Google Chrome - Instant Translation

MS – Cloud Computing advances..

Interesting Read

MS Research – One Album

Microsoft One Album

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Why i turned buzz off!

Google, Why are you invading my privacy!.

I find Google's buzz a terrible breach of users privacy. They are being very cheeky, adding the ‘buzz’ feature without  telling users what the hell it’s supposed to do. I never asked for one in the first place anyway, And this is my personal opinion.

I can’t be bothered to buzz around with my contacts or know what they are doing. C’mon Google !. I’ve lost some respect for you today. This is ridiculous. A very offensive approach at creating their own ‘eco’ system for the cloud trying to take the pie away from Facebook and Twitter. (Which i think they are trying to achieve with Android OS).

For me, it brought frustration more than a new found joy and i turned the buzz feature off. Thank god, they have managed to put that feature inside Gmail. And this is how i did it.

1] Open Gmail and navigate to the bottom of the page to find something similar to the below picture and click on ‘turn off buzz’.

 

 

  Interesting Links

1] Google buzz privacy policy

2] Privacy policy

Visual Studio 2010 and .Net 4 RC

WhooHoo!!
Download everything from here
Catch the action here
I’m having a play on the following, till the RC expires!
1] VS 2010
2] TFS
3] Lab Management 
4] Test Professional
5] Agents -Visual Studio Agents 2010 enables scale-out load generation, distributed data collection, and distributed test execution.

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary…

Machine Learning and Computational Linguistics are a fond hobby of mine. Someone ready to sponser money and family permitting time, i want to delve into it any day. I am very excited of Google’s attempt at transliteration so far. It has certainly made writing in foreign languages exciting with on the  fly ‘transliteration’ embedded into mostly all of google’s products, gmail, blogger,orkut etc. to name a few. This has added lot of joy and excitement into many native language communicators.

For a nation like the United States or the United Kingdom, such tools will hardly have any impact (Keeping in mind the majority of english speaking/conversing population). But for a country like india, It’s MASSIVE. India has at least 25 –120 regional languages.

I strongly believe that for a civilization to flourish language - ‘bhaasha’ or call it ‘mother tongue’ is the primary and most fundamental tool that humans could have developed. Indians are pioneers in Linguistics and Logic. Given the very fact that a nation of 1 billion today speak so many different languages is a very simple and strong example of the  Linguistics and Logic revolution in India.

In a diversified state such as India, Computational Linguistics can play a very significant role. Imagine a child writing a letter to his/her mother in a language that she can converse in. The mother might not know to read or write in a different language, However the child will go to school and learn english, call it modernization or existentialism the language english has bestowed upon us. ‘This is a very simple common day scenario in rural india.’

I am very sure that as we all evolve conversing in english everyday into the 21st century, Research in computational linguistics will only start adding much more values into our ‘diversified’ culture and lives.

Therefore Computational Linguistics can be seen as a ‘fundamental tool’.

Simply because for any language to survive, it needs speakers. Amongst the ubiquitous things we can think ok ‘Culture/Tradition’ alone does not help a language to survive, the moment a language loses it’s speakers, it starts to decay and disappear.

After all, the ‘Vedas’ (a philosophical discourse) says ‘Flowers of different colours will only make the garden bright’. Computational Linguistics tools can only enrich a diversified civilization and get it in equilibrium with the ‘modern’ world.

Bye Bye iPhone and Nexus one…

 

More Here and Here

Light Peak

 

1. Light Peak

Light Peak is the code-name for a new high-speed optical cable technology designed to connect your electronic devices to each other. Light Peak delivers high bandwidth starting at 10Gb/s with the potential ability to scale to 100Gb/s over the next decade. At 10Gb/s, you could transfer a full-length Blu-Ray movie in less than 30 seconds. Optical technology also allows for smaller connectors and longer, thinner, and more flexible cables than currently possible. Light Peak also has the ability to run multiple protocols simultaneously over a single cable, enabling the technology to connect devices such as peripherals, displays, disk drives, docking stations, and more.

More here and here

For a decade which i think would make iphone a laughable ‘invention’ and

inch closer towards augmented reality.

Android running on set top boxes!

MIPS Technology - CES 2010.

Nexus One, Here it comes..

More CES 2010..

 

Marvell’s Plug Computer 3.0

 

LaCie’s Flash ‘Keys’ made of metal.

 

Monster’s Ultra thin HDMI Cables

 

Asus EeePC Keyboard (A keyboard that has an intel atom based netbook inside it.)

