Automatic’s Smart Driving Assistant Can Now Turn Your Car Into An iBeacon

http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/28/automatic-ibeacon/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Wearable Lens War

For those who have been following the recent announcement from Google about the Lens that will help detect Glucose levels, a boon for Diabetic patients, there is another article from Microsoft claiming a similar research that started almost 3 yrs back.

The following post is from Desney Tan, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. Tan manages the Computational User Experiences group in Redmond, Wash.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/microsoft_blog/archive/2014/01/17/smart-contact-lenses-emerge-from-basic-research.aspx

Article: Wearable technology set to take the workplace by storm

Some applications of wearable technologies in the workplace in 2014..
Wearable technology set to take the workplace by storm
http://gigaom.com/2014/01/05/wearable-technology-set-to-take-the-workplace-by-storm/

Article: What to Expect at CES 2014

With the consumer electronic show right around the corner, some cool anticipatory ideas around what to expect...

What to Expect at CES 2014
http://thenextweb.com/gadgets/2014/01/05/expect-ces-2014/

Article: Orbotix Announces The $99 Sphero 2B, A New Super-Fast, Programmable Robot

Orbotix Announces The $99 Sphero 2B, A New Super-Fast, Programmable Robot
http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/05/orbotix-announces-the-sphero-2b-a-super-fast-programmable-robot/

Road ahead for Indian IT

With so many technology advancements that have become mainstream in 2013, serious questions about how the Indian IT sector should tackle these advances had begun to crop up. In this article,  Vivek Wadhwa outlines how this could be achieved while still keeping the tone optimistic. Not sure how much time the Indian IT sector has but it sure isn't a lot..

http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20131229234111-8451-why-i-have-become-pessimistic-about-indian-i-t?trk=object-title&_mSplash=1

Goodbye Year 2013

As the year draws to a close, some recaps of the happenings in the ear provided by popular engines:
 Facebook - gives an overview of the Year gone by.
 Predictions and Recaps in the tech world:

Sinofsky's predictions
http://www.businessinsider.in/Former-Windows-Leader-Steven-Sinofsky-Presents-10-Mega-Trends-In-Tech-For-2014/articleshow/27743422.cms

Zinnov prediction for 2014

http://www.ciol.com/ciol/features/204645/top-technology-predictions-2014-zinnov

Gartner's predictions for 2014 through 2016 (too long a duration for my comfort, but documented)
http://www.alibabaoglan.com/blog/gartners-technology-predictions-2014-2015-2016/

Apple Will Require App Submissions to Be Optimized for iOS 7 by Feb. 1

More work coming up for IOS developers...the optimized version for IOS 7 must be listed by Feb 7

  http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/KIR5IjAnlhk/

Article: How Facebook's New Machine Brain Will Learn All About You From Your Photos

An amazing effort to have FB embrace AI ...
How Facebook's New Machine Brain Will Learn All About You From Your Photos
http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/how-facebooks-new-machine-brain-will-learn-all-about-you-your-photos?dom=tw&src=SOC

Article: IFTTT adds a location channel for its iOS app

A feature long missing...
IFTTT adds a location channel for its iOS app
http://gigaom.com/2013/12/12/ifttt-adds-a-location-channel-for-its-ios-app/

Article: 3D print extra-tall models with the Deltaprintr

With 3D printing catching steam, another printer that can be used in the practical world of today's day to day scenarios.. 
3D print extra-tall models with the Deltaprintr
http://gigaom.com/2013/12/06/3d-print-extra-tall-models-with-the-deltaprintr/

Article: Top 10 Predictions for Technology in 2014

Some wishful tech world predictions for the year 2014. We sure hope at least some of these become a reality..

