Thought Garage

Being a Software developer in Telecom, I have been hearing about 'Click-To-Call' feature for a long time. Many technologies promised click-to-fax, click-to-call and likes, and there were many implementations particularly in the SIP world as well. But I haven't seen any website either on internet or intranet using this feature. And I happen to read this blog this morning which mentions about such testing going on from Google. Yet another first from Google. http://www.yardley.ca/blog/index.php/archives/2005/11/23/google-tests-out-click-to-call-adwords/ I tried different searches, but did not see it myself. There are snapshots in the above blog however. There is a FAQ ( http://www.google.com/help/faq_clicktocall.htmlFAQ ) also available on the Google site confirming it. Google might be using VOIP behind the curtains to connect the call. Yet another revolutionary introduction from Google. No wonder, analysts are expecting google share prices to go up to $500.

Interesting blog posting from Ingo Rammer. http://www.thinktecture.com/staff/ingo/weblog/archives/001431.html Different perspective about why chunky interface are recommended over chatty interfaces.

Link to the Cheat sheet: http://www.paulenglish.com/ivr/ Normally it takes around 15 minutes on most customer care service phone numbers to reach the human agents. But the cheet sheet provided by Paul English might give you the customer care agent at an average of 56 seconds, as per the news story on NPR. What a great relief. I don't know how long this will work out. And how does it work if everyone try the same option? It has been really frustrating to get in touch with customer care agents. However short time it may workout, it is still a great relief. I wish, the companies get the message and make it simple and really mean serving customer in providing easily accessible agents. I had a very painful experience with the customer care with Vonage, Uhaul and Budget truck rental and I summarized some of the reasons why customer service sucks for most of the companies along with detailed account of what happened in previous posts on my blog here. Customer Service Sucks! Everywhere? Vo...

I was surprised to know that Skype steals my bandwidth for other Skype users without my notice. Skype architecture is not truly (traditional) peer to peer network, but an overlay P2P network and may steal your cpu/bandwidth[3]. I am not sure whether this is ever conveyed to the end user in terms and conditions or in license. Anyway, it was very interesting to learn the underlying architecture of the one of the most used applications of the day. And, I don't mind sharing my cpu/bandwidth for other skype users. Skype is such an wonderful application, that I don't want to abandon for this reason. I searched for articles on Skype Architecture on google. Here are some of the links that explain the Skype architecture. I found the links to the first two articles at Brad Neuberg's blog - Coding in Paradise An Analysis of the Skype Peer-to-Peer Internet Telephony Protocol by Salman A. Baset and Henning Schulzrinne An Analysis of the Skype Peer-to-Peer Internet Telephony Protocol...

Brilliant fireworks at Disney Magic Kingdom, Orlando Fl, from my recent trip. Visit Photo Gallery

Free enterprise in America does not necessarily entitle the customers with same level of freedom to choose. It is certainly becoming evident with wireless companies. I have been looking for a while to buy a new cell phone for my wife. I looked at all major operators and there are very few or no plans without a contract. I have to sign atleast a 1year contract to get a postpaid plan. And prepaid plans are very expensive. I thought prices will go down as markets and technology improve. But comparing with prices/features to a year back, it is required to pay atleast $10 for the same features, even after signing a contract. This is not the case in the other part of the world. The prices are going down and feature set is on the rise in other markets, while in US prices are on a steep rise. Wireless Number Portability has been mandated (which allows to change the wireless carrier while keeping your old number), to provide more choice and freedom to customers to chose from. While all carriers...

Successfully imported all my posts on blogger to wordpress. Thanks to Andy Skelton's tool [ http://www.skeltoac.com/2005/03/12/from-blogger-to-wordpress-2/trackback/ ] and excellent tutorial at http://catsutorials.catsudon.org/?p=15 . The tutorial has step by step instructions to import the content from blogger. Thank you very much Andy.

