The African Call

Cedric Gouliardon Farewell Video - Pixelmetrix

2011-12-25T17:19:00.000+08:00

pour out my thoughts upon you...

2011-10-08T15:16:00.001+08:00

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

2011-04-17T23:03:00.002+08:00

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

2011-04-17T22:18:00.000+08:00

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!

2011-04-13T23:55:00.001+08:00

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

2011-04-13T23:29:00.004+08:00

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?

2011-04-13T23:23:00.000+08:00

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

2011-04-06T14:08:00.000+08:00

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.

2011-02-13T08:30:00.000+08:00

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!

2011-02-02T20:31:00.001+08:00

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!

2011-02-02T17:18:00.000+08:00

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!

2011-02-02T14:24:00.001+08:00

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! ;)

2011-02-02T14:10:00.000+08:00

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!

A unique Zip Code for every building?

2011-02-01T17:29:00.001+08:00

Zip Code, originally uploaded by mihalis.

Every building in Singapore has it's own unique Zip code! :) I find that crazy. You don't need long addresses - just one number and your flat number and mail intended for you can reach you!

How cool is that?

That's your Singapore Triva for today!

Enjoy your day!

SAP Teched 2009 and Sirius - Social Analytics

2011-01-26T22:09:00.000+08:00

Sirius won a couple of innovation awards. It was a great year for us as a team. We got to present at the SAP TechEd 2009, if you're curious, you can watch the video on http://bit.ly/fjaY8m. We start at the 48th minute. The video takes quite long to load! I'm not happy

SAP Demo Jams are quite cool. You get 6 minutes to demo to an audience of about 2000. You need to convince them to vote for your innovation by getting them to clap and hoot for you - that's how you win the demo.

We won. :) Oct 19, 2009 - SAP TechEd Demo Jam - Bangalore. Vishal Sikka, SAP CTO and Mark Yolton - SAP Senior VP for SCN presented us with the trophy.

After that, we won an internal SAP Innovation Contest. We were on a winning spree. Good life.

I know this is stale news, I never blogged about it before so why not now?

Sirius & Trend Hijacking

2011-01-26T20:53:00.002+08:00

I was involved in an innovation project called 'Sirius' when I was with SAP Labs, India. It is a social analytics tool - it could monitor social networks for certain search terms, analyse the text (through SAP's NLP product http://bit.ly/hcCecK) and turn it into 'sentiment' information. Basically what feeling a person is expressing in a post or tweet - NLP works quite well on text - generating this information. This is then feed into SAP Business Explorer (http://www.ondemand.com/businessintelligence/) - a free on-demand BI tool - allowing a user to quickly slice and dice the data to get useful relevant information quickly.

At that time, we took the case of car manufacturers and tried to generate a social-trend on them. It was also the time when Toyota had a lot of trouble with their cars - braking issues. Trend hijackers where hot on pursuit for Toyota - and you guessed it - we had a lot of junk information getting into our system. :(

These are slides from our presentation at an SAP Innovation Contest in 2009 - where we won the Customer's Choice Award and the Best Innovation Prize.

Sirius - Social Analytics

View more presentations from Savio Sebastian.

Trend Hijackers, gmmxle and me!

2011-01-26T20:18:00.000+08:00

Just read about Trend Hijackers on zdnet.com (http://zd.net/hgg55o).

I'm sure you've come across many instances when folks post stuff on twitter or other social media deceitfully trying to get people to visit their website. It happens all the time. I didn't know the name to such a thing - now I know - it's 'trend hijacking'.

On Dec 31, 2010 morning, Google home page had this cryptic image. I wrote about it. I didn't really think the post would get any attention.

But this was different, in the sense, when people were waking up all over the world, they see the google home page, do a google search - and my post is right on top! http://theafricancall.blogspot.com/2010/12/gmmxle-happy-2011.html

So that day I got more than a thousand clicks! :)

And http://theAfricanCall.blogspot.com's Alexa ranking also significantly got better - from 26,820,303 on Dec 31, 2010 to 4,156,585 3 days later.

And you can see the picture - http://theAfricanCall.blogspot.com hasn't really gotten many clicks since Dec 31, 2010.

This ain't a case of trend hijacking - but reading about it reminded me of my Dec 31, 2010 fame. ;)

Kanban and washing dishes

2011-01-18T19:33:00.000+08:00

Kanban - send an item to the next level of processing only after it meets required quality standards.
Well, it reminded me of one of the first times I got to chat up with Jane. :)
We volunteered to wash dishes at a camp and I was trying to impress her I guess - I told her about Kanban - how the Japanese reinvented the way cars were made and the works... Not sure if she remembers this conversation, but yeah... that was one of our first conversations. :)
About how I should exclusively focus on soaping the dishes, and she on rinsing them, and we'll do a good job together! :)
This was a little over 6 years back.

Kanban - Lean Production

2011-01-18T19:17:00.000+08:00

My read right now: The Big Moo - a book edited by Seth Godin. It's got a star cast of contributors including Tom Peters, Malcom Gladwell, Marc Benioff and others. The proceeds of the book go entirely to charity. And you have the permission to make copies of it and distribute it.
But I don't really like the book! It's an easy fast read with nothing much to glean from in my opinion.
Anyways... moving on... one of the chapters is about 'Kanban'. It's the Toyota way of lean, just-in-time (JIT) production. Many companies have adopted it because it helps keep your inventory low, thus eliminating waste, and also improving quality because if an item does not meet the required quality standards, the assembly line stops till it can be fixed.
No one wants to be responsible for stopping the assembly line - therein lies the strength of Kanban - it makes production perfect.
SAP also tried to adopt lean management/production techniques. From all my interactions with folks who were using the new process - most of them hated it. It supposedly gives a manager his much needed update of how development is going - but makes the life of a developer a nightmare with lots of meetings and unnecessary documentation. I didn't get to experience it since I worked under the 'innovation' banner - you need to waste a lot to innovate I guess?
When it's straight forward, lean helps. But when you're not entirely sure of what needs to be done, can LEAN really help?

I love Google Docs!

2011-01-15T12:03:00.002+08:00

I love Google Docs. It's brilliant. Sharable - you can share your document just by sending a link! No attachments! You can collaborate with other users as well. Anyone can alter the document and you know that at any point of time, everyone's looking at the current version! There's no confusion - it's got collaboration built right into it!

But I got to try the new Google Docs layout only this morning when I was documenting my learning from Seth Godin's 'Free Prize Inside' (http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/). I was pleasantly surprised by a new page layout! It makes it so much more better than before.

My only gripe - I can't seem to set my font to Tahoma by default, and it didn't import my font settings from before! I don't like that!

If you want to read the summary document I've made so far: http://bit.ly/gQA1dS

Jeff Bezos, Amazon and the TV adv. vs FREE shipping

2011-01-15T11:42:00.001+08:00

In the book, 'Free Prize Inside' (http://www.sethgodin.com/freeprize/), Seth Godin talks about putting your marketing into your product.

Citing one example, Jeff Bezos decided to put the money spent on TV adv. into free shipping. That way, the customers get a great service and really cheap and it's marketing by itself. You can read about that decision here: http://bit.ly/glQ2y5

That year, sales went up by 37%. International growth was an astonishing 81%!

Free Prize Inside - Seth Godin - Marketing is in the Product

2011-01-15T11:26:00.001+08:00

Started reading this Seth Godin Book. Very insightful - as always.

In this book he talks about the importance of "soft innovation", the free prizes, that do not require huge technology investments or marketing genius, just simply small thoughtful increments to the product that will go a long way in helping your customers.

Very simple ideas can often make your product worth talking about. Do them. Fix things that are broken. Talk to your unsatisfied customers and glean ideas from them.

Instead of spending on TV adv, spend on your product - because that is marketing in itself!

Choosing to SEE! - Mary Beth Chapman

2011-01-15T00:54:00.004+08:00

Just finished this book - "Choosing to SEE". Mary Beth Chapman's written a marvelously honest book on how the family handled the death of their little girl - Maria.

It's like reading the Psalms in prose, with some of SCC's verses thrown in between.

I especially like 2 quotes from the book.

"In the midst of it all, God really is with us and for us. I have found that even during those times when the path is darkest, He leaves little bits of evidence all along the way - bread crumbs of grace - that can give me what I need to take the next step. But I can only find them if I choose to SEE."

(desperately looking for a sign that God was in control after the tragedy, she wrote about choosing to see God through it all)

"In that moment, time Stopped. It was like God was speaking to me directly. "Mary Beth, you thickheaded woman, do you not understand now that this is the very way I see you? You are this orphan! I adopted you and you are Mine! I bought you for a price! Do you see how you love this baby? That's just a faint reflection of how much I love you! You didn't have a name, and I gave you a name. You did nothing to deserve my love, and I love you anyway. You had no hope, no future, and now you are the daughter of the King!"

(this was after the first adoption. The Steven Curtis Chapman eventually went on to adopt 2 more kids - the last being Maria)

I had written about this book earlier: http://theafricancall.blogspot.com/2011/01/soli-deo-gloria.html

This "Mary vs. God" book is a great book to read.

To read my review of the book on Amazon: http://amzn.to/hWU6Fz

Shelfari: I know I am Ahead! - but how?

2011-01-14T13:15:00.003+08:00

Jan 14, 2010 - I had read only 1 book since the start of the year 2010.

Jan 14, 2011 - I had read 5 books.

So I know I am head of my pace - I read 4 books more than I did last year.

