Riya.Com is up for its beta customers

Riya.com is open for its beta customers. I was also the one lucky guy to get it for testing. Right now I'm trying it lets see how it performs. May be they guys did it better after getting rejected from Google.

This is not just another photo uploading service but an intelligent application that recognize your face. After uploading and with a little practise it recognize me in three pics and I think thats fairly good. keep up the good work guys.

On10 More hype than Origami

Robert scoble talks about 10. A sister of Channel 9.
This is meant for geeks to show their videos. 10 is built from the ground up using ASP.NET 2.0, SQL Server 2005 with a simple, easy to use design. Jeff sandquist talks about it in his blog.

Discuss 10 at Channel 9

Is this the Microsoft pay guidelines

I myself am not aware about the salary about my colleague or boss. But somebody outsider does. What do you think. Dont ask me if they are real.


Link to original image

Read the story at my previous post or
here(Seattle Intelligence)

Controversy over MS IDC and outsourcing

Now they are complaining against offshoring their job. Read the story from SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

A Seattle-based labor union is seeking to use newly obtained internal Microsoft Corp. documents to fuel the debate over outsourcing and draw attention to its assertion that the company is shifting fundamental work offshore.

Microsoft rejects the claim and says a certain amount of overseas contracting is natural given the company's worldwide presence.

The Washington Alliance of Technology Workers says it obtained the previously confidential Microsoft contracts, spreadsheets and phone lists this month from a source inside the firm. The documents describe a series of agreements between Microsoft and outsourcing firms in such countries as India.

One conclusion the union draws from the papers: More than 1,100 people work for Microsoft in India under contracts with outsourcing firms, in addition to the 970 direct employees the company acknowledges. That brings Microsoft's total presence in India to more than 2,000 people -- significantly larger than previously known.

"They clearly have not been forthcoming about the extent of their offshore outsourcing," said Marcus Courtney, president of the union known as WashTech.

Microsoft said it doesn't disclose the size of its contract work force in India or anywhere else, because the figures can fluctuate significantly. But the company disputed the union's broader assertions about the role of its overseas contracts.

"These accusations don't reflect an understanding of the global nature of our business," said Microsoft spokeswoman Stacy Drake. "As a global company with operations in more than 80 countries, we absolutely work with partner companies around the world."

She noted that top Microsoft executives have said repeatedly that they plan to keep the majority of the company's core software development work in the United States.

During the fiscal year ended June 30, about 4 percent of Microsoft's research-and-development budget went to contract work by outside firms, Drake said. About 1 percent of the R&D budget went to work by contractors outside the United States.



Examples of work for which the company has recently contracted with Indian outsourcing firms include the development of a promotional computer program that advertises the company's software. In another case, Microsoft contracted with a company to replicate problems reported by customers and provide the information to Microsoft employees, who analyze and fix the problems.

Microsoft uses contract workers for "projects -- not products. There's a big difference there," said S. "Soma" Somasegar, the Microsoft corporate vice president who oversees the company's 6-year-old India Development Center in Hyderabad, India.

"Anything that is core to what we are doing, core to our mission, we are going to do it in Microsoft," Somasegar said in a recent interview.

WashTech's Courtney, however, pointed out that the documents leaked to the union include long lists of outsourcing contracts that refer in two instances to Longhorn, the code name for the next version of Windows. One contract with Infosys Technologies is described as "Longhorn Migration Guide," and one with Wipro Ltd. describes testing for Longhorn and other products.

Courtney called it "a red flag" suggesting that fundamental work on the next operating system is being outsourced overseas.

But one analyst said the descriptions don't seem to refer to fundamental development work. "Based on the names of these contracts, I don't see that you can reach that conclusion," said Michael Cherry, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a Kirkland-based research firm.

Microsoft's Drake said the company uses employees, not contract workers, for "all intellectual property work," including the design and creation of Windows and other products that the company sells. "All development work on Longhorn is done by Microsoft employees, the vast majority in Redmond," she said.