Top 10 Predictions for Technology in 2014
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/07/top-10-predictions-for-technology-in-2014.html

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Hacker Makes Drone to Hijack Other Drones

Sounds like zombie stuff straight from a Sci fi movie but after Jeff Bezos talking about possibility of

drones delivering packages, there are others who have already punched holes in this idea through kidnapper drones...

  http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/SdwshGt72c4/
 

Article: How LinkedIn is evolving its media business

Interesting to know what LinkedIn could do next in terms of a business model.
How LinkedIn is evolving its media business
http://research.gigaom.com/report/how-linkedin-is-evolving-its-media-business/

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How Facebook Went Mobile, In Before And After Org Charts

An interesting insight into how Facebook transformed into a strong mobile force. From being a website that also ran on the mobile, reorg to a mobile first company was interesting..

  http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/YGzDGmp0W-M/

Article: Fragmentation lives: iOS 7 now on 74% of iPhones, while KitKat has only reached 1% of Android devices

An interesting percentage split over the adoption of latest OS versions.
Fragmentation lives: iOS 7 now on 74% of iPhones, while KitKat has only reached 1% of Android devices
http://gigaom.com/2013/12/04/fragmentation-lives-ios-7-now-on-74-of-iphones-while-kitkat-has-only-reached-1-of-android-devices/

10 Excellent Platforms for Building Mobile Apps

Found a list of platforms that are really efficient in creating Mobile applications..

  http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/BLpFEY5qvCQ/
 

Smartphones: The Tech Guru Gift Guide

For those getting confused about what Smartphone to buy or gift, here is a nice decision

tree mechanism. 
 

http://readwrite.com/2013/11/28/smartphone-gift-guide
 

What Tech CEOs Are Thankful for This Holiday

Wishing all my friends a very Happy Thanks giving. During this time of the year, CEOs of top technology companies are thankful for a lot of things. A small snippet of what each of the top

CEOs are currently thinking is at the below link

  http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/tYZpJMARiUE/
 

Python Displacing R As The Programming Language For Data Science

For those who have worked or learnt Statistical programming languages/ packages, R has been pretty popular. Now a new breed of apps using Python for data science applications is coming up.

http://readwrite.com/2013/11/25/python-displacing-r-as-the-programming-language-for-data-science
 

Military's Driverless Vehicle Plans Languish Amid Technology Woes

An ambitious project in the US Army, to get driverless cars working is caught in glitches..

With a similar project much ahead in the UK, all eyes will be on the next 2 yrs to get this technology on the road.

  http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/xyWBBM2hkFI/ 
 

How Google Shrank Android For Version 4.4 KitKat

An interesting article on how the Google developers worked on making their OS slimmer and faster.

  http://readwrite.com/2013/11/25/how-google-shrunk-android-for-version-44-kitkat

Article: How to switch from iPhone to Android – the Eric Schmidt guide

For those wanting to move from Apple to Android...

How to switch from iPhone to Android – the Eric Schmidt guide
http://www.androidauthority.com/how-to-switch-iphone-android-eric-schmidt-guide-319680/

iBeacon vs NFC

For those wondering about advantages of iBeacon vs NFC, some good insights..

http://www.freenewspos.com/news/article/e/13066/5S%20Tech/why-apple-s-ibeacon-is-better-than-nfc

Top 10 Tech This Week

Some really nice technologies as 10 cool apps/ platforms debut. Now technologies gets into your dreams, under your skin and a lot more..

  http://feeds.mashable.com/~r/Mashable/~3/p6SgDW7xTL0/ 

 

10 predictions from Gartner that will shape our life in the coming years...Some of them are already taking shape. Others are surely making an impact on enterprise roadmaps..

 

http://www.enterpriseefficiency.com/author.asp?section_id=1129&cid=sem_ob_pv_sbm_nc&doc_id=269098&image_number=2

Google Paradise

Another evidence why Google is so good at what they do..They went to extremes usual companies would not even dream of.
http://hbr.org/2013/12/how-google-sold-its-engineers-on-management/ar/pr

Gates should come back - Charles Schwab

Given the leadership, technical foresight and aura that are all a trademark of Bill Gates, it is logical for a call from Charles Schwab to call him back at the realm. Granted that a lot of Bill Gates' predictions have not come right as well, BUT he remains one of the most charismatic and well respected figures in the technology world...I personally feel he may not be able to bring about the transformation that Microsoft desperately needs at this point but then this one is open to discussion.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-20/bill-gates-should-return-to-lead-microsoft-schwab-says.html#!

