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How girls ruin...?

மது, மாது, சூது (liquor, girl, crookedness) - Tamil tantras list down one's reason for fall/collapse. In recent times, I'm hearing many relational breakups and personal collapse due to "girl". Some even seem to have damaged career, business, friends, family, etc. I'm thinking, how come such girls are getting cabal and ruin things... Not to blame it on them--but to blame it on guys...

Gen Y workforce, a threat to Indian IT?

I belong to Gen X . I'm noticing high change in the way of thinking and approaches of Gen Y (born after 1982 or 1985) workforce. Whenever I sit for interviews, I feel getting quite old... Characteristics of Gen Y (as I noted) Freshers Everybody owns mobile phones and laptop. At least using them for 2-years. Only very few people know touch typing. Almost all are interested to start their career in programming; but they don't have any basic knowledge. Most of the people can speak in English. I'm noticing a huge change here; In our generation, many people would be having good programming skill but can't express them in English People from CS aka Computer Science background says that they don't use computer labs as they own laptop. I can remember my college days at The American College, Madurai during my PGDCA and MCA--we often used to demand more lab time. I still remember that I'd run to computer lab by 7am and would still find few guys...

Groupon - Next move?

Sometime ago, I blogged Groupon is chasing GroupDeal , the group buying software platform developed by our team and powers many competitor sites. Groupon has chased our self servicing platform and introduced as Groupon 2.0/stores. In that concept, to overcome the whitelabel group buying platforms, they have offered 2 types of self-services: promoting via groupon with 30% commission and promoting to followers with 10% commission--eventually focusing everyone to use their defacto platform. Unlike groupon, as we have already added friends module , what could be groupon's next move after adding self service platform? I have an answer:-)

Who is RJ Joshua and where is he?

After I have given my Humble Award to RJ Joshua , I have noticed that many people are visiting my blog when they're searching his name in search engines. I used to listen to his English programs on AIR Chennai FM sometime ago; but couldn't get his details on the internet for a long time. Recently I have spotted his photo in potofthots.com and I have stolen that photo too:-) Hope, this little photo of him (with Sanjay Pinto sitting in front) would give good feeling to his fans and well-wishers.

Who is behind Savukku.net (WikiLeaks of India)?

Ever since I've given my Humble Award to Savukku , I've started getting hits about the person behind Savukku website (Julian Assange of Savukku?). In fact, I wasn't aware of the identity of the person behind the Savukku and so I collected the following information. Name Shankar Age 35 Previous job Staff of directorate of vigilance and anti-corruption (DVAC). He was suspended and arrested for alleged leaking of taped conversation Marital status Single, living with mother (Heleena told me that she read somewhere about this) Native Tanjore Photo Lifted from blogintamil.blogspot.com shows he's arrested on alleged road rage Related links Blogger whips up a following City blogger held for road rage நிர்வாண அழகு (வலைச்சரம் ஜோதிஜி 5வது நாள்)

Beware of Chennai Book Fair crime - mobile theft

Unfortunately, lost my iPhone 4 that was gifted my boss on Jan 9, 2011 (Sunday) at the Chennai Book Fair held at St.George Anglo Indian School (Opp to Pachayappan college, Poonamalee High Road, Aminjikarai, Chennai - 600 030). When I visited T.P.Chatram Police Station to file the complaint, I have noted about 20 mobile theft complaint from the visitors of the book fair! So, there is a big chance that a mob is targeting the book fair. Beware! Steps to be taken (general guideline) Try to reach the mobile from other phone (to confirm if it's been stolen) File a complaint with nearest police station Deactivate your lost SIM with the operator, especially if it's a post paid connection. Things to be mentioned in police complaint Handset model IMEI Cost of the mobile Last used SIM (mobile number) Date and time of loss Place of loss Alternate contact details (if the phone is recovered) Have to receive the CSR (Complaint Statement Receipt(?)) as a receipt. Chennai...

