Happy Republic Day

Got this picture as a mail forward(with this embedded text) and I decided to keep that in my blog..

Happy Pongal

PONGAL WISHES TO ALL

PS :
Thanks to my friend(jayan) who did this design as per the client(me) requirement..:-)

New Year (web2.0) Wishes

Belated new year wishes to all. continue from my previous post, no changes in my blog vision :-) I will maintain this space for an interesting external links and my comment about that topic.

This season popular blog posts are PREDICTIONS & RESOLUTION..I will also do the same here.
I too thought of writing a prediction list..but in the net, I found couple of links(below links) which comes close to my listing..that is,

• ten predictions for Java in 2007
• Software Development Trends for2007

ok..my prediction part post is over(how easy it is!!!!...:-))..next my resolution part..this time no long 'to-do' list items . simply 2 wishes,
a) finish my previous year pending wishlist. (personal)
b) research on WEB2.0 products. (official)

I think, the first wishlist will continue for every year.don't know exactly how to explain that....let me give a try.."I can't live my life fixing a deadline because I am a human being"(nice escape ..is it?? but if you think again, its partially true).So, I can try to reduce that atleast not growing much every year.( If anyone asks me more about this topic, I will explain it in a next post..but its a complete philosophical post. If you are ready for that, then write it as a comment in my blog)

Regarding my second wish list, its bit easy because I am already a regular user of most of the WEB2.0 products. User is more different from Researcher..am I correct? So,initially I thought of finding the best 2 products in each category and start doing my research. But the below link helped me not to do that too(thanks to internet/google..:-)).

The new 100 most useful sites

So, every day browse and find what's common or unique in each products listed there. Addition of that alot more other research too..how the page UI designed & what's the technology platform..etc. For a developer,what's the benefit will I get if I do this?..I don't know. I will learn something new..that's it.

some one told me this year is 'James Bond' year ..2(007 )...lets enjoy more thrill and fun this year..wishes to all again.

Blog Vision

Can anyone teach me how to write a new blog post after a long interval of time? If its a first blog post, I can start with "hello world" or if its a last post i may start with "bye"..but now, how do I start??......hmmm...thinking..( I have already started well here, I think :-))



Everyone had the experience like "work pressure" or "deadline pressure"..etc. But last one week, I am facing a "blog pressure". Yesterday I got a mail from my sister asking "why no updates from your blog?"....that's also one reason for this post.

Actually, I never used my blog as an online diary because I am very much comfortable with traditional diary style(with paper & pen).Intially, blog boom was started for that purpose only, I think. But now its become like you can run a business based on blogs.that's a different story.

First, I started my blog as mail repository(in 2003 - no gmail at that time) where i can store the forwarded mails. I will laugh now if I read my old post. that's ok.that's what my intention at that time.After gmail, I moved these kind of mails there for future use. After that my blog focus has changed like giving an interesting web links and write 2 lines about my view on that topic. instead of sending mails to all my friends, I just update that info. in my blog where they can all read.Now, I am thinking how to move my blog vision to next level. hmm...thinking again..let me think and will update in the next post.

(If you notice well, I wrote this blog post without any external link/without any useful topic.that's itself a great move, i think..:-))

AJAX - defacto standard in the web

Last week I met a group of students(final year guys, searching for their last semester project)..all of them asked me the same question..What is AJAX??

I just gave an intro about AJAX (actually, nothing big to speak other than 'XMLHttpRequest' object) and asked them all to visit my blog regularly ..(blog marketing !! :-))

I don't have the patience to list all the AJAX links here. Click the below link and learn ( more than sixty thousand relevant links available in that site...)
AJAX


They asked me a couple of questions about AJAX...I don't know if I answered them correctly...

question : Which course should I join now ? j2ee or .net or mainframe or SAP or AJAX?
my answer: you can easily learn Ajax from the net ..& do a simple research on other technology part (but I gave a suggestion to join 'j2ee'- suggestion only.. because later if anything goes wrong (or) if he didn't get a job in j2ee side, they shouldn't simply say they would have thought of doing some #@$%$ technology, but only because of durai...:-))

question : Is AJAX more powerful than JAVA?
my answer: "NO"...it is a simple one javascript object..but Java is a programming language..Java supports AJAX strongly..nothing here to compare..but this simple javascript object is creating a revolution in the web.