Article: Apple applies for 5 patents tied to Liquidmetal, 3D printing

An interesting update from Apple on the LiquidMetal front..it would be interesting to see how this proceeds..

Apple applies for 5 patents tied to Liquidmetal, 3D printing
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-57613333-37/apple-applies-for-5-patents-tied-to-liquidmetal-3d-printing/

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Issues with Windows 8 phone

Despite relatively better sales numbers for Windows 8 phones, there remain more problems to the platform and MS selling strategy than just lack of applications. This article has defined the issues pretty well...

http://www.fonearena.com/blog/77660/there-are-six-major-problems-with-windows-phone-and-apps-isnt-one-of-them.html

Article: Windows 1.0: The flop that created an empire

An interesting story on how to learn from mistakes and innovate in 

different ways..

 
Windows 1.0: The flop that created an empire
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57613051-75/windows-1.0-the-flop-that-created-an-empire/

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Article: Google releases 'sneak peek' of Glass app-development kit

Google Glass readies for prime time with its latest GDK. Some really nice applications showcased.

Google releases 'sneak peek' of Glass app-development kit
http://www.theverge.com/2013/11/19/5122878/google-releases-sneak-peek-of-long-awaited-glass-development-kit

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Article: Atheer Looks to Add Human Touch to Futuristic Wearable Computers

Nice article....sounding almost like a sci-fi movie..

Atheer Looks to Add Human Touch to Futuristic Wearable Computers
http://allthingsd.com/20130530/atheer-looks-to-add-human-touch-to-futuristic-wearable-computers/?refcat=d11

Shared from All Things Digital: News From D11 

Article: Apple Retail Stores to Integrate iBeacon Systems to Assist with Sales and Services - Mac Rumors

Having seen some steam in this area, a good step in the Mobile ECommerce space eventually..

Apple Retail Stores to Integrate iBeacon Systems to Assist with Sales and Services - Mac Rumors
http://www.macrumors.com/2013/11/16/apple-retail-stores-to-integrate-ibeacon-systems-to-assist-with-sales-and-services/

Article: Nokia updating Windows Phone 8 Lumias with low-power Bluetooth

An interesting update from Microsoft after most appliances in the world are going LE. MS finally seems to be heading in the right direction after a long time..

 
Nokia updating Windows Phone 8 Lumias with low-power Bluetooth
http://www.cnet.com.au/nokia-updating-windows-phone-8-lumias-with-low-power-bluetooth-339345984.htm

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Article: Flipboard finally makes its appearance on Windows 8.1

Finally..it has been a long time coming...
Flipboard finally makes its appearance on Windows 8.1
http://www.engadget.com/2013/11/14/flipboard-windows-8-1/?ncid=rss_semi

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Article: Android vs. iOS Development: Fight!

 Very nice and informative comparison between IOS and Android development methodologies..

Android vs. iOS Development: Fight!
http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/16/the-state-of-the-art/

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Article: Recommended practices for using Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS)

Recommended practices for using Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS)
http://blogs.windows.com/windows_phone/b/wpdev/archive/2013/10/22/recommended-practices-for-using-microsoft-push-notification-service-mpns.aspx

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Facebook login for Windows 8

Nice article for  Facebook login for Windows 8 ..

http://techcrunch.com/2013/11/14/developers-can-now-use-facebook-login-in-windows-8-windows-phone-8-applications/

Business with little/no investments

If ever you have had a brilliant idea which you think would earn you top dollars and had the potential to make it big, you always wondered what the initial step should be. Investments and infrastructure fears have always pulled folks back.. Now some ideas on how to zoom past that in this article..

http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2013/11/16/build-multi-million-dollar-website-without-spending-cent/?fromcat=all

While the author scratches the surface it can surely be processed further to dig out some interesting insights.

