Ashant's Random Word

SOA India 2008, Bangalore

2008-10-10T11:49:00.002+01:00

I'll be speaking at the SOA India 2008 conference in Bangalore on the topic "Europe - The Next Battlefield for Indian IT SME's", and will be in India between 16/11/08 - 22/11/08 (split between Bangalore, Hyd, Delhi and Kolkata).

Further details at http://www.sda-india.com/conferences/soaindia2008/index.php

Story of Stuff

2008-10-04T20:32:00.001+01:00

Corporate Goodwill Index

2008-10-03T10:26:00.003+01:00

Wouldn't it be great to have some kind of an index for companies, especially for big corporation which have an impact on thousands & millions of people, that measure the "goodwill factor" for them. It would be a measure of how the public, or consumers, perceive a certain product or service provider.

German marketing, explained in Cricket language

2008-10-02T08:59:00.002+01:00

Since I'm involved with market development for a number of Indian companies in Germany right now, one thing I have to take many pains to explain to CEO's from India is that the German market takes a long time to deliver, usually never less than 6 months.

This is hard for many CEO's to grasp, as they are have been fairly successful in closing deals in the US/UK markets faster than that. Purchasing patterns of German companies is much much much different than those in US.

In this sense, cracking the German market is like winning a test match, when compared to the US market, which is like an ODI.

Computers & Telescopes

2008-09-02T21:44:00.000+01:00

In der Informatik geht es genau so wenig um Computer, wie in der Astronomie um Teleskope.

Edsger W.Dijkstra

Integrating GeoIP

2008-08-30T14:17:00.004+01:00

Just implemented GeoIP into confero24.com (for currency selection), with help of following resources:

http://htmlblog.net/geolocate-your-visitors-with-php-part-1/
http://www.maxmind.com/app/geoip_country
http://docs.huihoo.com/php/pear/manual/en/package.networking.net-geoip.html

Other possibly useful resources:

http://ip-to-country.webhosting.info/
http://firestats.cc/wiki/ip2c
http://svn.xnull.de/svn/misc/geoip2mysql/

2-Letter Country Codes

http://www.modemsite.com/56k/_ccodes.asp

Who really snubbed Jesse Owens?

2008-08-23T17:14:00.001+01:00

by T V R Shenoy

August 19, 2008

Every four years, when the Summer Olympics hit the headlines, some media outlet or the other mentions the great Jesse Owens and his victories at the 1936 Berlin Games. Inevitably, the story of his famous snubbing by Adolf Hitler when the murderous Nazi dictator refused to shake Owens by the hand, is brought up.

There is just one thing about the story -- it is pure hogwash from beginning to end. And digging up the truth reveals some interesting facts about the United States.

So, what exactly happened in Berlin in 1936? Hitler and his goons were bent on leaving a good impression by crafting the most magnificent spectacle seen till then. (How many people realise that the relay of the Olympic torch from Olympia in Greece to the host country was dreamt up by the Nazis? There was no such 'tradition' before 1936.)

Hitler was at the stadium on the first day of the track and field competition on August 2, 1936. When the German athlete Hans Woellke won the shot put gold medal, the delighted dictator called him into the presidential box to congratulate him in person.

Henri de Baillet-Latour, then president of the International Olympic Committee, politely informed the German dictator that he could either receive all the athletes or none at all; congratulating only German athletes, he said, violated the Olympic spirit. Hitler, who was at his charming best, actually apologised for breaking tradition, and said he, would refrain from singling out athletes of any nation.

This was the origin of the famous 'snub'. Did Adolf Hitler actually insult the famed American athlete? The answer comes from the man best qualified to answer that, Jesse Owens himself.

'When I passed the Chancellor he arose, waved his hand at me, and I waved back at him. I think the writers showed bad taste in criticising the man of the hour in Germany’

Interestingly, Owens did not say that in 1936, he wrote that in 1970, in the book The Jesse Owens Story, at a time when Hitler's monstrosities had been public knowledge for a quarter of a century.

Yet his concern for the truth was great enough that he acknowledged that it was Hitler who arose first to acknowledge the athlete.

