Smart Image resizing

YouTube - Content Aware Image Resizing This is pretty cool stuff - they can remove information from images in a way that the resulting resized image is not scaled, but resized. It's not cropping, it's math functions automated the process. The results are very impressive.

flick:The lives of others

We watched The lives of others subtitled in English yesterday. I highly recommend it. The movie has a slow pace, but yet it has a lot of suspense. It depicts the lives of people in East Germany before the Berlin wall fell. The motto of the secret police "To know every thing", you can imagine the surveillance and the culture of fear every one was living under. The three main characters, the surveillance guy, the writer, and his girlfriend evolve in very different and surprising ways as the story unfolds. It just goes to tell us that no matter how good/bad a system may be - the real thing that will make a difference is the people in the system. This film is about showing the humanity for its good and the not so good that comes with it in all the characters, no super heros, just people living their lives with their qualities and weaknesses.

Palm Foleo - does anyone care?

Tech Trader Daily - Barron’s Online : Palm Sub-Laptop "Foleo" Delayed, Says Deutsche; Does Anyone Care?: "I wonder how many folks are actually waiting with bated breath for this gadget." I for one, I'm almost ashamed to say, I care. I'm a big Treo fan, running with Palm, I've been a convert since the 600, then 650, now 680. The instant on feature of the foleo, the very small size, and the fact that I have everything in my treo, would allow me to be productive without having to boot the real thing all the time. More and more apps I use are on the web so that's even better, the connectivity with the phone would get me connected wherever I have wifi or phone coverage instantly. I wonder if the settings can be different for the mail app between the treo and the Foleo. On my treo I never download all the emails content from the first pass, on the foleo I would probably want to download them automatically, or at least bump the download limit up. Anyhow is this device going to be commercial success - I don't believe so, even though I will likely buy one...maybe!

TechStars

Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing: TechStars Demo Day - 10 new companies ready to launch It's interesting to read what people are developing and what seems to be the applications people need/want these days. One thing is for sure is gone are the days of an application is running in a silo. All the startups show cased have a social component to it, as well as participation, or user in charge kind of thing. Nothing new to you, it just daunted on me when reading the list.

Doing two things at once : impact your product!

Customer Experience Crossroads: The latest news on multi-tasking and what it means for customer experience: "on average, 20 hours a week -- attempting to do two things at once."

The first reaction I had reading this was, "how many times do I chat while I'm on the phone, or read an e-mail while chatting, or even on the phone?". This is not always the most productive way of doing things, and it takes great discipline to focus on one thing. So let's change that, well not really.

This trend is trending upward, more people are doing multi-tasking, what does this mean for me? As the post author says - getting the attention of people is becoming more and more difficult. I consider this an important trend to take into account when designing a user experience, our design must take into account that people's attention is not fully there. Making an easy to use product, with low customer support to use common business goals - takes a different direction when one knows about that trend.

Business is social. — Alec Saunders .LOG

Business is social. — I'm on the fence about facebook vs LinkedIn. I can't say I'm a power user in either of them, nothing like Alec is doing anyway. So my 2cents on this are really worth 2cents. My take on Alec's point that LinkedIn is still just the old boy network, and that facebook is open and much better for business, I don't agree with the way he puts his argument. He says I posted a few problems on facebook and within minutes I had people willing to give me pointers. The help you get on those social network is directly proportional to the cost it will be on the donor. If it's easy and hassle free then you get an answer from Joe, but if it will be expensive in time or in social points he better know you very well before he takes the plunge. In that respect I don't see how facebook is better than linkedin.

Code Collaborator | Get the Free Book

As you know Macadamian is a big fan of code reviews. We have adopted peer code reviews very early on after working on Wine . At the time we were thinking we were pretty good software engineers so why do we need our code to be reviewed. Well that was before our patches got rejected on the wine mailing list. We were shocked at first, but then we thought if those guys are doing this for fun, and they take this so seriously, what the heck are we waiting for as professionals. So we adapted the process to work in our context and it's now part of our way of work no questions asked. A patch a day keeps the bugs away - we happily sing everyday! (ok we don't sing - we just say it) Well if you want to know more about peer code reviews, what they are , how to do them, what you should expect, how they will improve your organization, have a look at the free book on just that one topic - Code Collaborator our friends at SmartBear have taken the time to write a whole book about it.