Amazedsaint's Tech Journal: Top 500 MSDN Links from Stack Overflow Posts

Amazedsaint's Tech Journal: Top 500 MSDN Links from Stack Overflow Posts

Sachin Tendulkar retiring

16th Nov 2013 will go down in history as one of the most memorable days in Indian cricket..the day Sachin Tendulkar, one of India's favorite cricketing icon, bowed out to a packed Wankhede stadium in Mumbai, India. Cricket will never be the same without him..
Good bye Sachin and thanks for those lovely 24 years!

Azure HDInsights, Mahout and Hadoop

A really well written article on creating a recommendation engine using Azure HDInsights, Mahout and Hadoop :
http://www.amazedsaint.com/2013/07/building-simple-recommender-engine.html

U.S. dollar: Ok we get the negativity

U.S. dollar: Ok we get the negativity
A good take at the US Dollar speculation

Happy Diwali

Here's wishing all my friends a very happy and joyous Diwali and a prosperous New Year..

Using Fiddler for debugging Windows Phone Apps

Nice article on using Fiddler on Windows Phone 8 ...

http://channel9.msdn.com/Series/Windows-Store-Developer-Solutions/Using-Fiddler-to-troubleshoot-HTTP-protocol-issues-on-Windows-Phone

Xamarin and Calatrava

While there have been scores of tools in the market in the space of cross monile development platforms, i have always liked Xamarin due to its obvious affinity with c#...read an interesting take on cons of Xamarin at
http://www.whitneyland.com/2013/05/why-i-dont-recommend-xamarin-for-mobile-development.html

Also one of the tools the folks mention is Calatrava, a good tool built with support from Thoughtworks.

http://calatrava.github.io

Windows 8.1 Enterprise Edition Release

The enterprise version of Windows 8.1 is finally out. Following is a link explaining what to expect from that upgrade:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/10/17/windows_81_update_what_to_know/

Pebble

With the advent of recent  Pebble based applications, checked out the cloud version of the development environment http://www.cloudpebble.com.
It gives a nice way to compile the application based on templates. The pbw that gets generated after the build can be downloaded and deployed.

Wearable tech applications

Wearable technologies have taken the tech world by storm and are promising some revolutionary applications in the years to come.Some ideas around where these could be used.

1. The agent at the boarding gate has a head up display just above eye level, which provides them with status information on the scanner and information on the passports and boarding passes that are being scanned.
2. They could be used by roving agents who currently carry iPads, or by agents at the entrance to airport lounges to remove the need to physically scan boarding passes and frequent flyer cards.
3. Airlines or airports offering wearable technology to passengers in the near future, but he does think that “flight attendants, maintenance personnel, flight crew and ground operations staff could benefit” from head-mounted wearable technology.
4. Locating pallets and boxes in a warehouse. 
5. Location based or interest based notifications. Offers that are meant for targetted customers. Compare and contrast based on past demand.

MariaDB VS MySQL

Concerns over what Oracle could do with the MySQL licensing and also the DBs limitations when dealing with a highly available/ high performant website seems to have given birth to a new DB ..MariaDB..From the initial creators of MySQL, this is a very good alternative to  MySQL ..

http://slashdot.org/topic/bi/mariadb-vs-mysql-a-comparison/

IOS Nahs and Wows

As the world goes viral about the new IOS release and a record 9 million iPhone 5S get sold over a weekend, I thought it would be a nice idea to summarize the good and not so great things about these. IMHO, a resounding number of opinions point towards not upgrading to the IOS 7 and rightly so..Some issues..

http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml

http://www.imore.com/heres-why-you-shouldnt-upgrade-ios-7-yet

A balanced view:

http://www.knowyourmobile.com/apple/20445/ios-7-good-bad-and-ugly

The developer viewpoint:

http://www.fastcolabs.com/3016423/open-company/developing-for-ios-7-the-good-the-bad-the-flat-and-the-ugly