But having a message like this - "You've read 5 books this year. Last year you read 49 books, so you're ahead of your pace" - this does not make any sense. May be you want to change that?

May be you want to give something cool like a graph? With different kinds of filters - authors, months, tags? May be you want to use the community to develop apps that enable such a thing? You can get free developer time by just exposing certain APIs and allowing the developer community to enrich your products offerings?

Like most other sites have done - namely the apps in Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc...

I had written to Shelfari last year regarding these ideas - they don't seem to be interested? Why would you not like to make your platform extensible? I do not understand! Anyways... such is life! :)

Soli Deo Gloria!

2011-01-09T13:12:00.003+08:00

For who He is and what He does... and what He's done and what he will do - no eyes have seen, no years have heard.

I started reading Mary Beth Chapman's account of how she struggled to see God through the turmoil the Chapman family went through recently (in her book 'Choosing to See' http://amzn.to/dLNAMz) . Jane is a big fan of Steven Curtis Chapman (http://stevencurtischapman.com/) - I am also - but she is a HUGE fan of his...

Steve writes the foreword for the book - signing off quoting 'Soli Deo Gloria!' I love the sound of that! :)

Anyways, so far I'm on page 33 and I'm loving it. She starts the book off with the whole saga of Will (her son) driving his Land cruiser into Maria (her daughter). Heart wrenching description of it.

Quoting from her book:

Singapore City Guide - Lonely Planet - must read Singapore book!

2011-01-08T09:59:00.001+08:00

This book has lots of information about Singapore!

Some cool facts from the book - Singapore is the 3rd biggest oil refinery hub. Apparently there are more botanical species in a tiny reserve in Singapore than there is in North America!

There's also a lot of information of how the Government handles the opposition - only 2 out of 84 members of parliament come from the opposition.

Like every Lonely Planet guide, this gives its readers a wonderful experience of the food and culture of the place. A lot of restaurants have a 'self-service' board put up. I never went close to any of them for the longest of time because I didn't know what they meant by self service - if they wanted me to serve food myself, why did they make it super hard to reach for the food! Finally I realized, 'self-service' in Singapore means you need to get to the counter and ask to be served, the person behind the counter will not come up to you asking how you'd like to be served.

Dropbox - great way to save files on the web!

2011-01-07T21:51:00.002+08:00

You want to share large files among friends or simply want to archive files on the web? Use Dropbox! :)

Click here to get yourself an account: http://db.tt/Si3nzwz

Why not Gmail?

1. It does not have a file system view of how you would like to save your files - which can help in finding things faster if you know exactly what you're looking for in a particular directory structure.

2. It does not allow you to upload more than 25 MB.

Having said that, I have uploaded a lot of my files on Gmail - and a lot of my documents get archived on Google Docs as well - but I find that if I want to get a specific version of a file, and I know how I've organized that in my directory - to get it from Gmail/Google Docs will be a nightmare! :)

I used Dropbox with a couple of friends when we were organizing a Photography exhibition back in 2009 - http://bit.ly/17eevS

Anyways, get yourself a Dropbox account! :) Help me out in the process by clicking on this link - http://db.tt/Si3nzwz - if you make yourself an account clicking this link, I get more space in my dropbox account!

Thanks!

Lovegrove's Wedding Photography Guide

2011-01-04T12:33:00.003+08:00

Damien Lovegrove does a good job taking his readers through the process of setting up a Wedding Photography Business. Really enjoyed the read.

One particular thing I found quite insightful and funny - he talks about sales and how to get the customer to say yes. One way to do that is to use manipulation: Spend time building rapport, followed by a presentation, and then ask the customer - "so how would you like your album - xxx style?" this would prompt the customer to talk about his choice. And then closely follow that question up with something like... "so how would you like to pay?" :)

But according to him, many customers see through this sales technique. What he prefers doing is more of a personalized sales process - where one would spend more time building rapport and getting to know the customer before pushing for any kind of commitment.

My review: "Damien Lovegrove does a fantastic job taking the reader through different aspects of being a Wedding Photographer - the creative, technical, marketing, sales, finance and growth of the profession. It could double up as an entrepreneur's handbook to starting a photography business. However, I was disappointed that he didn't give much information about the kind of equipment required and also information about the lens used. But overall, a very interesting book on wedding photography. I especially loved the last couple of chapters devoted to the business aspects of the job."

To buy this book on Amazon: http://amzn.to/hIOlHB

Also check Lovegrove's site: http://www.lovegroveweddings.com/

My 49 books of 2010

2011-01-02T21:48:00.004+08:00

I planned to read 52 books in 2010. Made it to 49 - 3 short of my target. I guess that's pretty good considering that it wasn't all that great before! :)

For a listing of the books I've read in 2010: http://bit.ly/eTsOfU

To see my reviews, log on to: http://www.shelfari.com/savioseb

Shelfari: Book reviews on your book blog

Some Incredible Books I read in 2010

2011-01-02T21:22:00.002+08:00

Lee Hsien Loong - highest paid head of state!

2011-01-02T18:23:00.002+08:00

Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, originally uploaded by Hung the Bear.

Interesting piece of information - Singapore's prime minister is the highest paid head of state! I read this in the Lonely Planet - Singapore City Guide (Amazon's link to this book: http://amzn.to/eHHtkD).

He earns about USD 2.8 million in a year. British PM receives USD 370,000 while the US President earns about USD 400,000.

Wikipedia also talks about this: http://bit.ly/gB3QXa

The ministers deal with corporations which have a whole lot of money. The best way to prevent these ministers from becoming corrupt is by paying them well! This is how the government justifies their salaries.

Singapore Elevator: Urine Detection Device!

2011-01-02T17:07:00.003+08:00

Singapore Elevator, originally uploaded by Stephen, Hesty and Anya Taylor.

They even have an acronym for this device! UDD! Almost all elevators in Singapore are equipped with this device! And what's cooler is that one of the founders of the company I work with - Pixelmetrix (www.pixelmetrix.com) helped invent it! :)

http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/091999singapore-tech.html

So if someone urinates, the lift stops and and an alarm goes off. The authorities come in later and arrests the guy.

gmmxle! - happy 2011! g2011e :)

2010-12-31T12:48:00.002+08:00

Google's way of changing it's homepage logo to celebrate events is legendary! :) Here's wishing you a happy 2011 in Roman Numerals! :)

MM = 2000

xl = 11

:) really cool logo!

2010 has been a very interesting year for me. I'm really looking forward to 2011. I believe the best is yet to come! :)

Happy 2011. I think I'm going to be far more active on my blog this year. It's one of my resolutions for the year! :)

facebook messaging needs to grow up!

2010-12-18T15:34:00.003+08:00

Savio Sebastian

Create Your Badge

I really don't like using Facebook Messages/Mails. For a lot of reasons!

No effective Search mechanism
Always Reply All - there's no such thing as a replying to just one person, which sometimes can lead to an embarrassing situation when your intended message was just to 1 person only
No provision to Archive or more to another folder - so my inbox remains big and cluttered forever!
It's not email!
Browse Relationships allow you to quickly see events you attended/ comments that have been exchanged/things that you like together/mutual friends - but no record of the Facebook Messages you've exchanged!

Lead me to the Rock

2010-10-10T11:57:00.001+08:00

Psalm 61-2-sm, originally uploaded by AgentZ92505.

Yesterday, at breakfast with some friends, we prayed and read this Psalm. Lead me to the Rock that is higher than I.

So many times we get lost. Make a million mistakes. Feel terrible and wallow in our own little pit... not happy.

Praying this prayer from the bible gives you a lot of hope that everything's gonna be alright because you know He's heard you. And he will lead to to the rock that is higher.

Take me to the rock that is higher than me. In my character, dreams, everything I say or do or think.

Lead me to the Rock that is Higher than I.

Roadkill!

2010-09-29T16:45:00.001+08:00

20100911 - pondy trip, originally uploaded by Savio Sebastian.

I love shooting signages. I think they look really nice and each one's got a character of it's own! The message may be unique by itself, but apart from that, the rust and the imperfections of these signages fascinate me! :)

These are a set of my favorite signage pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/savioseb/sets/72157625023408700/

Tell me if this fascinates you as well?

Motion Blur Photography

2010-09-29T16:38:00.001+08:00

20100911 - pondy trip, originally uploaded by Savio Sebastian.

I love this kind of photography - I think it makes some really good pictures! :) like this one for example. :)

Basically you focus on a moving subject and follow it through some distance and then click - so as it moves, everything else becomes a blur because you're moving your camera along with the subject. The moving subject is caught in perfect focus and no blur while all around it, it's blurry.

Recently I got to experiment this kind of photography. I love the results. May be you wanna check it out yourself: http://www.flickr.com/photos/savioseb/sets/72157624898808877/

Early this month, I went for a trip to Pondicherry - on the East Coast of Inda just about 160 Kms south of Chennai. Used to be a French Colony, then on Nov 1, 1954, it became a part of India. There are a lot of Foreigners visiting - especially the Auroville Ashram which is probably the most popular place in Pondicherry.

What makes the place really beautiful is the fact that it's got an old world colonial charm, stone paved roads and a lot of people commuting on cycles. I had such a blast taking pictures of people cycling around.

mobile phones I've used and lost!

2010-09-03T19:21:00.001+08:00

Recently I got myself a HTC Desire. Never thought I'd really go in for an expensive phone after my trysts with a couple of them which proved to be disastrous because I lost the phones in a couple of months. So I used a lot of cheap phones which I didn't really worry about losing, and which of course, I lost! :)

Let me try and make a list of the phones I've lost... I know there're more than these, but I'll try anyways...