View Full Album

CES 2010

Time to get excited.

What new technologies will the CES 2010 unveil.

Six trends to watch for at CES 2010

- ULV Processor laptops

- Smartbook

- 3D HDTV

- OLED (organic light emitting diode) and AMOLED (active matrix OLED) displays

- Microsoft SYNC and Ford in car communications (Ford SYNC)

- Green Computing Trends

Office 2007 Open XML File Formats – An interesting read from the ‘new’ MSDN Lite Edition.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa338205.aspx

Hackers create rougue CA certificate using MD5 collisions

I Love the way they have hacked it. A group of hackers/researches have found success in forging digital certificates trusted by ‘modern’ web browsers using a cluster of PS3 game consoles! wow!!

The research also shows a significant weakness in the MD5 algorithm currently used by 6 CAs to issue certificates.

This also means that they have managed to break the secure ‘SSL’.

I loved it. Follow the link.

44th US Presidential Inauguration Coverage with Photo Synth

Check it out.

Ideas from IBM - You've got (TOO MUCH) mail..

This white paper can be found here. It talks about efficient ways of handling information overload. The other interesting aspect to look out for is the IORG (Information Overload Research Group) which consists of people from IBM, Microsoft, Intel and various academia. :-|

Tools for everyday development

1. Process Explorer

Process Explorer shows you information about which handles and DLLs processes have opened or loaded.

The Process Explorer display consists of two sub-windows. The top window always shows a list of the currently active processes, including the names of their owning accounts, whereas the information displayed in the bottom window depends on the mode that Process Explorer is in: if it is in handle mode you'll see the handles that the process selected in the top window has opened; if Process Explorer is in DLL mode you'll see the DLLs and memory-mapped files that the process has loaded. Process Explorer also has a powerful search capability that will quickly show you which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded.

2. Debug View

DebugView is an application that lets you monitor debug output on your local system, or any computer on the network that you can reach via TCP/IP. It is capable of displaying both kernel-mode and Win32 debug output, so you don't need a debugger to catch the debug output your applications or device drivers generate, nor do you need to modify your applications or drivers to use non-standard debug output APIs.

Cool Features

• Win32 OutputDebugString
• Kernel-mode DbgPrint
• All kernel-mode variants of DbgPrint implemented in Windows XP and Server 2003

DebugView also extracts kernel-mode debug output generated before a crash from Window's 2000/XP crash dump files if DebugView was capturing at the time of the crash.

3. PsKill

Windows NT/2000 does not come with a command-line 'kill' utility. You can get one in the Windows NT or Win2K Resource Kit, but the kit's utility can only terminate processes on the local computer. PsKill is a kill utility that not only does what the Resource Kit's version does, but can also kill processes on remote systems. You don't even have to install a client on the target computer to use PsKill to terminate a remote process.

P.S: Filemon and Regmon have been replaced by Process Monitor on versions of Windows starting with Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2, Windows Server 2003 SP1, and Windows Vista. Filemon and Regmon remain for legacy operating system support, including Windows 9x.

4. Resource Refactor

Features for Resource Refactoring Tool

• Works with C#, VB.Net languages. Supports all project types that ships with Visual Studio 2005 including web sites and web application projects.
• A preview window to show changes.
• Finds other instances of the text being replaced in the project automatically.
• Lists existing resources by their similarity level to the text being replaced.
• Automatically replaces hard coded string with a reference to resource entry.

5. Ghost Doc

Automatically generates documentation for constructors,methods,properties and class. Integrates will with visual studio and style cop and is a must have to get rid of those style cop warnings.

6. Microsoft StyleCop

StyleCop analyzes C# source code to enforce a set of style and consistency rules. It can be run from inside of Visual Studio or integrated into an MSBuild project. This is a definite must have. It enforces consistent looking code across the whole project with multiple developers with varied tastes and preferences.

7. Microsoft FxCop

FxCop is an application that analyzes managed code assemblies (code that targets the .NET Framework common language runtime) and reports information about the assemblies, such as possible design, localization, performance, and security improvements. Many of the issues concern violations of the programming and design rules set forth in the Design Guidelines for Class Library Developers, which are the Microsoft guidelines for writing robust and easily maintainable code by using the .NET Framework.

FxCop is intended for class library developers. However, anyone creating applications that should comply with the .NET Framework best practices will benefit. FxCop is also useful as an educational tool for people who are new to the .NET Framework or who are unfamiliar with the .NET Framework Design Guidelines.