It's the second time in recent months that WashTech has obtained documents outlining Microsoft's outsourcing practices. Last month, the union publicized two Microsoft outsourcing contracts, including job descriptions, seeking to show that high-end jobs are prone to outsourcing.

As part of its broader campaign against outsourcing, WashTech also is running an ad in The New York Times today urging Congress to protect technology jobs. The ad doesn't mention Microsoft.

The latest documents received by WashTech also include a recent agreement between Microsoft and a Russian outsourcing company, Luxoft. Courtney said the deal shows that Microsoft is developing "a global supply chain of labor." Drake described the company's relationship with Luxoft as new and said the firm isn't yet doing any work for Microsoft.

Courtney said the union received the latest documents in early July, from the same source as before, but waited to provide them to reporters until this week to coincide with the recent release of Microsoft's hiring projections and the company's annual meeting with financial analysts, to take place today on its Redmond campus.

Microsoft last week said it plans to hire 6,000 to 7,000 employees worldwide during the next year, including 3,000 in the Puget Sound region, but a significant number of those people will fill jobs vacated by others, rather than new positions, making the net gain in employment smaller. During the past year, for example, Microsoft hired about 3,000 people in the region, but less than half of those filled new positions, and the company's local employment expanded by about 1,400 people.

That is much smaller than the company's growth during the economic boom of the late 1990s.

"Microsoft has significantly reduced its hiring," Courtney said.

Rising Frustration with Microsoft’s Compensation and Review System

http://www.washtech.org/news/industry/display.php?ID_Content=5041

Wash Tech a seattle labor union got hold over some Microsoft confidential documents and now trying to unionizing microsoft. Read the story from Washtech

Defections by high-level engineers have stung Microsoft in recent months, prompting questions about a rush of creative minds for the door. One explanation is the Redmond software giant has grown too big and cumbersome to keep its top engineers happy and productive.
But the star engineers who are jumping to younger technology companies, such as Google and Yahoo, aren’t the only employees who are disgruntled with day-to-day operations.
Internal Microsoft documents obtained by WashTech News show that Microsoft salaries have been stagnant or nudged only slightly higher over the past two years. Comments from current and former employees about the company’s compensation and performance review system suggest a growing level of frustration among rank-and-file workers.

