Objective is to keep track of what all I am working on at the moment.

Monday, April 25, 2005

ColorCombos.com - Web Color Combinations Tool and Library

Welcome to ColorCombos.com. This site was built to help web developers quickly select and test color combinations.

The heart of the site is the Combo Tester, which allows web developers to see how different color combinations work together on the screen.

If you are looking for Color Combination ideas, check out the Combo Library.

ColorCombos.com - Web Color Combinations Tool and Library

Site for Web Color combos

I wish we had found this site earlier. Anyways we can use this in future
:)
Regards
HimS

Date: Sun, 24 Apr 2005 14:39:14 +0530
From: Manoj Vijayan
Subject: Site for web color combos

Welcome to ColorCombos.com. This site was built to help web developers
quickly select and test color combinations.

The heart of the site is the Combo Tester, which allows web developers
to see how different color combinations work together on the screen.

If you are looking for Color Combination ideas, check out the Combo
Library.

www.ColorCombos.com

21 Rules of Thumb: How Microsoft develops its Software

Jim McCarthy's 21 Rules of shipping great software on time:David Gristwood's WebLog : 21 Rules of Thumb � How Microsoft develops its Software

Monday, February 28, 2005

IBM Emerging Technologies Toolkit FAQ

IBM Emerging Technologies Toolkit: talks about web services etc. The tool kit by IBM provides the basic software components needed to design, develop, and execute emerging autonomic, web services, and grid-related technologies.

Friday, January 28, 2005

E-Mail Bounce Management

E-Mail Bounce Management is the requirement of the industry. Especially our customers whose email campaign volumes reaches thousands of electronic communications per day.
Bounced emails, have the potential of not only putting the system out of gear, but also increases the email costs for the user (Hosting charges per mail box fee with a constraint of how many emails you can recieve and send)
Hence we should strive to handle this OOTB.

Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Marketing ideas

What is the goal of a company? To make money for its owners.
How to make money? By selling products
How to make more money? By selling more products
What if the market does not buy more product? Redefine the market by either investing in engg to make develop more products or by repackaging the existing product such that the benefit offered by the packaging outweighs the existing products in the same market.

Well Apple seems to be doing exactly that by coming out with a headless mac. They are trying to address the complaint that Apple is unaffordable. At $499, it is definitely affordable.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Open Source marketing

Ever wondered how an Open Source project which gives away a free download of their product market themselves?
Well here is one idea:
"If you got a bunch of big titted chicks to run naked around a public domain (say times square or buckingham palace) with "Firefox" scrawled over their tits it would: 1.Gain massive exposure 2.Make every man switch to Firefox (and a few women too) 3. Make me very happy. What do you think? Im working on an idea for a tv ad that works on the same principle but on a trampoline" (http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/6518)

Not exactly how it would happen though...It is interesting to see how a product (which like phoenix, literally, risen from the ashes of Netscape), has collected over $250,000 as donations for funding its marketing campaign.

What is all the more interesting is that it is creating an ecosystem out there for Open Source products, foot steps others can follow to fight in the market. Check out http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ a place where volunteers, in the true spirit of Open Source movement collaborate in creating marketing communities.

Regards
HimS

Monday, October 04, 2004

Product Pricing Primer

A very nice article on product pricingProduct Pricing Primer

Eric provides a collection of issues to consider when making decisions about the price of software products

Wednesday, September 29, 2004

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

IDC report on VoIP adoption

According to IDC the hosted IP voice services is expected to reach $60 Mn by end of 2004 and to grow with a CAGR of 282% to reach $7.6 Mn by 2008

Friday, September 24, 2004

Call Centers Charging for service

Analyst say that this wont catch as a wild fire, but I definitely think it will as more and more companies try to push their users to web self service. Only the terminlogy will differ. instead of saying taht they will charge you for serving over phone, they will say that they will give you a discount if you opt for Self service.
And I am sure it will catch up in a big way.

I am wondering why cant they use phone self service? agreed it is costlier than web self service, but definitely it is a good option.

