purchasing a DSLR?

I am currently researching on DSLRs and found the following articles, pointed to my by a colleague, extremely valuable. Posting them here for wider audience reach.

How to buy a DSLR?
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-buy-a-dslr-camera/

Should you buy a DSLR or a point-and-shoot?
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/should-you-buy-a-dslr-or-point-and-shoot-digital-camera/

Top 20 DSLRs
http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/top-20-dslr-models-reader-favorites/

OSAF on-site week

We had a rather vibrant and happening week, this last week here at OSAF. All the remote people were on-site for the Preview celebration as well as planning for the next version of Desktop and Server.

Here are some pictures from the on-site week.






With Sheila's twins










At the Preview Party in Kate Obrien's in SF. Rather packed for a 80 people crowd.



Pro-social activity at Half Moon Bay

Mozilla launched new Email and Communications Organization

Mozilla is launching a new organization to develop internet mail and communications software. It will use the open source email desktop client Thunderbird, as a base. It will remain a Mozilla subsidiary with Mozilla providing the initial seed money of $3 million to establish this new company.
The new organization will be led by Dr. David Ascher, currently CTO and VP Engineering of ActiveState, who joins Mozilla to carry out this job.

I am sure people invariably will have questions about potential cross-overs with Chandler but as far as we know, there are no news about an explicit collaboration between Mozilla and OSAF over the email application.

More posts on Chandler Preview

Here's the official post from OSAF addressing the Preview release of Chandler, as written by Katie Capps Parlante, our VP of Engineering and General Manager.

Scott Rosenberg has added a follow-up post on his blog addressing the Chandler Preview release. It has an interesting comparison with the Zimbra client.
I look forward to personally congratulating Scott on the success of his book, Dreaming in Code and the subsequent release of the paperback edition, during the Chandler launch party next Thursday.

Here's Mitch's blog on the Preview release.

'Viral' marketing paid off - Yahoo acquires ZImbra

As quoted by a Zimbra insider that they are ecstatic about the acquisition as this has essential business appeal for both the parties. The Zimbra team will be relocating to Sunnyvale, where Yahoo is headquartered. The relocation and subsequent commute is a minor let down for some Zimbra people, and there is one I can commiserate with, as he happens to be my Husband.

Here's the NY Times article on the acquisition.

Starups, how not to die.

A very interesting post by Paul Graham from Y Combinator, a company that provides seed money to fledgling startups, on what factors account for success or failures in startups. I am sure a lot of us can learn from this..

Here's the link to the article.

iPhone early adopters get $100 back

In this open letter to all iPhone early adopters, Steve Jobs has generously offered a $100 credit towards any purchase in Apple Store. Definitely a good move since the price slash came just months after intial offering of the product. A large number of buyers who were caught up in the excitement of the launch were not part of the early adopter demographic. So they were indeed shocked at the price slash. But people like us who live and breathe in technology land know tech gadgets aren't something you buy as an investment for future. You know if you wait, it will get faster, cheaper, smaller (or bigger) over time and what you have will become obsolete faster than you had imagined (remember the last laptop or digital camera purchase). Folks who bought the iPhone early got something for it, they got to be the first iPhone owners. They got to be the cynosure of everyone's attention and the unmistakable cool image it carried of truly owning something everyone around wanted to lay their hands on, or at the least gaze at. All in all, Apple did the right thing being focused on keeping the customer happy, rather than the bottom line at the end of the day.

Mullahs on the Mainframe

My reading has surely taken a backseat lately but recently I read a book generously loaned by a friend titled 'Mullahs on the Mainframe'. It is a brilliant study by a young American social scientist who delves into the world of Daudi Bohras, a unique Muslim denomination in India whose religious beliefs and practices are largely compatible with modern ideology. It is a resounding example of how a community can live in peaceful co-existence while practicing orthodox religious practices and still maintaining liberal political and secular views and modernization of tradition. The book starts out with the historical background around the roots of the faith and then delves into day to day rituals of a Daudi Bohra life, religious festivals and their code of celebration, insight into domestic life, status of the religious leaders and royals and ultimately maintenance of spiritual and political hegemony. The study is a wonderful introduction of a peace-loving modernistic Islamic community that is often confused with the values of their more aggressive and violent counter-parts in the middle-east. We are used to living in our little cocoon of comfort constantly soaking in information as they are broadcast by the news channels and thereby creating a rather faulty image of certain people or groups of people, and until you read a book like this that completely dispels all your preconceived notions and broadens your mind to wonders and varieties of outside world.

Chandler Preview is here!

After months of grueling hard work, we are proud to announce Chandler Preview.

