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Showing posts from February, 2006

Surfing Journal

I love to surf the web. For fun. For information. Many times, as part of my work. Everytime, I visit a nice website, I used to write down the URL in my notebook or send in email so that I will have a note some where. But I often find it very difficult to get the url when I really needed it. Used to send an email whenever I wanted to share with somebody. But none of my buddies have no idea where I have been wandering, unless I send them an email. Not any more. I found del.icio.us website, an easy way to post urls from anywhere and get them back when I really need it. My buddies can instantly see the urls I post. Not just that; when they see an url that I like, they can automatically post it for me. Excellent way to keep in touch. So from now onwards del.icio.us will be the host of my surfing journal. Here is the address: http://del.icio.us/mkmurali And here is the rss feed: http://del.icio.us/rss/mkmurali

Proud to be a Software Engineer

Software is invisible to most of the world. Although individuals, organizations, and nations rely on a multitude of software-intensive systems every day, most software lives in the interstitial spaces of society, hidden from view except insofar as it does something tangible or useful. Despite its transparency, as Bjarne Stroustrup has observed, "our civilization runs on software." It is therefore a tremendous privilege as well as a deep responsibility to be a software developer. It is a privilege because what we do collectively as an industry has changed and will continue to change the world1. It is a responsibility because the world in turn relies on the products of our labor in so many ways2. In the context of that labor, software is perhaps the ultimate building material: it springs from pure thought and is intrinsically malleable, yet it can be made manifest in our hardware systems, limited only by our vision (and certain immutable laws of physics and software3). As softw

Robin Good...... no good at all?

Robin Good, who assumes himself a communication expert who can teach to communication experts recently announced a Design Challenge, 'The MasterNewMedia Design Challenge', an open interface design contest to redesign hiw own website. Why? I guess he could not do. I am afraid he don't understand what makes a good user interface, let alone how to design one. Anyway, finally deadline arrived. Robin must have been dreaming of thousands of proposals and must have allocated his next few weeks to review them. But there were NO official entries to the competition. He was however seem to be delighted to update the news saying that he did receive ONE submission before the deadline. Oh, it saved a life. I first visited this website around 6 months back. The compilation of articles was good. So I added to my rss reader. As I started reading for a while his blog posts, I did not see any originality in his blogs. I never see Robin in his own posts. Most of them are mere compilations

Wal-mart in India

A few weeks ago, Wal-mart filed an application with the Reserve Bank of India to setup an office in Bangalore for market research and business development. News story at http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1397292.cms by The Economic Times Still a long way to go for Walmart to do anything in India.....but Indian Retailers better watch out!!