Example:
The documents outline 20 salary grade levels with a low, medium and high range of pay for 2004 and 2006. A software design engineer in Test, for example, might start at level “58,” earning about $67,000. An employee at the Product Manager level could earn a $74,000 base at level “59;” and a Program Manager might start at level “62,” earning a mid-range annual salary of $99,000.
Some employees have access to pay levels, but others do not. And although most are aware of the different pay levels, some have only a vague understanding of how the system works as a whole. At Microsoft there is an unspoken code that co-workers not share compensation information with each other.
What is causing considerably more ire than pay levels, however, is a performance review ranking system that uses a bell-curve model to decide who gets high scores and who takes the low ones.
Microsoft Corp. has over 60,000 employees, and like almost all large corporations, it uses a performance review process to rate them. The idea behind any corporate performance review system is to provide an accurate and fair assessment of employee contributions, but some employees say Microsoft’s system promotes politics over fair reviews.
According to employees, who said they would be fired if they spoke on the record, the annual review amounts to little more than a closed-door popularity contest in which managers “fight” for higher scores for their team, or defer to higher-level decision makers who mandate how many workers drop to the bottom of the review scale.
One employee in the company’s Mobile and Embedded Devices group said when it comes to her review score, “my performance is about 10 percent of the whole equation.”
Another employee denounced a compensation system that is “capricious in its tolerance of managers who corrupt the system for their personal gain,” and blamed consecutive low-rankings on a “well-entrenched culture of favoritism.”
She said that even though she had received division awards for good work, two consecutive low review scores blocked her from moving to another, less-politically driven team, and the low reviews exclude her from getting any raises. Now her only option, she said, is to leave the company.
Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said the company conducts an annual poll of its employees, and that it was aware of the “different feelings” about the performance review system.
“The theme of this is something that is not new. We’re aware of what employees feel about this issue and others,” Gellos said in answer to a question about the level of frustration among employees.
Gellos said senior vice president Lisa Brummel, who was promoted to Human Resources Director in April last year, has been conducting an open door “listening tour” over the past month to solicit feedback from employees, and that compensation is high on her list. Gellos stressed that Brummel’s listening tour wasn’t an exercise, and that there would be action once sufficient information is collected.
Behind closed doors
In many groups, an employee’s review score may have less to do with their performance than their popularity, or their manager’s ability to negotiate to give out more high review scores. Another variable is when a marketing manager who does not have the technical background to fairly assess technical work is expected to review individual contributors in their team.
Review scores range from 2.5 to 5.0, but the process by which scores are arrived at occurs behind closed doors, employees said.
A writer who has worked at Microsoft for over six years, first as a contractor and now as a full-time employee, said her team numbers “have to be distributed in some way along a pseudo-bell curve: a certain percent get 4.5, a different percent get 4.0.” She said a 3.0 score officially meets expectations, but, “we all know that 3.0 is a red flag that you're on your way out the door - after all, Microsoft wants only people who exceed expectations.”
Unfair or not, she noted, “At least the company actually has enough money to give out raises, and bonuses, and stock.”
One former employee who worked at the company for over a decade said that if someone received a low review score and was overheard by a manager discussing it with a colleague, they risked a serious reprimand or being fired.
“No one would even talk about his level,” said the former employee, who said any open discussion about pay or review scores was taboo.
Microsoft’s bell-curve grading system has been in use, in one form or another, for years. A “stack ranking” system, which identified employees as “number one” and “dead last,” was changed in recent years to a “bucket system” in which employees are placed in a categories. The change occurred after lawsuits were brought against Microsoft alleging racial and gender bias in the closed-door meetings that determined the fate of an employee.
But the system hasn’t changed much, said the employee who worked at Microsoft over 10 years. “That’s why people are so irritated; there’s no way to predict your bonus, or ranking,” he said.
“Now the big problem is that those bucket meetings are behind closed doors. And where you get ranked depends almost entirely on who your lead is, how hard they fight, and what you’re working on,” he said. “Somehow that passes legal muster.”
Another employee who has been a test developer for several years said the reviews have always been a political process.
“The more peoples’ consciousness that you can get into, managers or peers, the better your rewards,” he said.
“In other words, your performance is meaningless unless everybody knows what you've been doing and see that it has a value or benefit to them or the team.”
A blog run by an anonymous Microsoft employee argues that the company is alienating employees with the review system and needs to overhaul it or risk further damaging morale. A post on the “Mini-Microsoft” blog sums up what appears to be a growing sentiment at the company once famously known for its overachieving workforce: “Microsofties have had enough.”
Comparing Microsoft’s review system with Boeing’s
If Microsoft is one side of the economic engine in the Northwest, Boeing is the other.
Each company employs highly educated, skilled workers. But Boeing’s engineers enjoy far more transparency about pay levels and their review system due to collective bargaining agreements between Boeing and the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace union (SPEEA). SPEEA represents about 22,000 engineers, the majority of whom work in the Northwest.
Software sales are more predictable compared to sales of 737 jets, so Microsoft employees don’t face cycles of layoffs like at Boeing, but there are similarities in the review systems. Boeing engineers are assigned "Retention" numbers, from “R1” to “R3.” The 20 percent of the group who are categorized R3 know they are the first to go in a layoff, and explanations for R designations are available to all workers.
SPEEA makes salary grade level information available to all members. Retention ratings, layoff information, and salary adjustments are also readily available. At Microsoft, annual bonuses and review scores are determined behind closed doors. The difference between the two groups is the collective bargaining power of the Boeing engineers.
According to the Mini-Microsoft blog, Microsoft employees “own their own career.” For employees who work hard and manage to land on the high side of the review scale, the statement rings true. But for others, the bureaucracy in Redmond is wearing thin:
“I love working at Microsoft but cannot stay in an environment where I am treated shabbily and afforded no opportunity to defend myself against such treatment.”