1. Nokia 3310 - really good phone! My first one - great looking and almost everyone else had the same phone.

2. Nokia 6269 - my first smart phone which was nice but really became slow over time. So I thought taking it to the local service center would fix it. That's when I learnt 2 things

a] Nokia makes terrible smart phones - they just don't know how to make good ones

b] Symbian OS, which Nokia relies on, really slows down over time and that's terrible

c] Nokia Customer Support is awful - they don't really care about fixing your issue - they have too many people coming back at them asking for fixes!

d] Contacts syncing is a joke - it does not really sync contact the way you would expect from a 'smart' phone

Just to be fair, I loved the user interface, very elegant. I loved the fact that my phone had a flip and a twist! :) But it was useless when your phone would just get stuck all the time!

3. Nokia 5210 - I borrowed this phone from Kavita and lost it! :( not fun!

4. Samsung Slider Phone - I really liked the looks of the phone and it felt great - really nice slide. But I used it only for a week... I couldn't stand it except for the slide! So I traded it in for my next phone, so no, I didn't lose this phone. I also promised myself that I'd never buy another Samsung phone - the worst ever User interface ever!

5. Imate SP5 - which was actually manufactured by HTC. A Windows based smart phone. I really liked this except for the fact that the UI was quite clunky. Felt like I was using a Win 3.1 OS on a mobile phone. But I really like the fact that it was a nice sturdy phone - good syncing capabilities. I lost this phone! :( Ever since I lost this phone, I decided that I would never buy another smart phone again! But I broke that promise very recently. :D

6. Sony Ericsson - I bought the cheapest phone I could find. I hated the UI and the feel of the buttons - but it was cheap alright and so I didn't care. Used it for a year before it went missing!

7&8. Nokia 1100 - I owned 2 of these at different points of time - I really liked the torch feature. Lost one and the other I still have - the only one I did not lose but decided to upgrade so I archived it. :)

Now I use the HTC Desire. I really like the phone. More about it later...

Animoto - 20100717 - family time

2010-09-01T17:41:00.001+08:00

via animoto.com

Posted via email from saviosebastian's posterous

Animoto - 20100729 - SAP Team Outing - GPR

2010-08-19T16:40:00.001+08:00

via animoto.com

Posted via email from saviosebastian's posterous

20100613 - worship @ apc - dream

2010-07-08T04:28:00.001+08:00

via animoto.com

Posted via email from saviosebastian's posterous

20100620 - worship @ apc - God loves

2010-07-08T03:57:00.001+08:00

via animoto.com

Posted via email from saviosebastian's posterous

FAV 20100627 - worship @ apc - faith

2010-07-08T03:34:00.001+08:00

via animoto.com

Posted via email from saviosebastian's posterous

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - Super simple to use!

2010-05-27T04:41:00.000+08:00

Just rented a Windows Server sitting somewhere in the US for a couple of hrs - USD 0.12/hr.

I'm quite excited about it.

It's a very simple way of hosting an application on the cloud. You can get up to speed in just a couple of minutes! I'm amazed at how simple they've made it for developers to host their applications and use infrastructure on the cloud - pay for use instead of owning physical servers sitting in some ac room of yours and having to go through the hassle of getting yourself a public ip and all that!

here's how simple it is to host an app - in my case, a java app - on Amazon EC:

1. Obviously go through the registration process - credit cards/phone verification/the works...

2. Log on to the console - https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2

3. Launch an instance - specify what kind of machine you'd like to rent - i rented a 'small' Windows 32-bit server - it came with about 20 GB space

4. On the Navigation Sidebar, select Instances - you'll find your instance there

5. Request for the Administrator password - might take a couple of minutes before you get it - you would've downloaded a .pem file sometime during the authentication, open it in a text file reader, eg: textpad - paste the contents into the textbox for private key.

6. On the Navigation Siderbar, select Elastic IPs

7. Get yourself a new Public Elastic IP

8. Assign your instance to that public IP.

9. Go to Security Groups in the Navigation Sidebar

10. Assign all the ports you require for your usage - in my case - I assigned ports 80 and 8080 - TCP - HTTP ports to my security group

11. Now you can simply do a remote desktop to the public ip - or if you don't require a public ip, then you can go back to the instances sidebar and use the Connect - in the Instance Action to access the rented server.

12. Now you can log into your server and possibly download Apache Tomcat - host your app there and then check if you can access it via your desktop - on the public ip - you should be able to do it.

I downloaded Google chrome browser, since the IE which the system comes with always throws security exceptions making it difficult to browse.

That's it! I'm quite happy by how simple they've made it. It's very easy to use and awesome!

Collabio - Social Network Tagging

2010-03-31T17:21:00.001+08:00

This is something that we came across at work recently. It's a very innovative idea towards tagging your friends with terms and then making that data usable in differenct interactive applications - like q&a and feed generation.

I personally tried it out and found that it is quite addictive. It's fun to keep tagging and seeing your points grow.

But more than that, I'm fascinated by the endless opportunities that can arise by making this data available. It is a big step towards the "programmable web".

Aardvark is a very similar idea. Recently vark.com was acquired by Google for social search. Tradition searches often falls short of giving a personal/social recommendation - for example, say you're looking for a good baby sitter - you would not use Google search for that. You would probably ask around, and sometimes use twitter/facebook to get the right match. So instead of allowing competition to feast on social searches, Google acquired vark.com to perform social searches. You ask the question and it forwards the question to your social network. But I was not pleased with the results, since I got answers only from strangers. I would much rather put my question to twitter and glean information from my friends when I need it.

Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl

2010-01-23T13:41:00.001+08:00

This is a terrific read into the mind of a teenager. Anne Frank's folks went into hiding when she was 13 and that worked for 2 years before her secret annex was discovered by the secret police. This is her diary describing her life in the secret annex.

Most of the read is quite funny, some sad stories interspersed everywhere. It gives a good understanding of what the Jews had to go through during the WW2. She talks a little bit about politics, food, her conquest (Peter - one of the residents of the secret annex who was about 2 years older to her), her growing up pains (about no one understanding her - the best part is that she admits to playing victim, but sees a bit of truth in it), education, family... She's a terribly self-aware woman. It's amazing how at such a young age she knew so much of herself. And also how to write so well! She writes about travelling and becoming a writer after the war. Little does she know, that her diary would become famous one day.

When she was in hiding, she struck upon the idea of publishing her diary after the war. Her father fulfilled her dream.

She died 2 months before the war was over, spending the last 7 months of her life in hard labor concentration camps.

If you want to read more about Anne Frank: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Frank

Sridhar Vembu - Smart Indian Entrepreneur

2010-01-19T16:20:00.001+08:00

I read this interesting article on Forbes about Sridhar Vembu. One of those very few successful and popular products made by Indian companies. And it's offering a SAAS model. That's very cool. I checked it out sometime back. Read the Forbes article here: http://www.forbes.com/2008/02/22/mitra-zoho-india-tech-inter-cx_sm_0222mitra.html?feed=rss_popstories

Summarizing what I've read about him from this article and other sources online:
1. $1 million in profits every month!
2. Since it is not VC funded, he's got all the freedom to do what he really wants to.
3. Used to be called AdventNet - now renamed to Zoho Corp. The three different market segments:
    - Zoho.com - The division focused on Online Business, Productivity & Collaboration Applications
    - ManageEngine - The division focused on Enterprise IT Management and
    - WebNMS - The division focused on the needs of OEMs.
The company blog: http://blogs.zoho.com/
4. Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com tried to buy/shut down Zoho: http://blogs.zoho.com/uncategorized/mr-benioff-tear-down-that-wall
5. Hiring pattern is very interesting - picks up people who don't even have engineering degrees - but are smart and have to earn for the family - this gives him the ability to develop software way cheaper than the rest of the players and thus offer it at an inexpensive rate.
6. Zoho CRM's free for small players and comes at a monthly fee of $10 for larger ones - Salesforce.com charges $65!
7. Got similar offering to Google docs - office productivity suite online.
8. Based in Chennai, India - he employs 600 - only 8 people work Zoho in the Silicon Valley.
9. Sridhar Vembu did his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT, Madras and PhD from Princeton University. http://www.crunchbase.com/person/sridhar-vembu

Reading Commuter

2010-01-19T13:52:00.001+08:00

One of my best moments of the day – reading to and from work. That gives me about 2 hrs to read. I've done that occasionally over the last couple years, but then I also watch a lot of videos on my iPod while in the bus.

But starting this year, I just want to reading. It feels really nice – some people describe it as heavenly. It gives a sense of achievement as well – like – "oh yeah…. I can read a book… and do it in a week!"

So yeah, I actually did draw up some new year resolutions – thanks to my wife – jane – on new years eve. Reading 52 books this year is one of them. :) So far, I'm on track.

3 idiots - lessons learnt from the movie

2010-01-18T16:23:00.001+08:00

I received spam - which I happened to read and found it quite interesting. These are lessons learnt from the movie, 3 idiots, produced by Aamir Khan.

1. Never try to be successful , pursue excellence
- Success is the by-product of doing so
- Excellence is a process of continual improvement
2. Life is beautiful
- Don't die before you really die
- Live every moment to the fullest as if today is the last day
3. Passion leads to Excellence
4. Never stop Learning
- Teachers fail, learners never do
5. Necessity is mother of invention
6. KISS - keep it short/simple stupid

:) enjoy your day.

