Friday, December 25, 2009

Last week of the yr

As the last week of the yr draws to a close, nostalgic moments of this yr go past in the mind..Lots of interesting events, trips and important of all learnings from this yr..Lets ring out the old and ring in the new..

Happy XMas and a smashing new year ahead..

Saturday, November 21, 2009

Zachman framework for enterprises

While organizations grapple with increasing complexity in business place as well as technology implementation, Zachman provides some help in organizing corporate assets in reusable format.

http://www.zachmaninternational.com/index.php/the-zachman-framework

ASP.NET MVC 2 BETA

ASP.NET MVC 2 Beta provides a new Model-View-Controller (MVC) framework on top of the existing ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 runtime.
The framework encourages developers to maintain a clear separation of concerns among the responsibilities of the application – the UI logic using the view, user-input handling using the controller, and the domain logic using the model. ASP.NET MVC applications are easily testable using techniques such as test-driven development (TDD).


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4817cdb2-88ea-4af4-a455-f06b4c90fd2c&displaylang=en

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Money Transfer: The Top Mobile App of 2012?

An interesting piece of information surfeced on Business week regarding top mobile app by 2012. Transferring money apparently will be the most sought after feature in mobile banking

http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/11/money_transfer.html

Friday, November 13, 2009

About Doloto

Doloto is an AJAX application optimization tool, especially useful for large and complex Web 2.0 applications that contain a lot of code, such as Bing Maps, Hotmail, etc. Doloto analyzes AJAX application workloads and automatically performs code splitting of existing large Web 2.0 applications. After being processed by Doloto, an application will initially transfer only the portion of code necessary for application initialization.

The rest of the application's code is replaced by short stubs -- their actual function code is transferred lazily in the background or, at the latest, on-demand on first execution. Since code download is interleaved with application execution, users can start interacting with the Web application much sooner, without waiting for the code that implements extra, unused features.

In our experiments across a number of AJAX applications and network conditions, Doloto reduced the amount of initial downloaded JavaScript code by over 40%, or hundreds of kilobytes resulting in startup often faster by 30-40%, depending on network conditions.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/devlabs/ee423534.aspx

Sunday, November 08, 2009

Performancepoint in MOSS?

While investigating about the latest status of PerformancePoint came across the following links:
http://blogs.msdn.com/sharepoint/archive/2009/01/23/microsoft-business-intelligence-strategy-update-and-sharepoint.aspx

What this means for us:"Microsoft is removing the barriers for customers who want to deploy a complete Business Intelligence solution, leveraging their existing investments in SharePoint Server, SQL Server, and Excel. Customers with SharePoint ECAL SA will have rights to deploy PerformancePoint Server today. PerformancePoint’s scorecard capabilities are certified by the Balanced Scorecard Institute/Palladium, building on the capabilities first introduced in Business Scorecard Manager. This means companies can implement their scorecards, following any methodology they choose, and accurately reflect this with their company strategy. The contextual dashboards allow organizations to create data-rich views that are interactive and change based on the users context. Organizations can create rich views that combine Excel, Excel Services, SharePoint Lists, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, and relational information to accurately reflect the business, measure the right information, and quickly understand changes in real-time.

This capability augments the team-based KPIs in SharePoint today, and utilizes the Excel Services environment, already allowing customers to share and reuse their workbooks in personal dashboards across the organization."

Tuesday, November 03, 2009

Saw USS NY

Today saw the USS NY sailing on the Hudson river from my office..This magnificent piece of work was built from the wreckage of the WTC.



At approximately 8:00 a.m., on November 2, the future USS NEW YORK will come to a standstill across from the World Trade Center site, dip her flag, and deliver a 21-gun salute. Members of the Fire Department of New York, the New York Police Department, Port Authority Police, members of the families of 9/11 victims and veterans will gather on the shore at the North Cove in the World Financial Center to return the salute.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

SharePoint and alternative to BDC?

While doing some brainstorming on where SharePoint currently is and what exactly BDC does, there are so many ideas around what this could mean. Getting an overview of BDC and its metadata model at:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms546541.aspx
you can't miss thinking is there an alternative to BDC, using the same Runtime Object model exposed....Is there a plug in solution out there that could do that?