question : Would I get a job if I learn AJAX?
my answer: hmmmm(thinking)...YES..(1 year guarantee in the job market)..but you should have more knowledge on HTML,CSS,DHTML,JAVASCRIPT,XML,XSL (tag based programming is easier to learn than the object oriented..but in the long term you should learn at least one server-side language )

question : How long will it take to read the above TAG based languages?
my answer: max. 2 months..(learn from home if you have 24hours net connection )

question : Can you forward my resume inside your company after I have learnt this?
my answer: hmmmm..(thinking again)..if you become an expert(?), i will fwd. your resume.

..and alot more interesting questions.checkout the links below ....it may be useful for you all..All the best guys.

• The World's Most Misunderstood Programming
• ajax - nice definition
• java & Ajax
• ajax-camp
• infoword ajax

Recent Updates

After a long time, I started posting a post in my blog...little update from my side

a) Last one month, I saw almost all worldcup football matches.(really enjoyed like sending SMS at 3:00am to all my friends about the match status & discussion after that)

b) Found a nice place nearby my hometown( I have this habit of finding the "hidden tourist places" in tamil nadu..In that list I found this place called "Beeman falls" in Tiruvanamalai district...I will post the pictures later...)

c) Reading Mr. Jayakandhan books, really a good novels..finished the book called "Sila Nerangalil Sila Manithargal"(1970 novel)...

d) Company Change !!!

f) Started reading JSF again..(pending for a long time)
...
...etc
Check the below links for technical updates,

• AJAX issue in IE7
• The Future of Open Source

Public Speaking..

I am busy writing my Tamil blog, but deliberately want to post something in my blog regarding the upcoming election in Tamil nadu..I am not here to suggest some junk party to cast yr vote.

I am going to write about the greatness of political orators skills. I love to listen these people speeches if I come across any party meeting on the way to my room. And I like to watch these guys speech in TV too. They are damn good in expressing things in their own style. Whenever I find time, I just check these speakers programme and try to attend maximum like just standing somewhere in that crowd.(without showing any expressions)..The same speaker will speak in different manner with in a week after he/she changed their party..At that time also they will speak in a stunning manner supporting their current party..That's a different story :-)

Ok..Come to the point. After watching these scenes I have one doubt. Give the mike to one MCA/MBA finished guy. Ask him/her to speak about anything in the world for just 10 mins. And do the same to any political speaker. And see,who will win?? You will be really astonished seeing the result of any political speaker(you have to stop him after 10mins, otherwise he will keep on speaking)..surely the political speaker is a low profile guy in the education level and other areas too.

We can give a lot of justification like that political speaker has a vast experience and he has took that as a profession ...Etc. But the fact is, we never learned how to speak on the stage without fear. But don't know about others, but in my case its correct. But I too, keep on participating anything from my college studies(like taking part in cultural,seminars..And other interesting stuffs).But still lacking a lot when compared to those political people. I will simply list what are all the mistakes we do in the stage...
a) start speaking without switch on the mike.
b) audible ( distance to keep the mike)
c) how interactive you are when speaking.
d) how confident you are when speaking.
e) clarity of the speech.
g) swallowing words.
I) very fast or very slow kind of speech.
...
...
etc.

(check this link if you want to learn more on this topic...)

But, in the political speaker case, u can't find not even a single mistake like what I listed above. That's their speciality. Today also I am planning to attend one party's election speech in T-nagar. For me, its really a enjoyable election this time.

இனிய தமிழ் புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்துக்கள்

This is my Tamil New Year post…. if I check my wish list, a lot more things are pending. I want to reduce it one by one. So I am going to start Tamil blog for this tamil new year.

Mali and I were started one blog in the year 2004 after we saw the movie AUTOGRAPH (we posted one famous dialogue from that movie). After that we forgot about that blog.

