New web mail era

Yahoo! has announced that its going to provide unlimited storage for all its users from May, 2007. This is an interesting news today.

Almost every free web mail provider has been offering lots of features (mainly storage related) during the last 2-3 years. Hotmail increased the storage from 5MB to 25MB and then to 1GB. Yahoo, from 100MB to 250 MB and later to 1GB. However, this new web mail era started since the introduction of the GMail with ever-growing storage (initially 1GB I think). Every free web email user should thank Google for releasing such a competitive product which has boosted the whole web mail industry.

I have been using Yahoo mail, Gmail and Hotmail for longer period of time and I personally prefer GMail for several reasons; its way of organizing the whole bunch of emails (through labels, archiving, etc..), free POP and forwarding facilities, integration of one account (Single Sign On) for several applications (GTalk, Blogger, Reader, etc..) and so on. And also, GMail has always been an initiator and not a follower.

The current trend of the web mails shows that we can expect more from each vendors in future, such as the present announcement from Yahoo. We will wait and see!

[This is not a marketing for Google]

UPDATE:
This is an iteresting article from TechCrunch; A Comparison of Live Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo Mail

My college magazines online - thanks to www

My schooling was in Jaffna and it was at St. John's College. I was one of those who suffered by the displacement in 1995 (from Jaffna peninsula) due to the local war. It was such a difficult and unforgettable time period in my life and I could not take more stuff when I moved. One of the items I missed during that time was the collection of my college magazines (publications, issued annually, detailing the college's and students' achievements). Still I am worried, thinking whether I can get them back in anyway.

Today, when I googled for something (related to my name), accidentaly I found some of the college magazines, published online. And the publications where my achievements (GCE Ordinary Level and GCE Advanced Level) listed are also there (find 'balamurali' in the page). I should thank the www for giving me a chance to have a look (at least some) after a decade.

I refreshed my memories through the articles in the site and I feel I miss my alma mater.

St. Johns College magazine (1994-1996)
End of an Era (1993)
175 years at St. John's College

I should start singing my college song now...

Decked with shady palms and trees,
Fringed with rich mahoganies,
There beneath a glowing sky,
St John's upraise her crest on high.

Bill Gates to receive his degree

Bill Gates, chairman of Microsoft and the wealthiest man in the world is going to receive an honorary degree from Harvard, the same university which he dropped out from the degree course to start the company around 30 years back. This is to happen in June in a commencing ceremony of the university, according to this news item.

So, now Gates got an entry for the education column of his resume?

Team Outing with Petra and Iréne

Our guests Petra (Process Manager) and Iréne (Project Manager) are here in Colombo this week, mainly sharing knowledge with the Hatrick team (a sub team of the Corporate Services development team). I don't work for Hatrick, but we do communicate with each other.

Our company culture always encourage us to go for an outing with our guests. So, we decided to go for a dinner. As sea food is the most wanted item for our visitors, we chose the 'Fisherman Cove' at the Mount Lavinia Hotel.

Yesterday evening we all left our office for the dinner together with Petra and Iréne. The hotel was already illuminated with some lights and the sun was about to set. So, we rushed to the beach to see the sun set and we didn't miss it. This nice photograph should say how nice it was.

We moved to the roof-top of a building as someone in the team suggested that the view would be eye-catching. Thats true. We could see a wonderful view of the west coast of sri lanka, even our office at wellawatte was also visible.

Time was up so we again came back to the 'Fisherman Cove' to order the dinner. Loads of fresh sea food items were showcased for us to choose. We ordered grilled fish with french fries and vegetables. The dining table was set on top of a boat (not in the sea) in the beach side with lantterns and candles lit around. I already have had similar beach side dinner many times before but everytime its a different experience with different people and menu.

We talked about a lot of things; about globalization of food items and restaurants, fruits special for sri lanka, sweden and some other countries, Politics and also about the cockroaches and mosquitoes in sweden. Everybody shared their experiences in different countries with different people and food. It was really entertaining.
Before leaveing the place we took a snap of the our team.


I enjoyed the dinner and I hope everybody would feel the same. This kind of outings improve the relationship between the co-workers which eventually will increase the productivity of everyone.

Domain name unavailable? one reason here

You search for a domain name through a domain registrar's search page; You make sure it is available and decide to register later; But when you try to register the same domain the next day, it has already been registered. You wonder who is that black sheep that wanted the same name. This is a common issue that many people might have experienced.