So who did 'snub' Jesse Owens? Once again, Owens speaks for himself:

'Hitler didn't snub me -- it was FDR who snubbed me. The president didn't even send me a telegram.'

The 'FDR' mentioned in the quote is Franklin Delano Roosevelt, then president of the United States. 1936 was an election year, and Roosevelt, who was running for re-election, simply did not want to be seen shaking a black man's hand. That might have cost him valuable votes in the southern states.

I am sure American journalists knew the truth. But they did not acknowledge that President Roosevelt, an icon of the liberal media, was such a racist that he could not spend a few minutes in the company of a black man. It made a better story to pin the story on Hitler, who, ironically, had publicly acknowledged Owens.

Owens also said that he was treated far better in Germany than in his own country. At a dinner held for all the victorious American athletes in New York, Owens and the other black athletes were ordered to ride in the freight elevator, used for transporting luggage, because the elevator for guests could not be used by blacks! He was denied all recognition by the American system, and reduced to stunts like running against horses; when he got too old for that, the great athlete worked as a janitor. In 1966 he had to endure the pain of filing for bankruptcy.

The story of Jesse Owens is hardly unique in American sport. A young Muhammad Ali ( then named Cassius Clay) was reputedly refused service in a whites-only restaurant; humiliated, he threw away the gold medal he had won at the Rome Olympics. Later, he refused to be drafted during the Vietnam War, famously declaring, 'I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong, they never called me a nigger.'

The United States has traveled some way since the days of Roosevelt and Owens. In those days, there was a white man in the White House and a black man doing the hard yards out in the stadium. Today, there is a serious chance of a black man sitting in Roosevelt's chair, while a white man is winning accolades for his octet of gold medals.

Sadly, some things never change. In 1936, the press allowed itself to be seduced by Nazi propaganda; sift through the archives, and there is no shortage of admiring reports about the economic and social development of Germany under the Hitler regime. In 2008, there seems to be the same unquestioning admiration for Communist China as for Nazi Germany.

I cannot help reflecting that his athletes achieved one of the aims that Hitler set for them. Germany won 33 gold medals and 89 in all, handily beating the 24 gold medals that fell to the United States (56 in all). When you see the determination with which the Chinese are setting out to beat the United States in the gold count, you cannot help wondering if this dictatorship too will follow the Nazis in other areas too.

Tailpiece: I have long since despaired of Doordarshan's commentators -- why can't we simply get the foreign feed? -- but the national broadcaster hit a new low with the Beijing Games. Even its technical standards have slipped, with comments from the harassed engineers clearly audible over the air, not once but just about every day. And then there was the time that we saw the men's badminton championship match while the audio feed related the tale of the women's diving finals. Simply horrible!

Heart Health Tips from Dr. Devi Shetty, Bangalore

2008-08-17T10:43:00.002+01:00

A chat with Dr.Devi Shetty , Narayana Hrudayalaya (Heart Specialist) Bangalore was arranged.
The transcript of the chat is given below. Useful for everyone.

Qn: What are the thumb rules for a layman to take care of his heart ?
Ans:
1. Diet - Less of carbohydrate, more of protein, less oil
2. Exercise - Half an hour's walk, at least five days a week; avoid lifts and avoid sitting for a longtime
3. Quit smoking
4. Control weight
5. Control blood pressure and sugar

Qn: Is eating non-veg food (fish) good for the heart?
Ans: No

Qn: It's still a grave shock to hear that some apparently healthy person gets a cardiac arrest. How do we understand it in perspective?
Ans: This is called silent attack; that is why we recommend everyone past the age of 30 to undergo routine health checkups.

Qn: Are heart diseases hereditary?
Ans: Yes

Qn: What are the ways in which the heart is stressed? What practices do you suggest to de-stress?
Ans: Change your attitude towards life. Do not look for perfection in everything in life.

Qn: Is walking better than jogging or is more intensive exercise required to keep a healthy heart?
Ans: Walking is better than jogging since jogging leads to early fatigue and injury to joints .

