Disruption

Dear Readers,

As you may have noticed, my frequency of updating the site has gone down significantly. The reasons are two-fold

1. I am currently spending an insane amount of time developing a Test Automation Framework for my Company. It is a complex and difficult problem which automatically means I am really passionate about it.  My goal is to reach the quality and flexibility of the industry leader, “Google”. Considering that its a high goal, you can imagine the  amount of time and effort going into the task. You will appreciate the effort better especially if you have been following the testing gods at the Google Testing Blog.

2. I am participating as a lead Actor and Dancer in a Charity Show for the Berkeley Chapter of Asha, a Charitable organization. The event is going to be in July and is going to take a significant amount of preparation from a team of about 35 singers/dancers/actors. If we can accomplish this successfully, we will be able to raise around 5000$ which will go towards the education of underprivileged Children.  I feel very strongly about the cause and I can’t not do it.  If anyone in the audience feels the same and wants to contribute please drop me a line at : nikitph (at) gmail.com and I will get you on board the effort.

I apologize for the inconvenience. You can in the meanwhile get your byte of technology on Techcrunch or engadget

Perimity: Something you should always keep in your perimeter

There are many disagreements in this world. But what everybody agrees on is that location based services are gonna be the basis of web 3.0. Withe the incubation of smartphones, it has become increasingly clear that mobile phones are the next frontier of monetization. Although there are a number of iphone apps and a number of other services provided by major players like google and yahoo, none of them provides truly local information. In all this clutter, a new services is germinating in Bangalore India. Called perimity, this startup aims to take location based services to a new level.  And in all probability they will succeed. The Indian mobile phone market is way ahead of other countries. What the market lags in is added services. data plans are exorbitantly priced. If perimity optimizes the data usage and is able to succeed in India, they would not only have conquered a major market but also passed the stress test of their application. The service is still in private Alpha. However do head over here in case you want to sign up for an invite. We will be following it very closely. So stay tuned for more information.

Yahoo to reject microsoft Bid

CNN money is reporting that yahoo might well be on its way to rejecting the 40 billion dollar bid from microsoft. The decision could have huge consequence on the cat and mouse game between microsoft and google. Google will definitely breath easy hearing this news. Inspite of being the market leader in search a combined microsoft-yahoo alliance would definitely be formidable for google. So there is no better news that could make google happier at this moment ( except perhaps winning the FCC bid for 700Mhz spectrum.) Microsoft could either be forced to increase its bid or to drop the idea altogether. Given the state of the US debt market, option one seems pretty unlikely. Hence microsoft will probably have to work on its own in order to build its online services arsenal against google.  Seems like we might have to wait for some time to see Yahoo and microsoft shake hands on Yahoo live.

Yahoo!! Live

Yahoo has just launched a new service called Yahoo Live. It allows users to stream live feed from their webcams to a dedicated webpage. The service is pretty similar to existing services offered by justin.tv, Ustream.tv and mogulus. We havent been able to test it out as of now. The site is experiencing a ton of technical issues. Head over to Techcrunch.com if you are interested in some screen shots. I hope they sort out their technical difficulties before the CEO’s of Yahoo and microsoft say cheese while shaking hands with each other on the day of their merger. May be we will catch it live on yahoo live!!

Good Work Issuu

Have you ever wanted to view a PDF in a manner which was extremely slick and did not clash your browser everytime you wanted to access it on there? Well apparently Issuu has understood our issues and has come up with an excellent online PDF viewer. The viewer is excellent ( Follow the open publication link below to see the viewer in its full glory). All you gotta do is upload your file to issuu.com and they will give you a ton of options. Right from the ability to embed it on popular social networking websites (Finally somebody has understood that orkut is a popular social networking website) to setting the viewer size and background. It is pretty slick. The service should gain some traction. It deserves that.

Lunarr: online collaboration suite!!! yawn!!!

Lunarr is a newly launched online collaboration suite yet another online collaboration suite. With a Wiki style editing functionality it promises to bring a different twist to online document editing. Their intentions are innovative but they are entering a very crowded and highly competitive area. With offerings from google and tons of other companies,( expect one from microsoft live services soon) Lunarr has very limited scope. But its worth checking out. So all those of you who havent got tired of a new online collaboration suite very now and then , here’s Lunarr to you. Its definitely worth a try.

Yahoo-microsoft merger: Some thoughts

Todays internet stands on three pillers: yahoo, google and microsoft. When two of these superpowers plan to merge you know something is up. So what is up? its google’s search market share.Google currently controls as much as 75% of the world’s search market. For those of you who discount that leading the search market share in not a big deal, there are other things that need consideration you are slightly mistaken. Search corresponds to advertising dollars and hence makes it the most viable source of income for any kind of online service provider. Other online communication tools such as email and IM and VOIP though extremely well utilized are way behind in terms of monetization. Hence search is the single most dynamic and well monetized entity on the internet. So if a well established company ( read microsoft) lags behind a relatively new player ( google) so miserably , what does it do? well it first tries to ramp up its own offerings by pumping cash and manpower to catch up with google. but when it fails at that too, it has no option but to pump more cash and buy an established player on its downhill curve. That is what is going on here with the offer of microsoft to buy yahoo. But its not all negative, this buyout will create a much needed competition in the search arena and some other areas. Afterall without competition what we are gonna get is yet another microsoft by the name of google.

Mint: I like it

There is a new service in town. its called mint…….and its GOOOOD …….It takes care of ur finances at a single centralized space. It first asks you to give ur ID and password for all your accounts. As soon as you do, it downloads ur entire transaction history from the various accounts. And then u r all set. It tells you of upcoming deadlines, your cash versus debt ratio and special offers in order for you to save money. In my testing I had to try repeatedly to link my accounts for like 2 hours. But that was the only negative side in my entire experience. Its the most useful tool I have seen in a while.Definitely worth a try.

Crysis, The next generation in gaming

This game is gonna be big!!! watch the preview right here.

Coghead- helps you build applications online

coghead, a new service released by the redwood city CA based company allows you to build database driven applications and (hold your breath) online!!! The domain previously held by desktop based programs seems to be under threat by a number of new startups. The ones worth mentioning are zohocreator and wyaworks.
coghead is pretty intuitive to use and utilizes a very slick user interface. We will keep you updated with the latest from this domain. Meanwhile put your head in coghead.