American “If I give job to my cousin without merit”.
Afghanistan:”If I am in position to give job and I don’t give job to my cousin”
Its just about the perception and culture.
Above is based on a research quoted by David Brooks’ on NPR this morning.
Additional Link:
Why there I no looting in Japan after earthquake and Tsunami
Microsoft released new web browser IE9 yesterday night and I believe this is one of the sleekest, safest, fastest browser Microsoft ever had, which also followed wide variety of industry standards.
You can read and download IE 9 here http://www.beautyoftheweb.com/. I love it!
But if you are one of the guys like me who like building and playing web and have been dog fooding Release candidate, you might have noticed that there are some cases where IE9 does not renders your website as good as IE8 was.
I don’t want to get into the discussion of why it doesn’t? (fairly long discussion).
So just in case, your website is not getting rendered as expected on IE9, and before you figure out how to optimize your website for IE9, below is a small trick.
Use below string in your meta data of your website template. Whenever a user hits your website using IE9, IE9 will smartly figure out that it needs to behave like IE8 and would render your website
<meta http-equiv=”x-ua-compatible” content=”IE=8″>
You can read more on document compatibility http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc288325(v=vs.85).aspx
Windows Phone 7 comes with great security feature, which automatically wipes all the data from the phone if someone tries to unlock my phone by typing in wrong password and fails.
Sounds great, but I have a toddler at home, who plays with phone and resets it every now and then and brings it to the ‘factory setting’ state. 
I get back all my contact details, as they get synchronized with windows live. If I have synced with Zune Client, I might be able to get pics and videos on the phone, but there is no way for me to get all the apps I have installed.
I am pretty sure that this is one of the common scenarios people with kids and lock enabled phone have today. If you are a windows phone 7 app developer, you should consider writing a ‘paid’ app for the same.
Let me know if you write one. I will buy your app and get you more customers 
Seattle Tech Forum have invited me to give a talk on Business Intelligence this evening in front of their couple of hundred members. I am excited about it.
Below is the deck I am presenting.
Amazing view as I captured this video while going from Circular Quay to Darling Harbour on a Ferry in Sydney.
Good to find advertisement by Indian tourism on Monorail near Darling Harbor in Sydney.
Dear fellow Alumnus,
In 1999, I gave a combined entrance exam for Master’s in Computer Application. Results came out, seats got distributed. I had very little choices when it came to colleges I can get admission in. I chose a college randomly, thinking its proximity to New Delhi, will help me get ‘a’ job.
Fast forward 11 years, I am here in Microsoft Headquarters in Redmond, USA and that small college which was running in a bungalow in Saket Meerut, became today’s Shobhit University.
I always believed in being united and playing it together against the adversity. Be it the tiny little issue when there was no electricity in the boys’ hostel or standing against some local undesirable elements (if you were with me in college you know it 
).
I always told my peers and juniors in the college that stronger the alumni network is, better are the prospects for me, you and anyone who will join this college. With every year, prospects for us are going to get brighten, alumni by alumni. Just make it good for you and remain connected.
This sense of building a strong camaraderie for the good, continued every year in the form of alumni meets and here we are. On Dec 24th, 2010 we are meeting again.
I am little sad, because this would be first ever alumni meet I am going to miss, but I am really happy that you guys have done a wonderful job by putting together this year, all your own! Its an accomplishment and indication of brighter prospects for all of us related to Shobhit University.
I am on my way to Australia for sometime with my family this year.
I wish you all very best to everyone, love to my juniors and respect to my faculty members.
Have fun!
I recently completed 5 years working as Technical Program Manager for Microsoft and they conferred me with this shiny ‘service award’ made up of crystal.
What a journey, starting from how I got recruited, to how we delivered some cool features for MSN Games as part of India team, to how I got moved over to USA office, and how I have been able to contribute to world class products like Windows 7, Windows Phone 7.
Just wanted to share all the joy!
Whenever someone (family or a close friend) visits me in Redmond, I give them a tour to my office at Microsoft headquarters (Studio West), just to show them one of the best office building and infrastructure one can ever anywhere in the world. I happen to sit in one of the latest and best campus owned by Microsoft.
Unfortunately not everyone who knows me can visit me because of various constraints.
But now, you don’t have to wait to visit me to see my office from inside. Checkout a video walkthrough of my office here.
What did you like about it most? Add your comments below.
This is what happens when traditional media merges with new age media.
NDTV streams its TV content on internet on their website www.ndtv.com of which I am a regular viewer. Surprisingly, they decided to stream their content( with the advertisement they show on the TV) to be streamed and then also choose to put video advertisements on top of it.
End results –> Internet user sees more advertisement than a TV user.
It completely makes sense to show location aware contextual video advertisements on the actual content, but it doesn’t make sense to retain and stream ‘TV advertisement’ to the internet users, even if advertisers are paying you to do so.
Reasons below:
1- Wrong target market: lets take an example of Tata DoCoMo, They are running a campaign for their services ‘Be the first one to experience 3G’. Heck, I have been using 3G ever since here in USA and even if DoCoMo have something more futuristic say 4G, I cant use it in USA.
Assuming that NDTV is charging these advertisers to show their advertisement on internet steam, advertisers are for sure looking money here.
2- Bad user experience: More you show ads less captive is your audience. Bad user experience, see I am writing this blog post.
3- Costs more money: Every extra byte streamed over internet costs money. Every extra space used to store original content with advertisement costs money.
Serving content over India is still in nascent stages for Indian market and I am sure that eventually NDTV would fix this as they understand more about internet users and the business of doing business over internet.
How do you see old media adopting to new age tools? Share your comments and thoughts below.