Qn: You have done so much for the poor and needy. What has inspired you to do so?
Ans: Mother Theresa , who was my patient.

Qn: Can people with low blood pressure suffer heart diseases?
Ans: Extremely rare

Qn: Does cholesterol accumulates right from an early age (I'm currently only 22) or do you have to worry about it only after you are above 30 years of age?
Ans: Cholesterol accumulates from childhood.

Qn: How do irregular eating habits affect the heart ?
Ans: You tend to eat junk food when the habits are irregular and your body's enzyme release for digestion gets confused.

Qn: How can I control cholesterol content without using medicines?
Ans: Control diet, walk and eat walnut.

Qn: Can yoga prevent heart ailments?
Ans: Yoga helps.

Qn: Which is the best and worst food for the heart?
Ans: Fruits and vegetables are the best and the worst is oil.

Qn: Which oil is better - groundnut, sunflower, olive?
Ans: All oils are bad .

Qn: What is the routine checkup one should go through? Is there any specific test?
Ans: Routine blood test to ensure sugar, cholesterol is ok. Check BP, Treadmill test after an echo.

Qn: What are the first aid steps to be taken on a heart attack?
Ans: Help the person into a sleeping position , place an aspirin tablet under the tongue with a sorbitrate tablet if available, and rush him to a coronary care unit since the maximum casualty takes place within the first hour.

Qn: How do you differentiate between pain caused by a heart attack and that caused due to gastric trouble?
Ans: Extremely difficult without ECG.

Qn: What is the main cause of a steep increase in heart problems amongst youngsters? I see people of about 30-40 yrs of age having heart attacks and serious heart problems.
Ans: Increased awareness has increased incidents. Also, sedentary lifestyles, smoking, junk food, lack of exercise in a country where people are genetically three times more vulnerable for heart attacks than Europeans and Americans.

Qn: Is it possible for a person to have BP outside the normal range of 120/80 and yet be perfectly healthy?
Ans: Yes.

Qn: Marriages within close relatives can lead to heart problems for the child. Is it true?
Ans : Yes, co-sanguinity leads to congenital abnormalities and you may not have a software engineer as a child

Qn: Many of us have an irregular daily routine and many a times we have to stay late nights in office. Does this affect our heart ? What precautions would you recommend?
Ans : When you are young, nature protects you against all these irregularities. However, as you grow older, respect the biological clock.

Qn: Will taking anti-hypertensive drugs cause some other complications (short / long term)?
Ans : Yes, most drugs have some side effects. However, modern anti-hypertensive drugs are extremely safe.

Qn: Will consuming more coffee/tea lead to heart attacks?
Ans : No.

Qn: Are asthma patients more prone to heart disease?
Ans : No.

Qn: How would you define junk food?
Ans : Fried food like Kentucky , McDonalds , samosas, and even masala dosas.

Qn: You mentioned that Indians are three times more vulnerable. What is the reason for this, as Europeans and Americans also eat a lot of junk food?
Ans: Every race is vulnerable to some disease and unfortunately, Indians are vulnerable for the most expensive disease.

Qn: Does consuming bananas help reduce hypertension?
Ans : No.

Qn: Can a person help himself during a heart attack (Because we see a lot of forwarded emails on this)?
Ans : Yes. Lie down comfortably and put an aspirin tablet of any description under the tongue and ask someone to take you to the nearest coronary care unit without any delay and do not wait for the ambulance since most of the time, the ambulance does not turn up.

Qn: Do, in any way, low white blood cells and low hemoglobin count lead to heart problems?
Ans : No. But it is ideal to have normal hemoglobin level to increase your exercise capacity.

Qn: Sometimes, due to the hectic schedule we are not able to exercise. So, does walking while doing daily chores at home or climbing the stairs in the house, work as a substitute for exercise?
Ans : Certainly. Avoid sitting continuously for more than half an hour and even the act of getting out of the chair and going to another chair and sitting helps a lot.

Qn: Is there a relation between heart problems and blood sugar?
Ans: Yes. A strong relationship since diabetics are more vulnerable to heart attacks than non-diabetics.