So when I was thinking what name I have to give for this new Tamil blog, I just remembered this. And then found the password and going to start from today onwards. Autograph

checkout this, Mali wrote interesting stuff about Tamil New Year...

Hobby

If anyone asks me, “where will you be 3 years down the line?” Sometimes I don’t know what to say. Because everyone is saying the bore answers like I want to be a SYSTEM ANALYST, PROJECT MANAGER or PROJECT LEADER…etc (some kind of next level designation in their field)

I generally have the habit of saying something like “technical architect”, some tech jargon that should be different from normal answers (even that is common nowadays :-)). But if I think, do I really want to become like that? I don’t know.



When I was reading the below link, I thought I should change the answer for the question in the first line (3 years down the line)? So, my answer for that question is “ethical hacker”. It looks odd initially but if you explain well then no issues, I think. (If I read any other article, I may change it to some other designation:-), But time being I will choose this)

Definition for ethical hacker:
An ethical hacker is a computer and network expert who attacks a security system on behalf of its owners, seeking vulnerabilities that a malicious hacker could exploit.

I heard this word long time back and I knew a lot of financial domain groups are spending very big chunk money in this field.

Checkout this link, where I got this lead,
What I Learned at Hacker Camp

In the same way if anyone asks about my hobby that ‘s also one difficult question to answer (I mean tech. Hobbies, not cricket and other stuffs). My default answer for that question is ‘READING TECH BLOGS’. I think this is correct time to change that habit too.

So here after, my tech hobbies should be,
* Play around with · REGEX (Regular Expression)
* Writing SQL queries (single query length should be more than 3 pages in the word document)

I have a basic knowledge on these areas. But I want to become an expert on this. For that, what are all the steps I should follow? I have to think (!). So, if you have any idea on this or if you find any web links, please send it to my gmail id (duraionly@gmail.com) or put that link as a comment here. Happy surfing.

Q & A

Generally I like to read alot of question and answers type of pages in any magazine or in newspapers or in the Internet. Don't know how I learned this habit because in my school days, I hate this kind of culture when preparing for exams. (obviously everyone :-))

If I think back , it may be began with when I started reading Anantha vikatan(Tamil weekly) Mr. Madan's question and answer. Still I am enjoying that page. Not only by the weird answers and also something different from normal stuff. After reading that, I will also start giving answers for that question. Unfortunately I am the only reader for that answers…:-)

In that series, Q&A I enjoyed recently,

---

From the JAVA Guru,
Question : At Sun, are you closely involved in managing the company?
Gosling replied : Not really. I'm pretty high up in the ranks, I'm a vice-president, but I have the luxury of being able to stay away from stuff. Sun's kind of a funny company when it comes to management. A lot of the oil companies are very hierarchical and Sun, on paper, we have a hierarchy, but as somebody once said, "Sun doesn't have an org chart, it has e-mail." Sun is more of a debating society than an organized corporation. More..
----------------------------------------
Yakov Fain asked Gosling: "There are many different languages in the world. Some people are saying there are some other new languages coming up and Java is endangered. Do you feel this way?"
Gosling replied (in full): "No I don't, really. Most languages that have been coming up lately have been scripting languages - things like PHP and Ruby. And these are all perfectly fine systems. More..
----------------------------------------

Wonderful answer given by Master Blaster,
When we are at losing side we stop matches at Eden gardens, if we don’t like the performance of maestro we boo him in Mumbai. Does cricket lost its sporting value?
Tendulkar replied : "I have to ignore them. I cannot forget the backing I have got from the people all these years just because of this. I appreciate the support I have got over so many years,'' he added. More..
----------------------------------------
Especially I love to read Mr.Jayakanthan interview. Last week Vikatan weekly(81'st b'day special) contains his interview, but I couldn't find a web link for that....he is really stunning personality..

WEB 2.0

Checkout the WEB2.0 Companies(KINGS) List...The Next Net 25..In that list, I did a quick demo on WRITELY tool and liked very much..Its called online word collaboration. (AJAX based MS-WORD)

Recently, I was stunned by seeing the below news..( because In that list of 25 companies, I did a quick research on this tool only and the rest of the tools I just read the features alone...Is that mean,I and google thinking alike..:-))

Writely is now part of Google!