Should we talk about terrorism attack strategies?

If You Were a Terrorist, How Would You Attack? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog: "Hearing about these rules got me thinking about what I would do to maximize terror if I were a terrorist with limited resources. I’d start by thinking about what really inspires fear. One thing that scares people is the thought that they could be a victim of an attack. With that in mind, I’d want to do something that everybody thinks might be directed at them, even if the individual probability of harm is very low. Humans tend to overestimate small probabilities, so the fear generated by an act of terrorism is greatly disproportionate to the actual risk."

This is from the guy who wrote Freakonomics, a book I truly enjoyed reading. He always look at things in ways that are difficult to predict and surprising. So I picked up this post with interest, to end disappointed, there were no real revelations for me as for theory of terrorism or anything like that. I also felt uneasy about the scenario he describes, cause it's like giving ideas to the bad guys. I remember reading a tom clancy book(as pointed out in the comments), the one where the plane crashes in the senate and kills everyone but the VP, our hero, who then becomes president. Then in 2001 when seeing the planes crashing in the WTC NY - I asked myself some serious questions if a link could/should be established. Back to today again - I reread the post, and like *some* of the comments, I think it's better to know about the scenarios than not. The consequences of trying to stop people from writing/thinking about potential scenarios are unacceptable, it would be literally the wrong side winning. So I agree with the author statement:

"So by getting these ideas out in the open, it gives terror fighters a chance to consider and plan for these scenarios before they occur."

So even if it's scary we have to have the courage to talk about.

cry me a river!

From the cry me a river department Here are complains the rupee went up 10% this year. Boo hoo hoo I say - take a look at the canadian $ over the last 3years. It's hurting us but this is the difference in business - we're in a business of projects where getting the RIGHT product to market matters, as such urgency, Jumping right In, flexibility, customer adoption, increasing batting average with new products are the driving decision factors for us.

India outsourcing challenges

NewsFactor Network | Is the Party Over for Indian Outsourcers? The article started on a bad note, what sounded like a repeat of what we read all the times, talent shortage, rupee going up, visas cap etc. But then the author hooked me with new information. I don't know that this new information in itself is calling for the demise of India, journalist always have to be dramatic, but they are factors to consider.

For example below is the clear belief that India is stronger for Indians, its industry is the strongest so no real need to worry. When you keep on winning like the big guys are doing I think it is natural for people to start to think your invincible and then things start to get really wrong.

"But while India lacks a formal innovation culture, one would never know from the assumed superiority over foreign rivals. Indian firms are simply unable, culturally, to absorb a Western company. Industry analysts say Indian companies such as Infosys are hierarchical, and have an elitist view of their business and suffer from "conceptual Brahmanism," referring to the group at the upper echelon of the Indian caste system"

So I'm here thinking CMMI was the best thing that ever happened to India as a society. The theory on CMMI is simple - the processes that CMMI certified companies employ are allowing everyone in the org to contribute on equal footing given their position, so whatever your social rank is really, and in a country like India this is an important thing given the historical caste system etc. To read that it's the elite, running the show is like reading Gates daughter is on equal footing as mine in life in North America, no real surprise. Obviously there is a legacy to the caste system you won't get out of quickly, just like powerful families in Europe or North America. What is important is that the opportunities are there now for every one. To read though of the reference to management suffering from "conceptual Brahmanism" is disappointing, because I thought they understood better than us "go where the talent is" ie who cares what family or caste someone is from as long as the brain is all there - it will get my company ahead.

"In fact, IBM is the top choice of India globally. Ambitious Indian corporations such as Bharti Airtel, since 2004, have outsourced roughly $1 billion worth of tech services to firms such as IBM with global expertise."

This is interesting that IBM is winning serious deals in India. Just thinking that Infosys was announcing with grand fanfare a 250M deal - IBM just go for the home run, why work on the smaller deals when they are just as much work to close as the bigger ones I hear them say, and let's kick some butt in India along the way - it's very promising market.

"The future, say industry analysts, lies in doing things the multinational way: embracing innovation, consulting, and geographical expansion. To get there, Indian companies must get over their "25% margin fixation," says Ashish Thadani of Gilford Securities, who covers Indian tech companies listed in New York. "Those continuing high margins mean you are probably underinvesting for the future."

