Happy New Year

Happy New Year. May 2013 bring all the great things that we wish & desire and may God & Nature give us the strength and health to work towards that. Let's make sure that we earn and grab all of the stars the let them stay with us!

Neethanae En Ponvasantham

My verdict : It is light. It is nice. I was able to remember a poem that I read during my school days from John Keats. 

There is an expectation set when you hear the names like Gautham Vasudev Menon, Illiyaraja, Jiva, Samantha, Santhanam. All have done their job with an intention to give a very good movie. It has really come out well. I initially read and also heard from my friends that this was a very huge disappointment for them from Gautham Vasudev Menon. I even saw few similar FB posts. But to me it was a very nice movie.

Story: It is a love story. A love story very raw and very natural. Normally I term only Subramanipuram kind of movies as raw, but this too was a raw love story.

Screenplay: Poetic! The narration is actually excellent. The director along with the cameraman and editor has done an excellent job. Flashback's are an very essential element for story telling. Even for us a story is something that happened in the past. Gautham is an amazing story teller, no doubt. He has handled this subject too very well. Heard that in VTV the story itself was from Gautham and in NEP he wrote the screenplay and was the director. But his improvisation to the script has been really cool. Coming back from this movie was very light. Like Ok, get back to work. But after an hour, you have Varun Krishnan and Nithya Vasudevan haunting you. The story line says "This could be your love story". But there are certainly a lot of elements that each one of us could relate to ourselves. 

Jiva & Samantha :  Jiva is so handsome in this movie. In a few scenes I was not able to take my eyes off Jiva and have a look at Samantha. I should say he is a very professional guy. If most of us say that Surya may be the next Kamal, here is one guy who is silently surpassing that. Watching Jiva is something that you would love in this movie. Earlier I said that this was a *raw* story, it is because of Jiva. The way the climax was narrated and how Jiva did that was like *real*. 

Samantha, she is beautiful. She knows acting too and has did well. She is picture perfect! The scenes to quote her acting are the scenes in that Tsunami village and the climax. She has done it very well. 

Music : Breezy. Don't expect anything less here. It is all very real instruments being played by very real human beings! A lot of LIFE gets added into the movie when real people play it.

Could have been better: 

1. Camera - I personally felt that few shots very shot in long which made us get out of the scene. One shot to quote was the fight that they would have on a terrace when Jiva says he is going to join IIM Calicut.
2. Few Santhanam scenes could have been avoided in the 2nd half. Especially that VTV mimic scenes. 
3. The night walk and talk in the climax could have been cut short. Because it was not that time that Jiva and Samantha spent triggered the climax, it was Jiva's father who says "Be a man". 

Watch it! Varun and Nithya are sure to pass through you. 

My rating: 4 STAR

The Brand called goGrab

Like most of you, I too always wanted to be an entrepreneur. One industry that I always kept doing homework was service aggregation. I used to even tell my friend back home in Tirunelveli who runs an IT hardware shop that we do start a business where we just take AMC contracts for desktops and laptops basically in the Home PC segment. Every other home in the middle class to upper middle class owns a computer. And if you start catering to that market alone, we would have both (1) business and (2) work!

But that was not the intention when I started a very serious thought process about goGrab.in. Actually all I wanted to build was a great product and a platform which can open itself for much more service aggregation with very less effort. I have met Naru 4 times for validating my idea and also get his feedback and comments on goGrab. He always used to ask me one question when we start - "Ganesh, actually what are you trying to do?". 

We are creating a brand called goGrab, in the process of building goGrab.in. Yes, that is what we as a team intend to. Business is money, but brand is trust. The trust that you build with your customer, consumer. And to create trust with someone who is totally a stranger and eventually becomes your patron is an experience. 

At goGrab, we called ordering food as an experience and not a process. We keep working to make sure that the experience is always the priority. I think that is what made big brands like Sangeetha Veg, Kaaraikudi Chettinad, The Dhaba, Wangs Kitchen to partner with goGrab.in in the first place.

