Category: Tech and Culture

This webpage has got to be the best potential opportunity advertisement I have ever seen on the Internet. Truly remarkable. There’s not much crap, is straight to the point, tells the student that the company has something great going for it, and most importantly, tells a lot about their work culture in very few words.

Which software engineer/developer/architect/designer doesn’t like to spend long hours toiling in front of the computer at the wee hours of the morning? This company offers the promise of that sweet self-inflicted torture along with the benefit of location. Excellent marketing. The company offers free accomodation, free food, free entertainment, free sodas, and access to a plethora of nightspots. I am sure even Google doesn’t offer all that to their interns.

Now, if only I were in college.

Link: http://www.fogcreek.com/Jobs/SummerIntern.html

What’s different about this post is that although it is being composed on my laptop, the Internet connectivity is provided by my cellphone. I have to admit, the feeling of being able to surf the Internet wherever your cellphone takes you is very nice. I have actually never used my phone’s GPRS (it doesn’t support the faster EDGE) capabilities to do anything more than use Google Local on it, or periodically check my emails while on the move/highway.

The setup using my Sony Ericsson S710a software was pretty straightforward, and once I have the requisite bluetooth modem driver, I can just setup a regular dial-up connection in Windows to connect to the Internet instantaneously. Cingular’s coverage is awesome, and although there are periods when the GPRS fails, the connection is overall pretty rigid, and FAST!

I can’t wait for this technology to mature more and eventually reach critical mass. Once that happens, I could see companies like Microsoft literally making cars with operating systems being navigated through the Internet. Not just navigation, a fast pervasive Internet means a breadth of services like customized “Waypointing”, family tracking, and even sharing media with other family members on the go. I have always prophesized Microsoft manufacturing cars in some way, and a pervasive Internet could just be the driver for that initiative, especially when the car is becoming more like a general purpose customizable Dell hardware piece with lots of embedded/special purpose software that controls everything from the brakes to the cooling.

Sometimes, I feel like getting trained to be an effective visionary!

I was reading the latest issue of FirstMonday, when I came across an interesting statistic. Apparently, approximately 60 million Americans use search engines to find information on the Internet every day. Nothing wrong with that, you say. But, how’s this for another statistic; there are about 204 million Internet users in America! This is about 68% of the total population.

So, where do the rest 144 million Americans go for information on the Internet? Now, this statistic could mean a few things:

1. Most Americans don’t use the Internet daily!
2. Most Americans know where to find what they’re looking for!
3. Most Americans don’t look for information online.
4. The statistic is completely wrong.

I am not sure what is the case here, but it is interesting to note that statistics can be fairly amusing at times!

I love to talk about jobs and hiring practices. Political issues notwithstanding, every country is facing a serious deficit of qualified people. As such, companies are having to deal with these shortages in innovative ways.

I just came across this article on Yahoo! News about an Indian headhunter using a “Speed Dating” technique to hire people. Although, this is not the first time that such a format has been used to hire people, I see more companies doing something like this than ever before. Now, of course, I would love to dwell on the benefits and drawbacks of such a hiring technique, but I am sure that would lead us to nowhere, especially since established studies have proved that traditional interviewing techniques are more a failure than actually effective.

I believe that in the software development, especially the backoffice arena, qualifications are not as important as the actual motivation for getting the job. Writing mundane code is like speaking in a foreign language. Even if you suck at it, there will always be quick ways around to help you overcome those drawbacks. What the “speed dating” technique does is help the recruiter get a quick first impression about your motivation, core skills, and your seriousness about the opportunity. Then, if both the participants sense a match in objectives, they communicate further and basically seal the deal.

I take special interest in the JobsBlog, and have time and again commented on stories pertaining to the evolution of recruiting at big software companies. This one instance, my comment was also quoted by a Microsoft recruiter!

It would be great to see the Internet, coupled with established social norms play a much more dominant role in hiring people.

The telephony techscape is heating up with newer technologies being revealed almost everyday, and the POTS companies struggling to exist. VoIP is nothing new, and I, personally, have been using it since around 1999 when I first made my Internet voice call to the US. What’s really happening right now is the emergence of global open standards making it easy for new players in the arena to set up shop.

Skype has been around for quite some time and holds the most prominent position in Internet telephony. But, it suffers from the fact that it still uses proprietary technology, and is closed in many respects, restricting the users of other open standards based software to connect to their gateways. Nonetheless, they do have a sound business model.

I had the chance to use a relatively new service called Gizmo Project a couple of days ago. What distinguishes it from Skype is its implementation of open standards (including Jabber for IM), although the main client software itself is closed. Users get a free area code 775 US telephone number that could be used by regular POTS/cellular phone subscribers to connect to a Project Gizmo user for free. In addition, users have the option of paying a monthly/pay-by-use fee to forward/transfer their incoming calls to a regular phone number across the globe.