Qn: What are the things one needs to take care of after a heart operation?
Ans : Diet, exercise, drugs on time , Control cholesterol, BP, weight.

Qn: Are people working on night shifts more vulnerable to heart disease when compared to day shift workers?
Ans : No.

Qn: What are the modern anti-hypertensive drugs?
Ans : There are hundreds of drugs and your doctor will chose the right combination for your problem, but my suggestion is to avoid the drugs and go for natural ways of controlling blood pressure by walk, diet to
reduce weight and changing attitudes towards lifestyles.

Qn: Does dispirin or similar headache pills increase the risk of heart attacks?
Ans : No.

Qn: Why is the rate of heart attacks more in men than in women?
Ans : Nature protects women till the age of 45.

Qn: How can one keep the heart in a good condition?
Ans : Eat a healthy diet, avoid junk food, exercise everyday, do not smoke and, go for health checkup s if you are past the age of 30 ( once in six months recommended) ...

Database Class/Methods in Zencart

2008-08-17T07:58:00.004+01:00

ZenCart has been a rewrite of OSCommerce, and is a notch above the latter in code quality and features. Database is accessed via a class (includes/classes/db/mysql/). Here's an example of how it can be used.

require ('includes/application_top.php');
$db = new queryFactory();

# DB_SERVER, DB_SERVER_USERNAME etc come from includes/configure.php
$db->connect(DB_SERVER, DB_SERVER_USERNAME, DB_SERVER_PASSWORD, DB_DATABASE, USE_PCONNECT, false);

Baje Sargam

2008-08-15T16:13:00.003+01:00

This is a rare production that summarizes the many dances and music of

Any you thought it was all only about Bollywood numbers? :)

Paris, c’est cheap

2008-08-14T06:14:00.002+01:00

telegraphjournal.com - Paris, c’est cheap

PARIS - Paris may be the most visited city in the world, yet it’s also one of the most expensive.

“This city is worth the price,” says veteran tourist Alex Wadkin, 71, a retiree from Dublin, Ireland, sipping a $6 (U.S.) cup of coffee on the Champs-Élysées.“ If you avoid expensive neighbourhoods – like this one – you’ll do all right. But the key is to plan ahead.”

For travellers on a budget, the choices can be tough: stay in a far-flung suburb and eat a baguette for every meal, or leave happy but broke. Yet for those in the know, there are plenty of cheap – and even free – ways to enjoy the city.

telegraphjournal.com - Paris, c’est cheap

Better to know either Victory or Defeat, rather than knowing neither

2008-08-12T10:22:00.002+01:00

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

— Teddy Roosevelt

Developing Components in Joomla!

2008-08-02T22:29:00.002+01:00

Joomla! is a powerful content management system that has so far successfully helped me to deploy and maintain 2 important websites www.euroblaze.de and www.indescon.org.

Of late we have the requirement at Indescon for automating our membership related business processes, for which I am looking into developing a Joomla! based component.

Necessary developer resources for creating Components in Joomla! can be accessed at:

Articles and Tutorials on developer.joomla.org

The component will likely be developed and released under a suitable OS license. Keep an eye out at my OS space on Google Code.

Bridgeheads

2008-07-26T10:20:00.003+01:00

The term "bridgehead", somewhat accurately defines people who are able to serve as an interface to a professional team from a different culture in the context of multi-cultural global work environments.

In a technical world such as of software the role of culture is often underestimated. Understanding culture is key to understanding behavior, which in turn is key to getting things done together. Bridgeheads have a grasp of multiple cultures, which enables them to understand different lines of thought, and makes them ideal candidates for performing a bridging role in global work groups.

In most cases, however, Bridgeheads have professional experience in two cultures, and they are deployed at two geographically separated locations, working usually on phone, email or IM, speaking different mother-tounges (but having a common language of communication). The bridgeheads connect two teams working towards a single goal.

Two bridgeheads dealing with each other shield a vast amount of complexity beyond themselves. Depending on the size of teams, the level of complexity vary from minor to enormous.