When you actually want to order food from home? When you actually want to place your order as you start from work and just pick it up on your way? Just try goGrab, once and let me know if we did redefine your food experience. If it we suck, just call us a shout at us. We will work on it and get back to you. 

goGrab, your brand to redefine your food experience!

Cheers,

Why goGrab.in?

When it comes to Thursday's of the week, plans start at home on where to go this weekend and whom to meet? To makes sure that kids are doing Okay and all. But most of the time, 99% we end up spending time at Besant Nagar beach and at our cousin's place for dinner and some chat.

Okay, coming to the rational of all these is: For a Housewife:  being a housewife, with 2 kids, all day at home, husband busy with work all the time and not spending time with you, all you have is only this reason to just pull him out of HIS chores and spend some time driving, walking and talking with him. For Husbands: More than an outing, it is just like a MUST DO to make sure that the rest of week and next week is taken care, just a balancing act!

Incident 1:
So, back to the story, it was on a weekend when performing this balancing act, at around 8:00 PM when we were about to start from Besant Nagar beach, I asked my wife, 'Can we have dinner outside?'. She thought for a moment and said 'No, we will go home and have dosas, but I want to have juice from Fruit Shop on Greams Road outlet.' That was a great idea and I too love juices from Fruit Shop on Greams Road. So, we drove and parked the car and ordered 3 juices for take-away and waited in the car.

My elder son, who is fond of cars, immediately jumped to the front seat and starting playing with the steering and gear knob. Actually the engine was ON as we were using the Air Condition as we were waiting for the juices. I had a tough time to convince him not do that and finally he started crying. So, to pacify him I asked my wife to get the biscuits that she usually brings. She said she did not bring it! Then I asked water and she said it was over!! So, I turned around and asked "Don't you know you need to bring all these when coming outside? Are you carrying it by yourself, you could just keep in the car, right? What stops you from doing that?'. That was all, to start a **good** argument within us and spoil my total balancing act! As my wife was yelling at me, I looked at my watch and it was almost 25 minutes and still the juices were not there. Just asked the guy again and finally he brought it after 10 more minutes. It was like 35 minutes for 3 juices!!!

As I started to drive back, I was thinking:- 'How would it be, if I had an app on my iPhone to order juices from Fruit Shop, Besant Nagar and just drive thru to pick up the juices, not needing to wait for 35 minutes. I would have very well spend that time at the beach itself!

Incident 2:
It was once such evening, we were back from a movie from Prathana and planned to pick-up food at Sangeetha Velachery. So, reached the place around 9:50 PM and saw it crowded. As we had no choice, I walked in and ordered just 4 dosas for take away. Finally the guy came around 10:40 PM with the dosas after repeated, heated queries with the billing counter. By the time, my kids has slept on the car and we were burning on hunger.

Once again, the same thought pop's-up! How would it be, if I has ordered this food as I started from Prathana and just stopped by to grab my dosas. In-fact if I has had that, I would ordered, Naan and Pulav instead of dosas!

So, finally I started brainstorming this idea with my bunch of pals and of-course, my experience with CSS Labs and PayPal helped me to give a product shape to it! And finally after doing some home work on the tech feasibility, we formalized that we are doing goGrab.in!

goGrab.in - makes it easy for you  place an order with your favourite restaurant and pick up food with NO Waiting Time!

Try it! Tell me if you also feel the same experience on using goGrab.in. Also please do send me your feedback on ganeshrajmohan@gmail.com.

Cheers!

My takeway from DisneyLand...

This is was in October 2011, but, was the moment that made a huge impact in my life.

It was with a lot of stuff happing in my life I decided to take my family to DisneyLand,CA for my son's quarterly leave. We spent a week in Fremont, looking around SFO and other places and drove the 2nd week to LA. 