Yes, we've been acquired by Google, and we're really excited about this for many, many reasons. But I can hear you saying, "I don't care why YOU'RE excited - I want to know how this change will impact ME!" More...

Generally I have a doubt like why google acquiring (startup)products instead of creating a new one. After seeing the demo , they can comeup with a new product which is better than the existing one(they have a BRAND & BRAIN as well). I found the perfect answer for my question from one blog....

During one of the final internal "sales pitches" for the purchase, I had finished demonstrating Flickr to some important Yahoo's that weren't as familiar with it. One of the technical leaders in the room suggested, politely, that it was a waste of money and that "we could build this in six months."

I honestly don't remember if I responded to his assertion in that meeting or not (I think I did), but to me he was wrong and missing the point. Yes, we could have replicated the technology in six months. Heck, we probably would have improved it quite a bit. But we didn't have the experience to replicate the "feel" of the early Flickr community. More..

One more info, about google..

Most of you knew about the service offering by Google like Google Earth, Google Moon..In that series, Latest release speaks about Google Mars(Have a nice trip :-)).....checkout more from Google team blog

Instead of "WEB2.0", I think I can give a heading as "GOOGLE " for this post..( that much Google info than web2.0)

checkout the WEB2.0 companies logo....(looks like WEB2.0 COLLAGE ..:-))

When I write about WEB2.0 I forgot to mentioned one more thing...This time GEEK CAMP(officially "BAR CAMP") is happening in CHENNAI .. nice quote from that page.."NO SPECTATORS, ONLY PARTICIPANTS"..actually I too want to participate..lets see.

Chennai - Tech Days

One stall has this poster in the SUN TECH DAYS in Chennai..

Things I noticed in that session:

1. Most of the guys used Solaris or Linux box for their presentation (very less 'Windows' user).
2. One hour track for each session was very less..A lot of peoples run out of time(especially j2me peoples..I mentioned this in their response sheet also)
3. The food & entertainment was damn good..:-)
4. I enjoyed attending this guy session and Chuk Munn Lee sessions.
5. They gave NetbeansCD(5.0) for free..Really its useful for developers and now I am playing around with that tool(especially mobility pack ROCKS)..Checkout this link for Free CD for NETBEANS
6. Every one gave a demo on how to use AJAX? And also they showed, how easy to do that using SUN IDEs.
7. The bonus day session was more interesting(and useful) than the previous days sessions.(I opted "Netbeans", not "Solaris")

And a lot more interesting stuff..It was a really a cool experience for me.

checkout the below links for more,

• Peter Kessler's Blog
• Netbeans Day

Java Festival

its happening this time in chennai. So, the next 3 days(9th feb - bonus day) i will be busy(!) on this schedule...



Checkout the agenda page where you can find really a cool sessions. But this time i am going to concentrate more on j2ME side.

Especially, I don't want to miss this session ...:-)

India Everywhere

"I want you to know the power, the liberation of another kind of science, the inner science, the yogic science through which you can become the master of your own destiny." - Mr. Jaggi


The Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum is going on. I read in the newspaper like "Dream india Team" is doing a campaign there. Bit curiosity, I want check it out who are all there in that team. They below category has that details,

• Political Leaders
• Business Delegation
• Social entrepreneurs
• Spiritual leader

When I saw Mr.Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev in that list, I am just thinking, what he is doing in the World Economic Forum. But I feel, that's a correct choice. Becaue when you say INDIA, you can't separate SPIRITUALISM from that..

I love to read Mr.Jaggi books and everyday I love to watch his speech in the morning, vijay TV and still planning to join in Isha Yoga session..

When I was discussing with my friend I said, if Mr.Jaggi enters into corporate world, he can earn alot of money...yea,I know its not his ambition...I am just thinking like how to convert those (priceless)spritual speeches into "BRAND YOU" kind of stuff in the corporate world.