My experience up until now has been excellent, and I actually like the simple yet functional interface. The sound quality is great as well. Gizmo Project provides the cheapest calls to regular phones in the US at 1 cents a minute. International calls are not competitively priced, and this is where Yahoo! Messenger/Dialpad steals the show. Toll free calls (8**) incur no charge at all, and provide a great way to communicate when you’re travelling internationally.

The most phenomenal aspect of this software is its use of open standards, which means that it can connect to a multitude of SIP enabled networks, all for free! It is worth mentioning that almost all universities across the globe use open SIP gateways, which means you could use Gizmo Project to talk for free internationally! A lot of businesses are also investing in open SIP gateways. I see a complete Internet telephony enabled talk-space within a couple decades from now. Cell-phone networks stand no chance in the light of pervasive Internet and mature VoIP telephony.

That said, I would still wait for Yahoo!’s latest messenger to come out of beta stage before passing any final judgment. Yahoo! has a lot of tricks up its sleeve, and has just licensed the best VoIP codec technology for use in its messenger software. With its competitive pricing, it could very well emerge as the winner in this battle for a very long time.

Interesting times indeed!

A lot can be said about someone from the way they talk, express their opinions, and describe themselves. The Internet has evolved. We now have speeds that enable videoconferencing. Most of the voice communications is handled through VoIP streams these days. It makes perfect sense to use these interactive technologies in looking for a job.

A resume is the basic form of applying for a job. You market your core skills, brag about your interpersonal skills, and write about your achievements. Most companies now get more resumes by email than any other medium like fax or snail mail. A lot of hiring managers/recruiters at large corporations are also facing challenges in keeping up with the influx of resumes, and research has shown that most resumes do a very poor job at protraying the real candidate.

Imagine a scenario where your electronic job application is a software executable with a small video window and interactive text. You can actually make a better impression by recording a customized video and then highlighting it with scrolling text. Something like a powerpoint presentation. It would help recruiters in avoiding all that mess of garbled words that they so lovingly often ignore depending on the time of the day and their current mood. JobsBlog had an example a few days ago where someone got a job at Microsoft just by making a very powerful Powerpoint presentation instead of sending in a resume.

Truly, this needs to be made easy for all the non-techies out there to really be pushed into mainstream job search techniques. A standard is needed, and thus a feature-full software suite. Any venture capital people out there want to give me finance? Email me for a proposal!

I have been using XM Satellite Radio for about the last month or so. I have to say that it is actually a giant leap forward in radio programming, and I am addicted to its programming. The fact that I can easily tune into any kind of music or talk radio programming is very enticing. Not to mention the commercial free music. The hardware is also revolutionary, and I use a receiver that works in my car, home, as well as in my pocket. Satellite radio is here to stay. Bye bye regular FM.

Or not?

Is satellite broadcasting the ultimate in “national area” digital transmission? I can count some things that satellite radio lacks at present:

1. There is no way to send user statistics back to XM Radio to help them calculate demand for a particular genre.
2. It is non-interactive.
3. I still cannot listen to anything on demand.
4. The number of channels is strictly limited in proportion with the broadcast quality. There is little room for expansion unless a new codec comes out.
5. Any technological changes/innovation would result in making the current breed of receivers obsolete (read inability to update firmware).
6. It is still not global, and is fairly expensive to deploy, although the costs diminish once the systems are in place.
7. Satellite transmission is not enough. There are terrestrial repeaters throughout the nation that broadcast the digital channels to crowded urban areas, i.e., a generous land based infrastructure is still required to provide coverage.

There are many more drawbacks of this technology. In a way, satellite radio companies (2 at this time – XM and Sirius) have deployed a terrestrial network not unlike a mobile communications company. This is because each of these repeaters has only a limited range and uses a freuquency not very far away from those used for cellular communications.

Now, when we talk about anything digital, the first thing that comes to the mind is the Internet. It is the world’s biggest digital network that reaches almost every point on Earth. I, for one, believe that the Internet is the best content delivery mechanism for anything digital.

Could Internet radio ever take over satellite radio? I believe the answer is yes. The Internet is duplex, and has the potential to provide many more services than just radio, for example. The way I look at it, Satellite radio is just a transitionary phase from FM to nearly pervasive digital radio based on the Internet. Already, there are companies with plans to blanket the nation with high speed wireless networks that connect to the Internet. All that is needed is a “peaceful” way to establish internetwork traffic and tariffs.

From a content provider’s view, I could focus solely on content rather than the underlying infrastructure if I use the Internet as a delivery vehicle. This also opens up the business so that there are more competitors, and better choice for the consumer. In fact, Internet radio obliterates almost every drawback I enumerated earlier. But, I believe it is still quite far away, and until then I am going to enjoy my XM Satellite Radio!

I have been spending all my gaming time playing with Kameo lately (as in controlling her on the TV :-P), and should be done with it pretty soon. Definitely one of the best video games I have every played. Great graphics, too.