DisneyLand was fabulous and we all thoroughly enjoyed it. The second day I waited till 8:00 PM to watch the parade. Once the parade was over, there was a show with fireworks and so many fantastic actions performed as if in a disney tale. And the show ended with the saying "This is the place where dreams come true!". That is when I started thinking about how much of effort, work, planning and co-ordination should the team have to create this wonderful experience for all its guests all these years. It was amazing to see that the principle and vision of DisneyLand, what Walt Disney had envisioned, was still alive even several years after his death! I can name a tonn of organization where the employees don't know their vision or it was forgotten by the entire exec team, but here, this place is great!

My take away from disneyland that day was... for life!

Getting back into the groov

Occasions are basically reasons for us consider and do something different that we either love or wanted to do that for a while. 

After 3 days, yesterday was when I started feeling of getting back into my regular mode. New year eve, New year day, etc, etc. And what did I do, was just left it open and took it in the way it came. Actually it was not bad at all. Somehow this year took me close to Swami Vivekananda. Yes, I visited both the RK Mutt and the school and polytechnic + hostel in Mylapore too. I had the chance to meet few very great scholars who have devoted their life towards bharamacharya and service. 

One thing that I learnt from that place was the power of being disciplined. It was an excellent, calm, very neat place and it was completed maintained by the students of the home! I am very sure that if you go the houses of few old students of the home, their home will also be neat and clean. There are few very basic things that needs to be inculcated into a child right from the beginning and the first one is discipline. Discipline make you align with Principles and people with principles are they ones who live even after death!

I personally feel that having principles for life and following that is very important. Just start with 2 and then keep adding. But you should know what suits you and what not as you are the best person who knows yourself! Principles are NOT to make you good or great, but they make you give 100% of you, which makes you live that moment.

When you sit in a roller coaster and start, first few secs you feel wary, but then you enjoy it, and I am... for 2012...

Come 2012... take me where you are destined to....

Welcome 2012, take us one level higher... to 2013!!!!

2011, a lot of things had happened and still going on. It has been a joy rid. Right from creating my FB account till ending 2011 with a family trip to US, all of it has been fun and joy!

I remember spending the eve of 2011 travelling to Bodi to meet my wife and kids, and the year saw me travel a lot! Yes, domestic and international. I move to my new home. Got very busy @ work and also getting more creative now-a-days.

I will all my friends and well wishes a fabulous 2012!!! Happy New year.

De-Normalization Guidelines

As I was reading thru an article on denormalization I came across these steps that are guidelines to decide on what would be an candidate to denormalize. Wanted all of you guys also to know...


Three general guidelines to denormalization

First, perform a detailed view analysis in order to identify situations where an excessive number of table joins appears to be required to produce a specific end-user view. While no hard rule exists for defining "excessive," any view requiring more than three joins should be considered as a candidate for denormalization.  Beyond this, system performance testing by simulating the production environment is necessary to prove the need for denormalization.

Second, the designer should attempt to reduce the number of foreign keys in order to reduce index maintenance during insertions and deletions.  Reducing foreign keys is closely related to reducing the number of relational tables.

Third, the ease of data maintenance provided by normalized table structures must also be provided by the denormalized schema.  Thus, a satisfactory approach would not require excessive programming code (triggers) to maintain data integrity and consistency.

Source link : http://www.siue.edu/~dbock/cmis564/denormal.htm

The path to be a software architect...

I am not very sure whether I am qualified to write on this topic. My intention here is to register my thoughts on the topic.

Calling yourself as an "ARCHITECT" is itself considered to be a pride by self! The word now-a-days is more than a sign of prestige and pride rather than whether you qualify for it or not. There used to be a time when "Lead", either you prefix or suffix with any word was considered to be a designation on pride, but now I see "Technical" and "Architect" taking that roles. How many of us have really felt that we qualify to own that word as our identity?

To be an architect you need to be a - programmer - debugger. Architecture is not about designing systems or solutions with design patterns, frameworks, portal solutions, messaging bus and soa, rather it is about putting together pieces of code that would work perfect for the given need. This should also take care of the past bad and buggy experiences you had in your career. If you are able to conceive such a system or solution, then you may call yourself the creator (architect) of that system. You should each and every entry and exit point of the system. You should be able to see where the system would fail and where it would choke. You should have addressed all those areas. The system should of course follow a standard or a pattern, but it should be only to the extent it is needed.