Interesting Links

• Developer.com Product of the Year 2006.
• Google Eats Apple.
• Sun Rock stars.
• Using JAAS with JSF.
• Basics of GLASSFISH
• How to Do What You Love
  

Happy Pongal

Pongal is an ancient festival of the Tamils and it is not known when exactly the Tamils began celebrating the festival, but some historians identify it with the Thai Un and Thai Niradal, believed to have been celebrated during the Sangam Age..that's the speciality about PONGAL

WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY PONGAL

Interesting Links

Interesting links i bookmarked in the last couple of days...

As usual monthly check on this site, I found very interesting essay on procrastination,

Richard Hamming suggests that you ask yourself three questions:
1. What are the most important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?
Good & Bad Procrastination

------------------------------------
Servlet 2.5 features :

• A new dependency on J2SE 5.0
• Support for annotations
• Several web.xml conveniences
• A handful of removed restrictions
• Some edge case clarifications

There are few others features in pending/ wish list phase which will be coming in upcoming releases.More

------------------------------------
An engineer from Sun is teaching a online Java Class. The best part of it. Its free. This is the time to brush up on your programming abilities.More

------------------------------------
interesting tech interview to read...Excerpts from that interview...
You mentioned diversification, as a Java developer how should you diversify?
...This may involve looking at things like .NET, for example. This is a kind of knee-jerk reaction that lot of people have in the Java community now. I am aJava programmer, that's Microsoft; I am not going to touch that. I think, that's shortsighted, because as we're looking more and more at an interoperableworld, we are gonna to be looking more and more interacting with Microsoft front ends, whatever it might be and we need to work on how that happens.....More

------------------------------------
Joel writes :
"I'd like to claim is that Java is not, generally, a hard enough programming language that it can be used to discriminate between great programmers and mediocre programmers. It may be a fine language to work in, but that's not today's topic. I would even go so far as to say that the fact that Java is not hard enough is a feature, not a bug, but it does have this one problem."
More
------------------------------------
Netbeans Vs Eclipse worth to read

------------------------------------
First secure an independent income, then practice virtue.
- Greek Proverb
I don't know the reason why i love this quote...hmmmmmm..still thinking..

2006

Generally for every new year, I will do 2 things...

• Take a december month balance receipt from my bank account & paste it in my diary's last page(to see what's my savings in the year end).I have been doing this for last 5 years..actually speaking nothing improved till now..
• Watch a movie with my friends on Dec'31st night & at exactly 12:00am, wish everyone who are all sitting in the row with us in the theatre.(so in the interval time we buy cakes for this celebration)

That's it, And on the resolution side...I want to be more aggressive on my wishlist..

New Year wishes to all...See you next year!

Quick links

I want to write some description about each link...but due to time constraints I am just listing below..Check out that..

• 10 Things Every Java Programmer Should Know About Ruby
• Java tips (In the URL change the number for more tips)
• 10 places you must use Ajax
• IT - Time Management
• Feedster Top 500 - Blogs - Summary View
• McNealy: Why "Sun Is Back"
• Think you could get hired by Google?
• Holiday quiz
• Computer Software That Writes Itself
• TIME - Persons of the Year
• Mobile Market Future

GYM

Nowadays wherever you go(in the net), you can find the name google..When surfing, I found this link(not the below image..:-)) which speaks about GYM!!!

10. Is your business GYM-proof?
I think GYM is a term coined by Robert Scoble - stands for Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. The question is "How do you know that one of these big companies come up with the same offer as yours but give it away for free?"

Recently Google announced "Google Analytics" - a simple, sophisticated Analytics solution for the web for free. I am confident that a few boutique firms whose bread and butter was to sell these solutions are worried like hell. It is hard to get information on what all projects that these companies are working on but sometimes they give a hint. For example, it would not be a good idea to work on something that is already being showcased in Google Labs unless you are pretty sure that you have some amazing technology and you know that your solution will be far superior than whatever Google will eventually come up with.

10 Questions to ask yourself when you are small

Interesting..Even I can say, its called "The height of confidence"

G

One more info' about Google, how to handle knowledge workers..
excerpts from that link..

Getting the most out of knowledge workers will be the key to business success for the next quarter century.