Origami - what is the hype all about

Here is the Origami launched by Microsoft I talked about earlier in my posts.
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS4596527542.html

Microsoft launched a new category of mobile computers Thursday, following several weeks of teasers on its Origami Project website. "Ultra Mobile PC" (UMPC) mini-tablets feature 7-inch touch-screen displays, built-in hard drives, WiFi, and Bluetooth wireless, and run Microsoft's Windows XP Tablet Edition operating system.

The first generation UMPCs are expected to weigh around two pounds and offer two and a half hours of operation per battery charge, and will include 30-60 GB hard drives, according to Microsoft. They are expected to be based on Intel Pentium M, Intel Celeron M, and VIA C7-M processors.
Intel showcased several UMPC prototypes based on its chips earlier this week at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, and Via is showcasing a new high-integration chipset and several UMPC prototypes using its chips, at CeBIT starting today.

Bill Mitchell, corporate vice president of Microsoft's Windows Mobile Platforms Division, said he expects some UMPCs "to include additional built-in features such as GPS, a webcam, fingerprint reader, digital TV tuners, and CompactFlash and SD card readers." Additionally, "some UMPCs will be able to connect via wide-area networking."

Because they run a full Windows XP OS, UMPCs will be useful for a wide range of entertainment and computing applications. An on-screen QWERTY keyboard can be used for data entry and navigation, along with stylus-based handwriting input. The devices will also support external Bluetooth and USB keyboards as input devices.

Mitchell said he expects the devices to be popular for "mobile communications, entertainment, gaming, and new scenarios such as location-based services."


According to Mitchell, UMPCs will initially run Windows XP Tablet PC Edition 2005, along with a new software package called Microsoft Touch Pack for Windows XP. The Touch Pack "optimizes the touch screen user interface for UMPCs to simplify navigation and ease-of-use while on the go," Mitchell said.

The Touch Pack also includes a customizable Program Launcher that "organizes software programs into categories, and uses large buttons and icons to make it easy to find and open your favorite applications," according to Mitchell. Other Touch Pack features include a thumb-based on-screen keyboard, a "Brilliant Black" Windows Media Player skin, and Sudoku, a "highly entertaining touch and ink enabled game," Mitchell said.

Windows Vista will eventually replace Windows XP Tablet PC Edition as the UMPC operating system, Mitchell added.

"We anticipate pricing in the $599-999 price-range," Mitchell said. "Part of our objective in creating the original reference design for the UMPC category was to engineer a platform that's both very compact and, through careful component choice, possible to sell for $500 MSRP."

UMPCs are expected to begin shipping during 2006. Founder and Samsung plan to introduce Intel-based UMPCs in Q2, with Asus following shortly thereafter. PaceBlade and TabletKiosk also plan to introduce Via-based UMPCs in Q2, according to Mitchell.

Interestingly, several companies have already introduced or announced Windows XP-based handheld mini-tablet PCs over the past several years, including OQO and DualCor Technologies.

OQO, which has made "ultra personal computers" (UPCs) for several years, recently began shipping a UPC running Windows XP Tablet PC Edition that offers handwriting input. The 4.9 x 3.4 x 0.9-inch OQO model 01+ is based on a 1 GHz Transmeta x86 processor and is equipped with 512 MB of DRAM and a 30 GB built-in hard drive. The device boasts a 5-inch 800x480 pixel touchscreen LCD along with a slide-out QWERTY thumb keyboard, and it provides both 802.11b and Bluetooth wireless, as well as connections for USB 2.0, Firewire, and Ethernet (available via a docking cable).