But on contrary to this, doing architecture or system design is now considered to be using design patterns (that the individual is comfortable with) and popular frameworks (that the individual knows). Most of the times I see things are being used for the sake of it. In my opinion I feel that this practice should change. 

The other type of architects that I have come across are people who live that designation and take that very personal. They are so obsessed about what already exists and start writing things on the own. I am not sure whether they do it for the sake of it OR they really don't believe is something that is already proven. I have several times asked the question:- "Why don't you take the existing stuff and re-factor or enhance it and use it? So that others can also benefit". But I always get a weird look as my answer. 

Okay, now coming to your question, I see you asking me "What kind of "architect" are you?

I am the person what I have echoed above. I too have been carrying the word "architect" as my identity for quiet some time, but I have always lived to the the kind of person whom I echo to be. I have not created the so called great solutions so far, but I have had a lots of learning.  So, what do I do as an architect? I code - debug - refactor - create small frameworks that cater to a common issue in my design - test automation - application profiling - so on and so forth....

As I said in the beginning, I might not be qualified to write on this topic, but I definitely wanted to echo my take on this.

Cheers,

A Developer's Wish

I have always wished to creates waves out of the lines of code that I make. But the real truth, most of the times it dies as a wish! I am sure most of you should be nodding your head for this :). This is one reason why whenever I get a chance to attend any developer conference I would be the first one to regiter.

I have decided to attend the GIDS (Great Indian Developer Summit) @ Bangalore for Day 3 and Day 4. I wanted to write about some of the interesting sessions that I am planning to attend.

Session on Relentless Innovation in Java:- The overview of the session talks about the way Java needs to be taken post Oracle acquistition. But with James pulling out of Sun, now how much of these things would really make the same sense as before. Sure that this would be a more of marketing session, but the interesting part of this session would be towards the end, the Q& A part. Our guys are pretty smart and I guess that this session would be interesting to see the questions that the community has. True that the presenter would also be smart, but what I am looking for is not the answers, but the questions.

Session on Java Generics:- This is another interesting session for me. That particular slot has 4 tracks and I would prefer to attend this track. I see the other 3 tracks to be marketing their products and this the odd man out. Other other session is GWT 2.0. Its close to 2yrs since GWT 2.0 was released and till today if Google is not able to market a technology, then I suspect the glitch in that. Of couse I have used GWT to its maximum extent and event designed a tool/framework, but I tool feel that GWT needs to focus more on organizing the content and presenting it rather than just the display part of it.

Session on Maven:- Now most of the corporates already have and are mavenizing their projects. It would be really interested to know more about that. Other session that I am equally interested is Business Driven Identity Management, but I don't think I would be attending that.

Session on Complex Event Processing:- You won't be suprised if I tell that I am working on a system that processes close to 70 million events per day. So why would I not be interested in the topic!

Apart from that you can visit Stall No: 25 where I would spending most of my time to involve in several activits to select the winners of Dell NoteBook that PayPal is planning to give away for the event. Not necessarily for the notebooks, you can also visit the stall to understand how can you leverage PayPal today to monetize your apps (if you have one) to be fetching an additional revenue for you.

See you there...

Coruage Conquers

Courage conquers, boldness pays and timidity fails.....

This is a saying I read it somewhere during my school days, yep my father showed it to me. He is the one who mostly shows all these great things and I keep them in my mind... It is always like being courageous to showing courage to face challenges. Sometimes you solve, and sometimes they get solved by themselves. Sometimes when I feel afraid, what do I do? I just act like I am courageous. Over the years everyone improves on acting and guess do I!

It is good to be a software guys designing and architecting systems. Guess if were a production or a doctor, GOD save all the patients. But here I got the ground to try out a lot of things and learn from mistakes. Learning from mistakes has been a habit from childhood days and that is where the destiny has taken me to, be amongst this software. But at the end of the day, do I feel good. Yes, sometimes, but NO sometimes. It is all the opportunity that matters. Everyday feels like now when you have a lot of problems to address. Now I feel like having more greener and newer days. I feel like having a handful of challenges and getting added more. I feel like I need to live new!

