RING RING… not another forward message, I thought as my cell phone vibrated. I checked and realized it was an alarm call. It was 7.30 am. My God, it was my first day to college. Welcome to college, I said. I got up and after hours of mulling on what to wear, I was ready. Walking for around 15 minutes were really very exited. Finally, I arrived at my destination, my new college. I was on time. I went to my class and the most the most shocking experience came in front of me when i saw that I was the only one in casuals and rest all were in full formals. The whole atmosphere was friendly but it took me more than an hour to make friends, but finally I ended up makign 3 friends, one from Delhi, one from Guwahati and one from Kerela.

After a few minutes, we moved to our main campus which was around a 25 minutes drive from our regular campus. There we went to a seminar hall and all the faculties, mentors and program coordinator were present. The first person introduced himself and gave a brief description about the whole institution and what we are going to do in next three years. Flowed by the lunch we have some ice-breaking sessions. I realized that some were from the science stream; with some others were from commerce background. As I wasn’t a regular student in 11th & 12th, I knew that studies had no link to me and I would have to start from the basic level. So I concentrated on each and every word, he said. The four-hour lectures made me realize that it was not just another three year course; it requires much more hard work. Less the time, more the amount of hard work would be needed… this was my first lesson.

Finally I, along with my one-day-old friends, left the college. On my way back home, I recalled my days in school and all the fun I had in the past years. Well now, it would be a different story altogether.. this course, I mean. Welcome to college, I said to myself.

Btw I was so much indulged in the city that i forgot to tell that why i came here, I’ve joined Alliance school of management for pursing BBM for my graduation. I would be spending the most important part of my life, the next three year here in Bangalore.

Back to track, the taxiwalas here are very unpredictable. Every other taxiwala has his own version of a random number generating software and comes out with a very different and outrageous figure for the same destination. My love for the number 7 never subsides and I somehow managed to get a BIL flash card displaying the number 7 .

The best thing about Bengaluru is the weather: one, it’s not very hot in here; two, it rains just about every other day here and gives me a chance to step out in the rain and enjoy the awesomest of all feelings. The best part of the week was when some I decided not to eat the normal indian food and rather step out in the rain and eat at the outlet instead! Ended up visiting A to B, had good masala dose, with a lot of butter followed by starters, along with redefined low service quality levels and STILL had a great time with my old-found friends!!

I’ll be discovering a lot things in the upcoming days, bengaluru walo main aa gaya hoon !

I’m still alive. Yes I am!! After being told by a lot of friends, today i finally got some time to make a blog post. Sorry about the long hiatus. I’ve been busy packing up with my schools and then preparing for entrance for various colleges and then GD’s and PI’s. The whole summer came in and now went away, i came across to a lot of new things and various cities – Mumbai, Pune, Bhopal and Bangalore to be precise.

The whole summer was superb, I had a lot of fun with usual dash of lectures, bunking classes, restaurants, discs, pubs, encounter with a lot of blondes & chicks and a monster of studies…!

Finally after all this i drove down to Indore as i got admission and now preparing to move to Bangalore. I am selected in Alliance School of Management for BBM.

Living in Bangalore would be a complete new experience and studying there would be total fun. High tech city, new pubs and discs, awesome people, looking forward to have gr8 time there.

I don’t have much things to pen down for now but i assure, there would be a lot of more stuff as soon as i reach Bangalore…

Its been a month since I ordered Dell Studio XPS 16 and finally today it arrived , the laptop seems really good and I’ve even got some free goodies too

Below are the tech specifications:

• Processor: Intel Core i7 Q720 @ 1.60GHz
• Memory: 4GB – 2DIMM DDR3
• HDD: 500GB 7200rpm
• Graphics: ATI Mobility RADEON HD (1GB)
• Display: 16.0″ 1080p Full HD RGBLED LCD with 2.0 MP Webcam
• Optical Drive: 16X BDisc Combo Drive (DVD/CD +/- RW +BD Read)
• OS: Windows 7 Professional (64 bit)
• Software: 15-month McAfee security subscription, Microsoft Works 9
• Wireless: Intel Wireless 5100
• Mediabay: 8-in-1 Media Card Reader
• Battery: 9-cell batteries
• Other: Facial Recognition Security; Dell Dock; Dell Video Chat; 2GB Data Safe Online
• Dimensions: 0.95″-1.34″ x 15.15″ x 10.02″ with 6-cell battery (H x W x D)
• Weight: 6.53 lbs with 6-cell battery
• Price as configured:Rs. 78,000 (Starting price: Rs.73,000)

The main reason for buying this laptop was that i really needed a portable workstation so that when i go out, i dont need to think about work, i can start the work anywhere at anytime. This system is more than a workstation as i stated the configuration, you can surely say that i can run any application on this very swiftly.

