Cedric Gouliardon Farewell Video - Pixelmetrix

pour out my thoughts upon you...

pour out my thoughts upon you..., originally uploaded by Savio Sebastian.

God says "... I will pour out my spirit upon you". I love what that means - he pours out his thoughts to us - he confides in us... The implications are incredible!

Imaging thinking God's thoughts? He will keep in perfect peace he whose mind is stayed upon him! :)

The Lord confides in those who fear Him!

Reminds me of a line from a song... ".. break my heart for what breaks yours!"

SAP ByD is changing the world

I worked on SAP ByD. I think it's a great idea. I think it will change the industry - I think it really is amazing.


But what I admire more is how SAP handled ByD.


It was launched with huge fanfare the year I joined SAP Labs Bangalore - 2007. Henning Kagermann said it was the "most important announcement I’ve made in my career." (http://goo.gl/68mXR)


But it didn't achieve it's business goals that year. Neither did it the next. In spite of more than 10,000 people working on it full time from all around the world!


It's amazing how SAP decided to re-engineer the offering. It made a lot of people unhappy - but it really needed to do that for the product. My team struggled with this decision. But in the end - it probably is the best thing that happened for SAP.


ByD is yet to reach it's full potential, but I am fully convinced that it will - with SAP willing to be agile and fix it's products, I think it will really change the world.


Read an interesting article by Dennis Howlett about ByD on ZDNet: http://goo.gl/2tQzN

Stephen Elop is a Superman

I admire this man's courage. He's changing Nokia in a way no one expected. It's amazing. He would probably be the only reason why Nokia and Microsoft will still remain biggies in the phone business.


His highly publicized memo on WSJ: http://goo.gl/ClRqt

I can't fathom the guts he had in burning Nokia's Smart Phone OS platform - Symbian. They have been investing a lot on the platform for a long time - heavily invested! In fact they were world leaders in the smartphone business before iPhone and RIM changed the industry. But still Nokia seemed quite reluctant to change. They slacked.


Then an outsider came in from Microsoft - Stephen Elop - to replace a CEO who had been with Nokia for about 30 yrs!


Stephen was bold. He challenged. He go everyone on board. And he killed Symbian.


To read more about him: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Elop

I really admire his guts!


This weekend I spent a great deal of time thinking about re-engineering and how it is probably the best thing you can do for your technology.

How I Really Really Know!

Not that I didn't know it before I met her - but she made it so much more real to me - God really does love me a lot! :) I KNOW that! :)


Best friend and critic... compassionate yet sometimes quite irritating, loving and sometimes gives a lot of tough love - she's a wonderful wife. :)


:) I'm amazed and grateful...


it's a couple of days before our 3rd anniversary... and about 6 years of knowing each other - feels just like yesterday - except that I take her for granted a whole lot more from the time we started. :( hmmm... need to do something about that huh?

Perfect vs. Interesting

This is a really good read from Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/04/perfect-vs-interesting.html


So make it interesting - if you didn't take the perfect shot. :)

Convofy?!! Why?

I'm not sure why convofy exists. Where's the USP? And why would I want to download an application? Someone please explain! I don't get it at all!


I generally love to try new things - new sites/technology stuff... but I didn't like convofy.

Adobe Wallaby - Flash to HTML5

On March 10, 2011 Adobe announced the launch of Wallaby.
Coming from the makers of the Flash technology - it definitely points towards the end of Flash/Flex development. :(
Being a Flex developer myself, this is not necessarily great news.
My problem with HTML5 is that it's not standardized and there is no easy way to make them. And the fact that I love Flex because it's highly Object Oriented - much like Java!
So this ain't good news - but it's big news!
To read more about it: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/

The Internet's getting FASTER! I <3 Google Chrome.

Google's changing the internet. Google Chrome's latest update carries Google instant built right into it! :) It's simply AMAZING.


So the moment you start typing into your browser, websites are getting fetched.


What I'm learning now is speed is probably the most differentiating factor when it comes to using a software. If you get instant feedback, you're more likely to try the software again and again. If you don't, you abandon it.


Speed is probably the biggest value add in a user's experience than anything else.


You can read about it here :) http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/this-week-in-search-21111.html

The Bible Experience!

 I'm listening to The Bible Experience (http://bit.ly/gSqbuI). I love it. It's engaging. It's got a lot of these funny background scores that make it fun. It's got a lot of detail - like for example, Moses really speaks with a stammering tongue! :) I really liked that!


Faith comes by Hearing.


This was the motivation behind 'The Bible Experience' being one of my first $100+ purchases in Singapore. I got a friend hooked onto it - she finished 43 books of the Bible in less than 2 months!


It paints a big interesting picture of the Bible times - making even the boring parts super interesting.


You should check it out!


A friend of mine, Shyju Mathew (http://bit.ly/dRHOCU), is running a campaign to read the bible in 90 days. This encouraged me to get on the bandwagon as well.


Get on with it!

@twfeed! I don't get it!

I use TwitterFeed. That's what makes the content of my blog come onto my twitter account - which, by the way makes me in the Top 200 Tweeters in Bangalore by Twitaholic (http://twitterholic.com/savioseb/ making it one of the few companies which have name that's different from the web domain they own!)


Anyways, I really don't get TwitterFeed!
1. Why is the bar graph showing 8 clicks as more than 12 clicks?
2. Why doesn't the site allow you more information - since all of it can anyway be obtained from bit.ly - all I'm asking is either they give you a link to get that information or show that info in itself - but they don't, when it's incredibly simple to do!
3. Why are some of my posts missing?!!! Not that it changes too much, but it's frustrating to be unsure whether your post is gonna make it to twitter! ;)
4. Why can't I see all my twitter feed links?!!!! Why only 2? Why not top 10? etc?
5. Why haven't you exposed APIs?


I'm turning out to be a technology cribber. I love technology - especially stuff that's related to the web/SAAS/Social networking...


I love APIs.

To Google or NOT to Google!

 When I'm searching for critical information, it's always a Google search. But there are somethings I do not like about Google search when I'm searching for fun stuff.


Like when I'm looking for images! I love how bing shows all the images neatly tiled on a page. If you look for more, you don't have to click, just keep scrolling your mouse down and more images will appear magically on the screen. I love the experience. Lesser work to find what you're looking for - and it's all neatly arranged. There is a stark difference in User Experience. Google Image Search does not deliver! :(

And then there's video search. Google does show a more comprehensive result. ;) By that I mean, it shows my YouTube videos right on top when you search for 'savio sebastian'. On the other hand, bing's video search shows only a couple of videos - leaving mine out - but it does a good job at it! :)


It's amazing how you can quickly mouse over a video stored in the Bing search index and determine whether you want to use it or not! In Google, you need to click on the search result which takes you onto a totally different page!


So if you're looking at doing stuff that's not critical, and it involves images or videos, google is not your search engine - bing is. If you don't find satisfactory results on bing, only then go to google.

Sting Bing! ;)

Google just did a 'Sting Bing'. Yesterday (Feb 1, 2011) Google announced that Bing piggybacks on its search engine. A test was done to prove it, results of which are on Search Engine Land (http://selnd.com/e2cHlW).


This picture is from there. It's funny! Quite evidently Microsoft's caught on the wrong foot!