For its part, start-up DualCor recently unveiled a 6.5 x 3.3 x 1.2-inch handheld that combines the functions of a Tablet PC with those of a Pocket PC Phone. Like OQO's devices, DualCor's cPC has a 5-inch 800x480 pixel touch-screen. Unlike the OQO handhelds, the unusual cPC runs two OSes -- on two processors, no less. Windows XP Tablet Edition runs on a 1.5GHz Via C7-M processor, equipped with 1GB of DDR 2 DRAM memory and a 40GB hard drive, while Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Phone Edition runs on an unspecified XScale processor equipped with 128MB of DRAM and 1GB of Flash. The device also provides two USB 2.0 type A ports, one USB 2.0 type B port, and a CompactFlash Type II slot.

OQO's UPC currently goes for a whopping $2099, roughly double the expected pricing for the initial UMPCs. Additionally, both OQO's and DualCor's devices have smaller screens -- 5 inches, vs. 7 inches for the current generation UMPCs. DualCore, which offers the advantage of including Pocket PC Phone capabilities, has disclosed neither availability nor pricing of its device.

Nokia takes a lower-end tack with its 770 Internet Tablet, which runs a Linux-based software platform and sells for around $360. The device, which features a 4.3-inch 800 x 480 pixel touch-screen LCD, is substantially smaller than the current-generation UMPC prototypes. The 770 boasts built-in WiFi, Bluetooth, and an RS-MMC (reduced-size-MMC) memory card slot, and its bundled software suite is mostly oriented toward Web browsing and media playing. It includes a version of Opera's mobile browser, along with an email client, multimedia player, image viewer, sketching, note-taking, and games. VoIP capabilities will be added in an upcoming software update.

Compared to the first generation UMPC prototypes, the 770 offers smaller size, lighter weight, and, most likely, longer battery life. But these advantages come at a cost: constrained processor and memory resources -- a 200 MHz TI OMAP processor, 64 MB of SDRAM, and 128MB of flash (expandable via RS-MMC) -- and a limited set of available application software, in comparison with all that Windows XP Tablet Edition has to offer. On the other hand, by the time second generation UMPCs reach market sometime next year, the Nokia Internet Tablet can be expected to have evolved, both in terms of computing resources and available applications.

We reckon consumers, who already have desktop and laptop PCs running Windows XP or Vista, will be reticent to shell out $750 or more for a fairly large, rather heavy, high-powered device that requires handwriting or soft-keyboard taps as input -- and that might easily get dropped or lost.

Frankly, we think Nokia has the right idea but the wrong software. In our opinion, a Windows Mobile version of the 770 Internet Tablet -- but with more DRAM and flash, and an honest-to-goodness SDIO slot -- priced under $400, would be a real winner.

Not that we don't think the Windows XP-based UMPC concept has merit. It's just that from a Moore's Law perspective, the necessary economies of scale are probably several years off.


LinkBack :
http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS4596527542.html
http://www.microsoft-watch.com/article2/0,1995,1935744,00.asp
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/24/1734257
http://scobleizer.wordpress.com/2006/02/23/what-is-the-origami-project/
http://www.origamiproject.com

Apple: Finding the Root of the Problem

http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2006/tc20060308_032391.htm
Hack-My-Mac Challenge Leaves System Shipshape
Plug pulled on Mac hacking challenge


The second potentially major Mac security incident in as many weeks has thankfully been debunked. Earlier this week I wrote a blog entry about a Mac Mini owner in Sweden who configured his machine as a server and challenged hackers to gain access to it. The Mini was -- as hackers like to say -- "owned" only 30 minutes after the challenge started. By "owned," I mean rooted. An outside attacker, through a remote Internet connection, was able to get "root" access -- the highest and most powerful level of administrative access on a Unix-based computer (which Macs running OS X happen to be).
Advertisement


Root access gives the bearer free reign on a machine, no questions asked. Files can be altered or deleted. Accounts assigned to other users can be changed or deleted altogether. The potential for misuse of the privilege has caused Apple to ship its machines with root access disabled by default. Root can be re-enabled only through a series of technical contortions understood by advanced users.

Even so, the Swedish attacker said he succeeded with an "unpublished" exploit -- a method that hasn't been publicly documented. If your Mac is connected to the Internet all day, as mine is, you can see the fright such news might generate. It's like knowing a criminal gang has a master key to your home and thousands of others, and that the only defense you really have so far is that they haven't found you yet.