I like the first point made here - focus on embracing new ways, move up the chain, and think geographic. Not everything out to be done from India to be delivered efficiently and the only reason it's still done now, is that it's still viable $$ wise, but sooner or later Indian companies will need to get out into the world. I like the following question "Who stand a better chance of success at globalization an IBM like companies with presence around the world with the need to increase its India foot print, or an Infosys with a huge presence in India"

As for the focus on margin - I like margin, the focus on it, I understand that it can be limiting strategically speaking. The race for the top Indian outsourcer is so fierce with no one willing to give an inch to the other - what could convince them all to start investing in R&D? - they are still growing very fast and faster than any services firm of that size elsewhere in the world.

I think they ought to invest more outside of India, I think multi geographic approach is much better for the end client.

Spock: Spooky

Spock the people search startup has a spooky way to verify your identify. I find it hard to give away my password to another site (linkedin in this case) to verify my identity. I'm brainwashed to not trust anything or anyone who ask me my password. In this case they say it's to verify my identity, but what do they do with the password afterward? There ought to be a better way - I haven't checked LinkedIn's API, actually it looks like LinkedIn doesn't have an API just yet.

Customer experience

Matt brings up an interesting point - "Both cite that roughly 70% of organizations are dissatisfied with their outsourcers. The Tholons white paper highlights something interesting though - around 80% of respondents in their study beleived their outsourcing provider were meeting their contractual committments. Huh? How can you be meeting your obligations yet still have an unsatisfied customer? Therein lies the kicker - the big secret that's sure to raise the hackles of anyone in legal - in a successful outsourcing deal, the contract doesn't mean squat." His take is that it's all about the relationship to which I couldn't agree more. I would push it even further, how do one build a relationship? Some says it's through the test of times that one gets to build strong relationships. Still I believe that the one ingredient we forget often is to even have the opportunity to continue building a relationship one needs to be providing a satisfying customer experience. This is what he hints at in:

"In my own experience, the best projects I've worked had a clear and open line of communication between the outsourcer and the customer. Both show give and take and both feel comfortable picking up the phone at any time to tackle an issue head-on."

Some will call this communication, but to even have what may seem like the simple concept above(which is no walk in the park to do) a company has to have a culture where it's important for its people, their own, and their customers to know where they stand on an issue, and expect to always know where they stand. In the services business I am - this is customer experience, in a software application they would call the software is easy of use, and in the restaurant business they call this hospitality. For an awesome read on the subject pick up Setting the table by Danny Meyer. I found this book so great that I bet I will be referring to it for quite some time. Earlier in this post I referred to a third book on my streak of good reading lately, well this is it.

Blog move - updated rss feed, url change

I moved my blog. After thinking about it for a while I decided to bite the bullet. I should have done things differently to minimize disruption of the few readers I have now that I look back. I should have sent a notice on the old blog warning of the move. I wanted to try out new features in blogger and from services on the web leveraging blogger, but my blog setup was too old to take advantage of any of them. I have been using the same setup since 2001 – things change in 6years in technology, they are dog years. So I’m now hosting things on blogspot instead of our own server, and this gives me access to layouts instead of templates. The new feed also comes with the switch, I use feedburner now, my feed is http://www.feedburner.com/picpacwrack

 

Mail post

I’m trying for the first time to post from Outlook – I don’t know what will come out of this post on blogger. What happens to the title? How does it get parsed if sent as HTML? So many questions.

the cost of attracting people in India?

Wall Street & Technology: Blog: Too Soon To Call the Demise of Labor Arbitrage? : "To work on its visibility, GlobalLogic spends $100,000 a month on newspaper and magazine ads." This is a huge price to pay to be able to attract people. For those thinking about setting up in India brand is huge, people want to work for companies with solid brand with strong career path, advancement possibilities up the ying yang for the most ambitious. Small outfits don't fit the bill. This will lead to higher turn over and the demise of the overall investment for the Company. Before setting up shop if your company doesn't have a brand that is known worldwide or if the goal is not to have at the very least north of 750people, your lab will be a small one, , you will have lots of problem retaining talent. Go big or go home or partner with an established player!