Is the 'Hot'mail man heating things up again?

My cousin TP just happened to mention blogeverywhere.com Sabeer Bhatias new venture. It would be difficult to call the idea novel or something new. Im sure we have all come across it in one form or the other.

So i just thought i'll dig up a little more into what else he is up to these days..

And here's a few links i found after an initial probe...


Navin.com, India's largest provider of Voice Mail services

BlogEverywhere.com, allows you to read and write comments on any web page as you surf the net. Also has a Hotmail enhancer that allows email downloading for better performance and an Outlook-like preview function that allows an entire mail message to be viewed directly in the Inbox.

InstaColl.com, a contextual collaboration solution.

Hotseasons.com, a travel website that will focus on hotel ratings.

VoiFi.com, a project using VOIP

telixo.com, A project that turns your mobile phone into a personal organiser

Things do seem to be hotting up again for Mr Hotmail.. :)

IBNLive : Live Video Feeds!!!

IBNLive has a live video news feed thats comes in two options Low Res and High Res. If you are on a broadband the service is really good.

But what really takes the cake is that ibnlive is not charging you for this live video. Its absolutely free and is as good as watching the channel itself.

Not sure if this is intended to remain this way or its just an attempt to grab some eyeballs from sites like ndtv.com etc.

In fact while i was at it, just realised the number of sites offering video services.

I could name a few on the fly like google videos, youtube, videosift, Break. Im sure a search on google will get you plenty more. There are plenty of sites being built around these services. For example VideoDL is an excellent site that lets you download videos from google videos, youtube and break.

And the news is, that Amazon will be joining the fray soon with its unbox service. This would be a service based on windows media player and DRM, letting you purchase or rent videos from its site. The service will ofcourse need to compete with the likes of iTunes and indirectly with services like netflix and blockbuster.

Three weeks of solitude

The last few weeks in Brussels have been amazing. I have had nothing to do on the weekends. No work!!! no social engagements and no phone calls. Phew!!! Dont i sound like a busy man???
.. well i've been really busy doing nothing much in particular.
So i've been sleeping, watching TV and browsing the net in peace. The only work!!! i have to do is the laundry. But over the last 3 weeks, even this process has been audited and tuned, to maximize efficiency and minimise time and effort. Phew!! i can justify that management degree now..

So i've also had the time to catch up with whats been happening around me. There's plenty as usual. Almost overwhelming infact to digest all at once. But the good thing is i have started digging in.

Just noticed a few weeks back, that google has added their services to the top of your gmail account. Its a pretty kewl idea especially if they can integrate all their services and provide access to all of these through one's mail account. But they have indeed taken the right step forward yet again.

Hope to see u guys here more often now.

Cheerio..

The Belgian Golden Boy

Well i've been moving again... Bangalore to hyderabad and now in Brussels, Belgium.. the land of chocoloates, diamonds..

But thats not what this is about... This is bout the pissing boy...

For those who thought Tintin was the golden boy.. he he you ought to see this to believe it...

This dude is one hell of a popular guy...

check him out.. i have been told u should NOT miss it if you are in belgium..

Software Production Lines

Having been a part of the software industry in the last 2 years, I could not help noticing a radical change thats taking place in the industry. The pronounced impact of this change is on the developers and those that are still playing technically inclined and find themselves in the software services industry.

Gone are the days when an Architect was required to have an understanding of all the technologies involved and the developer needing to be skilled enough to deliver the solution. We are walking into the SOA age and developers are working on very high level languages.

Some of the tools that i have had a chance to work on like TIBCO BW, SAP XI or an Oracle BPEL PM and many more on the same lines like Savvion, Pega, Fuego, Staffware etc that are in the market, provide you with GUI's and require you to just drag and drop images and build entire flows.

With SOA coming into the picture and each application / end point being exposed as a web service, enterprise integration is just a matter of dragging and dropping a sequence of activities in the right order. What would normally take a design phase and almost 10 days of development can now be completed within 30 minutes. Ofcourse this is not to say these products are perfect and do not introduce any bugs, but what they have achieved is the ability to produce mass software within no time.

This has helped software service providers to set up a software development production line where you can deploy a huge number of resources and can still develop exactly the same quality of software rapidly.

Will knowledge still have a say in the years to come? Or will it just be a software production line with yet another 'resource' being required to meet deadlines.

If the count is all that is going to matter, India and China certainly have a lot to look forward to.

B2B

Yes, Back 2 Bangalore. Got here a few weeks back and waiting to catch up with life et al. Something that i havent done in the last few months.

Just want to thank all u guys(yes,even the fellows who come here and post ad's), for visiting whats been a dead blog over the last few months.