BIASED STUDY. That is, if it were true. It turns out the original reports weren't forthcoming with all the facts. The person who "rooted" the Mac already had a user name and password, as if he were a regular day-to-day user. In fact, having an account on this Mac was a prerequisite to taking part in the challenge. From there, the person used some method -- most likely having to do with weaknesses in the Unix underpinnings of the Mac operating system -- to gain escalated access.

These kinds of "privilege escalation" vulnerabilities have cropped up on the Mac over the years and date back decades to FreeBSD, the variant of Unix on which Mac OS X is based. But remember, you can't take advantage of this type of vulnerability unless you already have access to the machine -- which implies having been given permission for that access in the first place.

The pseudo break-in and misleading reports didn't sit well with Dave Schroeder, a network systems engineer and Mac enthusiast at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. He's been outspoken on the issue of Mac security, portraying recent reports as overblown. So he set up his own challenge, inviting the world to hack a Web page -- the very page he used to tell the world about the challenge -- running on a Mac Mini he set up as a Web server.

His challenge mirrored the one in Sweden, with one critical difference: No one would have an account on the machine. They'd be locked out and therefore would have to break in. His aim was to demonstrate the flaws in the Swedish test, and provide a more realistic test of Mac security. The tech news site Slashdot picked up news of the challenge and quickly spread the word.

A NEW CHALLENGE. Attacks on the machine surged. It recorded more than 4,000 login attempts, and Web traffic to it spiked to 30 megabits per second. Half a million people visited the Web site (http://test.doit.wisc.edu/). That little Mac Mini was one busy server, but it remained online.

Most of the network traffic conveyed attempts to break in: Web exploits seeking a wedge into the machine via the public page; dictionary attacks, which make repeated guesses at passwords at high speed; and a scanning tool known as Nessus, software that scans for known vulnerabilities. The machine even came under what's known as a denial of service attack, in which an attacker hammers a machine with thousands of requests for information in an attempt to overwhelm the server and thus create an exploitable weakness.

For 38 hours, nothing worked. The Mac Mini held its ground against the worst that the multitudes could throw against it. The contest ended earlier than originally planned and even appears to have gotten Schroeder in trouble with his employer, since it wasn't sanctioned by the university. I'm hearing he may face some kind disciplinary action. The University of Wisconsin apparently isn't interested in such a real-world ad-hoc test, no matter how successful and harmless it proved to be. Schroeder wasn't available for comment.

This illustrates changing perceptions about Mac security. The Mac is increasingly on the radar screen of people who have long ignored it and who, for whatever reason, want to find the chinks in as-yet virtually impregnable armor. And while it may indeed be a more secure system than anything put out by Microsoft (MSFT) and its many hardware partners including Dell (DELL), Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), Gateway (GTW) and others, the level of attention can only increase. Hackers love nothing more than a difficult challenge -- which Windows ceased to be a long time ago.

SOWING FEAR And as Apple Computer (AAPL) gains attention for its innovation, superior software and so far relatively airtight security, people in the media -- including myself -- will be watching with interest and not a small amount of anxiety for the moment when the first really nasty and widespread Mac security vulnerability shows up. Until that happens, even little hiccups are going to trigger an avalanche of negative publicity.

Uninformed media sources will do what they do best -- sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt. And the first time a really big Mac security incident occurs it will cause some people who are considering a Mac over a cheaper Windows-based system to change their minds.

Vulnerabilities in Windows are so common they don't really make the news anymore. But a large-scale, widespread incident on the Mac could badly wound Apple's reputation.

LOCK DOWN. It's for this reason that I think the time has come for Apple to consider doing what many other companies like IBM (IBM) and Oracle (ORCL) have: create a position of chief security officer. This person would be a well-known computer security expert, ideally from outside Apple, who would wave the flag for all things related to Mac security, debunking myths, correcting the record, and providing a public face when issues crop up.