"A good engineer is always convinced that he can build a better system than the existing ones, leading to the refrain "Don't buy it, build it.""
"knowledge workers believe they are paid to be effective, not to work 9 to 5"

Google: Ten Golden Rules

Y

This is really a DELICIOUS news...I've been using this for almost a year now..
"Del.icio.us provides a simple way for hundreds of thousands of Web users to share and categorize their favorite Web page bookmarks as Web pages."

Yahoo gobbles up Del.icio.us

M

Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft?

The familiar pattern of a decade ago begs the question that Bill Gates was asked when he met last month with a group of executives and journalists from The New York Times:
Will you do to Google what you did to Netscape?

Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chairman, paused, looked down at his folded hands and smiled broadly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Nah," he replied, "we'll do something different."

More....(you have to register first to read this article..) or you can read the same article in yesterday's(12th dec 05) DECCAN CHRONICLE chennai edition( in the executive club section)

Discovery

I love to read this author books. My favorate book in that list, "The monk who sold his ferrari, Discover yr destiny"...recently I got a chance to read his another book,"The monk who sold is ferrari,The leadership wisdom"..superb book..I have to thank Mr.Rams. He only gave that book to read.

Couple of weeks ago, I got a mail which contains some inspirational quotes. After a lot of discussion regarding that quote mail, my friend said those quotes are taken from this website.The Success Manifesto™: 200 Powerful Ideas for an Extraordinary Life

Today morning when I was sleeping, Ganesh came to my room and gave me the hardcopy of this 200 quotes. thanks ganesh..When I was reading those quotes, sudden thought like, instead of memorizing the 200 points , why not I implement a single idea given in that list..so I decided to follow the 1st one.(most difficult one)

"Sleep less. This is one of the best investments you can make to make your life more productive and rewarding. Most people do not need more than 6 hours to maintain an excellent state of health. Try getting up one hour earlier for 3-4 weeks and it will develop into a powerful habit. Remember, it is the quality not the quantity of sleep that is important. And just imagine having an extra 30 hours a month to spend on the things that are important to you."

checkout his fav. books list( I don't know when will I get a chance to read all books in that page??)...if u r not interested in reading those kind of stuffs or if you are a pure techy(!), then checkout this site.( actually speaking, I want to read these books also)..Finding a good sponsor..:-)

Great Contest

JAVA Developers, here's a wonderful opportunity to showcase your cool apps and win big

Share yr experiences with Mr. James Gosling on how the sun java studio enterprise IDE(its free now) inspired yr creativity....

Initial criteria:-
To participate, you must be 18 years or older and a legal resident of one of the following countries at the start of the contest: United States, Canada, Japan, China, Russia, and India.


I wrote about BRIC countries in my previous post.. Except Brazil all other contries name are there in the intial criteria contries list..4 asian countries(japan,china,russia,india) got a strong position to participate... .that's great.

Don't forget to register yr email address to get more details about this contest...

Birthday Wishes

On November 9th, 2004, Firefox 1.0 was released to the world (in 17 languages and on 5 platforms) and Spread Firefox, and the rest of the Mozilla community celebrated with parties all around the globe.


Achievements

• “Better than Internet Explorer by leaps and bounds.” - FORBES
• The Best Products of 2005 – Firefox steals the position
  
• Top 10 Products for 10 years - Firefox catches its place.
  

If you check the latest news in the net, Mozilla’s Firefox has managed to grab over 10 percent of the Web browser market with its highest percentage to date.

Anyone can upload the 1st year celebration photo..I saw couple of nice pictures in this site..but i feel this one looks good..:-)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY FIREFOX, Go Firefox, Go!

Free Software World

FOSS.IN is India's largest Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) event, bringing together thousands of participants from across India, Asia and the rest of the world.

checkout the International Speakers list..u can find Mr.PHP in that list.

Interview with JAVA CMS guy

BRIC countries,
B- Brazil
R- Russia
I- India
C- China

The Russia has professionals to design some algorithms and India has enough quantity of professionals to implement it quickly.....

Use a spade to dig a hole - Use a bulldozer to dig a trench