Chromecast and Google Tv difference

Interesting the way Google thinks..hadn't even thought of the different streaming scenarios..

http://allthingsd.com/20130724/sundar-pichai-on-the-difference-between-chromecast-and-google-tv-interview/

Mobile App development

While doing Mobile App development, folks often come up with the question whether to use Sencha or JQuery mobile or in fact the latest Titanium from Appcelerator. Here is a nice comparison:

http://www.slideshare.net/stevedrucker/mobile-platforms-19979061

Sideloading Windows 8 App

While testing the Windows 8 App, there are some things to consider, unlike iOS and Android there is no Over the air (OTA) or Ad Hoc testing that is available currently in the Windows 8 World. The only way to do this is via Sideloading:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/jj874388.aspx

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/jj721669.aspx

These were some of the links that helped me understand and implement the side loading strategy.

Windows 8.1 preview

Pretty interesting Windows 8.1 review comments :
http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/microsoft-windows-8-1-unveiled/?utm_medium=feed&utm_source=Feed_Classic&utm_campaign=Engadget

Tumblr acquistion

Afterthe recent spate of acquistions andnews pertaining to takeovers, some articles revisited

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/

Tumblr acquistion

Afterthe recent spate of acquistions andnews pertaining to takeovers, some articles revisited

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/

Tumblr acquistion

Afterthe recent spate of acquistions andnews pertaining to takeovers, some articles revisited

http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/18/tumblr-is-not-what-you-think/

Yahoo takes up Flickr?

The eMedia is full of posts talking about how Yahoo has bought Flickr for 1.1 B and unveiled the takeover through a 1 TB free space campaign. This will no doubt, help Yahoo get the young and hip cloud to some extent back into its fold but will it help Yahoo at least make a dent in the ever expanding reach of Facebook, Tumblr and Pinterest family?

Only time will tell... 

70 k apps on the Windows Store and 10 K per week?

http://www.businessinsider.com/microsoft-now-has-70000-apps-in-its-windows-8-store-2013-5

E-Book Gallery for Microsoft Technologies

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/11608.e-book-gallery-for-microsoft-technologies.aspx?WT.mc_id=CIC_TWITTER_Azure%20Blogs_20130402_20130402063727_37166_WindowsAzure#UsingWindowsAzureMobileServicestoCloudEnableYourWindowsPhone8Apps

Azure Mobile services

With some new releases slated for Windows Azure, what caught my attention was support extended for Mobile service that can be quickly created through Azure Management Portal.

One of the latest blogs also talks about using multiple clients to communicate with the same mobile service.

http://chrisrisner.com/Connecting-Multiple-Clients-to-the-Same-Mobile-Service?WT.mc_id=CIC_TWITTER_Community%20Blogs%20_20130328_20130329053954_37107_WindowsAzure

TechEd 2013 in Pune

Was a great experience attending the TechEd 2013 in Pune. The two tracks I was particularly interested was  the Windows 8 / Phone track and the Azure Track. After attending some of the hands on labs and deep dives, I came out concluding that if not a 100% Microoft has at least started their march against the "Fruit" company and the Droid makers in the field of Mobility and Cloud at least.

Interesting to see how this war shapes up.

Aaron Swartz

It was indeed a sad day today to hear about the untimely death of Aaron Swartz..
Co-founder of Reddit, Demand Progress...

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/13/technology/aaron-swartz-internet-activist-dies-at-26.html?_r=0

Vertica

http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2013/01/11/h-p-using-its-analytics-software-to-grow-sales/?mod=wsjcio_hps_cioreport

I was a little surprised today to read about Google blocking Win 8 Google maps functionality.
http://t.co/XHumUYXI

Happy New Year 2013

Here's wishing all my friends a very Happy and Prosperous New Year. May the new year bring everybody peace, happiness, health and everything they wish for.

