Proxy Switcher is such a convenient tool

Filed Under (Technology) by Rajesh Kumar on 28-02-2007

If you chugg your laptop along across your company’s locations in different cities or buildings, chances are that you may need to change the proxy server settings in your browser to access the internet, which at times can be such a pain. Even if you do not need to do so, chances are that you are using your laptop with a proxy in your office and direct connection while in Hotels or at Home.

Proxy switcher is one cool utility that helps you take the pain out of the whole process of remembering and changing proxy server settings.

All you have to do is let the tool know about the different proxies with location identification such as Locations Office A, Office B and so on.Proxy Switcher sits in your system tray and changes the proxy settings at the click of a button.The biggest appeal of Proxy Switcher is its ability to switch proxy on the fly across Internet Explorer, Opera and Firefox. To use on Firefox for example, as a one time action, set the browser proxy to locahost and port as 3128.

Goodbye Ford for Thousands?

Filed Under (Business) by Rajesh Kumar on 28-02-2007

Feb 28 is the day not just being watched in Dearborn or at Wall Street, but across the world.Every analyst worth his salt expects some major announcement on this day regarding restructuring of Ford under CEO Alan Mulally. It is also the last day for possibly thousands of Ford employees, who opted for the buyout package for which they had Feb 19th to sign up. The management will possibly also try to portray the ‘new Ford’ or whatever, it sure will be a painful new day for many of Ford’s long time employees.While the analysts world over focus on the market movements and meltdowns, folks in Dearborn and elsewhere near Ford’s plants are possibly least bothered, with Ford its rock bottom share value has possibly nothing more to loose at Wall Street, but lot of human capital to be lost at the plants.What a shame!

Google Apps for Your Domain micro case study

Filed Under (Technology) by Rajesh Kumar on 24-02-2007

Few weeks back I signed up for Google Apps for Your Domain, now called just Google Apps for my college alumni. It was tempting, since we were already holding a domain, and running a WordPress blog hosted by Wordpress.com(via domain integration). We were a little unhappy with Wordpress since it put lot of limitations in our ability to do anything with the scripts, which it does not allow, till you take their software and host it elsewhere. We defined our objective as follows:
  • Keep the blog format(which means we did explore Jumla, Xoops, Drupal for content management, but decided not go forward for the time being ) due to its flexibility and collaborative abilities.
  • We wanted to start email service, without taking too much headaches, and yet wanted the best.
  • Run the blog on the domain
  • Retain flexibility on our ability to play with the html.
We succeeded in some steps quite easily, and learnt some steps the hard way, and yet to figure out some missing ones.

  • Learning One: Domain registrar and domain host are two different animals. Both should clap for your GAFYD to work.Sometimes the same company performs the two roles for you.
  • Learning Two:Don’t look for just low cost domain registrars, look at the flexibility you get.Cheap domains may not allow you to play with CNAME, MX etc and you will be stuck midway.If need be, change your registrar to one who provides comprehensive services. Migration is quite easy, just that it takes few days.
  • Learning Three: Do not try to achieve the email and publishing intergration with Blogger on the same domain, there is no clarity whether it is possible. (It sure appears possible, but does not seem to work in real life)
  • Learning Four: Do not expect Google Staff to respond to every panic email from you, read this page thoroughly and go to discussion forums. Discussion forums may not solve every one of your problem, but atleast you will have the (sadist!) comfort that others have the same problem too.
  • Learning Five: Inline URL frame is your best bet to achieve Blogger integration. However, Google juice will taste differently(meaning it will index yoursite.blogspot.com) and not yoursite.com which is your domain
  • Learning Six: Inline URL frame is crazy too, no matter which internal link the user clicks, the browser will continue to read yoursite.blogspot.com
  • Learning Seven: Migrating hundreds of users on email, have the password logic ready. I felt good using a random number and character combo, which I generated in XL. Worked fine. Do not give the same initial password to all users.
  • Learning Eight: If you are stuck with some registrar who offers only NX level manipulation and you are reluctant to migrate your domain to any other registrar, you also have the option of hiring an intermediary such as Dynamic Network.

On the whole, I give good marks to Google Apps, and though I did not use the Page Creator to host the HTML pages, I did try it and quite liked it. And by the way, our experiences relate to our experiments with this site.
(Google recently launched a Premier Edition of Google Apps, read incisive observations at Digital Inspiration, recently rated Best Science/Technology IndiBlog 2006)

World Cup Cricket Squads at a Glance

Filed Under (Cricket) by Rajesh Kumar on 23-02-2007

There are four groups in the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 and sixteen teams in all.While there are bound to be injury related changes, like the Brett Lee and the threat looming over Irfan Pathan right now, here are all the teams for your quick reference.