Chandler Desktop is an open source, standards-based personal information manager (PIM) built around small group collaboration and a core set of information management workflows modeled on Inbox usage patterns and David Allen's GTD methodology. You can manage and share calendars, tasks, messages, notes and other information with the Chandler Desktop application and/or with the Chandler Hub web application.

The Preview releases are public-beta quality applications ready for daily use

Download the desktop application, sign up for an account on the web, look at screenshots, watch screencasts, read about features, read about the project and more: http://chandlerproject.org/

The set of new features are:

1. New Triage workflow featuring the new Dashboard viewFaster Sharing protocol
2. Compatible with Chandler Server Web UI using a single Ticket URL mechanism
3. Support for a OSAF hosted Chandler Hub free sharing service
4. Support concurrent edit with merge and conflict management
5. Support background auto Sync
6. Improved Email capabilities with support for In and Out boxes, Reply/Forward
7. New Edit/Update workflow allows Chandler data to be shared through email without using a server
8. Support for special Chandler IMAP folders to automatize incoming email treatment and parsing
9. Improved Calendar user interface: better visual, better Drag and Drop, new Preview area
10. New Quick Entry widget allows easy entry of new data
11. Improved Search
12. Improved Security with support for encryption
13. New Export/Reload version migration tool
14. Many architectural improvements (performance, API, command line arguments, optional launch dialog, troubleshooting tools, etc...
    

If you are one of my loyal friends following my blog, I am sure you will douse your curiousity about what I have been working on the past few years and download our product and give it a shot.

Be sure to report any enquiries, questions, bugs on our users list at chandler-users @ osafoundation.org

My new Intel Mac is here...

Finally after having waited for months, I ordered my new Intel Mac last week. While I hate the fact that they don't carry them in the 12 inch models any more, everything else has things going for it.

1. Power and Performance (2.2 GHz and 2 GB RAM) - a powerful graphics processor and dedicated memory makes the entire computing experience better than ever.
   
2. Glossy widescreen LCD display - I watched a movie on it the other day and the resolution was far better than my plasma TV I say.
   
3. Built-in iSight Camera - No more fiddling with external, wired web cams which are cumbersome to get mounted and positioned. Now a sleek, built-in high quality iSight camera that is so neatly integrated. No need to worry about installing and configuring, only dressing up.
   
4. Built-in wireless and Bluetooth - Syncing your Macbook Pros with your bluetooth enabled phones and transfering images and data can be enormously handy. I use the feature to take quick photos on my iPhone and transferring easily to my iPhoto albums.
   
5. Multiple OSs - I just installed a version of Parallels and Windows XP on the virtual machine. So now I am able to run Mac OSX and WinXP seamlessly in an integrated environment. How cool is that

For now that's enough to get me going!

connecting in an open source world...

This is the age of social networking and practically everyone you know is on some list making his/her network grow. While some of these tools form the A-list of people's primary networking medium, others are slowing coming up with niches that you didn't imagine existed. I have recently been drawn into Facebook by a handful of friends. I didn't think I belonged there but soon other friends found me, contacted me and before long I realized we had formed a small clique there. When I first read about Facebook I discounted it as some teenage-geeky tool that most youngsters might feel drawn to. I couldn't be more off. I am seeing more and more business professionals signing up on it, and like a colleague casually mentioned, it might soon become the tool of choice for shunning people with finesse and forming small cliques.

While these mediums do exist, I have to say that I have never felt myself being connected to so many colleagues and friends, purely through working in open source community. Just the other day, I heard from a friend I went to school with 11 years back, with who saw a post from OSAF in one of the open source forums and contacted me and here we were chatting, back like the old times. And I hear similar tales from others around me who have hooked up with friends through the community.

So while the social networking tools are doing their job, lets not discount the fact that networking just comes easy being part of an open source community.

I have a crush...

I have a crush. A crush on something that is an indispensable part of my life. I didn't quite think at this age I could ever fall for something but here I am totally bowled over. Viral surprised me the other day bringing home this little thing, nicely coated and wrapped. As I removed the layers and saw the little black thing sitting on my lap, I jumped! It was the new iPhone. I really didn't think a tiny piece gadget would have me all over. I have to admit I am enamored by it. It's been a bit of adjustment getting used to owning a phone that has no keypad, no knobs and yet super-slim. It's cool, extremely functional and loaded with features. Music, video, photos, email, calendar, maps, weather and what not...it has it all.

Here's one of the many pictures taken on my iPhone. It's special because it is the first one. Riya sleeping on the cot cuddled up in her blanket.

Quote of the year

"If you do what you've always done, you'll get what you've always gotten." - Tony Robbins

On why Bombay is a writer's city...

Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, has been a writer's paradise for years now. Like London and New York, there is a very specific sense of the metropolis, with a certain amount of self-mythologising and narrative-making. Life throbbing with activity, unstoppable pace, amalgam of different cultures ,a launch pad of talent and amazing juxtaposition of the riches and the poor - this city has it all.

Among the novels I have read, the following fiction novels' plots are based around Mumbai - my favorite city.

John Irving - A Son Of The Circus - ***/2
Salman Rushdie - Midnight's Children - ****
Suketu Mehta - The Maximum City - ***

Implicit Bias

Brian Nosek, Professor of Psychology from University of Virginia was one among the many distinguished and prominent speakers who walked the ramp of 543 Howard Street as an invited guest from our sister organization, LPFI. He gave us a scintillating presentation on unconscious bias - thoughts and feelings that exist outside of conscious awareness or conscious control that to a large extent shapes how we think and do things.
Recent results from his lab compared implicit - and explicit -
bias between self-identified conservatives/liberals, with these results,
as reported in the Washington Post:

"Another study presented at the conference, which was in Palm Springs, Calif., explored relationships between racial bias and political affiliation by analyzing self-reported beliefs, voting patterns and the results of psychological tests that measure implicit attitudes -- subtle stereotypes people hold about various groups.

That study found that supporters of President Bush and other conservatives had stronger self-admitted and implicit biases against blacks than liberals did."

Here's the complete article from Washington Post.

But better commentary yet was from Stephen Colbert on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show".

Twitter

If you are in for hours of mindless voyeuristic fun, here's something for you:

http://twittermap.com/twittervision

"Small" is BIG

I have been a proud owner of an Apple PowerBook for the last 3 years. While I possessed and used only Windows based machine for about a decade before that, I have to admit my loyalties switched as soon as I got used to a Mac. The resolution of the graphics, the slick user-interface and virus-free system that never crashed on me - all had me going for it. The package was all the more attractive since mine was a really slick 12-inch Powerbook that was handy to carry along and fast enough for running all my cpu and memory intensive applications (earlier version of Chandler included). Recently I was told by my IT guy that it's time to switch to a newer machine and I had to pick one out soon. Well, given practically everyone around me now owns the new Intel-based MacBook Pro and they rave about how swift it is, I couldn't wait to get mine soon. So I was checking out the Apple Store in San Francisco, I have to say I was thoroughly disappointed to learn that they have stopped carrying the 12-inch laptops anymore. All the MacBook Pros now come only in 15 and 17 inches. While I am looking forward to my new MacBook Pro I have to say I am going to miss my "small" book that had become the central domain of my work life the last 3 years. Who ever said, "small" is big has my +1 on that.

What is a brown-paper-bag bug?

There's not much software jargon that I am unfamiliar with. Well, today in one of our discussions, I heard someone say "Can we test this quickly so we can forestall any brown-paper-bag bugs?" It had me wondering what that meant and as usual Google came to my rescue. And here it is for you:

"A bug in a public software release that is so embarrassing that the author notionally wears a brown paper bag over his head for a while so he won't be recognized on the net. Entered popular usage after the early-1999 release of the first Linux 2.2, which had one. The phrase was used in Linus Torvalds's apology posting."

The Grasshopper

A very interesting article that was forwarded to me by a friend. So accurately reflecting the state of affairs in India I had to blog it.

Subject: The Grasshopper

OLD VERSION...

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long building
his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper
thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The grasshopper has no food
or shelter so he dies out in the cold.

MODERN VERSION

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building
his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper
thinks the ant's a fool and laughs & dances & plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and
demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed
while others are cold and starving.
NDTV, BBC, CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering
grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a
table filled with food. The World is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be that this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Arundhati Roy stages a demonstration in front of the ant's house.
Medha Patkar goes on a fast along with other grasshoppers demanding
that grasshoppers be relocated to warmer climates during winter.
Amnesty International and Koffi Annan criticize the Indian Government
for not upholding the fundamental rights of the grasshopper. The
Internet is flooded with online petitions seeking support to the
grasshopper (many promising Heaven and Everlasting Peace for prompt
support as against the wrath of God for non-compliance) . Opposition
MP's stage a walkout.Left parties call for "Bharat Bandh" in West
Bengal and Kerala demanding a Judicial Enquiry.CPM in Kerala
immediately passes a law preventing Ants from working hard in the heat
so as to bring about equality of poverty among ants and grasshoppers.
Lalu Prasad allocates one free coach to Grasshoppers on all Indian
Railway Trains, aptly named as the 'Grasshopper Rath'.
Finally, the Judicial Committee drafts the Prevention of Terrorism
Against Grasshoppers Act [POTAGA]", with effect from the beginning of
the winter.
Arjun Singh makes Special Reservation for Grass Hopper in
educational
Insititutions & in Govt Services.
The ant is fined for failing to comply with POTAGA and, having
nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by
the Government and handed over to the grasshopper in a ceremony
covered by NDTV.
Arundhati Roy calls it "a triumph of justice". Lalu calls it
'Socialistic Justice'. CPM calls it the 'revolutionary resurgence of
the downtrodden' Koffi Annan invites the grasshopper to address the UN
General Assembly.
Many years later...The ant has since migrated to the US and set up
a multi billion dollar company in silicon valley. 100s of
grasshoppers still die of starvation despite reservation somewhere in
India ...
As a result loosing lot of hard working ants and feeding the
grasshoppers, India is still a developing country..... .