Open source stack

Looking at the different open source options like Node.js with MongoDB.
Also looking at Google's AngularJS to see how it fits into the overall scheme of things.
Looked at Testacular + Jasmine combination for a proper testing framework and found the power in the simplicity of this testing framework.

SharePoint 2013

After a long time went back to my Microsoft buddy. SharePoint and started looking at the newer features in SharePoint 2013...To be honest not too excited :(

Found these videos that helped:

SharePoint 2013 Preview Unboxing Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-5Dcpearwg

SharePoint 2013 Preview Unboxing Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=1fqxWuTItMw

Newer techs

It has been a fun last 5 months with lots of new technology tried - PHP, RoR, Alfresco, Liferay..
Not to mention to read up on lots of new tools in Social Media and Mobility.
Also did some deep dives into PhoneGap and Appcelerator...
Interesting technologies

Olympics

With the Olympics events going on, lots of things to ponder, despite it really being a great brand ambassador for international unity:
1. Were security measures truly upto the standard for 10K + atheletes to safely compete?
2. Are all players truly playing in the right spirit of the game that this event symbolizes?
3. The oft repeated - Why is India, despite having one of the largest populations and sending one of the bigger contingents still not able to get higher medal tallies?
As the event rolls on, you cannot but think about these things..

Win 8

Had the opportunity to try out Windows 8 Release preview along with the Mobile development process. I like the initial look and feel and the ease with which Metro style apps can be built using Visual Studio Release preview 2012..Will be posting screenshots of the development soon..

Comparison between Appcelerator and PhoneGap

Was trying to look at different platforms for Code once target multiple scenarios in the mobile space.
Here's an in depth look at Appcelerator and PhoneGap if you are interested: http://savagelook.com/blog/portfolio/a-deeper-look-at-appcelerator-and-phonegap
And here's more detail about how they differ programmatically:
http://savagelook.com/blog/portfolio/phonegap-is-web-based-appcelerator-is-pure-javascript

Microsoft Gallery

Microsoft's gallery for CMS, Blogs, Forums, Galleries and other tools have some interesting additions since the last time i visited them. They can be found at :
http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/categories.aspx?category=Wiki&sorting=mostpopular

Some nice plug ins I saw were :

• Incentive - Social collaboration for your company
• Composite C1 - MVC CMS
• nService - Help desk and support Software

Best Practices for MOSS

http://spg.codeplex.com/

SharePoint Online Virtual Lab

Found some interesting virtual lab for SharePoint Online at
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/office365/hh699847

Microsoft's Big Data strategy

While trying to understand what Microsoft's strategy for Big Data was, stumbled upon the following link
http://www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsofts-hadoop-roadmap-reveals-new-big-data-deliverables/12037

Microsoft has already released the Hadoop version of its Azure release. Need to check on its integration with Hadoop tools like Sqoop and Flume.

New role...different work...same chaos

Have moved into a different group within the same company..New interesting work and getting hands into a lot of Strategic/ partnership initiatives but the chaos remains...A different perspective..
Will be blogging more about offerings creations in enterprises and what the learned have to say about making a company "customer-centric" while keeping an eye on recent trends..More to follow..

New yr...new beginnings

Coming out fresh from some outings and rejuvenating experiences, starting the new yr on a high...
Working with some colleagues to identify business opportunities and trying to identify technology trends.Should post soon on what I find...

Happy New Year

As the new yr comes to a close, wishing everyone a very happy and healthy New Year!!
Have fun..

Technology Trends in 2011/ 2012

Technology trends for 2011 were :

http://www.deloitte.com/us/2011techtrends

http://www.ctoedge.com/content/top-10-emerging-technology-trends-2011?slide=1

What we found in the market, following were the items that took precedence over others:

1. Unified communications
2. Mobile Applications
3. HTML5
4. Analytics
5. Social Media

Interestingly, while most theoretical folks talked about cloud, not many companies wanted to proceed with practical applications. Lot of discussions happened about the current state and future of Cloud and Azure in particular but not much materialized.