And whenever you design systems or learn about new systems, keep in mind, Courage conquers..

Technology should touch lives

This has been the base of my thought process for quiet sometime or since when I started to progress along this technology path. But my time seems to be running like trying to learn and follow some technology just for the sake of it. I still don't feel that I have created or even tried to create something that touches lives.

Thinking deep it feels as if how can that happen with software development, but I still feel that it can happen. When a mobile phone can reach even a kid at no time, why can't a technology, an invention with software reach people. We see a lot of softwares that are a part of life, but how many of then claim that, it has touched their lives.

All the terms, "technology", "architecture", "software development", "enterprise", "portal", "SaaS", etc.. all should be just shelved off! I had always liked the term KISS that we use in the design world. "Keep It Simple and Stupid"!. But designers and architects seems to have their own style or way of "KISS", like how our heroes have in movies and thus KISS is not effective.

We should have our end-users, in the front of our mind, to whom this piece of software that we design / architect or develop would be a part of their day to day life. The moment we drive all our decisions towards that goal, we can slowly start to realize how our decisions affect the lives of people. We should never be pre-occupied that we are giving them something much better than what they have now, but we should always be inclined to give them the BEST we can out of all our abilities. The moment we start working towards that goal, the reality comes very near and by the time we think of retiring from this career, we can see ourselves into lives of many.

Cheers

TEDxChennai - Talks that made me think...

I wanted to share the good talks in TEDxChennai that made me think of what I am doing now...

Overall experience of TEDx in Chennai was very good. We need a lot of these good events to come to our city and we get a real experience. There is/was a lot of difference in watching a TED video on your computer and being live there. The next TEDx event in Chennai would be happening on 10-10-10. Note this somewhere and get a ticket for yourself the next time.

TEDxChennai talks-

Kavita Baliga:- A very cute and beautiful little girl. But she is a TED fellow. All these she achieved in 4-5 years. What inspired her was her cancer! Yes, that is what made her think that she had nothing to leave her mark and then she fought her cancer, she is fine now and she now lives a life of thinking that today would be her last day. It was a very good talk that made me think in the lines of "what am I doing here?". I got remembered of my doctor saying it to me a few months ago and I can be active like this only till my 40, then I would be a full time patient. It is actually not the disease, but something that make you inactive, then you have a lot of things to do and you don't have time and energy. So, it high time that I stand up and write down things that I wished to do and start working on that. Thanks Kavita, you reminded me of a lot of things....

Satyabrata Dam:- A very simple person. He was seen wandering here and there during the session post lunch. He was like a TEDx Chennai volunteer. But he is a great and god blessed mountaineer. A really inspiring person. After climbing all the world's top peaks, he was there as if he just started. I was really moved by the way he presented himself. There was definitely a lot to learn from him. Passion is word that I have heard many say, but I saw a person who was living it just like that risking his life all the time. I am not able to express what Satya taught me that made and impact, but it is many, not one. He was always feeling proud of what he did and is doing, but he never presented like that. A great session to inspire to live a life with passion. Every time I wanted to do that, there are so many think that drift me away, but this till, I have decided to resist the drift and see whether I get over that. Thanks Satya, it was really an eye opener.

These were the two talks that inspired me a lot and made me think. But all the other talk were really good. It was interesting to know how people have/had shaped their lives and made a great life of it. They were all real people who can smile when death comes in front of them. They really have something very good to feel about of their life. All of us are also determined to live a life that, but how many of us do that?

Agile Scrum – A brief overview

Scrum is one of the methodologies used for iterative software development within the available set of agile methodologies. SCRUM is not an acronym and it has been derived from the game rugby. Scrum is a project / product development methodology which fits to the current changing paradigm and also gives more importance to project governance.