This article describes a cause of the above problem and lists some tips to avoid.

Stealing domain name research

The Slow down Culture

I received this nice article from one of my friends. It's really worth reading it till the end.

An interesting reflection: Slow Down Culture

It's been 18 years since I joined Volvo, a Swedish company. Working for them has proven to be an interesting experience. Any project here takes 2 years to be finalized, even if the idea is simple and brilliant. It's a rule.

Globalize processes have caused in us (all over the world) a general sense of searching for immediate results. Therefore, we have come to posses a need to see immediate results. This contrasts greatly with the slow movements of the Swedish. They, on the other hand, debate, debate, debate, hold x quantity of meetings and work with a slowdown scheme. At the end, this always yields better results.

Said in another words:
1. Swedenis about the size of San Pablo , a state in Brazil .
2. Swedenhas 2 million inhabitants.
3. Stockholm , has 500,000 people.
4. Volvo, Escania, Ericsson, Electrolux, Nokia are some of its renowned companies. Volvo supplies the NASA.

The first time I was in Sweden , one of my colleagues picked me up at the hotel every morning. It was September, bit cold and snowy. We would arrive early at the company and he would park far away from the entrance (2000 employees drive their car to work). The first day, I didn't say anything, either the second or third. One morning I asked, "Do you have a fixed parking space? I've noticed we park far from the entrance even when there are no other cars in the lot." To which he replied, "Since we're here early we'll have time to walk, and whoever gets in late will be late and need a place closer to the door. Don't you think?" Imagine my face.

Nowadays, there's a movement in Europename Slow Food. This movement establishes that people should eat and drink slowly, with enough time to taste their food, spend time with the family, friends, without rushing. Slow Food is against its counterpart: the spirit of Fast Food and what it stands for as a lifestyle. Slow Food is the basis for a bigger movement called Slow Europe, as mentioned by Business Week.

Basically, the movement questions the sense of "hurry" and "craziness" generated by globalization, fueled by the desire of "having in quantity" (life status) versus "having with quality", "life quality" or the "quality of being". French people, even though they work 35 hours per week, are more productive than Americans or British. Germans have established 28.8 hour workweeks and have seen their productivity been driven up by 20%. This slow attitude has brought forth the US 's attention, pupils of the fast and the "do it now!".

This no-rush attitude doesn't represent doing less or having a lower productivity. It means working and doing things with greater quality, productivity, perfection, with attention to detail and less stress. It means reestablishing family values, friends, free and leisure time. Taking the "now", present and concrete, versus the "global", undefined and anonymous. It means taking humans' essential values, the simplicity of living.

It stands for a less coercive work environment, more happy, lighter and more productive where humans enjoy doing what they know best how to do. It's time to stop and think on how companies need to develop serious quality with no-rush that will increase productivity and the quality of products and services, without losing the essence of spirit.

In the movie, Scent of a Woman, there's a scene where Al Pacino asks a girl to dance and she replies, "I can't, my boyfriend will be here any minute now". To which Al responds, "A life is lived in an instant". Then they dance to a tango.

Many of us live our lives running behind time, but we only reach it when we die of a heart attack or in a car accident rushing to be on time. Others are so anxious of living the future that they forget to live the present, which is the only time that truly exists. We all have equal time throughout the world. No one has more or less. The difference lies in how each one of us does with our time. We need to live each moment. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans".

Congratulations for reading till the end of this message. There are many who will have stopped in the middle so as not to waste time in this globalized world.

vi editor by Microsoft

I too get upset with the Microsoft office assistant popping up and asking me silly questions when doing something serious. It might be helpful for the dummies. Who knows.

Here is an imagination of how the Microsoft version of the famous vi editor (linux) would look like. Really funny.

How the vi editor would seem if it has been made by Microsoft

2 useful sites

I want to share 2 links which I think would be very useful for web developers.

1. Ready.mobi: provides an analysis of how your web content is likely to function on a mobile device. The report prints a rating out of 5, for the page. It also gives the results on some additional tests as passes, warnings, fails and comments. It seems that I haven't designed my personal web .mobi friendly as it received an overall rating of 1 out of 5.
   
   
2. MiniAjax.com: a collection of downloadable Ajax and DHTML scripts. They call it a showroom of simple and downloadable scripts.