Blue Blooded Techie

Just when I thought I will ditch blogger

2008-12-10T14:55:00.000-08:00

They go and add geotagging to their posts.... Damn, Damn, Damn!

GOOG 411 Error

2008-09-05T09:27:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday evening, I have been getting errors when searching for businesses in the Bay Area. The error message goes: "Tell you what, I think you discovered a bug in the system. We are working on fixing this as soon as we can. Please call back later."

Instant Domain Search

2008-04-22T21:11:00.001-07:00

Attempting to register a domain name for a new website is a painful process these days. Most of the straightforward names are taken by either
1. legitimate businesses
2. or by novices that registered them to use on personal projects that they will get around to "someday” (and hey it costs less than a coke a MONTH to keep the registration current)
3. or kited by dodgy businesses that abuse the 5 day grace period while ICANN looks the other way.

So if you are attempting to set up a mainstream business using a catchy name, chances are that you might need to search for multiple permutations of your desired business before you find a domain name that fits your need. Unfortunately the search facility provided by all of the major domain registrars still harks back to the Web 1.0 era where you type in values into fields on a form, submit the form, wait, wait, and Oops sorry usefulwidgets.com is taken would you like to try widgetusers.tv? Needless to say this can be a painful process especially when you have to do it over and over again in a short span of time.

However, I recently found this site called InstantDomainSearch that actually searches in the background as you type so that by the time you have finished typing you already know whether the domain name is available and provides links to various domain registrars where you can register the domain name. If the domain name is NOT available it shows links to

1. suggestions for other domain names

2. WhoIs search

3. a domain brokerage service where you can opt to negotiate to acquire the domain

4. A domain name hack search utility

5. and last but certainly not the least a link to Alexa where you can see the traffic analysis to this website which indicates how active the site is.

The speed of the search actually invites experimentation – ok, so usefulwidgets.com is not available how about I try this? – and delivers a much more positive search experience than that I have had at any of the domain registrars.

Check it out here and let me know what you think...

Craigslist gets its official blog

2008-04-03T16:49:00.001-07:00

Craigslist has launched its official blog today. Till date, its founder Craig Newmark used his personal blog as a forum for C!list. But he presumably decided to create a separate blog for Craigslist to address issues that are more topical to the site itself.
From the first few posts, this looks like it would make interesting reading in the future.

Ode to the Tech Bubble - Video on Youtube

2008-03-07T13:38:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6IQ_FOCE6I
Cool...
Saw it posted here

ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions Preview Posted

2007-12-10T09:17:00.000-08:00

Exactly what it says on the Title of the post... :-) For those that don't know what the extensions are (which cave were you living in by the way? ;-), they essentially enable native support for the MVC pattern, supports browser history for AJAX enabled applications (which is a big plus for me) and some data goodness(in the form of ADO .NET Entity Framework and Dynamic Data). Can't wait to install and work on it. :-)

"You must enter a question or subject (in English)" Wierd Error on MSDN Online Concierge

2007-11-22T00:32:00.000-08:00

Try this if you have an MSDN subscription with access to Online Concierge. Login to MSDN Subscriptions, choose Manage My Suscriptions and on the Manage subscription page, click on the Online Concierge Chat. You are taken to the MSDN Online Concierge page. Enter any query in English and click the Chat button. And you get an error message saying "You must enter a question or subject (in English)" See a screenshot of the error message here. After some experimentation I found out that this occurs when the length of the query exceeds some arbitrary limit. But showing an unrelated error message really doesn't help in identifying the problem.

Google Launches SMS Services in India

2007-10-09T15:04:00.000-07:00

Google has launched Google SMS in India, a cut down search service for mobile phone users that accepts queries sent as text messages and returns results as text messages.
To do a search all you need is to send your query in the keyword[space]query format to 54664 (5GOOG). The results are delivered to your SMS Inbox. Where the results are too long to fit in one SMS, they are broken up into multiple messages. Currently seven major carriers including BSNL, Reliance and Airtel support this. At the time of writing this, Vodaphone does not support this service. The fly in the oinment is that this is a premium SMS service so all carriers charge premium rates for the outgoing SMS, though the incoming SMSs are free. BSNL with 80ps per SMS for the postpaid customers is the cheapest, while most other carriers charge Rs 3 per message.

