WordPress now supports press by email

I am very happy that finally WordPress now provides what Blogger/Blogspot has always been providing. Press by email. In simple terms, one just has to establish a “secret email” from “My Blogs” page within WordPress Admin. To publish a post, all you have to do is send an email to this address and you are done. Though there may have been a delay on my part to discover this feature. I saw this today, and clearly remember was not there when I started using WordPress.

You can also change this email ID any time you want. This has an even more powerful implication. Since any one sending an email to this ID will publish a post in your blog (there is no check on sender’s identity). One can quickly change this “Secret” email and share with others to invite open posts/views etc creating an open forum. Once done, this can be changed again, closing the entries, and making email pressing private again.

I just wish for some more goodies from WordPress:

1.  Any ideas/tricks on how to tag a post which is pressed from email
2. The WordPress blog URL which serves as OpenID is platform 1.1. Please start dishing out OpenID platform 2.0 which is what everyone else seems to be using now a days (including Google, Yahoo, Facebook, MyOpenID to name a few)

By the way, I got my OpenID 2.0 from “MyOpenID” and thats http://sidfadnis.myopenid.com/

Cheers !!
Siddharth

Kudos to small shop owners. Boo on Mall culture.

In this jet age when people are supposed to gain benefits of Internet shopping, and reap ample rewards from discounts available on-line, one shop still beats them all and the shops in glittering malls.  Let me explain how.

I was in dire need of a printer cartridge for my inkjet printer. It was way too costly in malls in Noida and I had no time or money to make a trip to Delhi’s Nehru place to find one at the cheapest price. I searched ebay and still price quoted there was MRP plus the courier charges, making it cost even more than the prices in Noida.

I was perplexed why would people buy something online, if they are not getting it at the right price, and if they could get it cheaper locally.

Then I decided to give it a try. My brother was supposed to come to Noida the next day from Ujjain. I asked him to find the price of the cartridge in Ujjain, which is a small town and comparatively in a remote location, giving you the impression that things like computer supplies might be costlier there. But to my utter surprise, the price quoted was lesser than I enquired anywhere else.

And the icing on the cake was: The cartridge was not available in Ujjain. However my brother informed the store keeper, that he needed to travel in the evening, and hence needed the cartridge before that. The storekeeper, setting an ultimate example of customer service, promised to get the cartridge ordered from next town, and to deliver at the railway station right at my brother’s seat, before the train’s departure.  And he kept his promise, indeed! All this at a price less than internet’s best price.

In future I am always going to get a quote from Ujjain shops first, for all things that I can get from there.

Google does it yet again!! Picassa Updates.

Though I am a bit late to notice this, but is worth sharing. Picassa for Web now supports:

1. Name tagging like Orkut, using your Gmail contacts.
2. Email upload.
3. A shiny new GUI.
4. And introduces Picassa 3 software, with some improvements to photo editing features.

I am not detailing it here, because the experts have themselves done it on Gmail and Picassa blogs. And finally here is a link detailing the differences between Picassa 2.7 and 3.0 beta.

 

Google does it again. Experimental iGoogle features.

Google is constantly changing its products. First it was Google Talk Labs Edition, then the hyped browser Chrome, and now they have put in some innovation and cool user interface in their personalized (for users) Google page called iGoogle.

This is still in experimentation, meaning, not everybody will be able to see this version of the iGoogle web page. But a few users have been invited by Google to use this experimental web page when they log in. (and that includes lucky me !!). Full story can be read on Google Support page.

The USP of this new interface are rounded boxes (called canvas view gadgets) on the Home page for various applications added onto iGoogle by the user. Any box can be maximized to view the full application in its own frame within iGoogle page. Also iGoogle has a left navigation to tab through each of the frames / pages of application added onto iGoogle. These boxes can be dragged and dropped to change their location on the Home page, can be collapsed, maximized and customized.

So now I can have all my favourite web applications, web sites, news feeds, jokes, weather forecast, Gmail, Gtalk and many more added as boxes to my iGoogle webpage and use them from a single window. I can also set iGoogle as my home page to have quick access to all my favourite web sites at once.

Did I mention GTalk, yes the best part of this new interface is that it also provides a separate tab in the left navigation for chatting using Google services. And now since base code of Gmail is supported on IE6 as well, you can go invisible while chatting from iGoogle irresepective of the IE version you are using. Great !! What else could I ask for. However as of now the Gtalk tab is not available to all who have access to the new iGoogle. Google says, there are still some bugs with this, which they are working upon. For me, I do not have the Gtalk on my iGoogle as yet.

All of this is what makes me a die hard Google “Bhakt”. I only wish Google to call more and more users to experience the new iGoogle, and to make the chatting tab available to all.

Here is a sneak preview of the new iGoogle, for those who do not have access to it yet:

 

What my peers do

Many of my colleagues are fresh from college. With the zeal and enthusiasm they bring to the workplace, it is real fun, any day at work. One of them is not satisfied with his job, and is preparing for interviews and aptitude tests. Though I am good (I believe so atleast), I was bowled with his this question:

“How to remove the duplicates in a sorted array and return the number of unique elements in linear time and constant space…”

For once, I was not sure, if it was a technical question from one of those data structure concepts, or an aptitude quiz, or a jibe taken at me.

These lads sure are smart.

 

My take on Indian IT Industry

Well it is not just about recession, layoffs and mergers. There is more to know about the very basics. Read on…

It’s fortunate that the skill, intellect and competency of the Indian Youth have landed us in such a remarkable position in the world. Millions of us riding high on this boom and earning our bread, but let me point out that we are not just earning our bread but also flaunting our riches.

This boom like any other has had its peaks and troughs. And we have witnessed it. But more recently a silent change is creeping into our lives unnoticed and not thought of. Are we prepared for that? Are we trained for that?

Let me be more clear on this. Who was your best buddy in college (ok at least for the assignments sake), I bet it would have been some geek proficient in C/C++/Java able to dole out lines of code at slightest provocation and with a built in memory chip having references to all libraries and source codes from the latest release of the language.

What were the languages we were taught while in graduation? C, C++, java, data structures, algorithms, right? Wasn’t the stress on cracking complex problems using efficient code?

But what are we doing today? Can any one compare the efforts we took in honing our skills to the efforts we put in today designing a form / screen. I guess the answer for most of us would be NO unless we are into R&D.

Has any one wondered why this has happened? Do they think its good to be lazy once we have secured a job? No I guess not. The answer lies in the fact the outsourcers have heavily stared relying on proven architectures and reusable codes for dependable and robust enterprise systems and minimum development time thus reducing costs.

So have any of us wondered, why native libraries are disappearing, why Visual C++ took over traditional C? Why Microsoft comes with a new version for Dot net every now then expanding its class library? Why java is also approaching newer levels of standardization?

The fact is that Programming Languages are shifting more and more away from the binary and approaching levels of human intellect. Work done by any human today is encapsulated and shipped into a new version release tomorrow, so that newer generation has lesser and lesser piece of code to write each time.

The architectures and platforms are growing larger and larger with each passing day, and the onus on programmers today is just to reuse proven efficient code.

The question here is that should schools and colleges now teach C# and J2ee, Oracle Apps instead of C and basic SQL to students? Won’t it make them industry ready in much smaller time than ever before and prepare them for emerging trends? Or will it seriously curb the analytical and problem solving / coding skills of graduating studs, thus enslaving them to architectures.

We need to introspect, because the time has come to innovate at a totally new level, reduce costs, and move up the value chain, to kill competition from newer bases for IT.