I use AVG antivirus, which has never ever caught a virus on my laptop. For long, I have pondered if I really need one, since I have been quite fastidious in ensuring the media that I download/execute on my laptop. In my eagerness to try out Dreamweaver CS3 and Photoshop CS3, I slipped in the latest chip-India DVD (July 07) which carries the trialwares, and boom! AVG chucked out its first trojan alert in the last 5 years! That is quite amazing ain’t it? I haven’t had a virus in half a decade and boom one fine day!!...

It has just dawned on me that I have more work to do, that when I was employed. So many things to catch up on: emails, orkut messages, linked-in invites (ohh. Kristopher Tate is a contact now! Thanks Kris! :) ). Talking of linked-in, the pressure from the ‘opening-up’ of facebook is showing. Linked-in has added several new features and made interaction much easier than it was before. Things are where they should be; A free member can get in touch with someone they know directly. No need for any introductions if you know a person. (you don’t need to know their mail id, either). Finally someone at Linked-in realized that they need to accelerate the rate at with the interconnections were formed between people. That’s where the money is. ...

I recently quit my job at Novell. After more than half a decade of working 5 days a week and several hours a day, I get to spend my time doing only things I want to do. No more tasks that I have to complete, no more deadlines, no more betas to release (atleast for a few more weeks). I get some time to myself before take a deep dive into the job of chucking out code day-in and day-out. ...

Zooomr, for those of you, who don’t know it, is a photo-sharing site, that is developed and maintained by a single developer, Kristopher Tate. Thomas Hawk, the CEO, is a wonderful photographer, and writes a great blog, which you should check out. If Flickr started web2.0 photo-sharing, zooomr is slowly moving the game forward. The latest version of zooomr, offers a bunch of new features, that are nothing short of amazing. Now, they are offering free pro-accounts for bloggers who use zooomr. (Marketing tip #1: Befriend the blogger). Ohh, btw, you can choose to use zooomr, on any blog service that allows you to add html to your post. I guess, that includes every single blog service out there! ...

It is comical to see how the country, in other words, the ones who rule them ridicule one of the most important posts in India. How can the political parties choose to gain mileage by being so very fragmented in choosing the next president. How can they even propose to elect people who probably have very little to show for themselves as imminent achievers in their respective fields?! For God’s sake, you are going to elect a president! ...

Here is a wonderful way to spend about an hour of your time, particularly if you are in anyway associated with software development. Listen to Grady Booch talks about “The promise, the limits, the beauty of software”. Apart from that he also talks about pimped out laptops, being half dead, and fun stuff like, “I looked at a machine from Siemens, and thought, Damn, I know the guys who wrote the software for this machine.” ...

Rich Skrenta elucidates the power of less code. I ask you, grasshopper, which is better: flexible code or tiny code? “Ah,” you exclaim, “Learned master, it is a trick question: code which is tiny yet flexible is best!” WRONG! Tiny code is always best. Now you must carry water up the hill for the rest of the day. For sure, he can’t think up of good stories. Just Kidding! Every time we, developers, make a change or fix a bug, we decide the fate of that particular code flow. We take a call on how the module or component is going to behave for the rest of the life of that application. ...

Over the last couple of years, the onslaught of web 2.0 apps has almost made the desktop irrelevant. With a service offering for almost every kind of application that a normal user would use, the age of installing applications is near its fag-end. Is this good? Is this the direction we want to head towards? More importantly, does it make real sense for end-users? Ok let’s see what you pay for a normal laptop these days. ...

Finally upgraded to wordpress 2.2. Geez!! It was released almost a week back and I hadn’t upgraded!!! I know, I know! I am a little paranoid! I wonder why, that every time I update my wordpress version, I need to go through this very laborious task, of backing up my database, the entire wordpress folder, the last underwear that I wore, etc. Scripts guys! I need a script that does all that. Installing wordpress takes 2 steps, but upgrading 5?! ...

I’ve been on a reading binge lately. With quite a few hours of flying time, and long waits at airport lounges, I got the chance to catch up on my reading. Went through two books this time around, the placid, but mildly interesting “The Namesake” by Jhumpa Lahiri (skip the book and watch the movie.. way better) and the exhilariting final masterpiece, “The Salmon of Doubt”, (wikipedia entry here) by the new age, space comic, Douglas Adams. ...