Sunday, October 25, 2009

Visit to the Statue of Liberty

A visit to the Statue of Libery today :



Amazing piece of sculpture. It was apparently gifted to the US by France on the occasion of 100 yrs celebration for declaration of independence.
Standing on Liberty Island in New York Harbor, it welcomes visitors and immigrants traveling by ship Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi sculpted the statue.Maurice Koechlin—chief engineer of Gustave Eiffel's engineering company and designer of the Eiffel Tower engineered the internal structure. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc was responsible for the choice of copper in the statue's construction and adoption of the repoussé technique, where a malleable metal is hammered on the reverse side. Amazing piece of art!

Saturday, October 24, 2009

DI using Unity Application block

A nice article on DI using Unity Application block is at :

http://computerauthor.blogspot.com/2009/09/di-using-unity-application-blocks.html#SolvingproblemusingUNITYblock

Application Architecture Guide 2.0

The application architecture guide provides design-level guidance for the architecture and design of applications built on the .NET Framework. It focuses on the most common types of applications, partitioning application functionality into layers, components, and services, and walks through their key design characteristics. This guide is a collaborative effort between patterns & practices, product teams, and industry experts.

http://www.codeplex.com/AppArchGuide

More on this soon..

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Visit to Lake Placid

Over the last weekend, we went to Lake Placid, a beautiful place upstate NY..


Mirror lake :



Veterans Memorial:



From Whiteface:



Winter Olympics training:



About Newport and the surroundings

A little bit about Newport, the place I stay and the surroundings now..
Below a nice snapshot of this place taken from the Hudson that borders on this city. The building with a weird top is my office..



To get a true flavor of Newport you should visit, http://www.newportnj.com/
Nice place this for families and the like..Following are some more things to see..

The mall:



Near Pavonia:

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Oslo roars ahead

Microsoft's strategy to have MDA into the mainsteam surges ahead with a big push into Oslo..Here the site that talks about it all:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/oslo/default.aspx

Performance Engineering and architecture

I read some really nice article on performance aspects at:
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/SitePerf.aspx

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998530.aspx

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/aspnet/10ASPNetPerformance.aspx

Some really nice facts of the performance and scalability aspects were brought forth by these articles.

Friday, October 16, 2009

Happy Diwali to one and all

This is my favorite time of the year..Not that I am overly religious but being an absolute foodie..its an amazing time of the year to be gulping sumptous foods, sweet dishes and the like..The festival of lights inspires one and all...Destroying darkness and lighting the sky with crackers/fireworks of different colors..The smell of newness everywhere and shoppers going crazy for the festive season..
Amazing experience..!!

Happy Diwali to all..May this new year bring happiness and enrich you with health, wealth and everything you wish for...

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Something new I learnt today...

While there are many aspects of code quality checks that I have seen over the years, learnt something new today regarding Javascript code checks..
www.jslint.com is a nice tool to check the Javascript you have in code and it tells you what could be potential issues in it..Interesting!

Sunday, September 27, 2009

Enterprise Architecture

Coming back to my original love..Enterprise Architecture and where exactly this field fits in the current scheme of things. Which role in a company is most suitable to handle this?CIO/CEO? Numerous companies big and small have tried to get their hands around this field and have still not got there..
Agreed that this strategy is going to be slightly different for different companies/fields but a basic framework more tighter than Zachman and TOGAF seems to be the need of the hr.
Despite governance software (read SOA),looks like companies like HP are still trying to figure how to get to the pinnacle...IBM has some ideas but aligning IT strategy and business goals remains a challenge even now..

Lets see who gets there first ..
More thoughts to follow...

Sunday, September 13, 2009

Power in the interstices

As more and more R & D is being done in the innovation that lies in the interstices between disciplines/fields, the medici team is busy taking examples of practical applications in this area. Some of them include:
1. Volvo’s Vision for Collision Safety Based on the African Grasshopper’s Vision

2.Fighter aircrafts and cross-country skiing

3. Bionics and the how robots are getting influenced with cognition, regenerative medicine and bioengineering..

While majority of the people in the world continue to live in their own silos, it is people who think differently, think in the interstices that seem to be getting it right...
Interesting stuff..

Saturday, September 12, 2009

Living a perfect day

One of Robin Sharma's best thoughts: (IMHO)

What was the best day you've had in the past 12 months? What made it so special - and unforgettable? What things were you doing that time that gave you those superior results? Once you know what works, you can set about doing them with greater consistency. And consistency is the generator of Mastery.