And when something does go wrong -- and I think eventually something will -- he or she would be Apple's ombuds officer evaluating what failed, where, when and how, and then take responsibility for seeing that it's fixed, reporting on the matter to CEO Steve Jobs, Apple's board of directors, and (where appropriate) its shareholders and customers.

I talked briefly with Apple's Bud Tribble, vice-president of software technology. He called my idea a "good suggestion" but said the company would be reticent to assign security issues to any single individual, and that the responsibility of a CSO instead tends to rest with everyone. "For pretty much all the senior people at Apple, security is one of the top jobs on their list," he says. "When we think about security and how we design software, the basic approach is to make it as secure as possible, because most people really aren't security experts. We try to make sure things are pretty well locked down out of the box."

CONFIDENCE BUILDER. While the Mac's Unix underpinnings suffer from the occasional vulnerability, they still present a security advantage, Tribble says. "Unix is sort of a kid that grew up in a tough neighborhood," he says. That neighborhood was a networked environment where people were constantly trying to figure out tricks to log into the system. So over the decades, lots of holes have been plugged. You can't say that about Windows.

And I admit, creating a CSO position may be viewed by some as an admission of weakness. Still, I say it would be a good way for Apple to inoculate itself against the perception -- warranted or not -- that Mac security may be eroding, and get ahead of the curve for any troubles that may be inevitable. That may not be the case, but in matters related to product marketing, it's the public perception, not the reality that really matters.

And once you've lost a user's confidence, it's hard to get it back. Just ask Microsoft.

Live search in Beta

http://www.live.com/

Microsoft launched its beta search engine live.com officially.

Share your secret anonymously

http://postsecret.blogspot.com
If you feel shy to share your secret just send a post card to the address given at the above blog.

“what would it take to enable users themselves to wire-the-web”?

Nice article from RayOzzie. Talking about clip board. Standardization of WebFeed and much more.Dont forget to read the whole article.

Google use PowerPoint for their presentation

http://tomcaster.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/20060302_analyst_day.ppt

Why the heck google is using MS Powerpoint for their presentation if they are supporting OpenOffice at least they should show some respect for the Sun OpenOffice :)

TrackBack : http://sandeeprawat.livejournal.com/10145.html

Blogspot banned in pakistan. Who is next

Blogspot Banned,Next is Orkut,Insha Allah 3/7/2006 5:12 AM
Well the Blogspot has been banned in Pakistan and now its the turn of this vulgar,obscene and anti-islamic portal called Orkut.Instead of banning blogspot,they shud first have banned Orkut because such a website cannot be allowed to be run in an Islamic country.
Moreover let me tell u tht the Supreme Court of Pakistan has issued an explicit order to close and ban all anti-islamic and un-islamic websites and portals on the internet.I m very much surprised tht why is the Pakistan Govt delaying the blocking of this website,Orkut. If the supreme court and the govt are really sincere abt their claim to ban and block anti-islamic and un-islamic websites,they shud take immediate action against this extremely anti-islamic,unislamic,vulgar and obscene website.
Thankyou.
P.S:I will also do my part by informing the Information ministry abt this website also write to Pakistan Telecom Authority to immediately ban this website.Moreover i'll also contact members on Islamic communities on Orkut to mobilize against this website and pressurize the Ministry of Information to ban this anti-islamic and un-islamic website.

Just copied from Orkut thread somewhere...........................
http://www.orkut.com/CommMsgs.aspx?cmm=55961&tid=2451807805632979545&start=1

More info at http://www.boingboing.net/2006/03/04/net_censorship_in_pa.html

Employee headcount at Microsoft and Google and Yahoo

http://www.gaborcselle.com/blog/2006/02/timeline-employee-headcounts-for.html
Nice Reading nice reply thread too

Dell Hell

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/cat_dell.html
Dell is getting evil. Not microsoft :)

Do read the blog about Customer care of Dell. I myself am a HP customer.
May be you would like to read http://www.gapingvoid.com/ He reveals a true story about Microsoft.