Case Study

Consider for example a team of 4 German software engineers who are relying on a team of 8 software engineers for production in India with the ultimate goal of achieving an e-Commerce product release in the German market. Only one of the 4 German software engineers, Hans, has competence in software project management and has international work experience from UK where he worked for 3 years in a major UK bank.

On the Indian team, 6 of the software engineers are relatively junior with average experience of 3 years, speak no German whatsoever, and speak English with a thick south Indian accent. The other 2 Indian engineers, Kumar and Ashok, are MBA graduates with 4-5 years of careers behind them and hands on experience in software development. They however don't write code actively any longer, but rather participate in pre-sales pitches and manage projects. Both Kumar and Ashok have had experience in managing over 10 projects for overseas customers each, speak a refined English accent, but unfortunately no German.

In this example, we see that we have 3 candidates who qualify for playing the role of Bridgeheads - Hans, Ashok and Kumar.

On the German team, Hans has some international experience which puts him ahead of his 3 colleagues in interfacing with the team in India. It would have been ideal if Hans had previous experience from India, but we have to settle here for the next best thing - his experience from UK. It is quite likely and possible that his inter-cultural experience from UK and Germany has equipped him with the necessary soft-skills to deal with the Indian team.

On the Indian side Ashok and Kumar are ideal to be communication partners to Hans. They have a lot of things in common

international experience
common language they can comfortably talk in, and
management experience

Based on the profiles, Hans is the Bridgehead in Germany for the project and in India, both Ashok and Kumar qualify as Bridgeheads (providing redundancy in case one of them is too over-burdened by other projects or simply absent for a few days). Let's say Ashok and Hans agree to be constant contact-partners.

Typical roles the Bridgeheads play are:

On both sides, the teams communicate issues first to the Bridgehead on their side.
Deadlines are agreed between Bridgeheads - Hans and Ashok
Bridgeheads are responsible for planing deliveries on their side and once decided, make a commitment to the counterpart-bridgehead.
Status updates from India are sent regularly by Ashok to Hans. Hans then runs them by within his team in Germany to check if the project is going in the right direction.
Any feedback from the team in Germany is given to Hans, who passes it on to Ashok, who in turn makes sure that the 6 of his developers understand the feedback. This way, Hans doesn't have to explain feedback to the team of 6, or a few of those 6 who are specifically responsible for implementing that part of the project.
Course corrections are decided by team in Germany in internal meetings and passed on to Ashok via Hans, and Ashok makes sure that his team in India understands 100% what the team in Germany wants.
Requirements are discussed and transfered between bridgeheads.
If any personnel changes are to occur on his team in India, for example a team member quits, Ashok is to make sure to plan for replacement and generally ensure that no interruptions in the project occur. Ashok also communicates these changes on the team to Hans, although nothing is expected from the latter in terms of dealing with the situation at an operative level.

Shielding Complexity

One of the very significant contributions of a bridgehead to the project is to simplify complexities that lie within the teams on each side, so that they don't effect either the team on the other side, or the overall functioning of the project. In the above case study for example, Ashok was responsible for rectifying the situation when a team-member quit, by replacing the person and hence the competence level.

Since the bridgeheads meet and talk to each their teams almost on a daily basis, they are in a better position to identify problems on their side and also device solutions to overcome them. This would not be possible for a remote project manager, for example Hans, who might infact learn of problems and complexities when it is too late to deal with the situation.

Implication of Bridgeheads on Project Budget

Bridgeheads bring a vital competence to benefit of successful implementation of globally distributed projects. A non-trivial cost-overhead is associated with incorporating this competence in projects, usually in the form of a higher billing rate for bridgeheads. This has to be taken into account during project budgeting. Typically bridgeheads cost 20-25% more than technical (offshore or onsite) resources.