Technology Trends for 2012 are:

1. Social business
2. Tablets as personal computers
3. Dynamic ERP

Yr drawing to a close

As yet another yr draws to a close, time to ponder things that went right, things that did not go as planned...What could have been done better and what needs more thoughts..In the next 10 odd days would like to create lists that outline, at least from a technology standpoint, items / trends that were anticipated in the beginning of the yr and were given / not given their dues as well as outline similar steps for the new yr..

Lets see how fruitful this discussion goes...

Social media and Enterprise Social business

I have been following up on the nature, size and the business involved in the Social enterprise business and found some interesting facts...
First off is Forrester’s new estimate of the size of the social business industry, which they’ve put at $6.4 billion by 2016, an order of magnitude larger than the (by comparison) paltry $600 million it was just last year. Although the size of the entire worldwide investment in social business has recently been estimated to be as high at $100 billion, Forrester is specifically tracking the investment in the enabling software itself. This includes enterprise social networks, social collaboration suites, and other social business solutions, and not the entire project investment that organizations make as they roll out social software. This does not seem to be a either lowering or raising of previous projections, such as their 2008 forecast that the industry would be $4.6 billion in size by 2013. For a useful cross check, we can see that ABI Research’s new figures, which were released today, has lower figures yet shows a very similar 57% yearly growth (compared to Forrester 60%.)..
Looks like time to start looking more closely at some of the enterprise platforms that promote this...

BYOD

As the usage of mobile devices becomes more and more prevalent...companies are facing an unprecendented challenge to manage employee personal devices from a security and privacy standpoint...On one hand, there are the obvious benefits of increased employee productivity due to his device choice as well as reduced costs due to not having to buy these devices, there is the risk of corporate data sensitivity as well as application governance to cover these...Interesting times..

ASP.NET MVC 4 Ideas

Since I heard about the advent of ASP.NET MVC 4..started reading a little bit about it..Initial thoughts are around runtime libraries (MS assemblies) as well as  JavaScript libraries are available as NuGet packages..Greater mobility support is another added feature..
In the latest BUILD conference, MS discussed a little about it...

Anna - IAC

With the whole country waking up against Corruption - for the Lok Pal bill..it became necessary to blog about it..While there are a lot of debates about its authenticity and whether it is going to sustain the whole nation is clear about one thing, corruption leave India!!
Long live Anna!

VLDB

Currently working on a project for very large data processing with these kind of scenarios bringing its own challenges. Performance, Data freshness, spool sizes and data volume storage options are some unique issues and fun working on it.

Memory Mapped file

While investigating a quick and efficient way to store data locally on the machine in cache, was reading about Memory Mapped file. Another interesting article on this concept is at:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/salvapatuel/archive/2009/06/08/working-with-memory-mapped-files-in-net-4.aspx

Some emerging areas being tracked

1.       ASP.NET MVC 3 + HTML5

2.       RIA (Silverlight 5.0/WPF/ HTML5) 

3.       SharePoint 360

a.       Composites

b.      Insights

c.       Content

d.      Sites

e.      Communities

f.        Search

4.       MS BI 

5.       MS SOA 

6.       BizTalk Server 2010 / WCF 4.0 

7.       Dynamics (On-Premise or Cloud) 

8.       ASP.NET MVC Portal(Orchard CMS) 

9.       Azure 

10.   MS Lync Services 

11.   MS commerce Server 2011

Latest trends of 2011

In a recent post, I read about the 5 latest trends in the technology world. Some of interest to us..
1. Cloud computing
2. Smart Apps
3. Analytics
4. Social apps

Germany and Sweden

Work has taken me to Germany and Sweden for some project work discussions.
This is a very nice project to help the customer with their CRM needs. Both these countries are unique in their own ways..More on my experiences in later blogs..

Kids vacations

With the advent of summer several things to enjoy - kid's vacations, the mangoes, the IPL matches and lots more..Ofcourse training and other office activities are goin on in full swing as well..Hope to see some new members added to the team in the coming weeks..