Here are 4 recommendations for a perfect day:

1. Get up early. Getting up early is a gift you give yourself - once you install the habit. Yes, that's hard at first but after a few weeks you'll have more time for yourself every morning - time to think/read/visualize/exercise and set yourself up for superb results.

2. Run a schedule. I write more about this in The Greatness Guide where I say: "The things that get scheduled are the things that get done." Success and happiness don't happen by accident. No, they occur through conscious choice. Schedule your priorities and the most important things in your life so you can get them done.

3. Stand in Gratitude. While there are so many things you could do to ensure a great/perfect day, I find spending even 5 minutes in gratitude reshapes the way I perceive my day. Please remember, stress and gratitude can't share the same room. And you'll see more of what you pay attention to. So focus on best and block out the rest.

4. Growth. Much as we resist change, the fact is human beings are happiest when we are growing. To live perfect days, do things that move you out of your comfort zone and into your Discomfort Zone. A day with zero growth is a day unfully lived. Fears faced die speedy deaths.

Steve Jobs 10 magical principles

About the 10 things Steve Job thinks:

#10. On Management

My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better. My job is to pull things together from different parts of the company and clear the ways and get the resources for the key projects.

And to take these great people we have and to push them and make them even better, coming up with more aggressive visions of how it could be.

#9. On Hiring

Recruiting is hard. It’s just finding the needles in the haystack. You can’t know enough in a one-hour interview.

So, in the end, it’s ultimately based on your gut. How do I feel about this person? What are they like when they’re challenged? I ask everybody that: ‘Why are you here?’ The answers themselves are not what you’re looking for. It’s the meta-data.

#8. On Firing

We’ve had one of these before, when the dot-com bubble burst. What I told our company was that we were just going to invest our way through the downturn, that we weren’t going to lay off people, that we’d taken a tremendous amount of effort to get them into Apple in the first place — the last thing we were going to do is lay them off.

#7. On a CEO succession Plan

I mean, some people say, ‘Oh, God, if [Jobs] got run over by a bus, Apple would be in trouble.’ And, you know, I think it wouldn’t be a party, but there are really capable people at Apple.

My job is to make the whole executive team good enough to be successors, so that’s what I try to do.

#6. On Product Strategy

It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.

We just want to make great products. (I think he means “insanely great products!“)

5 Leadership Mantras

#5. On Leadership

So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know – just explore things.

#4. On Evangelism

When I hire somebody really senior, competence is the ante. They have to be really smart. But the real issue for me is, Are they going to fall in love with Apple? Because if they fall in love with Apple, everything else will take care of itself.

They’ll want to do what’s best for Apple, not what’s best for them, what’s best for Steve, or anybody else. (this actually reiterates my oft-repeated mantra of “ubiquitous evangelism” in companies)

#3. On Focus

People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.

#2. On the User Experience

Our DNA is as a consumer company — for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.

#1. On Creativity

That happens more than you think, because this is not just engineering and science. There is art, too. Sometimes when you’re in the middle of one of these crises, you’re not sure you’re going to make it to the other end. But we’ve always made it, and so we have a certain degree of confidence, although sometimes you wonder.

I think the key thing is that we’re not all terrified at the same time. I mean, we do put our heart and soul into these things.

Saturday, August 29, 2009

NY NY...

Rched NY a week back and finally the jet lag is over. Will not walk like a zombie everywhere now..Planning to get my wife and kids here so that they can view the beautiful Manhattan skyline bang opposite my hotel room..Can't wait!

Monday, August 10, 2009

Oslo May CTP

I have been following Microsoft's modelling platform for some time...They have made a promising start with their Oslo initiative a CTP of which is available at :
http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9648442
Obviously there have been some issues reported around the compatibility of the Jan and the May CTPs but overall a good initiative.
More to come in this space soon...

Swine flu epidemic

With the number of swine flu cases multiplying manifold throughout the world, there is a fear that this might turn out to be the worst pandemic the world has seen in a long time. Recent news reports are suggesting that we might see at least a third of the Indians get affected by it in the next 2 yrs...Scary!..
Meanwhile the Indian health ministry will have to have its work cut out fast...Time is running out.