I am not talking about emails sent by USPS to the online users, but the snail mails sent to every american resident and organization that have a postal address. Everyday I receive junk mail from USPS in my mail box. I have to search through the junk each and every day for the mail that I really needed. Spamming is very well known word in the online world. Everybody in the world who has an email account suffered due to Email Spamming. Wikipedia describes spamming as "Spamming is the use of any electronic communications medium to send unsolicited messages to someone in bulk. While its definition is usually limited to indiscriminate bulk mailing and not any targeted marketing, the term "spam" can refer to any commercially oriented, unsolicited bulk mailing perceived as being excessive and undesired". And there are so many laws around it to protect innocent victims. Well, in the plain old world, USPS, the United States Postal Service does a lot of this by dumping so man...

"India in News" is a news feed digest that provides latest news about India, has been added to this blog. So whenever you visit this blog, you can also see latest news about India right on this page, after the blog items. Scroll down if you don't see news digest in your window. An rss feed is also available for the news digest in the blogrolls section. The news search is provided by Google via RSS and multiple such searches are digested and made in to one RSS feed, thanks to http://www.feeddigest.com for such a handy feature.

Photos from my Orlando trip.

An interesting collection of history’s worst software bugs. There are so many wonderful bugs that haven’t made this list….. like the bug that crashed a premier Wireless Service Provider’s Mobile switches in Dallas last tuesday. But a good historical tally of some of the worst by Simson Garfinkel. “Last month automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars’ gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn’t a hardware problem — it was a programming error in the smart car’s embedded code. The Prius had a software bug. With that recall, the Prius joined the ranks of the buggy computer — a club that began in 1947 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark 1 system. The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed somethin...

Invaluable Essays on Software Development/Project Management and every thing about software by Scott. http://www.scottberkun.com/essays/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/sci_tech/features/health/tobaccotrial/usa.htm Who is responsible for this? Tobocco companies are talking about responsible marketing, advertising to quit smoking, opening new web sites to inform smokers about the risks of smoking. Come on, there is one big step that these tobocco companies can take to give those 400,000 lives back....(at least won't kill any more) by stopping production of cigarettes. If they think they are so socially responsible why do they abet the killing of so many people every year. America is Spending billions of dollars on War On Terror to fight out the external militants. What about people who are killing 400,000 people every year in America?? "We are an international company, we operate in nearly 180 countries and territories. There is a health warning on every packet and every carton of our cigarettes, no matter where they are sold in the world - even where governments don't require it. We want to do the right...

Capitalism : Compact Oxford English Dictionary defines Capitalism as "An economic and political system in which a countrys trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit , rather than by the state." Communism : Communism refers to a theoretical system of social organization and a political movement based on common ownership of the means of production. As a political movement, communism seeks to overthrow capitalism through a workers' revolution and establish a classless society . -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communism In simple words, Capitalism recognises classes like rich and poor in the society, while Communism removes classes from society. As per communism, everybody enjoys the benefits irrespective of whether everybody contributed to it. If you see how the insurance works, there is a striking shadow of communism in capitalism. Everybody pays the insurance. But only few will reap the benefits. In other words, if you are paying your medical insuranc...

An idea (Greek: ιδέα) is a specific thought or concept that arises in the mind of a person as a result of thinking. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idea I am afraid, folks at Microsoft have a different meaning of what constitutes an idea. I have trouble understanding about this hyped strategy. I read this news every where in the last couple of days about Microsoft opening up its services on the web. A fusion of Software and Services. "Live era" of software. Peeling off all the marketing hype and visionary overheads, it is a set of web based services like email, blogs, messaging, security, document sharing etc. These services will not be free, but will be based on advertisements and subscriptions. In simple words, application hosting service. Small businesses instead of buying the software may purchase a license to use them on the web, live. So whatz new? I am not sure what is so ground breaking strategy it is. So I visited the web site http://www.live.com/ to figure it out. Here a...