If you got spam from me, please ignore

2010-01-14T12:21:00.001+08:00

Recently I was checking out a networking site brought out by the Times of India - Peer Power.

I happened to key in my gmail password - like I would do on linkedIn. However, without my permission they decided to use my password to go through all my contact list and send spam.

I think it's a terrible thing to do on their part. Terribly unprofessional. I have changed my password to prevent this from happening again and I tried to delete my Peer Power account - which is as good as useless, but there's no way to delete it.

Sorry for spamming - in case you got it!

Be a part of Asia's largest Marathon and support Oasis India

2010-01-06T22:19:00.000+08:00

Oasis India is running for the Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010. I am donating and also helping raise funds. I'd love you to join me as well! Please donate. Last date to receive donations is Jan 10, 2010 - just 4 days from now

You can donate by
1. looking up the following link: http://www.oasisindia.org/scmmdonation.htm
or...
2. contacting me - savioseb@gmail.com
or...
3. looking up this link: http://www.unitedwaymumbai.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=39&Itemid=92 (please make sure you mention Oasis India)

To find out how this whole fund raising thing works, look up this link: http://mumbaimarathon.indiatimes.com/runforcause.html

About the run:
There're about 150+ runners running for Oasis India. 10 going there from Bangalore as well. Everyone's really looking forward to it. Oasis is hoping to cover more than 1110 kms in this run.

What is Oasis India?
They're an NGO working in India for the last 15 years. They've done a lot of work towards empowering women and freeing women and children from being sexully exploited. In Bangalore, they specifically work towards getting kids back to school - children from slum areas and also providing a safe house for women. They help train, equip and also sustain people who do not have much to look forward in life.

A bunch of my friends and I have worked extensively with them. We worked towards hosting a Photography Fundraiser Exhibition and also helped in giving kids some computer lessons which we hope will help them get jobs/movtivate them to dream bigger. Right now, we're starting off english language classes for these kids.

To read more about the Photography Exhibition we did in July '09: http://tntblr.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/the-photography-project-peter-brierley/
To read more about the Computer Classes we did between Aug-Nov '09: http://theafricancall.blogspot.com/2009/06/new-thing-for-me-teaching-computers-to.html
To know more about the english classes we're doing now, talk to Satish, jennifer, jane or me!

So I ask you to please support the cause. Donate! Do that now! Remember, 4 days to go before the deadline - Jan 10, 2010.

Thanks! :)

Dreams are Worth Fighting For! - Grylls

2010-01-06T17:56:00.001+08:00

I read this really neat article about the guy who hosts the "Man vs. Wild" Adventure series on the Discovery Channel. He talks about how, fighting for his dreams, he climbed the Mount Everest. He risked all to achieve his dream. And through it all, his faith was what kept him going. This is a really nice article to read:

http://www.charismamag.com/index.php/news/23722-man-vs-wild-star-talks-faith-at-florida-prison

This made me think of my dreams. The funny part is I have many and I'm not entirely sure what I need to fight for! That's a question I'll need to ask myself over the next couple of days. hmmm....

Bring Life to Dreams - 2010!

2010-01-02T06:12:00.001+08:00

We had a fun New Year's day!

New Year service at church started at 10:30 pm - 31 Dec '09 and when till about 1.30 am 01 Jan 2010. One of the songs Ajit did had the words - "You bring life to dreams". I loved that! God does bring life to dreams! Looking forward to a wonderful year full of dreaming and bringing life to dreams.

After service, we had a bunch from church come home for a party - played a couple of games - mafia, crossed/uncrossed, pshyco... was fun! :) wonderful start to a new year.

The Word of the Lord for 2010, which Pastor Ashish Raichur shared at the midnight service at All Peoples Church was "Reconcilation and Restoration". Looking forward to see how this year turns out to be - but it definitely started off well! :)

Looking forward to a great year! Wishing you all the best for the new year and may your dreams come to life!

google chrome os - what i think about it

2009-12-09T11:22:00.001+08:00

i also think chrome os is also a blunder, just like the google wave! i personally feel the world will go cloud computing big time - but it will be a hybrid system - not a device that "NEEDS" to be connected to the internet all the time...

like your phones - they're great devices - but you can do stuff when they're not connected to the network - if you made phones that would only work in case there's signal, that'd be terrible! terrible terrible!!! imagine that...

google wave - what i think about it

2009-12-09T11:20:00.001+08:00

i'm a google fanboy but i think wave was a blunder. they released it too early and it's quite heavy. i'm wondering, why couldn't they simply update the gtalk and provide this functionality, if people want to enable it?

something tells me people aren't ready to be letting others read their thoughts before they've had the opportunity to organize it themselves. something tells me wave is upto a big flop.

technologically wave is one of the coolest things, bit i think it will continue to remain just that - some really cool technology to help us chat better - oh wait... did i say better?! i woudn't want you reading this comment till i hit the comment button... why would you want someone to see unfinished work?... See More

google wave team seems to like it... :)

why didn't they put these innovations into gTalk and do a test run with people?

why isn't there group chat on gTalk?!!!

a couple of us tried at work gwave and it just died - just like that - stopped working after we had a super fast communication diarrhoea on it. and if you have a robot which isn't programmed well in your communication, god help you trying to make sense out of the mess!

and if a lotta people join the conversation, god help you again! you wouldn't be able to make any sense out of the conversation and the sliding bar doesn't help either - it's slow - it takes a long time to move it around!

may be i might eat my words in the next few months, but this is what i think about google wave right now!

Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

2009-12-05T14:45:00.001+08:00

This is a summary of the presentation on the CIO Insight Website. To find the presentation click here:
http://www.cioinsight.com/c/a/Expert-Voices/Presentation-Secrets-of-Steve-Jobs-881014/?kc=CIOQUICKNL11172009FEA1

I liked this a lot - made a lot of sense. I decided to summarise it and put it on blog for future reference.

1. Plan in Analog
- plan/draw/sketch on paper/whiteboards
- messages are consistent across different media: presentations/websites/advts/presss releases/banners.
2. Create Twitter Friendly Headlines
- Worlds Thinnest Notebook - more info was available, but you already knew a lot
3. Introduce the Anagonist
- A villan allows the audience to rally around the hero
4. Stick to the rule of Three
- Too much info - people won't remember a thing - just talk about 3 things!
5. Strive for Simplicity
- most of the slides are visuals - photographs or images. When there are words, they are astonishingly sparse.
6. Reveal a "Holy Smokes" Moment
- People forget words/actions but not how you made them feel! Show stoppers are completely scripted
- removing the MacBook air from the paper envelope
7. Sell Dreams, Not Products
- Launching the iPod: "In our own small way we're going to make the world a better place.". Most people saw a music player, Jobs saw a tool to enrich lives.
- Great products matter, but passion, enthusiasm and emotion will set you apart!

Understanding Users of Social Networks

2009-11-26T23:05:00.000+08:00

Interesting article I came across about Users of Social Networks from HBS Working Knowledge: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6156.html

Summarizing the article:

Social Networks help

Catching up on friends/family quickly
Creating new relationships
Looking for a new job without actually doing that actively since you can get head hunted on LinkedIn
Stay in touch with peers/latest technology

Pictures

People love them
People can show they are popular and are having fun just by putting pictures – covert boasting
Nice way to pry into other people’s lives without actually doing it
Women receive 2/3^rdsof all page views! Men like looking at pictures of women they don’t know

Twitter

Some people find it extremely scary, others love it
Women actually say things, guys give references to other things

Myspace

People use it only in small pockets of society – not really widespread

Social Strategy

People treat it as a way to drive other people to their sites using hyperlinks, it doesn’t work!
It’s like sitting your friends down and trying to talk your friends into buying something they don’t want to
Instead, just talk about the cool stuff you’re doing and leverage group dynamics and social behavior to market – that way only people really interested will be listening and you won’t appear to be desperate to drive people to your site!

Facebook Photo Tagging Needs Innovation

2009-10-06T14:11:00.000+08:00

I wish Facebook would innovate it’s Photo Tagging mechanism – similar to the way Picasa handles faces. Picasa scans pictures and then it groups them according to similar faces and it’s quite simple to tag faces. Right now, for each picture uploaded, you need to actually tell facebook where the faces are and tag it. If only they would innovate and allow a way to group similar faces – that would make it way more useful than it is today! It would make it faster to photo tag!

Picasa on the other hand does not really have a community around it, even though it’s got some really good technology. Probably trying to link it up to orkut could help – that way any picture tagged with the person’s email address would show up in his/her orkut page. This would be ideal – but yes, then again, orkut does not have much of a market presence – at least compared to facebook.

I really hope Facebook takes this up seriously!

Picasa 3.5 - my review on the latest picasa

2009-09-30T16:49:00.001+08:00

Picasa is a terrific software to organize pictures. It's unbelievably simple to use and can handle a million pictures with ease. With the recent update on Picasa, organising my pictures has just gotten easier. You can read google's update on this: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/picasa-35-now-with-name-tags-and-more.html

But let me specifically review 2 features: Name-tagging and geo-tagging, 2 features that I use quite extensively in picasa.

Name Tagging: This was an exciting feature, in fact when it was lauched in the Picasa Web Albums last year (http://googlephotos.blogspot.com/2008/09/announcing-picasa-30-and-new-version-of.html) I was really surprised how picasa web albums could recognize faces from all over the web albums uploaded and quite accurately group pictures together. Exactly after a year, this feature has been ported on the desktop application. And it works fine, except that it does not group pictures together.

