firefox is silently making $30m annually for its deal with google. check out Marks post here

Ranjith

Getting on to the Exact Place - Fire Fox Extensions

2005-06-08T22:50:00.000-07:00

It is getting really tougher to get on to the right place with a search engine for a particular requirement. I was searching for a open in new tab option for my firefox browser.. Atlas I got it here on this blog...

http://pchere.blogspot.com/2005/06/essential-browsing-firefox-extensions.html

Later I found that this guy is really interesting and is writing on some of the smart tips and tricks of the On line tools and browsers check out his blog

ranjith

The OS Suckssss

2005-06-08T01:02:00.000-07:00

This is a census from the Astalavista site based on the search hit on them.

Check out the following page to check the os you use is really rocking or ruling or Sucking..

who is the one?

Ranjith

On Version Control

2005-05-31T02:47:00.000-07:00

There is a good set of lessons going on in Eric's Weblog for the Source Control How-to

check out

Ranjith

Search History from Google !!!!

2005-04-21T04:51:00.000-07:00

Google now stores reference of your list of searches done with them along with the list of links you have clicked. This is indexed with your gmail id.

I was really disappointed by the absence of the same in the .co.in sites.

I sent a query to google too on this.

This is be a great feature to look back into your searches.

Your History

More on to the web

2005-03-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

My profile has changed to more work towards the world of web from the world of PCs. It has more challenges on the web than the PCs.

One of the Quite interesting things on the web, I am seeing is the java script and the latest trends happening with the development taken in the direction of the scripts. This induces me more to write more about the javascripts, as i study more in this direction.

Cheers !!!
Ranjith

Tech Talk

2005-03-09T04:50:00.000-08:00

From the day one of my starting of writing of the Blogs here, I hava great wish to write something technical here on the web. The reading of me on the xmlhttprequest followed by the power of javascript has really pulled me to do this today.

I started to read something on the xmlhttprequest() and reloading of html using javascripts when my browser took me to more resources on the web which took me more on to look at some of the things done using java scripts.

I will start writing one by one here..!

	While the performance issues caused me some inconvenience I mainly found the service acceptable last month. Give me 15 free days of TypePad.
	The performance issues made it very difficult for me to use the service on multiple occasions during the month. Give me 30 free days of TypePad.
	The performance issues affected me greatly, making my experience unacceptable for most of the month. Give me 45 free days of TypePad.
	I really wasn’t affected at all and feel I got the great service I paid for last month. Thank you for your offer, but please don't credit my account.