Group A:

Australia World Cup Squad:

Ricky Ponting (Capt), Adam Gilchrist, Matthew Hayden, Michael Clarke, Mike Hussey, Brad Hodge, Shane Watson, Andrew Symonds, Brad Haddin, Brad Hogg, Brett Lee( injured, now replaced by Stuart Clark), Mitchell Johnson, Shaun Tait, Nathan Bracken, Glenn McGrath.

South Africa World Cup Squad:

Graeme Smith (Capt), Jacques Kallis (Vice-Capt), Loots Bosman, Mark Boucher, AB de Villiers, Herschelle Gibbs, Andrew Hall, Justin Kemp, Charl Langeveldt, Andre Nel, Makhaya Ntini, Robin Peterson, Shaun Pollock, Ashwell Prince, Roger Telemachus.

Scotland World Cup Squad:

Craig Wright (Capt), Ryan-Watson (Vice Capt),John Blain, Dougie Brown, Gavin Hamilton, Majid Haq, Paul Hoffmann, Douglas Lockhart, Ross Lyons, Neil McCallum, Dewald Nel, Navdeep Poonia, Glenn Rogers, Colin Smith, Fraser Watts.

The Netherlands World Cup Squad:

Luuk van Troost (Capt), Peter Borren, Daan van Bunge, Ryan ten Doeschate, Mark Jonkman, Muhammad Kashif, Alexei Kervezee, Tim de Leede, Adeel Raja, Darron Reekers, Edgar Schiferli, Jeroen Smits, Billy Stelling, Eric Szwarczynski, Bas Zuiderent

Group B

Indian World Cup Squad:

Rahul Dravid (Capt), Sachin Tendulkar, Virender Sehwag, Robin Uthappa, Yuvraj Singh, Sourav Ganguly(Yes!), Dinesh Karthik, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Irfan Pathan, Ajit Agarkar, Anil Kumble, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, S Sreesanth and Munaf Patel.

Sri Lanka World Cup Squad:

Mahela Jayawardene (Capt), Kumar Sangakkara, Sanath Jayasuriya, Upul Tharanga, Marvan Atapattu, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Russel Arnold, Chamara Silva, Chaminda Vaas, Farveez Maharoof, Lasith Malinga, Dilhara Fernando, Nuwan Kulasekara, Muttiah Muralitharan, Malinga Bandara.

Bangladesh World Cup Squad:

Habibul Bashar (captain), Shahriar Nafees, Tamim Iqbal, Aftab Ahmed, Saqibul Hasan, Mohammad Ashraful, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mohammad Rafique, Abdur Razzak, Mashrafe Mortaza, Shahadat Hossain, Tapash Baishya, Syed Rasel, Rajin Saleh, Javed Omar.

Bermuda World Cup Squad:

Irving Romaine (Capt), Dean Minors (Vice Capt), Delyone Borden, Lionel Cann, David Hemp, Kevin Hurdle, Malachi Jones, Stefan Kelly, Dwayne Leverock, Saleem Mukuddem, Stephen Outerbridge, Oliver Pitcher, Clay Smith, Janeiro Tucker, Kwame Tucker.

Group C:

England World Cup Squad:

MP Vaughan (Capt), EC Joyce , IR Bell, AJ Strauss, KP Pietersen , PD Collingwood, A Flintoff , Ravi S Bopara , PA Nixon (Wicket keeper), JWM Dalrymple, Monty Panesar, J Lewis , JM Anderson, LE Plunkett, SI Mahmood.

New Zealand World Cup Squad:

Stephen Fleming (Capt) ,Shane Bond ,James Franklin,Peter Fulton, Mark Gillespie ,Michael Mason, Brendon McCullum, Craig McMillan, Jacob Oram, Jeetan Patel, Scott Styris, Ross Taylor, Daryl Tuffey, Daniel Vettori, Lou Vincent.

Kenya World Cup Squad:

Steve Tikolo (Capt), Thomas Odoyo (Vice-Captain), Ravindu Shah, Tanmay Mishra, Collins Obuya, Peter Ongondo, Nehemiah Odhiambo, Morris Ouma, Malhar Patel, Hiren Varaiya, David Obuya, Rajesh Bhudia, Jimmy Kamande, Tony Suji, Lameck Onyango

Canada World Cup Squad:

John Davison (Capt), Ashish Bagai, Ian Billcliff, Geoff Barnett, Kevin Sandher, Umar Bhatti, Desmond Chumney, George Codrington, Austin Codrington, Andy Cummins, Sunil Dhaniram, Asif Mulla, Henry Osinde, Abdool Samad and Qaiser Ali.