For example: if I were to name tag on Picasa Web Albums, I could easily tag 200 faces in less than 10 mins (approx 6 mins) if I were working on a moderately fast Internet connection. However, with the desktop name tagging, grouping of pictures is limited to less than 2 pictures, therefore it takes a lot of time to name tag - 200 pictures would probably take 20 mins or more. So I feel the intelligence programmed into the desktop application isn't as exciting as the one online - therefore I would stick to using the name tagging feature provided online.

Geo-Tagging: Geo-tagging on the other hand has made things really fast. Previously I would have to use Google earth, which could get really slow. However with the geotagging facility embedded into Picasa, it's lightweight and does not require too much system resources - it's like how you use the maps.google.com except that it is embedded into Picasa so you can geo-tag with ease.

Some other features I really like about picasa in general is its ability to be extended - like I can place a button to upload to facebook+flickr with ease. Just download the plugin and it works like a charm.

World Futures Photo Exhibition

2009-07-24T14:08:00.002+08:00

Hey everyone,

A couple of friends of mine and I are hosting a photo-exhibition tomorrow @ an audi next to bangalore central between 4-6 pm. What we did was we worked together with an NGO called Oasis and went into a slum community very close to my house, in Cox town… so over a couple of evenings… we taught these kids from there how to use a camera, how to compose pictures… and how to take them… they did a terrific job and we’d like to showcase their talent…

I’d love you to carve out time from your schedule and be there if you can…

Some details of the event: http://tntblr.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/the-photography-project-peter-brierley/

Some interviews with the kids from that community: http://tntblr.wordpress.com/2009/07/22/world-futures-interviews/

Some other info: http://tntblr.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/worlds-future-last-angels-savio-sebastian/

Have a great day!

Savio

FW: Small Poem, Just wanted to share with you ppl

2009-07-24T13:58:00.000+08:00

A colleague forwarded this beautiful poem… you might wanna read!

_____________________________________________
From: S, Karthika
Sent: 24 July 2009 11:02
To: Hegde, Vishnu Prasad; Agrawal, Trapti; Kale, Prashanth; KR, Sandeep; Kumar V, Vinod; Mittal, Pankaj; MS, Indresh; N, Lokesh Kumar; P, Ravi Kumar; Rai, Rakesh; S, Karthika; S, Shylaja; Thakur, Nitish; Trivedi, Bharati; Vagvala, Mahadev; Vempati, Madhuri; Vempeni, Savio; Adarsh Bekkalale (HCL Financial Services); Ajay Soreng; vijaya.kumarks@qwest.com; vinod.kumar.loganathan@oracle.com; p.fathima@samsung.com; Subramanyam, Gajendra; Rat - Tinku; Srinath; jk.arunshankar@hp.com; ranjitha.thimmegowda@hp.com; rajeevraj2@gmail.com; Manasa; joel.pereira@oracle.com; Ragini R, Ambika; roopaprabhun@gmail.com; Rashmi Prabhu; Rashmi Kumar; arivu selvan
Subject: Small Poem, Just wanted to share with you ppl

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids

On a merry-go-round?

Or listened to the rain

Slapping on the ground?

Ever followed a butterfly's erratic flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading night?

You better slow down.

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.

Do you run through each day

On the fly?

When you ask How are you?

Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done

Do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores

Running through your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.

Ever told your child,

We'll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste,

Not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch,

Let a good friendship die

Cause you never had time

To call and say,'Hi'

You'd better slow down.

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.

When you run so fast to get somewhere

You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry and hurry through your day,

It is like an unopened gift..

Thrown away.

Life is not a race.

Do take it slower

Hear the music

Before the song is over.

Regards,

Karthika S

Worlds Future, In focus now... invite!

2009-07-15T13:21:00.000+08:00

World's Future - in focus now...

2009-07-15T13:17:00.005+08:00

This exhibition is finally happening on July 25, 2009 - Saturday. i'm working on a couple of videos for this event... hmmm... lots of videos actually... :) hoping this comes out great... :) come and be a part of it!

For more details: http://tntblr.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/worlds-future-last-angels-savio-sebastian/

For directions: http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=103995169596750829609.00000111da42e8a0ff0da&ll=12.972452,77.61137&spn=0.003837,0.005466&t=h&z=18

would be great if you can confirm your attendance on facebook!! http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=95604176589#/event.php?eid=95604176589

world's future... last angels?

2009-06-27T05:56:00.001+08:00

there's a photograhy exhibition happening on july 25, 2009. we're going to exhibit pictures taken by the oasis kids. i'm really looking forward to it! I'm hoping you can be there for it! I'd love it if you can make it! :D

so yeah, a bunch of us went out with the kids to take pictures of their community... and more specificially of water, faces and hands. These were the themes the kids themselves wanted to take pictures of. first we taught them how to take pictures... taught them the basics about how to compose a picture... how to use the flash... don't cover the flash in case you're using it... make sure your subject has enough light... taught them about how you need to half click (padi press) so that you can give the camera time to keep your subject in focus...

so yeah... now we're doing an exhibition to raise money for the kids... they're really passionate about football... so probably some of the money will go into getting them great... then some other stuff... :) oh... by the way... they're doing a freedom tournament this sunday in frazer town corporation grounds... i think i'm going to be there... cheering them! :D so that's July 28, '09 around 1? i'm not so sure about what time though... but i know it's on sunday... and the kids have been training for it for a while now.

so yeah... gettin back to the photograhy exhibition... we're involving them in every phase of the planning and execution... so that means they need to come up with names and we together agree on it... we work together with the kids on making the invites/flyers... work with them to make sure we have an audience/buyers for the exhibition... we're really looking forward to it! :D it's going to be soo good! :D

yeah... so in one of the meetings discussing what we'd probably call the photography exhibition, one of the kids thought we should call it - last angels. and jennie and me were quite puzzled by it... what do you mean, last angels? so he went on to explain... well... you know... we're like the last ones to get opportunties... last ones to get new stuff... we're generally ignored... :) so hence... last angels... wow! :) i really liked that title...

but then most of the kids like the title... "World's future" implying that they were the world's future... how cool is that again! :D the "punch line" is "in focus now"... so putting it together, it will be... "World's future - in focus now" i really love it!

i'm really hoping you can make it. I'm really hoping you will support the cause... and even more... i'm hoping you'll join us in our journey trying to make the world a better place... stop talking... start walking!

So be there if you can...
Date: July 25, 2009
Time: 4pm to 6pm
Venue: Feba Radio Hall, commisrait Road, Bangalore 560001. It's very close to Bangalore Central (which is on MG Road)... so you follow along the road from bangalore central and turn into this road... next to bangalore central, there's this icici bank... and next to that i think is the feba radio hall... or may be it's 2 buildings after... i'm not terribly sure... but it's there...

hmmm... or wait... may be i can mark it on google maps! :D

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=103995169596750829609.00000111da42e8a0ff0da&ll=12.972452,77.61137&spn=0.003837,0.005466&t=h&z=18

So that's the link to the place... please come!

a new thing for me: teaching computers to kids

2009-06-27T05:19:00.001+08:00

I already wrote a little bit about it in http://theafricancall.blogspot.com/2009/06/what-my-day-was-like-june-26-2009.html but i just feel like writing about it again! :D

what if you can inspire kids to dream beyond what they thought they could do? what if you helped them embrace dreams you have for yourself? like... i always wanted to be involved in the process of making applications... that was what i wanted to do when i started programming in 8th standard... i loved it... and i pursued it... kinda... today i work for sap labs... i am loving it... living what i would call my dream job... at least then... i'm not terribly sure about that anymore though... right now i'm a little confused... i'd love to pursue a million different things and all things pulling me in different angles... but hey... it doesn't matter... i'm loving living in the present and it feels super! :D it feels awesome! it feels great!

now imagine, what if you helped another kid dream like that? what if you helped broaden a disadvantaged kid's aspirations... what if you took him beyond his comfort zone? what does that do for the kid? i think it will do marvels! it's crazy!

we've just started this thing - we're teaching kids computer skills... how to turn on the computer... how to use the mouse... and then progressively teach them how to make word documents/work with excel... how to use the net... email.. etc... broaden their scope of interest... tell them they can do it all... they can talk confidently in english... so far they're only comfortable with tamil and kannada... imagine teaching them language skills... mentoring them to be all they can be! i'm so excited to be a part of this! it feels so great!

it's suddenly bigger than computer classes... it's about their lives... and it's also about yours... being an inspiration/mentor to them. believing in them, along with the other volunteers who do fabulous work at oasis india! i tell you... they rock!

i am so overwhelmed by it all!

i am so proud of satish and jennie... they're an amazing couple!

and the rest of apc... it's so great to be a part of a church which tries to walk to the talk... :) stop talking... start walking!

