Thursday, September 13, 2007

For cricket enthusiasts

Recently Google enhanced their search to show cricket scores.

The best thing about this is that you don't have to go to different sites. It crawls to different sites, fetch the data and show the latest score. It does great to people like me , who work in organizations where major score providing sites (cricbuzz and cricinfo) are banned. :)

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

अब हिंदी लिखना इतना आसान है।

Thanks to Google for getting Indic Transliteration, writing in hindi is piece of cake.

मूझे याद है जब मैंने microsoft given fonts से हिंदी मैं लिखना सुरु किया था। It took almost a day after perfection when i wrote this.

पर अब हिंदी लिखना इतना आसान है। One should just see to believe that is it this easy.

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

The VHS vs Betamax Format War

Recently i had a chance to read on a format war and it just gave me something to write on. The instance goes something like this.

In year 1974 JVC launched its VHS format followed by Sony's Betamax format a year after. For around a 20 years both the giants had a great tussle with VHS being victorious.

The victory was not on technical grounds (as Sony was unarguably the winner in that context) but more on marketing and customer needs.

One of the biggest this which went against the Betamax format was that a single tape of betamax recorded for just 1 hour as against the 3 hour movies during that time. Where as a VHS format was for 3-hour recording. Sony did provide with other solutions for longer recording time but it was too late.

The tussle between two giant formats lead to two manufacturing groups with Sony, Toshiba, Sanyo, NEC, Aiwa, and Pioneer on one side. On the VHS side were JVC, Matsushita (Panasonic), Hitachi, Mitsubishi, Sharp, and Akai. But with recording time and the turn around time to create the VHS format players just squeezed the Betamax market.

Finally the last Betamax format machine was produced in 2002 with the war already over by late 1980's.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Remember v/s Thinking

Disclaimer: The below comments given under and my personal comments and doesn’t point to some specific organization or individual. There are lots of companies or institutes who believe in right way to recruit person but my views are for bigger % of institutions who still don’t believe that the path they follow is not right.

Interviews play an important role in a software engineer level. Why a software engineer it plays an important role in every walk in life. But there is a BIG BIG myth about the interviews across the Software Industry in India. Most of the interviews don't even check if a person can think logically or can apply the basic knowledge of solving problems. It just checks the bookish knowledge.

If we just rewind the full movie then we will just reach our childhoods. The school as a whole believed in how well a student can "remember" stuff rather than how well a student can "think". The previous statement is very easy to say or will empathize with each individual but it has a deeper meaning.

I have been a topper in Mathematics, which most of kids used to be really afraid of, and the in retrospect I feel the only reason why I excelled in maths or even Logical thinking was for the single reason: no single answer for a problem satiated me. I was always in look for multiple answers, for an IDEAL answer. There was some devil inside me who was very hungry for more and more answers. I used to even see numbers in air or solutions while seeing the architecture of the school buildings. I used to see solutions of trigonometry while watching shadow of flag post in the ground. In fact I used to design a problem myself. A real time problem to see how fast a bird is flying assuming what speed her shadow is traveling.

This is what I really meant by thinking and not remembering the solutions. I always wished that I would have been more blessed with such a thirst in other subjects too , but it wasn’t just there. And I strongly believe that no single person in this world is born with the vision to think like that in each field. This is the place where a mentor comes into picture and the world is so void without it. The mentor doesn’t have to be some elder person, it can be a young kid inspiring you to learn piano by just giving a great performance. A mentor is a person who shows you what was always there in front of you but one couldn’t see it because one was busy in watching something else.

I just want to close this philosophical, not a usual me note, just a single line. I person can be made to remember stuff but can never be taught to THINK.