Unlike the current development team structure, scrum has only 3 roles to play within a team,

1. Scrum Master – one who maintains the process and works to ensure the realization of goals of the Sprint.
2. Product Owner – the primary stakeholder of the product. Basically the customer who is responsible for prioritizing the backlog.
3. Scrum Team – a self organized group who do the analysis, design, implementation and testing.

The other terminologies used by scrum are:-

• Sprint – a 2 to 4 week cycle where the scrum team works to accomplish a set of tasks. The duration of the sprint can be decided by the team. The output of each sprint must be a working piece of software.
• Product Backlog – is a high level document of the entire set of requirements for the project / product. This is prepared by the Product Owner and would be the input for arriving with the sprint backlog. Each item in product backlog would be prioritized.
• Sprint Backlog – is the detailed document of the items that would be performed for the current sprint to accomplish either a set of or a single item in the product backlog. The selected item(s) from the product backlog are broken down into granular tasks which can be accomplished within 8hrs of effort. These tasks would constitute the sprint backlog. This is done by the team.
• Sprint Burn Down Chart – is a line chart showing the remaining hours available to be burnt for completing the sprint. This chart is owned by the Scrum Master and has to be updated on a daily basis.

The Methodology

The product owner comes up with the story for the scrum. The story meant here is a one liner of the requirement that would be accomplished to meet the specific business need. This requirement is further broken down into detail requirement points called the product backlog.

Now once the product backlog is ready is when the scrum starts. There happens a scrum planning meeting where the product owner meets with the entire scrum team and discusses on the priority of the items in the product backlog. In this meeting it is also decided on the during of the sprint. Once the product backlog is completely created a Sprint Planning Meeting is initialized.

The duration of the Sprint planning meeting is 8 hours. During the first half, the product owner describes the goal of the product and the details of the product backlog to the team. The second half of the meeting, the team selects specific requirements from the product backlog that can be accomplished per sprint based on the priority. The selected requirements are broken down into tasks which are called the sprint backlog. It is to be kept in mind that each sprint is expected a deliver a shippable product / feature.

The Sprint begins and lasts of the agreed duration. There is no change allowed or entertained to be added / modified to the sprint backlog.

Daily scrum meeting happens among the stake holders of the sprint, i.e., the product owner, scrum master and the scrum team. The during of the daily scrum meeting (also called as the stand up meeting) should not be more than 15 minutes. There is no excuse for any of the stake holders to skip the meeting. This is MANDATORY. The scrum master is required to initiate this meeting and also update the burn down chart based on the outcome of the meeting. The three questions that needs to be answered by each team member are:-

1. What did I do since yesterday?

2. What have I planned to do today?

3. Is there any issue that is obstructing my task?

Each sprint team member is expected to answer this question.

At the end of each sprint a Sprint Review Meeting happens where each discusses their accomplishments during the sprint and also a demo of the product/feature is planned to the product owner and the other business stakeholders.

· A scrum cycle can have multiple sprints. But the duration of each sprint should remain the same.

· There is nothing called schedule variance or effort variance for a sprint. It is only the Sprint Burndown chart.

Be real

I got this mail from one of my good friend. I felt that I should definitely share this, since this is something each one of us feel at times when we are/were real.

The world will often discourage you from giving love. Give love anyway.

Many times, despite your best efforts, you will not be understood. Keep giving it your best anyway.

The treasures in life are not what you get back. Those things are only shadows of life's true value.

The real treasures are what you're able to give of yourself. And as long as you give authentically, from the heart, with the best you have, it doesn't really matter what comes of it.

It's nice to be acknowledged and respected and understood. Yet even when you're not acknowledged or understood, there is still great value in doing what you know is right, what you know is best.

Smile a peaceful smile to the depth of your being. Be real, and know that all is well.

PayPal Innovate 09 - The intersection of Ideas & Money

PayPal X Innovate 2009 is PayPal’s first dedicated developer conference, November 3 & 4, 2009. For two days, you’ll have the absolute inside track on how to capitalize on all of PayPal’s products. You'll be in the mix with hundreds of other passionate developers - front and center as the possibilities of innovation are explored in over 35 interactive, technical sessions and Code & Build Labs. You’ll see how some of the most innovative developers in the world are building business on the PayPal platform.