Group D

West Indies World Cup Squad:

Brian Lara (Capt), Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan (Vice-Captain), Chris Gayle, Marlon Samuels, Dwayne Bravo, Dwayne Smith, Kieron Pollard, Denesh Ramdin, Lendl Simmons, Devon Smith, Ian Bradshaw, Jerome Taylor, Corey Collymore and Daren Powell.

Reserves: Daren Sammy, Sylvester Joseph, Dave Mohammed, Fidel Edwards and Runako Morton.

Pakistan World Cup Squad:

Inzamam-ul-Haq (Capt), Younis Khan, Mohammad Yousuf, Imran Nazir, Mohammad Hafeez, Kamran Akmal, Abdul Razzaq, Shoaib Malik, Shahid Afridi, Umar Gul, Danish Kaneria, Rao Iftikhar, Rana Naved, Mohammad Asif, Shoaib Akhtar.

Ireland World Cup Squad:

Johnston (Capt), K McCallan, A Botha, J Bray, K Carroll, P Gillespie, D Langford-Smith, J Mooney, P Mooney, E Morgan, K O’Brien, N O’Brien (wkt), W Porterfield, B Rankin, A White

Zimbabwe World Cup Squad :

Prosper Utseya (captain), Gary Brent, Justice Chibhabha, Elton Chigumbura, Keith Dabengwa, Terry Duffin, Anthony Ireland, Friday Kasteni, Stuart Matsikenyeri, Christopher Mpofu, Tawanda Mupariwa, Edward Rainsford, Vusi Sibanda, Brendan Taylor, Sean Williams.

Also see here: No Day Night Matches this Cricket World Cup ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 all set to roll

Britney Spears and Google's spelling Correction System

Filed Under (Uncategorized) by Rajesh Kumar on 19-02-2007

Google frequently gives suggestions when you run a search suggesting an spelling correction in the search string, which appears something like ‘Did you mean:Britney Spears?‘.

Google has an interesting trivia page around Britney Spears and Google’s spelling correction system. It lists out hundreds of spelling errors people made when they intended to search “Britney Spears” on Google. It also lists out the frequency of such errors in a two month time period(does not say the specific start and end dates though). What is remarkable is the robustness of Google’s spelling correction system in detecting a wide variety of errors.

Now that Britney has gone bald and is again in the news, search for Britney Spears would soar sky high and surfers across the world would benefit tremendously from Google’s spelling correction system. According to GoogleGuide, the system was developed by a bright Google engineer by the name Noam Shazeer.

No Day Night Matches this Cricket World Cup

Filed Under (Cricket) by Rajesh Kumar on 17-02-2007

I was pretty surprised to note that there is not a single match in the day night format this cricket world cup 2007. The official ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 website makes a very innocent one line mention that all matches start at 9:30 AM local time. And never mind the importance of sponsorship monies that getting pumped from India in sustaining ICC and in sustaining cricket itself, ICC website does not provide the match timings in IST. The even more horrible dimension is that the website ‘partner’ is Indya, owned by Star. To rub salt to insult, it provides the same schedule in GMT, where perhaps only a handful of people may be interested in knowing about it.Perhaps for ICC and the likes, the centre of world cricket is still Greenwich meredien. Pretty funny isn’t it?

But atleast the event has a website, unlike BCCI, which has so far not felt the need for a web presence!

WikiCamp Chennai: The Promise of BlogCamp?

Filed Under (Business, Technology) by Rajesh Kumar on 11-02-2007

I knew something was up in the air when Kiruba created Extrabed.in in a wiki format and began talking about wikis more frequently on his blog. Well, I am glad that we have another unconference in Chennai, this time on wikis.Last September’s BlogCamp was a great experience and I feel it will be the same at WikiCamp. 25th Feb is not far away, but if someone tells Jimmy Wales is going to be there, I cannot wait. The big question on Wikipedia’s revenue streams is definitely going to be fielded, but that is not the only reason why we should be there at WikiCamp.Never mind Time Magazine’s announcement of ‘You’ as the person of the year, I know very little of Wiki as a format.See you there guys.

Nanotech for dummies

Filed Under (Technology) by Rajesh Kumar on 10-02-2007

I have been looking for some starter level material to satisfy my curiosity around Nanotechnology, and this morning I cam across a great 42 minute video on this subject at Google Video by Stanford professor of Chinese origin. Prof Yi Cui is Assistant Professor of Material Science at Stanford. He gives this talk in his visit to Google. Not that I undetstood everything, but certainly felt happier having watched the entire video!
Do see the video below.




About Rajesh Kumar. Rajesh is based in Chennai, where he works for Defiance Technologies in Marketing. The views on this blog are his own. Rajesh Kumar