FxCop is designed to be fully integrated into the software development cycle and is distributed as both a fully featured application that has a graphical user interface (FxCop.exe) for interactive work, and a command-line tool (FxCopCmd.exe) suited for use as part of automated build processes or integrated with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET as an external tool.

Links

Sysinternals Suite
FxCop
The Visual Studio Code Analysis Team Blog
StyleCop
Introducing StyleCop on legacy projects
Ghost Doc
Resource Refactor

Mark Russinovich: Inside Windows 7

http://channel9.msdn.com/shows/Going+Deep/Mark-Russinovich-Inside-Windows-7/

Windows 7 Can scale upto 256 processors. whoohoo!!

The Numerati – Stephan Baker

They’ve Got Your Number

Maybe you’re the kind of person who doesn’t believe that the kind of person you are can be deduced by an algorithm and expressed through shorthand categorizations like “urban youth” or “hearth keeper.”

Maybe I’d agree with you, and maybe we’re right. But the kind of people — “crack mathematicians, computer scientists and engineers” — whom Stephen Baker writes about in “The Numerati” clearly see things differently. NYTimes Article

Industrial Design

 

If you ever wondered what's Common in  iPod, iPhone , MAC OS, Nintendo Wii and some of Google's simpler User Interfaces, It's the industrial design.

Watch this video from Buxton , delivered at Mix08 UK. This is mind blowing stuff. Also check out his research page and a book on Industrial design.

Some quick notes..

1] Where the heck is your designer ?

CEO

CTO

VP Sales

VP Engineering

VP Marketing ..

? (Where is the designer). Turns out that when Steve Jobs joined apple, within 24 hours,i.e on the very first day, he met the finance, marketing and the whole engineering team and already had a vision. 2 words . of course, It was 'industrial design'. And now you see the results.

 

An industrial designer is a huge asset to a product company. A guy who knows or rather have to know everything from design concepts to business awareness and usability. Buxton argues that if you don't understand it and your still in business, then probably  you are lucky or your competitors are pathetic.

Another important lesson to learn from Apple is the wide spectrum of things they focus on starting from Industrial design and including every single bit that you can possibly think of. (promotions, marketing, sales, shipping, support, user feedback) The elegant little 'shuffle' which happily resides on millions of shirts across the world is an example.

iphone and ipod's cover flow

Think about it.

Creative design { academic research , enterprise research } ->Vision

Vision { Business awareness } -> Concept

Concept -> Product

 

2] Innovation

Nintendo Wii

 

2] Not everyone can be a designer ( but almost everyone you work with thinks that they are!)

3] Atleast, an engineer with depth in business and depth in design ~= Industrial Designer

4] Can you sketch the UI of your phone in 15 seconds ?

5] Architecture and design of a BUILDING

vs

Architecture and design of a Software Product

Where is the analogy ?. Why can't we learn from them ?

Buxton argues that software be blue printed and planned before constructing.(This is where the industrial designer comes into picture). I kinda disagree on this one.

Personally, i think the only important reason why software industry is cost effective compared to manufacturing industries would be the magical world        're-usability'. Again, consider a production pipeline of cars vs software. A badly designed car can incur losses to a company, So does a badly designed software product. But can we use the car's carburetor again ? NO! (may be the design, but the physical component is out there with the user)

How about software ? YES!!!, throw away the bad components, reuse the carburetor component, may be a couple more of them.

" General Industrial Designers are a cross between an engineer and an artist. They study both 'function' and 'form', and the connection between product and the user. They do not design the gears or motors that make machines move, or the circuits that control the movement, but they can affect technical aspects through usability design and form relationships. And usually, they partner with engineers and marketers, to identify and fulfill needs, wants and expectations " - wiki

One such guy i can relate to immediately is Jayanth. happens to be a inspiration and a very good friend of mine. (Jayanth Kannan, Raptor Entertainment)

"Product design and industrial design can overlap into the fields of user interface design, information design and interaction design. Various schools of industrial design and/or product design may specialize in one of these aspects, ranging from pure art colleges (product styling) to mixed programs of engineering and design, to related disciplines like exhibit design and interior design, to schools where aesthetic design is almost completely subordinated to concerns of function and ergonomics of use (the so-called functionalist school).^" - wiki

More Links,

A new mantra for creativity - Bill Buxton, Business Week.

Now, Should i say coincidence!