Unlike the web search, this service focuses less on web search and more on local search services including weather, local classifieds aka yellow pages (address of restaurants, cinemas, packers and movers etc),currency conversion, reference material (e.g. population India returns the estimated population of India etc) and so on. While the web seacrh is de-emphasized in favour of local listings, you can still do a web search using the web keyword, though the results might not be as useful or even as comprehensive as the conventional web search.
You can test drive this service online here
Pros:
* Accessible on older generation mobile phones that cannot connect to the Net. You can use this even on a Nokia 1100.
* Quick and easy way to find local information virtually anytime.

Cons:

* This is a premium service. So expect to shell out as much as Rs3 per message, plus applicable taxes and surcharges.
* SMS is not really an ideal medium for displaying search results, due to the constraints on the size of each individual message. So expect to wade through multiple messages to find what you need.
* Web search is nowhere near a comprehensive or accurate as its online cousin. Also, you cannot click on a link to get more information on a result that interests you. So if you have a phone that can connect to the Net, a dataplan would be better (and more cost effective) if you plan on doing web searches from your phone.

Early onset of DST gives minimal power savings

2007-04-03T00:02:00.000-07:00

The early onset of Daylight Savings Time in the United States this year may have been for naught. - Reuters reports.
The move to turn the clocks forward by an hour on March 11 rather than the usual early April date was mandated by the U.S. government as an energy-saving effort.
But other than forcing millions of drowsy American workers and school children into the dark, wintry weather three weeks early, the move appears to have had little impact on power usage.
Read more about it here

Book Review: Community Server Quickly

2007-03-01T22:35:00.000-08:00

I have reviewed Ananad Narayanaswamy's new book on Community Server - Community Server Quickly on ASPAlliance. Read about it here and please leave your comments.
Thanks
Sreejath

Ultimate Rejection letter

2007-03-01T20:41:00.001-08:00

Old one, but still good

clipped from www.chaosmatrix.org

The Ultimate Rejection Letter

Herbert A. Millington
Chair - Search Committee
412A Clarkson Hall, Whitson University
College Hill, MA  34109

Dear Professor Millington,

Thank you for your letter of March 16.  After careful consideration, I
regret to inform you that I am unable to accept your refusal to offer me
an assistant professor position in your department.

This year I have been particularly fortunate in receiving an unusually
large number of rejection letters.  With such a varied and promising field
of candidates, it is impossible for me to accept all refusals.

Despite Whitson's outstanding qualifications and previous experience in
rejecting applicants, I find that your rejection does not meet my needs at
this time.  Therefore, I will assume the position of assistant professor
in your department this August.  I look forward to seeing you then.

Best of luck in rejecting future applicants.

Sincerely,
Chris L. Jensen

Enabled SNAP preview

2007-01-26T07:25:00.000-08:00

I have enabled SNAP image preview on my blog.
So now (theoretically) you can hover your mouse over a link in my blog and after a brief delay see a preview of the target page in a small preview window.
Try this by hovering your mouse here.
I qualified my earlier statement because some sites do not show up and some others show up only the frst time you hover the mouse over the link.
:-/

Background search reduces reposts in Google Groups

2007-01-25T06:36:00.000-08:00

One issue that many online forums face (other than link spamming, which is another story in itself) is to reduce the number of duplicate questions (queries, support issues, whatever) posted on them.
This is what prompts many forum administrators to put a sticky message right at the top that says, in effect: Please search before you post. Unfortunately, this is one nettiquette that is honoured more in the breach, as most people don't bother to search the forums (either succumbing to the "MY problem is different" syndrome or simple laziness.)
The new version of Google Groups has a nice feature where Google actually searches in the background for the words/phrases you type in the Subject field of a new post and show the threads that match in a preview window. I found it by accident, when I wanted help on a problem I was having with Blogger and (guess!) set about starting a new thread. By the time I finished the subject line, the answer for my query was right there at the top [See screenshot].

Way cool!

I am afraid I had to crop the image rather drastically to make it fit into my template. I am still trying to cajole someone with decent design skills to build me a template.

An error has occured while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005...