Typical Profile of a Bridgehead

We've tried to profile a bridgehead accurately in the above case study. The key competence he brings to the project can be summarized as:

Inter-cultural experience and cultural sensitivity to maximize performance of his team as well as the counterpart team
Sufficient technical background to manage the project.
Sufficient management experience to handle his team, project schedule and deliverable

To understand how the Indian mind works

2008-07-25T08:39:00.003+01:00

An Indian man walks into a bank in New York City and asks for the
loan officer. He tells the loan officer that he is going to India on
business for two weeks and needs to borrow $5,000.

The bank officer tells him that the bank will need some form of
security for the loan, so the Indian man hands over the keys and
documents of new Ferrari parked on the street in front of the bank. He
produces the title and everything checks out. The loan officer agrees
to accept the car as collateral for the loan.

The bank's president and its officers all enjoy a good laugh at the
Indian for using a $250,000 Ferrari as collateral against a $5,000 loan. An

employee of the bank then drives the Ferrari into the bank's
underground garage and parks it there.

Two weeks later, the Indian returns, repays the $5,000 and the
interest, which comes to $15.41. The loan officer says, 'Sir, we are
very happy to have had your business, and this transaction has worked
out very nicely, but we are a little puzzled. While you were away, we
checked you out and found that you are a multi millionaire. What
puzzles us is, why would you bother to borrow '$5,000' ?

The Indian replies: 'Where else in New York City can I park my car
for two weeks for only $15.41 and expect it to be there when I return''

Ah, the mind of the Indian...

Optimist's Creed

2008-07-06T10:06:00.004+01:00

To be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind.
To take health, happiness, prosperity to every person you meet.
To make all your friends feel that there is something of value in them.
To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true.
To think only the best, to work only for the best, and to expect the best.
To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own.
To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future.
To wear a cheerful countenance at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile.
To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others.
To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear, and too happy to permit presence of trouble.

McKinsey projects $56 billion for China's service Industry

2008-05-27T22:04:00.002+01:00

May 2008 -- http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com

China currently accounts for less than 10 percent of the global market for the offshoring and outsourcing of services. Yet McKinsey research—including interviews with officials at many Chinese government agencies, executives at Chinese leading services providers, and managers at Chinese services-outsourcing parks—suggests that by implementing an aggressive strategy to develop the sector and cultivate talent, the country could capture opportunities worth $56 billion a year by 2015.

China faces formidable challenges but can also draw on unique strengths. The country’s two million Japanese and Korean speakers, for example, should help it increase its lead in the North Asian market for the “near-shoring” of IT application and business-process-outsourcing (BPO) services. But a dearth of workers who can manage international projects and have strong English-language skills will make it harder for the country to become a leading provider of services to companies in Europe or the United States.
In the fairly new market for the offshoring of engineering services, China could become an R&D hub, given the country’s proximity to potential customers in the Asian semiconductor and consumer electronics industries. However, its relatively poor protection of intellectual property rights poses a significant barrier.

Bandwidth Monitoring Tools

2008-05-26T15:35:00.004+01:00

Ever wanted to measure your bandwidth performances on your *nix servers or laptops/desktops. Here are excellent tools for the purpose.

*nix Bandwidth Monitoring Tools

I've just tried bwm-ng, some notes on the same including network bandwidth monitor screenshot.

Excellent - क्या बात है!

Mesh Networking

2008-05-24T10:57:00.003+01:00

By my humble estimate, mesh networking is bound to change the face of WiFi. Officially the standard-in-waiting is called 802.11s. Here's a piece I wrote on mesh networking and it's probable impact on broadband industry ...

Upgrading Ubuntu Machines

2008-05-17T13:04:00.003+01:00

Is Ubuntu great or what? Two commands, then leave the machine alone for a while, lo and behold, you've got an upgraded Ubuntu machine to the newest status!

ashant@feather:~$ sudo apt-get install update-manager-core
ashant@feather:~$ do-release-upgrade

é finito!

I've tried this on my Dell Latitude D620 Ubunto, from 7.04 to 8.04 (LTS - long term support). Next in line is my Kubuntu Latitude X300, which I plan to do tonight (as it could take over 3 hours).