what my day was like - june 26, 2009

2009-06-27T04:58:00.001+08:00

this was one of my better days! a couple of reasons:
1. starting out in the morning, slept in a little bit and got to talk to jane before heading out to work, which was nice! :D
2. @ work: talking to colleagues more than i usually do... went out of my silo! :D it was a nice experience... working along side other developers and hearing what's on top of their minds... and office gossip as well! :D played some online games as well... which was cool... one of the games being: http://www.members.shaw.ca/gf3/circle-the-cat.html
3. went out for lunch with colleagues... ate some really nice andhra food! :D it was sooo good!
4. went out to teach oasis kids computers after work - this was awesome! :) i feel this is going to be soo good. one of the best things that i'm doing and i'm so happy i'm a part of it! cudos to the social entrepreneurs: Satish and jennie! they did a marvelous job getting everything together and giving up their office space for the kids to learn and play! they're such an inspiring couple I tell you! :) i am a big fan of them! it was like a dream come true... imagine teaching kids computers, kids who'd probably not have access to them, unless a miracle happened. Kids who'd probably miss out on so many opportunities coz they don't have the skill set. imagine equiping them and giving them certification and recommending them and getting them jobs! imagine what that could do for them... imagine what that could do for everyone?! it's so great... it's unbelievable... it's inspiring and it's something to go after... something i want to pursue... sometime in aug i'm going to start guitar classes with the oasis kids as well... :D that's the plan at least! :D
5. dinner and talking to roshan sam... i tell you... this guy is amazing... i love to pick his brain. I love the way he thinks... the way he opens your mind to new things... he's a star! told me what his ad agency was doing in terms of employing new technology - something called augmented reality... i thought that was really cool! :D unbelievable! yet so simple an idea! :D it's amazing... i need to reserach that sometime and probably do something... it doesn't seem to be far out of my grasp. really looking forward to doing something in that space... in terms of coding stuff in that space... :D Then he told me about xbox... how it maps your joints and movements and makes you so much a part of the game you're playing... - immersive technology! it's so freak! when wii came out with something like that i thought it was unbelievable... this is way more crazy... you don't need any kind of device... you are the device! so if you're playing a boxing game... you don't hold these sensors which wii has, you simply throw you fist in the air and it works! :D it's freaking crazyYY!! you can watch a youtube video of it, if you please: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2qlHoxPioM
then we talked about revenue models for the web 2.0, namely facebook/google/twitter... etc... something about afghanistan (his brother's doing business there)... future possibilities on the net... opera brower! digg.com... wordpress... how companies are using games to advertise... supposedly a new way to engage with customers! it was one crazy nite of tech talk! :D and it was really nice! :D
6. killed a cockroach with soap water! :D kinda drowned it! :D i hate cockroaches... and i am... scrared of them as well... so what's the best way to kill them? drown them! that way you don't get too close and you kinda feel good about how you're killing them! it's was after roshan went to sleep... sometime around 1 am in the morning... not it's 2:30!

yeah... so that was my day! i loved it... i enjoyed every min... i can believe i had such a fulfilling day! it's sooo good... i feel blessed to be surrounded by such great company! :D

God in the details

2009-06-13T02:15:00.001+08:00

my thoughts over the week in a song: http://bit.ly/MOcI4

god in the details!
--------------------------
You're the God in the details,
yet you forget all my sin!
You forgive me
You cover me with you love!

You love ME!

You're the god in the details
And you know everything that I do
But you died to forget all my sin!
Oh how you love me!

You put a song in my heart!
You put a smile on my face!
You restore me to you
You protect me Oh Lord!
Oh how I love you...

oh how i love you...
I thank you! :D

What disturbs me the most?

2009-05-28T13:46:00.001+08:00

This morning I read a wonderful devotional from the vine. http://www.thevine.co.nz/word/archive/2009/05/28

It made me think about what disturbs me the most.

But you really can’t put a finger on it, coz a lot of things disturb you in life. But right now, the one thing that’s disturbing me… or rather, on my mind concerning social justice is: how can I somehow bridge the gap between those who have nothing with those of us who have… enough and more to give.

I’ve realized that if you help the poor, give alms, etc – it’ll never take them off the streets and stop depending on others. In fact that’s their way of life – take the garbage you get. What if you treat them as equal, help them see your point of view, help them see that they are capable and strong enough to succeed in the world – or at least live to not take garbage everyone throws at them.

Treating someone as an equal makes him marry your dreams – or have similar dreams. That means, if I train a poor kid to play the guitar, or take pictures – he can dream to be a musician/photographer may be? At least it may stop him from thinking that he’s meant to be depending on other people for life? Or may be train them to use a computer so they can go get a job? Or even hire them?

May be, treating the poor as equals and caring enough to change the way they think – may be it will take them from being oppressed to being successful and help them to dream again?

I think this is going to be something I’ll work towards – to treat people as equals… to inspire people to dream. I’m dreaming now. I also wondering if it’ll work? And also, how many people can I inspire?

anna university sends its micro satellite into space...

2009-04-22T03:01:00.001+08:00

I was delighted this morning to read about the launch of anusat - a mirco satellite made by the Anna University. I couldn't believe the fact that an Indian Univerisity could actually launch a satellite into space! That's so freak - sky is the limit for enterprising engineers! :D read about it here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Celerbation-time-for-students-teachers/articleshow/4427481.cms

Oracle + Sun? What does that mean for me?

2009-04-21T17:16:00.000+08:00

I don’t think it’s a good thing! :(

Since I work in SAP Labs – it’s a very hot discussion topic everywhere… wonder what that means to me… my company and the whole software community.

I liked reading this interesting article: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/042009-the-biggest-loser-in-oracle-sun.html

Clean email

2009-04-04T22:28:00.001+08:00

I've finally cleaned out my official and personal email folders! :) ha... peace!

earth hour

2009-03-30T11:20:00.000+08:00

Saturday – 28^th March, 2009 – the earth hour happened – between 8:30-9:30pm.

Though we voluntarily wanted to participate, our Electricity company made us comply by simply switching off power in the whole area – so yeah, I did participate voluntarily but also was given no choice about it either!

But I have a few questions – what the earth hour just about switching off lights, or was it also about trying to get your carbon footprint to the least possible value? Is lighting candles okay? I found it quite absurd when I saw a couple of pictures and advertisements as well, were people hold candles celebrating earth hour…

I’m not sure if that makes any sense!

Tell me!

next door saviour

2008-12-23T18:35:00.001+08:00

We have a next door saviour – always there for us. His name is Immanuel. We celebrate this coming on Christmas day! Do not hesitate to call on his name – in the good times and the bad. He’ll always be there for you! :) that’s my saviour next door. I encourage you to follow suit!

Trust vs. Suspicion

2008-11-20T20:31:00.000+08:00

This morning, on my way to work, I was listening to this podcast by Andy Stanley (pastor of the North Point Community Church - http://www.northpoint.org/) about Trust vs. Suspicion in his Leadership Podcast (http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=290055666).

I loved what he had to say...

Being trustworthy does not mean that you’ll always live up to your promises, sometime you just won’t. But if you own up to it before someone else finds out about it and tells you – if you take responsibility of what happened before someone tells you where you were wrong, then that’s being a good leader who is worthy of trust – even though he probably did mess up. So never wait for someone to tell you that you’re wrong. Just tell them you’re wrong before they find out yourself. They don’t need to wait to hear that you’ve messed up from anybody else – they can hear it from you straight. That’s what makes you worthy of trust.

If you are a leader and one of your people came to you telling you that they’ve let you down, do not punish them. Just be patient and hear them out and understand that they made a mistake like everyone else does – do not punish them. Because when you do, you’re basically telling them “don’t come back to me to tell me that you’ve failed me!”. And that really is not good for anybody! You’re basically asking your people to cover up every time they make a mistake – so then next time they make a mistake they won’t be honest to you about it!

do yourself a favor

2008-11-10T16:08:00.000+08:00

I’m writing to myself right now: don’t be angry with people! Do yourself a favor – choose to let go. Forgive. Move on.

Can you tell I am seething with anger?

I think I’m not anymore… :) just needed to tell someone that I was. :D

What I am angry about is no longer an issue. YAY!

nothing else matters

2008-11-03T20:28:00.001+08:00

I’ve been reading Bill Clinton’s autobiography, ‘My Life’. The man came from a very broken and troubled background. No affluence of any kind. His step-father was alcoholic and very abusive. Even to the extent of attempting to murder Clinton’s mother – twice!

But he moved on – he loved life and focused on what he could do better.

Today I had a chat with my manager, Vishnu Prasad Hegde – one very enlightening conversation where he told me that he wanted me to aim higher – not just meet expectations – that’s not the measure of one’s greatness. He told me that if I gave it all, passionately – then sky is the limit – nothing else matters. Your situation no longer remains a crutch as long as you decide it’s not going to be your crutch.

Think creatively out of the mess you are in – think about how you can go beyond your very own expectations.

It’s you versus you.

Hmmm… every once in a while, I’m glad there’s someone telling me to shake off my complacency and start working towards bigger dreams.

I, the Convert - Outlook Business

2008-10-29T11:38:00.001+08:00

This is an article that a friend of mine, Raj Mudhaliar, sent to me yesterday. I loved reading this… I recommend you read it too!

The writer talks about his relationship with Jesus Christ and how he chose to follow Jesus. Beautifully written! He is the editor of Outlook Business.

http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20081027&fname=Conversions+%28F%29&sid=5

stay hungry - stay foolish

2008-08-19T14:31:00.001+08:00

I saw this on a t-shirt I think. I liked it. It wasn’t implying that you do nothing about being hungry or foolish. It was about how we needed to always aim higher and never think/feel wise because that’s what motivates the learning curve.

And I am also reminded of the fact that God chooses the weak to shame the strong, he chooses the foolish to shame the wise. :)

Stay hungry. Stay foolish.

Social change - starts with ME!