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

Global Broadband Marketshare

Global Broadband Tops 123M UK has 1/3 net users using broadband(DSL+cable modem)

Friday, September 17, 2004

Thursday, September 16, 2004

Bandwidth consumption of a VoIP call?

Click here for details.
Summary:
Codec BR NEB
G.711 64 Kbps 87.2 Kbps
G.729 8 Kbps 31.2 Kbps
G.723.1 6.4 Kbps 21.9 Kbps
G.723.1 5.3 Kbps 20.8 Kbps
G.726 32 Kbps 55.2 Kbps
G.726 24 Kbps 47.2 Kbps
G.728 16 Kbps 31.5 Kbps
iLBC 15 Kbps 27.7 Kbps

BR = Bit rate
NEB = Nominal Ethernet Bandwidth (one direction)

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

voip-info.org : Linux

Start Page for Open Source VoIP developments

GnomeMeeting - A window to the world...

GnomeMeeting is an opensource application, which delivers same functionality as Skype.

People at Gnome meeeting have scathing comments for Skype. Sample this:
The main problem is not that the program is not Open Source, the problem is that Skype is locking users into a proprietary protocol. Would you imagine the Internet with a proprietary equivalent to the HTTP protocol that only a given client could browse? That's what happens with Skype. Skype also has a great marketing force, some people even think that Skype has a superior audio quality. How could Skype have a superior quality when it is using the same codec (iLBC) than software like GnomeMeeting while introducing more latency by making calls go through a 3rd party? The only real advantage of Skype is that it is easily going through any type of NAT, using a 3rd user to proxy the call. But the day when the Linux kernel NAT will natively support H.323 or SIP, Skype will have lost its only advantage... Skype is hype...

This is really interesting.
Lets evaluate Gnomemeeting.

Friday, September 03, 2004

SIMPLE or XMPP

XMPP, is a ratified standard from IETF to allow IM interoperability. Jabber, IBM's Sametime work using XMPP. The industry is abuzz with rumours that Google is about to bring out their IM application in the market (Google recently acquired Picasa which has an IM client called Hello, working on proprietary standards, which allows users to share photos...I guess Google's offering will be an extension of this along with Blogger, gmail and search. Probably they will come up with interoperatability between Gmail and their IM client which will be a breakthrough).

At the same time, MS announced that its MS LCS will be an open standards based client, which will work using another protocol called SIMPLE. Now 1. SIMPLE is not yet ratified by IETF (i do not understand why they have two separate standards XMPP and SIMPLE)
2. MS's LCS is a part implementation of SIMPLE just like IE doesnt respect standards ( I guess tehy want to do the same thing to IM landscape as to what their IE did to NS).
3. Google's implementation of XMPP will fragment this space once again. There was some light at the end of tunnel after years of heated debate and frustrations, when AOL and Yahoo announced that their IM systems will interoperate with MS LCS
I dont think people will convert enmasse to Google, but yes, users of Blogger/gmail will start using this as an alternate as it will provide better functionality. (For example since I use Google to search and blogger as my webmail, Google toolbar became an obvious choice as compared to yahoo toolbar)

Jabber however has announced that it will develop a SIMPLE to XMPP gateway (why have two protocols in the first place?)
I am not a history buff, but I would love to know how email evolved? Comments anyone?

One potential application of SIMPLE is for devices to do presence detection. Fo example with the mobile revolution came the frustration of getting calls at any time of the day or night (yeah Alok, I know you well) (BTW, do not try this with me as when I am sleeping I switch off my mobile phone). Now the problem with mobile is that it being more personal, ppl do not think twice before calling you as they would have with a POTS.
Imagine the possibility that if I could update my status on the mobile phone, and anybody who has me in his phone list/address book can get that information on his mobile phone. It will really solve one big problem and it would give a better convenience to the users.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act

You can find the full text of Sarbanes-Oxley at http://vscpa.com/Advocacy/SOtext.htm , and the most relevant sections for IT teams are nicely summed up in 'How CIOs Should Prepare for Sarbanes-Oxley' at http://www2.cio.com/analyst/report2271.html"