Why people should attend innovate:

• 1. Get exclusive access through 2009 to PayPal payment technology for developers that is above and beyond Adaptive Payments
• 2. Hear Tim O’Reilly deliver the keynote address
• 3. Preview PayPal’s roadmap for 2010
• 4. See profitable early-adopter applications build on PayPal technology
• 5. Network with hundreds of other developers, VCs and PayPal engineering staff
• 6. Learn how to grow your business with PayPal’s payment solutions. Whether you are new to PayPal or an existing developer, the conference has tracks dedicated to helping you drive the most business with your products

Where: The PayPal X Innovate 2009 conference will be held on Nov. 3-4 at the design center in San Francisco. Full conference information can be found at www.paypal.com/innovate2009

I can get you promotional codes which makes your registeration fee of this conference $0. Contact me if you are interested.

Ciao

My LWD with CSS Corp

By today I had served 2 years 5 months and 8 days with CSS Corp on their payrolls. I would be joining my new job tomorrow.

It has really been an exciting journey with CSS Labs. Each day was a very new learning experience for me. It took initially few months for me to de-learn my delivery oriented experience and wear the shoes of being in a lab. But then, it was a very great journey to cherish. Being with labs gave me an entire new paradigm to look at any technology and envision a solution. Envisioning a solution with lab was limitless. I was free to propose any solutions and what we look primarily were the NFRs, because we were very confident that any technology can be used to meet the functional requirements of a system. Actually the customer is worried about the functionality until the UAT phase is successfully completed, but then on it is only the NFR that pop's up. But then by that time we would have a system that would not be in a state to accept any NFR!

This is where a solution architecture needs to be done in the first hand. And to do that successfully you need experience in all the prominent and niche tools. And CSS Labs gave me that free hand to goahead and explore these prominent and niche tools.

Life is full of experiences and world is full of suprises. There is an old saying "Courage conquers, boldness pays and timidity fails". With my heart full of courage I am looking forward for tomorrow to join my new job and have an experience filled with suprises!

Cheers

Interesting Amazon S3 tools

I have been wanting to write on this topic for quiet a long time by now. I feel good to say that I was also one of the early adapters of the cloud technology. I have been using Amazon S3 for alomst close to 2 years by now.

I initally started off with the S3Fox plug-in for Firefox. I tried BucketExplorer, but then it was too slow. By then we had completed a small web based product by name SmartS3 which we floated for our internal usage. This was not just an tool for Amazon s3, but we were having User Management integrated and we were able to server multiple users with the same s3 account!

S3Fish, a bucket explorer tool for Amazon S3 started off and we decided to do it on Microsoft platform. Detailed study made us decide to do it on MS.NET Framework v3.0. We successfully completed S3Fish, a tool that would help you to perform all the available functionality in Amazon S3 and hosted it via Code Google as open source. It was welcome by more users across the globe. We crossed more than 250 downloads in a week and we forwarded that tool to Amazon. Amazon gave us a good review, but suggested us to change the name to be propetiary and thus CloudBuddy was born.

By the time CloudBuddy was born, we had a hand full of tools for Amazon S3. A lot of tools. I decided to try CloudBerry since was more popular than any other tool. I really like the looks of the tool when I started off. But it was not very intresting on regular usage, it gave me a feel that it was another FTP / S3 explorer.

The biggest problem with technologists like us is that we always keep looking for more and new. I started convincing me that I am expecting too much, but my team came back saying that, only a user who is well aware of technology would use Amazon S3 and there is nothing wrong in the way you feel. I was so impressed with the answer from my team and I was then and till now sure that CloudBuddy would definetly be a great tool!

It was and is true. CloudBuddy has been having the MS Office plugin for alomst an year by now and there are several tools which sell Outlook plugin for cloud itself as a priced product. CloudBuddy is now coming up with a lot of new looks and more advanced features. We have taken care of Data Security as a major feature in the forth comming release. We have used the RCA/SHA1 algorithm for encrypting the files while uploading them to the cloud. I am sure that this would be a good feature to have. Even one of our CB user in our forum had asked for this.