Google Sites Collaboration Problem

2008-04-04T13:16:00.002+01:00

I'm unable to collaborate a Site with people outside the Apps domain. Below is the post I made for the Sites team to know - just in case it doesn't get published on the support mailing list, here it is again..

I'm facing the same problem, namely, users from other domain URL's are not able to access my Site, inspite of having a Google Account address included as "Collaborator".

Scenario: My Site is under the Apps account of domain.com, and every login with user@domain.com is able to collaborate, view and own. However a coworker with whom I am trying to collaborate on this project and who has an xyz@googlemail.com Account is not able to even view my Site, let alone collaborate or own. He is redirected to the login page at domain.com Apps account, which is a no go, because xyz doesn't want to have an account at our domain. He's in this just for this project briefly and doesn't wish to be strapped with yet-another-username-password.

If I opt for "Anyone in the world may view this site", then xyz can only view. But I don't want to do this, since the contents of the Site are sensitive and should be confined to a small group of people.

If it's a temporary issue/bug, we'll put up with it for a while till it is fixed. If the behavior is by design, then we'll have to rethink if Sites is at all something for us.

Any comment from Google Guys will help.

Thanks
Ashant

On Feb 29, 4:22 am, Sites Guide wrote:
> Hi RaymondAitken,
>
> Thanks for considering Google Sites! We completely agree with you.
>
> Collaboration isn't limited to those just in your domain, although
> site creation is limited to those in your domain. Once created, a site
> can be shared with users both in and out of the domain. These users
> can be invited (using email addresses) as owners, collaborators, or
> viewers. We feel this models a typical organization, where the
> collaboration is initiated from within the organization, but includes
> people both in and outside the org.
>
> Mike
> The Google Sites Guide
>
> On Feb 28, 5:40 pm, RaymondAitken wrote:
>
> > Are the collaborators and viewers of Google Sites really limited to
> > those of the domain email address associated with the signed -up
> > Google apps organisation? If so, this is very limiting, because
> > organisations with a collaborative culture do not function just within
> > their own organisational boundaries. They are creating projects and
> > undertaking initiatives in partnership with collaborators and sponsors/
> > clients (viewers from many other organisations. Google Sites is not
> > very useful to its intended users if it really restricts the
> > permissions for collaboration and viewing to just those people who
> > have email addresses belonging to the site creator. Can someone from
> > Google Sites give some feedback about this user issue? - Thanks

Where do you want to go tomorrow, Google?

2008-04-03T11:57:00.003+01:00

I'm one of those people who struggles to hide his admiration for Google. I use Google Mail, Apps and Sites and swear by their usefulness to a small businesses and consumers.

This well written article presents a contra-view to my opinion and, at least at first sight, demonstrates a scenarios where 1. "Even Google can make mistakes" 2. "Even Google can be evil".
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_sites_the_next_sharepoint_maybe_notwhy_google_apps_could_lose_the_enterprise_market.php

The truth (by judgment of end-user/consumer) however needs more research to be revealed, for which I wish there was more time at my hand. So for now, I'll stay happy using all the wonderful tools Google is providing for free and hope there won't be a stab in the back!

Counting files in a directory

2008-03-27T13:28:00.002+01:00

I would have thought ls would have an option for this, but the necessary command is:

ls -l | wc -l

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/x700.html

Open Source Developer's Hosting Dilemma

2008-03-24T13:04:00.010+01:00

sourceforge.net, Google Code or DIY - the choice between the three option is a significant one. Each offers certain advantages and disadvantages. To get analytical about this, the below categorization should help:

	sf.net	Google Code	DIY
Content Revenue	none	none	Adsense and other options
Infrastructure Maintenance	none	none	High, including concerns of security and redundancy
Ease of Use	average	high	Depends on choice of open source tools, feature road-map, community
Marketing exposure	very high	high	low

Basically it comes down to a trade off between accepting the overheads (effort, cost and risk) of maintaining own infrastructure and owning your content and users.

If the content is generating sufficient revenue, or shows a growth/maturity pattern that at some point not too far away in future shows it will generate sufficient revenue, to justify maintaining own infrastructure, I guess it makes sense to DIY.