The other reason why i bought this laptop is because most laptops lack in high quality speakers! I’m in to music and wanted decent sound from my laptop and this model has two 7 watt stereo speakers and a sub which deliver very good sound quality and loudness for a laptop!

Media and games are another good experience you will have with the good graphics card, high definition 16:9 aspect ratio (True wide-screen) monitor and high quality speakers! Also the touch buttons and backlit keyboard are added luxuries but are also very useful!

The only disappointing this about this machine is that its a finger print magnet.

Overall I am very happy with my new laptop and would recommend it to others!!!!

The main concerns about cloud computing are security and privacy. The thought of handing your important data over to something called a “cloud” can be daunting. Nervous corporate executives might hesitate to take advantage of a cloud computing system because they feel like they’re surrendering control of their company’s information. Data inside the ‘cloud’ is outside a company’s firewall and that brings with it an intrinsic threat of risk, because services that companies outsource evade the physical, logical and personnel controls that I.T. shops wield over data maintained in-house. Other fears include:

• Risk of data breaching
• Appeal to cyber crooks
• Lack of specific standards for security and data privacy
• Questions about jurisdiction. European concern about U.S. privacy laws led to creation of the U.S. Safe Harbor Privacy Principles, which are intended to provide European companies with a degree of insulation from U.S. laws
• Data location. Cloud users probably do not know exactly where their data is hosted—not even the specific country

Best practice issues:

• Exception monitoring systems
• Vigilance, or lack thereof, over updates and ensuring that staff does not receive unauthorized access privileges
• Third-party companies who may be able to access data
• Password creation and protection
• Availability guarantees and penalties
• Accommodation of personal security policies by the cloud computing company

Other issues with cloud computing are more philosophical. Who owns the data: the company who places their data with the cloud computing service or the cloud computing service itself? Can a cloud computing company ever legally deny a client access to their own data? Companies, law firms, and universities are currently debating these issues and others.

There is also growing concern about how cloud computing could impact the business of computer maintenance and repair. If companies make the leap to centralized computer systems, they will have less need for internal I.T. support. By removing infrastructure ownership from I.T., suddenly I.T. no longer has control over key business resources, which makes it feasible for someone concerned with a cost/benefit approach, like a CFO, to start limiting I.T.’s control. It is doubtful that this will have much of an impact on the cloud computing industry; the same concerns were no doubt raised when inventions like the cotton gin, assembly lines, and, well, computers first appeared.

Cloud computing evolved from the knowledge and experience of managed services, Internet services, application service providers, etc. Its technology is the result of a paradigm shift and is improving business computing because: (1) it is modular, compartmentalizing software applications and associated hardware and infrastructure; (2) it is uniform, utilizing the same resources that customers share. A business using cloud computing can avoid large outlays of capital expense as well as perpetual maintenance costs, thereby aligning cash flow with total system cost.

Data centers are known to be very inefficient, and clustering and virtualizing their servers has met with only limited success. Over time, there will be a logical segue to scalable computing based on/in the cloud. The future of computing is going to consist of the combination of service orientation, service management, and cloud computing. Some of the reasons for this are:

• Hardware costs would decrease because cloud computing systems would reduce the need for advanced, expensive hardware on the client side. It would no longer be necessary or desirable to buy the fastest computer with the most memory or largest hard drive. Rather, all a customer would need to buy is an inexpensive computer terminal, a monitor, input components such as a keyboard and mouse, and only enough processing power to run the middleware necessary to connect to the cloud system.
• Clients could access their applications and data from anywhere at any time using a computer linked to the Internet. Data would be stored offsite rather than take up space on a hard drive on a user’s computer or a corporation’s internal network.
• Since cloud computing is a “pay as you go” system, companies would not have to buy software or software licenses for each employee. Instead, the company would pay a metered fee based on usage, much the way open source software (as opposed to proprietary software) works. For the most part, cloud computing infrastructures are built from open source components because the cloud providers are hesitant to make large investments without knowing the payoff.
• Cloud computing customers would no longer have to worry about physical space in which to store servers and other storage hardware. They can store data on a third-party’s system, thus removing the need for physical space on the front end.
• Since cloud computing offers tried and true hardware, operating systems, and applications, customers could save money on IT support (for obvious reasons, this is not a concept that IT support personnel in general buy into).
• If the cloud computing system’s back end is a grid computing system, customers could take advantage of the entire network’s processing power. For instance, scientists and researchers who work with extremely complicated calculations could send the calculations to the cloud for processing. The cloud system would utilize the processing power of all available computers on the back end and significantly speed up the calculations.
• Cloud computing provides a way to outsource non-critical applications to organizations better suited to run them, allowing IT to focus on critical applications.
• Cloud providers are more efficient at IT operations, using fewer man-hours for standard tasks (again, not a popular concept with IT support personnel).
• By buying hardware in large volume, cloud providers get better pricing.

So, these are the arguments FOR the cloud computing revolution/evolution. My next article will look at the perceived disadvantages of it and why not everyone is buying in to it.

Maeda’s book breaks down the idea of designing with simplicity in mind into 10 easy to remember laws, written within 100 pages exactly and reinforced with easy to remember acronyms, making even the act of reading and learning from the book an act of simplicity.

One of the ideas that really stuck with me was the law of reduction. One of the key objectives of reduction, Maeda explains, is the idea of shrinking.

When a small, unassuming object exceeds our expectations, we are not only surprised but pleased. Our usual reaction is something like, “That little thing did all that?” Simplicity is about the unexpected pleasure derived from what is likely to be insignificant and would otherwise go unnoticed. The smaller the object, the more forgiving we can be when it misbehaves.

A company that successfully employs this reduction principle is Google. When you visit their home page you are greeted with a search box and two buttons. Compare this to the other less popular search engines and you will notice a striking difference. Other search engines seem bloated and full of unnecessary elements. Google thrives off the fact that people visit search engines in order to search, not to be swamped with content and links that have no relevance to them.

Still think simplicity is a commonly known idea?  Learn more about simplicity by picking up a copy of Maeda’s book.

For me, 2010 is the “year of action”. I am aiming for 2010 to be my best ever year with a new theme “Be better- Share more – Show up joyful so that I can make the biggest difference. Learning from the past mistakes, the lessons the success has taught, I’ve made a 10 point strategy to replicate it on higher platform, the whispers of the reasons for the success which is still to come the way… more aggression… more focused…

Besides being too idealistic I’ve some other plans as well, like photography and traveling ( I’ve purchased a new Canon SX20IS ), I am planning around 5-7 trips to some historic & high tech places this year. Also I am addicted to music music so I am also planning some short trips to listen & attend the shows of Indian Ocean, Raghu Dixit, Swarathma, Faridkot and many more.

At last I want to propose that we all make 2010 a great and creative year by sharing our knowledge and not being afraid of experimenting. Let’s be less critical about the outcome of our experiments and more cheerful about our discoveries in the learning process and the evolution path. That’s what’s most important after all.

I’ve seen a lot of colleagues set up their own blogs and I’ve been putting off my website for a long time now so I figured…why not! So here it is…..

I am a prolific writer.

Actually – scratch that statement. At best it sounds immodest, at worst it is untrue in comparison with the existing active participants of the blogosphere. I do write a lot. I also admit I want to write more than I usually do. A lot of the content I create is for internal online training purposes at Aspricot. To me that is an initiatevite well-made. The value of my time spent in penning down something, will likely be derived by several hundred individuals over the next years. I consider the value of any creation, directly proportional to the number of people that can use it. That is probably over-simplifying it, but it is definitely one of the more important variables.

This blog may not my daily journal, maybe not a repository for regular thoughts. Hopefully a collection of articles that will be read, by a larger circle. At the least an attempt.

Thanks for stopping by!