I have not tried or used all the tools available in the market, but I have definetly tried atleast the popluar ones. One thing I see that the CB team needs to do it, have more campaign's to feature the product.

My wishes and cheers to the CB Team, for the forthcomming release of CloudBuddy!

Interesting days...

Change is always interesting. This is a very subjective phrase. "Interesting" is again contextual and it differes from person to person.

From my day since joining CSS Labs (http://labs.csscorp.com) till date, life has changed a lot. It has made me a different person from what I was in Covansys. Similarly Covansys taught me a lot lot and made a different person of what I am today, that is a seperate story to tell :)

The journy of CSS Labs has quiet been iteresting. Doing something that you wish is different from doing something that you are asked too. Former is the case with CSS Labs. Being one of the charter member of labs and working with my current BOSS and team...

Two years have gone by and looking back at the difference that I have made to my organization with technology as an enabler is what I feel proud of.

Will keep writing more on this subject, again...

Thoughts On Architecture - What does it mean to be an architect?

Once again friends, the below is an interesting discussion that happened with one of the groups that I am associated in Linked-In. After my reply for this question, I got private replies from couple of people telling that this reply really motivated them...

When people say something is good, I immediately share that with the community.. So adding my 2 cents...

This was the question:-

Grady Booch: Thoughts On Architecture

"There are some things we are confident we know: every software-intensive system has an architecture (though most of them are accidental); multiple views are necessary to fully grok such an architecture (and what views one chooses is often a matter of taste, culture, history, and domain); while the code is the truth, it is never the whole truth (for a considerable amount of information lives in tribal memory).

There are also a number of things we know we don't know: what is the optimal way to represent an architecture? what is the role of architecture in the software development lifecycle? how should the as-designed architecture and the as-built architecture coevolve? and, what does it mean to be an architect?"

These are the questions Grady Booch will attempt to answer at the IT Architect Regional Conference this October. Before he gives his answers, what are yours?

And my reply was:-

"what does it mean to be an architect?"

To be an architect, first means to be the user of the system:- The end user is the one who is going to be day-in/day-out with the system. He is one who is going to be the happiest person in the world if his problem would be addressed by the system. He is one who wishes / expects that the proposed system would ease his life and give him more time and mental peace to concentrate on other things. So first an architect should wear the shoes of an end-user.

Second, the customer who give you the money :- This is a very challenging shoe to wear! Customer expects to get a Discovery Space Ship by paying for a Mercedez! In real life too, all of expect the same in each and every penny we spend. So this is the shoe that an architect needs to wear next. This shoe would help the architect to identify the tool and technologies that he/she needs to adapt to convince the customer that he has a Discovery for the price of a Mercedez. Thus I meant this to be a challenging shoe.

Third the implementor shoe:- Whatever an architect proposes and convinces his customer as state-of-the-art, would always be executed (developed) by a group who would be far below that what an solution expert is. There are always day-in/day-out issues. So this is the shoe that he/she needs to wear to understand what would be a feasible solution to achieve with the give group and get to a win-win situation.

Here it is win-win-win situation.

When an architect starts wearing these shoes and seriously spend some time before deriving at the final one, that is what it takes to get not the so called state-of-the-art but the "this-is-what-i-want" solution.

So is always the future (your end user), the present (your customer) and the past (your developers) who make things a win-win-win situation for you.

Apart from this I definitely would not like to discuss about code, patterns, design and all. If you look at it, as an architect, tech lead, project manager, you would be able to define and specify things only till the 100th feet, but from the 100th till 0, it is only the style of the individual developer. An architect is also a developer, even when is an architect. So as an architect, the solution what I propose should be making my end user happy, but which that translates as appreciated and applauds to my developers and thus I achieve a W-W-W situation!

It is always a matter of referenceability and always I ask myself "where in the referenceability curve are you?".