jobreapr, search better fiverr alternatives at one place

Sometime ago, I blogged that FPPlatform is ahead of other Fiverr clone scripts . FPPlatform, aka Fixed-price platform is a freelance job platform written in PHP/MySQL stack that our team has developed. It's powering many good fiverr alternatives. The panic fiverr then tried to close the competitors through PayPal's AUP through false copyright claim--the problems were sorted out through legal measures of the competitors and I hope, fiverr will be forced to pay damages for alleged copyright claim. Problems with Fiverr For sellers, Fiverr charges hefty 20% commission. There are bunch of related complaints about fiverr on the net. Also, on the net can find many buyers complain that sellers in Fiverr are not serious as they would be getting just $4 for every services; sellers have to focus on quantity--not quality to make profit. Better Fiverr alternatives FiverrWay , tracks all fiverr competitors and also publishes rank every month. Being competitors, these sites takes lot of mea...

Magic: T.K.Vadivel Pillai is above Cyril Takayama

Recently, I have been watching Cyril Takayama 's magic show in AXN channel. That reminded me of T.K.Vadivel Pillai 's magic show in Jaya TV. I have searched Vadivel's name in Wikipedia's Indian magicians article and to my surprise, his name was not present. In my opinion, T.K.Vadivel Pillai's magic is superior than Cyril's--especially, in one show, he could tell the name of the person whom the girl was thinking. Not really sure, why T.K.Vadivel Pillai could not be as popular as Cyril. Sidenote: I'm yet to see David Blaine 's magic and I still have a gut feeling that Vadivel's would be better.

Humble Award - savukku, WikiLeaks of India

Savukku is a brave news website on politics and corruption. It publishes many allegations, proofs and conspiracies against many popular personalities like journalists, news editors, politicians, activists, etc. As of now, it seems to be the only source of information on hidden things and politics. The articles published seem to have given important hints to CBI for it's recent raids in Chennai related to Telecom 2G Spectrum scam (Google "barkhagate" and related stories too) I wish Savukku to publish many more hidden truths without any arm-twist and get more support through social media.

Yahoo! and delicious.com - What's wrong?

On December 5th, I wrote What's wrong with delicious.com and somewhat predicted it's suicidal phase. And, then I have noted relatively high incoming hits on my article. On December 16th, TechCrunch wrote Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? . On December 17th, delicious/Yahoo! responded by clearing all blog posts and wrote What’s Next for Delicious? that confirmed suicidal in the form of sales. What's wrong with Yahoo! Yahoo! is in the wrong hands (Think of Apple without Steve Jobs) Yahoo! is lacking vision. There are many ways to make profit and for the internet services like Yahoo!, the profit may be virtual things--instead of physical Yahoo! is chasing Google and rivals. When you're the pioneer, people may not leave easily. Many people still use Yahoo! mail. Yahoo! may even raise money through donations like Wikipedia; no one would be bother to donate, if they really like it. Yahoo! is hiring wrong people. I often used to tell "though skills are trainable, ...

IP to ISP/Country/City (GeoIP) using PHP

I've noted that many people are searching here about how to find out City/Country/ISP details from IP; often referred as GeoIP. Here, I've compiled my replies that once I posted to comp.lang.php Get the IP Refer http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml and see which whois server should be used for the whois lookup Now, do the whois lookup. e.g., whois -h whois.apnic.net 61.x.x.x Parse the results. AFAIK, it will have the ISP, City and Country info For whois lookup, may use rwhois protocol through below PHP code: <?php function whois($host, $command) { $fp = fsockopen ($host, 43, $errno, $errstr, 100); if (!$fp) { $result = $errstr . $errno . "\n"; } else { fputs ($fp, $command . "\r\n\r\n"); $result = ''; while (!feof($fp)) { $result .= fgets ($fp, 128); } fclose ($fp); } return $result; } //debug... echo whois('whois.internic.net', 'php.net'); ?> Re...