2008-08-12T14:12:00.001+08:00

I loved watching this YouTube video. It’s about social change – how the little we do sometimes can make the biggest difference. :)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qp3ZgZDd0dg

outpouring 2008

2008-07-29T16:22:00.001+08:00

The world does not revolve around me, but I can’t help but think that I’m living in a really important part of history which can change a lot of things around the world.

My church has gone on a chase – a chase that will probably define history… time will tell.

We’re having outpouring meetings at All Peoples Church (http://apcwo.org/) . We’re meeting at a rented facility: St. Joseph’s High School, Museum Road, Bangalore. You may want to join us between 7-9pm on Tuesdays through Saturdays till Aug 31, 2008.

You also might want to read a blog post by my youth pastor on the risk of revival: http://ajit-tanya.blogspot.com/2008/06/risk-of-revival.html

Lots of love!

Savio

update after a long time...

2008-07-15T11:44:00.001+08:00

Hmmm… I’ve not being in the online space too much over the last couple of days… been quite busy with work and FAMILY. :)

This is an interesting devotional I read this morning. I thought it was brilliant!

http://www.thevine.co.nz/word/archive/2008/07/15 titled “Dealing With Strongholds, Imaginations, And Thoughts”

Children's names! :)

2008-04-28T19:19:00.000+08:00

I found this quote quite funny. :)

Always end the name of your child with a vowel, so that when you yell the name will carry – Bill Cosby.

In case you wanna read up more funny quotes of his: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/b/bill_cosby.html

Where is God when it Hurts?

2008-04-02T17:58:00.001+08:00

I found this Philip Yancey article really inspiring – I recommend you to take time to read it. It opened my understanding of how God can use pain for good. http://www.christianitytoday.com/cl/2008/002/6.33.html

Personally – I’ve seen that in action so many times. I love how God changes things and makes all things beautiful! Ask mE!

Zimbabwe

2008-03-26T22:07:00.000+08:00

I spent 6 months in Africa. 5 months in Botswana and one in Malawi. On work.

When I was in Gaborone (Botswana) Zimbabwe made a lot of news. Lots of Zimbabweans fled their homes to work in more prosperous South African countries, including Botswana. In fact, I worked for 2 Zimbabwean bosses.

One of the biggest missteps of the Zimbabwean government was expelling the white population from the country. And after that, giving their lands to the natives – who weren’t economically prepared to run the huge fertile lands that its erstwhile white owners made a lot of profit from. So the food and cash crop production plummeted. Tobacco was their major foreign currency earner. Tourism was wiped out – considering it hosts one of the Seven wonders of the world – the Victoria Falls.

It’s currency has fallen. Inflation is on the rise. It’s got the world’s lowest life expectancy – women can expect to live for 34 years. Salaries are not keeping up to the inflation.

I read the following articles about Zimbabwe – you might want to read them as well. It’s quite sad actually. You might not want it read them!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7308854.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7304635.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/08/africa_pre_election_zimbabwe/html/1.stm

been a while...

2008-03-26T20:56:00.000+08:00

Hi blog, it’s been a while since I’ve written. Yesterday as I was walking back home I realized that you have completely slipped away from my active memory. I’m sorry! Some big developments happening in my life – so I guess I’m quite preoccupied.

I’m to be married!

In May!

To a girl who I think has the prettiest smile in the world – very beautiful – caring – loving… simple… go figure!

I’m excited!

I’m also working on few things – painting… cleaning… soul searching… reading… getting counsel… praying… hmmm… all a part of the deal. :)

So that’s why!

Taxes

2008-03-26T20:50:00.000+08:00

Every day I hear people repine over how much they give to their country by way of taxes. I am not sure if that’s being patriotic or otherwise. :)

Okay, ‘repine’ is the new word I learnt today, so I thought I’d internalize it by making my own sentence. In case you want to look it up: http://dictionary.reference.com/wordoftheday/archive/2008/03/25.html

Getting back to the sentence I’ve written, I am not trying to say anything here – just a question. Something that’s been on my mind. May be you want to comment and express your views. :)

Personally, I would think it’s a privilege to give to my country. That’s probably the least I could do to practically express my patriotism. But considering the number of people around me who do not think like that – I would like to hear your arguments for or against it. Please comment.

I think it’s important to do all you can – and invest into tax saving plans – because indirectly I can see that benefiting the country. But what about taxes that you pay above that bracket? Is it something that you should complain about?

pi day

2008-03-14T21:58:00.001+08:00

Today is the PI day – 3.14 = March 14.

I enjoyed reading this article about PI so I felt like I needed to share it with you!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7296224.stm

Missed U! :(

2008-03-14T21:56:00.000+08:00

It’s been ages since I’ve written in here! L oh boy!

I missed you! Sorry about not talking for ages.

Just to update you, I had a wonderful trip to Goa, around the time I turned 26. I actually wanted to have a little more think time – didn’t really get to do that to my satisfaction but nonetheless, something is better than nothing.

Otherwise, I’m 26 – older… bigger… wiser… nicer (I hope)… less aggressive than I used to be (coz of some really big developments happening in my life)…

So yeah… that’s my life right now… I’ll talk to you soon!

Bono at Davos

2008-01-29T02:45:00.001+08:00

This is a speech Bono gave at Davos - World Economic Forum. It's quite interesting to listen to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQE3hxD050k&NR=1

I'm reading and watching a lot of Bono's stuff... very interesting man he is! :D

Shai Agassi's Electric Car Venture

2008-01-29T02:43:00.001+08:00

Hi! I looked up the internet to find more of Shai Agassi's electric car idea. Imagine! a whole country which runs on Electricity and not on gasoline! :D

I'm looking forward to buying a car sometime in the next 3 months. Unfortunately, here in India, there's only one company that manufactures electric cars - that's Reva. Unfortunately their cars are underpowered and small... not really an option for me right now.

But I'd like to think of it like this... I'm thinking of buying the Wagon R - the gas version. That's much less polluting than the petrol cars, and also way cheaper! :D

Kids Explaining the Electric Car Concept: http://youtube.com/watch?v=-U1U9HSviU0

This video is quite cute... it's well done... nicely animated... I recommend you take time to watch this! :D

Sav reads! :D

2008-01-24T23:54:00.001+08:00

I need to tell you about this:

I’ve started to read!

And I’m loving it!

Hmmm… this is in stark contrast to my growing up days where I used to resent books but I loved to read news articles and small things. The only book I used to read for a long time was the bible – and I haven’t really read it cover to cover, though I know a lot from it (I’m quite proud of my knowledge of the scriptures).

So yeah, towards the end of 2007 there’s been a change. And I really like it. I’ve started to read quite a bit. Like, there was this point where I even stopped reading the Bible, coz I knew so much that I didn’t feel like reading it over and over again. Also I felt like I wasn’t really practicing what I was reading, so what’s the point? But yeah, things have changed. I’m reading my bible now – like I’ve never read it before. :) I love the change. And I like the fact that I’m learning new things from it every day! It doesn’t feel like a big boring book anymore!

Well, reading it in a new translation probably helps! :) This year, I’ve decided to follow a year’s bible reading plan which would help me read small bits everyday so that by the end of the year I would’ve read the bible cover to cover. And I’m reading it in ‘The Message’ translation. I have a parallel bible which has ‘The Message’ and the ‘New International Version’ next to each other. So that helps to understand how beautifully the author of ‘The Message’ translates something really old to a brand new idea!

Apart from that, I’ve been reading a whole lot of other books on business… self-help… technology… right now I’m reading a book on Bono! :D how cool is that!

I read all these books in parallel coz I don’t like reading just one thing. So I’ve got my bookmarks on like… hmmm… I don’t know… 10 books?

One thing I do is, I read at least one chapter of any book everyday – and I never read a chapter halfway – which means if I read 3.5 chapters, and I get tired, I’ll force myself to finish the chapter before putting the book down. It helps me read more! It’s worked for me and maybe you want to try it too – in case you’re not much of a bookworm.

The other thing is: try and use a bus as much as possible. That is if you can read in a bus without getting a headache. So my company shuttles me up and down to work and I get a decent 2 hr reading time every day.

I know you’re beginning to feel jealous of me! :D

Jim Collins Circles of happiness

2008-01-24T23:40:00.000+08:00

That video of Shai Agassi prompted me to research on Jim Collin. I have his books, which I haven’t read yet, but I will before the close of this year. :)

Anyways, Shai Agassi mentioned Jim Collins circles of happiness, about 3 questions you answer… and the answers to that would help you decide what you wanna do and be happy and most effective. Shai answered those questions in his videos. I’m not up to answering those questions yet – though I do wanna think about it soon – probably this weekend! :)

The questions are these:

1) What are you deeply passionate about?

2) What are you are genetically encoded for -- what activities do you feel just "made to do"?

3) What makes economic sense -- what can you make a living at?

May be you want to answer them yourself.

This is the link from where I got the questions from: http://www.jimcollins.com/lib/articles/12_03.html

In that blog post, Jim Collins says that many times we just need to stop doing things to get better. That’s something that I thought about – and actually I did some time back. :) And that made me really happy! :) but yes… we need to keep doing exercises like these every once in a while.

More about Jim Collins:

His bio: http://www.jimcollins.com/bio/index.html

The Physics of Startups

2008-01-24T23:28:00.000+08:00

I spent a little time, actually 47 mins listening to Shai Agassi’s lecture in Standford Technology Ventures Program. He talks about ‘The Physics of Startups’.

I actually listened to him 2ice over coz I really liked the lecture. Click this link to listen to the lecture yourself.

http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?mid=1684

Summarizing from the lecture:

- He recruited his dad, Reuven Agassi, 4 times and fired him 2ice.