2006-09-23T14:05:00.000-07:00

I encountered the following error while transitioning a .NET application from the development environment to the Integration test environment:"An error has occured while establishing a connection to the server. When connecting to SQL Server 2005,this failure may be caused by the fact that under the default settings SQL Server does not allow remote connections.(provider:Named Pipes Provider,error:40-Could not open connection to SQL Server))"
This had me stumped for a while as our application was using SQL Server 2000 as the database. After some googling, I found the following post by Richard Byham on DBForums that gave me the solution.
http://www.dbforums.com/showthread.php?t=1204986
The IT environment DB Server and the client machines had (for some strange reason) SQL Server Express installed. The SQL server 2000 installation on the server (which had the actual DB used by the application) was a named instance. Due to this, the client code was encountering problems in accessing the SQL Server. After uninstalling the SQL Server 2005 Express and reinstalling SQL Server 2000 as recommended in the post, everything started working again.
But it sure gave us a few tense moments before we figured this one out.

---------
Regards,
Sreejath S. Warrier

Developing MMC snapins using MMC 3.0 SDK AND .NET 2.0

2006-05-01T11:03:00.000-07:00

In my current project I was tasked with developing the Admin Interface for the Application we are building.This needed to be implemented as an MMC Snapin.The current release version of the MMC SDK is 2.0, but developing a snapin against 2.0 involves mucking around in unmanaged C++ which I was not very keen on doing.So we decided to develop the Admin Console using the (pre-release) MMC 3.0 SDK, which requires .NET 2.0. While the documentation and tutorials available in the Managed MMC topic on MSDN provided a good introduction to developing snapins using MMC 3.0 SDK, the samples I got from C Sharp Indonesia provided much more by way of actual code to implement the various requirements.I am currently writing an article on developing real world snapins using MMC 3.0 and would post a link as soon as it is done.Watch this space for updates.
--------
Regards,
Sreejath S. Warrier

End of Telegrams

2006-01-27T09:57:00.000-08:00

Telegraphy started with a brief message - What hath God wrought? sent in 1844. And for hundred odd years it was the primary means of conveying time sensitive information (except for Stock tickers, which used the same channel, i.e telegraph), both good and bad.
In the United States, Western Union (est 1851) completed the world's first transcontinental telegraph network in 1861 which they then parlayed into an industrialized monopoly. Telegraph lines were also used to convey stock prices across long distances, thereby enabling more time sensitive trading. Also, the same network was used to establish the first electronic money transfer service.

The invention and subsequent mass adoption of telephones did relegate the telegram to a secondary role, though it continued to be widely used where a paper trail was required. Also, due to the relatively low telephone densities prevailing in third world countries, telegrams (sent via the respective country's Telegraph network) were extensively used as late as 1980's to convey important and time sensitive information.
However, the establishment of cheap long distance telephony in the US in the 80's cut it off at the knees. Fax machines eliminated the one remaining USP, i.e. the existence of a paper record. And email administered a virtual coup de grace.

And today, Western Union, the company that brought telegram as a messaging to the mainstream, effectively wrote its obituary in a terse message on their website.
"Effective January 27, 2006, Western Union will discontinue all Telegram and Commercial Messaging services. We regret any inconvenience this may cause you, and we thank you for your loyal patronage. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact a customer service representative."

This does not, of course, mean that telegram as medium ceases to exist. Even in the US, companies like ITelegram and Globegram continue to offer Telegram services, mostly for legal and business uses and the postal services in many countries do continue to offer this service. However, with Western Union reporting that they sent approximately 20,000 telegrams in all of 2005 versus close to 20 million in 1929, (with the trend likely to be the same for all major carriers) for all intents and purposes telegram can now be considered a legacy system.
At this juncture, it is interesting to note that the two services spun off from telegram, the stock ticker and the electronic money transfer service are both alive and well, albeit using the internet as the medium.

Hello

2006-01-25T05:45:00.000-08:00

I hope you didn't come here expecting brilliant insights into cutting edge technologies. :-)

I am just an average techie with an undying fascination of what goes behind the scenes in the various gadgets and services that we use on a daily basis.

I am working in IT, so my ramblings will have a bent towards what I see, do and experience.

But I am also keenly interested in how various pieces of technology originally invented for disparate functions are now being brought together to provide vastly richer services than their creators envisaged.

However, while I am interested in the intricacies of reliable messaging, memory management, business process design etc from a professional standpoint, I won't sully this blog with my views on the same.

Part of this is due to the fear of having my bluff called by people more experienced and knowledgable than moi and partly because it doesn't have the zing as far as I am concerned.

PS: I am also prone to malapropisms, so E&OE :-)

Cheers!

Sreejath