Donated a meager amount to Wikipedia

Heleena is madly interested in charity works and after reading Shiv Nadar's interview in Entrepreneur magazine , it gave us some direction as he mentioned only Education can change the lives . Been one of the early contributor of Wikipedia (13th or 18th Wikipedian, I hope), I've just donated a meager amount as it's a very good tool for Education. (In reality, these sort of things shouldn't be blogged (I know that); I just thought that it would let other people to donate to Wikipedia. Sorry for the noise)

SocialAV (Social Antivirus), site to create antivirus

About 5-years ago, I was asked to evaluate Norton and McAfee antiviruses for a purchase decision for the company. I've noted that Norton was quite slow and memory hog and both of them were somewhat in lag to push new detections. At that time, I have suggested Trend Micro and I was happy for about 1-year. Again, I have noted that Trend Micro wasn't pushing signatures in good speed. At that time, I was thinking about crowd power and my crowd power idea was substantiated when a malware attacked company's network through Yahoo! Messenger (which would send crazy automated messages through Yahoo! messenger and would get spread when the link is been clicked). Most of the antiviruses couldn't detect it; but we could able to find the solution over some random forums through Google. If the people who can supply solutions could come under one roof, it will be a great power and after much of thoughts and iterations SocialAV was born. It was somewhat ready months before and the tea...

How to pronounce Rajesh Jeba Anbiah

Some of you might be interested in the pronunciation of my name. I have noted that for the following transcription, the Google's TTS system correctly speaks out my name. Please see Raajeish Jeba Anbiah If you know Tamil, the language that has phonetic writing: ராஜேஷ் ஜெப அன்பையா

IT solutions industry and clone sites--option for creativity?

As noted, our team developed software solution platform that powers many Groupon and Fiverr like sites. Initially, the development wasn't much interesting as now; there was less freedom to add our own idea--as customers would be asking exact or similar features of popular site. Taking GroupDeal, when we added merchant interface, many customers didn't want it as it wasn't a feature available in Groupon and LivingSocial; but Groupon has come up with similar feature as Groupon 2.0! We've even added friends mod as I have a gut feeling that Groupon will definitely take that direction. From the very beginning, we predicted that Groupon is good idea out of Woot, but the interface isn't good--something like Digg would be ideal for Groupon; but, we couldn't do anything here. Also, the initial FUD was that our software didn't scale on load--even when we shown it's scalable than Groupon; and that got settled down once MySuperDealToday could sell 1,440 deals in a...

What's wrong with delicious.com?

The recent UI changes of delicious.com is quite confusing and smells suicidal phase. I have noted that, after Joshua Schachter sold it to Yahoo!, it's going crazy changes. Probably, it's because a Yahoo! company now or Engineers don't get the real idea? Some crazy moves: del.icio.us to delicious.com change; probably to reach countries that censor .us TLD? delicious.com to www.delicious.com; unjustified Perl to PHP switch; why? for:handle geekish way to share to separate box; crazy but ok. Looks like, the new Yahoo! guys don't know how to make it a cult following like how twitter popularized @handle Recent broken UI

Groupon - hype or paid news?

As our team is developing GroupDeal , a group buying software that powers most of the groupon like websites, I have been following Groupon for a long time. Quite often, I'm amused by the news and visibility that the Groupon is getting on the media. The recent buzz that Google May Acquire Groupon for $6 Billion, and It Would Be Worth Every Penny (!!!) and Groupon Turns Down Google’s $6 Billion Offer --and weird comments & noise posted over there--seems to prove my doubts that it's more of a hype or paid news. If my doubts are true, there's a clear "success mantra" for every internet company!!

"A to Z of C" in the book Cimple (ISBN 0070260982)

I was just searching "A to Z of C" in Google Books and found that the book Cimple written by Sasant K Rout has used our code. The irony is that the book was published by Tata McGraw-Hill , who rejected us in final stage stating that it wants us to get endorsement from any IIT professor, which we couldn't. (For the sake of record... IIT Bangalore was linking & supporting "A to Z of C" for long time once it's published over the net; see old IIT page from web.archives.org ) It's just another incident to prove that success isn't a measurable unit; even failed attempts can be appreciated in any other forms.