As far as I know, ever since Rails came, there seems to be a flare for learning things using a video tutorial. With more online space and high network bandwidth, having something demonstrated using video and audio seems to be not only catchy but gives a feeling of attending a class. tubetorial is a cool site that has video with audio tutorials not just technical but just any other topic as well. As I was checking out “How to Create Web Pages With HTML“, I was just thinking, I wished I had access to tutorials like this when I started off my career. It actually saves lot of time, money and effort and that saving could be used to learn more

Happy Friday.

For those of you new to Java one of the biggest challenges is to understand classpath, particularly when working with packages. It can be tricky in windows environment when the file system and path separator is different from many of the other standard UNIX/Linux systems. And classpath issue can simply eat away time and the mistake could be as silly as not having a “.” (which represents the current directory) in the classpath. This IBM article “Managing the Java classpath (Windows)” in IBM Developer Works gives a good detail on how to handle and setup classpath in Windows environment to avoid common pitfalls.

Yesterday was a milestone for us at Compassites as we successfully launched another product that went through ideation, innovation and incubation stages. iPolipo is an effective time management tool. It was Rajesh Setty’s idea that got transformed into this beautiful product. More details on what iPolipo tries to solve is available in his blog article “A new take on solving the scheduling problem: Launch of iPolipo“.

Technically, iPolipo web application was built using Ruby on Rails and the Microsoft Outlook connector using .Net framework. The pages where calendars are involved were really interesting to develop particularly we had good debates and discussions around time zone management. iPolipo involves lot of cool Ajax features and rich user interface. The movies in the site explains how iPolipo works. Take a look at “iPolipo - Connecting Up!“, use it, and let me know your comments, feedback and suggestions.

My friend Vijay forwards me a mail with the topic “The Shanghai Taxi Driver’s MBA Lecture”. It is a translation from Chinese blog by Run Liu earlier this year. It is a wonderful passage that explains the experience and lessons learnt by the author from a Taxi Driver in Shangai.  Be it any type of work, it can be studied, observed and improved continuously and can be performed with enjoyment. With Google search I found the article, so here it is “The Shangai Taxi Driver’s MBA Lecture“.

Promotion is a motivating factor for everyone, and in software industry (at least in India) there is usually a bigger hierarchy up the ladder. Once a college pass out joins the IT industry there could be a step forward every year if not twice in a year up till a particular level. A misconception is just because someone has been in the industry for n number of years he/she is eligible to be promoted to level X. A promotion should happen when someone in level X-1 is able to understand/perform some or more of the roles and responsibilities of level X+1. That should be an important criterion to evaluate before someone can be promoted and not just the number of years. Said that it is very important for every aspirant in this industry to have a career goal and milestones set. Because that is what is going to help in answering the question, “What should I start learning and practicing in the next level that I can be eligible to actually be in that level?”

This is part of the Foundation Stone Series 

Auto Rickshaw is a common public transport in India for hire. Bangalore is the silicon valley of India, located in the Karnataka state.

Happy Weekend!

A checksum is a way to check if chunk of information transmitted over a network has been transmitted without any data corruption. A checksum is similar to CRC (cyclic redundancy check) or parity checks to make sure that data transmitted over network is received without corruption. Checksum involves generating a key based on the content of the transmission. The receiving party can apply the same algorithm again and compare with the key. If both of them are equal then the transmission is corruption free. Checksums are used when large files are downloaded. Md5 Checksum is the most widely used one based on MD5 algorithm. For example take a look at the MySQL downloads page, you can see the MD5Checksum under every downloadable link. There are free tools that can generate the checksum based on the downloaded file to compare with the key. WinMD5Sum is one tool that you can download for windows and md5sum is a command tool that comes with UNIX Linux systems that can be used directly.

Ping - a command that we use a lot of times to check if we are able to reach a machine (through host/domain names, IP address). What is this ping anyway? How does it work? Here is a good resource that talks about “Ping Command“, its history and how it works.