- He started 4 companies between 1990-92

- He sold his company 2ice – he told his company to SAP

- The distance between Success and Failure is the same – you can be in this place where you can be in middle of success and failure, you’re in the middle of a disaster or a great story

- When you’re in a vacuum, you’ll appreciate air – same thing with money

- If you get into business to make money, you’re getting into the wrong business

- The only person who’s happy when you make money is your banker – you’ll come to a place you won’t be able to spend it anymore, and you’re banker’s gonna be happy coz he keeps making money on your money

- Factor extra costs into your venture – you’ll need it to make bigger investments to get bigger

- Leverage into your partners gravity

- Use orbits of bigger companies to grow bigger, swinging from orbit to orbit – figure out which giant’s shoulder you’re sitting on

- When you’re small you can’t define the future – bigger entities do that

- Enterprise corporate portal was his invention, which he wanted to partner with BAAN to sell, but eventually the relationship had a fallout
- Every action will have the exact reaction

- Honesty is your only currency

- Kinetic and Potential Energy is a constant – employees see KE and CEOs see PE

- Peddle before the waves to get to the shore – not at the back of the wave. Catching the wave is not easy, but you need to start early

- Mid-life crisis (when SAP offered him CEO position)

- What are you going to do for the next 15 years to make a difference?

- Jim Collins Circles – Passion

- What are you really passionate about?

- Shai Agassi’s passionate about Israel, climate change and his kids

- What are you best at?

- He’s good at problem solving

- What is the business economic model?

- Find a way for a country to be completely eliminate the use of fuel

- Electricity replaced oil – the lighting industry

- Replace oil with electricity with oil for transportation – cars which go long distance and lower cost

In case you want to read his blog: http://shaiagassi.typepad.com/

In case you wanna read a blog post of the video: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfgate/detail?blogid=19&entry_id=4882

vacation plans!

2008-01-18T23:31:00.001+08:00

Today I drew up my vacation plans. :) It’s been really long since I’ve gone out of Bangalore for a vacation.

So yeah, I’m headed to Goa, Mumbai and possibly even Pune sometime next month! :D I’m very excited about it! Can you tell? And I’m travelling by train all over. I love trains. It gives me a lot of “think” time and read time and basically a whole lotta fun! And it’s also cheap, so what the heck! :D

I think I’m going to be taking a hell lot of pictures. :) It’s gonna be really exciting. I’m so looking forward to it!

I'm asking you to dream again

2008-01-17T23:45:00.001+08:00

I recently blogged about one of Israel Houghton’s (http://www.newbreedmusic.com/) song. There’s another song of his that I’m in love with right now. It’s titled, ‘Take the Limits Off’. It’s about God asking us to take the limits off what he can do in and through us.

The lyrics to the song:

I'm not a man, I cannot lie. I know the plans for your life, I'm asking you to dream again, believe again and take the limits off of me.

No I'm not a man, I cannot lie. I know the plans I have for you they're my design, so I'm asking you just to hope again and trust again and take the limits off of me.

All I'm asking is take the limits off, take the limits off, release me to accomplish what I promised you, take the limits off me, take the limits off release me release me

No Limits (Enlarge My Territory)

No limits no boundaries I see increase all around me stretch forth break forth release me enlarge my territory(repeat)

Take the limits off take the limits off release me release me(repeat)

I loved how the song’s written. It’s beautiful. I especially like the part which goes like, ‘I’m asking you to dream again!’ God’s asking us to dream again. Dream wild. Hope again.

I sometimes describe myself as a hopelessly optimistic person. :) I just know how to be optimistic all the time, sometimes so much so that it seems hopeless.

Have I ever told you I dislike sarcasm? Including them sarcastic jokes which often appear to be innocently funny but has really hurtful undertones? Or have I ever told you that I try my best to quickly exit any conversation or team that is basically cynical? :) I find that I cannot breathe in environments like that. It saps the life out of me. One time, after constantly being in the company of cynics, I realized I became one myself. It’s contagious. I got myself out of it. :) I became happy again.

I want to always believe. Always hope. Always love… unconditionally.

And I’ve noticed when I ration out my time with God, my attitude towards life also goes down a negative spiral.

In case you want to listen to the song online on YouTube:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4dRNRB7YEQ

A Christianity Today Interview with Israel Houghton:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/music/interviews/2006/israelhoughton-0206.html

The link to my previous post of another Israel Houghton song:

http://theafricancall.blogspot.com/2008/01/im-still-standing.html

some developements Oracle + BEA & SUN +MySql

2008-01-17T23:20:00.001+08:00

Very interesting developments this week. Oracle managed to get BEA for 8.5 Billion USD and Sun Microsystems bought MySql (http://www.mysql.com/)for 1.3 billion USD.

The selling price per share of BEA came up to $19.38. BEA originally insisted selling at $21 and Oracle intended not to budge from its $17/share valuation of BEA.

I’m not very clear about the implications of both the purchases. But I liked to follow up on them coz Oracle competes with SAP and I have quite intimately used MySql during my days at Integra Micro Systems (www.integramicro.com).

If you want to follow up on the stories flying around the internet…

Concerning Oracle + BEA:

http://gigaom.com/2008/01/16/oracle-finally-gets-bea/

http://www.news.com/Oracle-to-buy-BEA-for-8.5-billion/2100-1014_3-6226385.html?tag=ne.fd.mnbc

Concering Sun + MySql:

http://www.forbes.com/home/technology/2008/01/16/sun-mysql-linux-tech-enter-cx_ag_0116sun.html

MacBook Air - world's thinnest notebook

2008-01-17T22:53:00.001+08:00

In its latest Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs launched MacBook Air, the 13.3 inch, world’s lightest notebook. It’s 1.3 Kgs. It’s built for the wireless world, and hence does not have Ethernet ports. It does not have an optical drive as well, which they replaced with an application called ‘Remote Disk’ which allows the user to Remotely use the Optical Drive of another PC/Apple computer. Aluminum body. Leopard OS. Backlit Keyboard – the keyboard automatically lights up when the notebook if there isn’t sufficient lighting. Core 2 Duo. It’s got a Big Trackpad – multi-touch sensor, which means you can pinch (zoom in/out), swipe (works even with the Safari internet browser to move back and forth pages) and rotate. Video camera.

All this for $1,799. I don’t think I would be interested in buying one of these – especially because of some severe limitations, missing Optical Drive and Ethernet Port.

In case you want to check it out, the following links are interesting.

MacBook Air Ad:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agaO1kR8Y6s

MacBook Air Demo

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7askBmF4_c

Forbes article:

http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/15/jobs-macbook-air-tech-personal-cx_wt_0115airmac.html

Java DB is a lightweight DB

2008-01-17T22:24:00.000+08:00

I did some more research on Java DB and found this interesting article so I felt I needed to write about Java DB again. Another key advantage of Sun’s Java DB is that it’s lightweight – just takes 2 MB RAM to run it.

Read this article in case you want to get more information about it. It’s quite interesting:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/programming-and-development/?p=587

To read my previous blog entry on Java DB:

http://theafricancall.blogspot.com/2008/01/java-db.html

Android - Open Handset Alliance Project

2008-01-17T19:39:00.001+08:00

I missed this!

I don’t know why I missed this! I like to be reporting everything new on the technology front that I read off… and this one happened in Nov 07 and I didn’t have any idea about it till… today! :(

Anyways, what is android? It’s Google’s OS (Operating System) for Mobile Phones. It’s open – that means the source code is available. If you’re a developer you could work with it to make some really powerful applications built on top of it.

And Google’s made it open source, that way allowing the whole world to develop applications for the OS. That means there could be endless amount of applications built on top of it – and the best part is, anyone can make applications and complete for the money Google’s offering for the best applications developed on top of Android.

In case you want to get the source code, or generally read up on Android: http://code.google.com/android/

In case you want to watch a YouTube video which talks about the OS: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FJHYqE0RDg

Android is based on Linux Kernel version 2.6.

This is really exciting. Google is investing big time into tomorrow’s technology – Internet-based applications and mobile applications – and hybrids.

cloud computing and google vs. microsoft

2008-01-17T16:32:00.001+08:00

What is cloud computing? It is using computing power of a third party and paying for it as a service. Much like how SAAS (Software As A Service) works. So we’d have computers sitting elsewhere and they help us make our documents, spreadsheets, manage our business, do our hi-tech calculations which require superior computational resources than what you have under one roof.

You can imagine it as using electricity which is provided by some Central Power Generation station sitting elsewhere rather than using your own generator under your own roof. It’s the exact same thing in computers.

Back in the 70s we had central systems (mainframes), which you accessed to do the things that now you normally would do now on a desktop. Microsoft lead the way with smart terminals (the PC), where you could have a desktop doing all that for you using Microsoft Office. Google is into cloud computing, which is the next big move in the computer world. 10 years ago (around the time the Internet was born) whoever though we could watch videos on the internet? Tomorrow, everything you do on your desktop can be done on a computer sitting on the other side of the world – at least that’s where Google’s headed, with its Google Docs, YouTube, etc.

I liked reading this article on Forbes. It’s an interview based on Nicholas Carr’s (former editor of Harvard Business Review) new book – ‘The Big Switch’, about what Google would look like when it grows up and its business model. :) It’s interesting and I recommend you read it. It gives you the general drift of where things are headed 5-10 years down the line.

http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/11/google-carr-computing-tech-enter-cx_ag_0111computing.html