Task Parallel Library

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd460717.aspx

Silverlight and PRISM 4.0

While researching about ways to improve RIA experiences for large dataset applications, read through the architecture for PRISM 4.0.
http://www.evansvillednug.com/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=iPJAbrewBBc%3D&tabid=76&mid=399

The stocktrader application seems to be a nice sample app for demo. This is next generation SCSF ..

New Year with a gush...

First of all wishing everybody a very Happy and a prosperous New Year ahead.
Some thoughts/ideas about what areas should we be focussing on ..are doing rounds..
Planning for the activities of the new year and targets to achieve in the quarter have become priority.
Will write in detail once something concrete.

Back from Goa

As a part of our annual outings had gone to Goa and my native place near the coastal city of Karwar...Truly God's own country I would say...Refreshing air, rejuvenating environment and loads of simplicity...You end up thinking ..whether how we(urban) people end up with all these complications in front of the simple life people lead in villages..Fully Geo friendly and optimized for the basic needs of man, resources are used only to the extent absolutely needed and rest of the nature thrives ..
Now back to the city and the madness around Mumbai..Start work soon..

Telerik RADTabStrip's weird behavior

Recently I have come across a very strange behavior in the Telerik RADTabStrip. A perfectly fine working code base suddenly started having a "Freeze" behavior in 2 out of the 4 environments we have. What I mean is, the TabStrip just locks up on the first load. Once there is a postback on the page, it starts working perfectly fine as if nothing had happened.
We tried resorting to all the typical tricks that Telerik has recommended and some of the settings that the Forum visitors asked us to use but to no avail. Some ideas were around validation, others around naming the user control and some around checking the JS/CSS issues...NOTHING! as yet..
Wonder if anyone can help me..

Meanwhile India whitewashed the NZ series and now head to SA. Lets see what kinda duel we have in store there...Hmmm!

Latest Status on Oslo...Oslo, Quadrant and the Repository is dead, long live “M”?

In October 2007, Microsoft introduced “Oslo” as the codename for a set of technical investments to apply model-driven principles to building applications and services. Since that announcement, many of those investments have shipped in products such as the .NET Framework, Windows Server AppFabric and Windows Azure AppFabric. This note is an update on the three “Oslo” investments that have yet to ship: the “Oslo” repository, “Quadrant”, and “M.”


Microsoft created the “Oslo” repository to make the model of a system or application easily accessible without relying on application-specific machinery to consume or query those models. The “Oslo” repository achieved this by storing the models for applications and systems in a shared SQL Server relational database.
Over the past year, customer feedback prefering a more loosely-coupled approach; specifically, an approach based on a common protocol and data model  rather than a common store has forced MSFT to shut down Quadrant and the Repository.  The momentum behind the Open Data Protocol (OData) and its underlying data model, Entity Data Model (EDM), shows that customers are acting on this preference.

With OData, Microsoft has enabled access to information across a growing number of technologies, data sources, and tools, including .NET Framework, Visual Studio, Microsoft Excel Power Pivot, SQL Server Reporting Services, SharePoint 2010, Windows Azure storage, and Codename “Dallas.”
With EDM, they have created a common abstract model for data that can be represented in multiple forms (XML-based EDMX/CSDL, C# or Visual Basic classes, visual designers, OData metadata) to simplify the creation and sharing of models.

Microsoft created a language codenamed “M” for defining schema, constraints, queries, and transformations. While they used “M” to build the “Oslo” repository and “Quadrant,” there has been significant interest both inside and outside of Microsoft in using “M” for other applications. Microsoft is continuing their investment in this technology and will share our plans for productization once they are concrete.

MS Tech breakup

As I continue to look into areas that will be growth islands in the MS domain, following topic come to mind:

• MS Cloud services (Azure)
• MS Web Platform
• MS SOA based technologies
• SQL BI

Wondering if there are any other ones at a high level..