Bollywood on Colbert

Amitabh and Shah Rukh Khan made it to the Colbert Report on Comedy Central. It's hilarious.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgVrygLx-hY

Multiples in the womb

Yesterday Mr.PureAnarchy and I watched this absolutely amazing, intriguing, visually awe striking documentary on "In the Womb : Multiples" on National Geographic Channel. While our 'sitting-together-and-watching-TV' days are far and few these days, we had put this one on our agenda to specially it watch together. Using revolutionary 4-D scans they showed unique footage of how fetues mark their journey from inception to birth - their fight for space and nourishment during gestation and their final journey into the outside world. Some key take-aways:
1. It was fascinating to see how humans first interact with their siblings even before entering the world outside - reaching, touching, pushing and even engaging in some game playing that continues after they are born
2. The personalities they develop in adult life are to large extent groomed in the womb.
3. 95% of all multiple births in United States are twins and it has increased by 400% from 1980-1998.
4. The record number of human fetuses in one womb at any one time is 15

This gave us a good prelude to life ahead with Arin and Riya...

Chandler in the WSJ

As part of Scott Rosenberg's book review by WSJ, Chandler made it to the WSJ. With the upcoming 'Preview' (beta) release of Chandler in Spring, we are hoping this will give us the right publicity we need before the launch. Go Chandler!

Dreaming in Code

Scott Rosenberg's new book based on software development titled 'Dreaming in Code' will be out this month. He has used the software development of 'Chandler' - our PIM software as a basis for his book. Scott has been a friend of OSAF - sitting in our meetings, hanging out at lunches and gathering the data for his subject. I am waiting to buy a copy of the book to read about the early years of OSAF when Andy Hertzfield, Lou Montulli and others were active contributors. A lot has changed since then - the people, the product vision and the business strategy. The latest copy of Business Week(Jan 15th 2007) has also reviewed the book calling it a "fascinating look inside a software development project". Katie Capps has since then updated our osaf blog with where we are since Scott's narrative leaves off - around the end of year 2005. For all of you wanting to know where OSAF is going with Chandler and Cosmo, there's your read for the day.

the ultimate travel companion

10 years back when we first came to this country and did some extensive traveling, I remember taking paper maps of the places we went to and as a co-driver/navigator my biggest role on a road trip was to make sure we were taking the right freeways, the right exits, the right turns. It felt quite equipped with paper maps even though we needed ton of them as we spanned different states and then narrowed down to the areas within each state. Then came the age of Map Quest and Yahoo! maps. Some 5 years back I remember making this statement that I couldn't imagine life without Yahoo! maps. It was as simple as mapping your routes and keeping those print outs handy while driving. Really that simple compared to carrying those dozen maps.
Just recently we bought a new GPS gadget the Garmin nuvi 360- the ultimate travel companion. Since the iPod I have never gone so gaga over any gadget. Not only does it map routes and speak out the directions, it has bluetooth, speaker phone and an MP3 player. That means my blue tooth phone connects to Garmin as soon as I enter the car and then I can use the speakerphone on it to chat while I am driving. Makes your driving experience truly enjoyable. I have always desired this in an automotive and now the wish has come true.
Wouldn't you agree technology has truely enhanced the quality of our lives? Just the last 10 years are an outstanding evidence. Wonder what we'll have to say in a few more years.

teething pain...times 2

In some ways I and my 7 month daughter are going through similar experiences. While she is going thru teething pain for her first 2 pearly whites, here I am going thru the pain of losing 2 of my wisdom teeth. While I got orajel for her, I got the adult orajel for myself. While she is taking infants' tylenol for her pain, I am taking the extra strength tylenol for mine. She enjoys cold yoplait and so do I. The only difference I guess is she wants to bite into everything within reach and I am staying away from biting just about anything.