Microsoft today announced to the world a new arrow in its arsenal. It is the all in one communication management software called ‘Response Point’. Supported by its OEM vendors, Microsoft claims that this will radically improve the way small business looks at its telephone system.  The following are the advantages that they claim from their website.

1. Got a LAN, you can have a neat telephone system with a minimal cost 
2. Need to call someone, no need to press any key, talk to the phone and you are connected..same to check voice mail and dial any external number
3. Need to dial an extension?…know the name of the preson you are dialling, just tell the phone the name..it will connect you ( virtual receptionist?)
4. Want to call directly from your outlook?…well they provide that
5. Moving to new location, take your phone and plug it in, tell the administrator and you are ready for using your phone in few mins…
6. Worried about new extensions, there is a anwer there too…:

Find more @ http://www.microsoft.com/responsepoint/default.mspx

It is looking like Microsoft is flexing its muscles for taking a integrated approach to small business needs.

The closer I get to the date for renewing my apartment lease, I stare at a lengthy exercise to see if it is a wise decision to stay in the same aparment escaping with a light increase in rent or move off to a new apartment which is lighter on the pocket. But, till now there is no way to find out if I am paying above or below the mean rate.

 

Recently I was searching on the internet to see what is the averate rent in and around the place I live and I happened to discovered this cool utility from google(??) or some app which might be using google maps. this is www.rentometer.com. I tried for myself on the average rents in and around Bellevue and here is what it looks like. Power of search answering the common problems.

The best part I liked here is that, you will have a visual representation of the areas with a “-” sign shown where the average rent is less than what you are paying and a “+” sign indicating the areas where I might need to shell out more to move. Good Catch!!!

I am on a proxy sabbatical for the past one month. Deeply buried myself into my project work. With the functional spec ready and signed off, I got some time to catch up with my blogging which is orphaned lately.

With cricket fever catching up and my project which will be in the middle of development, I am sure I can see some tough balancing between my passion for cricket and my commitment to work. Today, I just browsed all the available avenues for getting myself a connection to live cricket. Being tied to Comcast, I can resign to my fate that I cannot watch Cricket on TV. Next comes live streaming on internet. I found that there are many sites promising a lot of excitement through live feeds but not sure which one is the best in terms of promising uninterrupted connectivity. Boy, most of them are asking for a fortune for the whole package. I am missing India now more badly than ever. I am missing the good old DD which used to be the only source of cricket back till the late nineties. Those were the days when my dad as an exception used to wake me up to watch cricket (world cup in Aus) instead of waking me up for studies. I need to see if any of my friends are subscribing to the world cup package on Dish TV. I am sure to knock each ones door to see if they can provide me space on those days when India is playing. Don’t know if men in blue are going to pay back the hopes of billion fans. I am sure the team is more balanced than ever and Indian stand a good chance as any other team out there currently. I am just hoping Viru will be back to blasting and Dhoni will be as good as ever, Sachin will be making the best of his last glorious days, Dada need to answer many people to shut their mouths. All under the captaincy of dependable Dravid. Gosh, there are so many great players. In my mind, I see SA, Aus and WI as potential champions. Anyway, Cheers to INDIA…

My parents being not so comfortable with enjoying the digital snaps on computer, asked me to send some hard copies of the photos from here in US. I thought of getting them printed and posting them . But, when one of my friend advised me about couple of sites which will do the job of printing and shipping them to any address in India, I thought a sweet answer of internet to send photos to my parents. But my happiness lasted hardly for a week. It has been near to 10 days since I uploaded my photos and ordered them for shipping to my parents and god knows what is happening to them. BTW, this review is about www.picsquare.com . I need to tell you that I am misguided by all the reviews on the internet or I might be the unluckiest person to experience this bad customer service.

To tell you why I choose this site even after my friend had a nice experience with www.merasnap.com, I thought this being run by folks who had an experience of US customer service after working here and also coming from IIT backgound will have a good business acumen than others. Ofcourse all the good press about them also helped to sway my decision. Probably I am wrong by reading that all those who wear suits are businessmen.

My story goes like this.

1. I uploaded the photos on 16th Jan 2007 for 72 prints and thought my parents can receieve them in 4-6 days time( taking one day extra for mattee finish)

2. Amount is debited from my account the moment I placed the order

3. Even after 5th day, the order still shows the status as “In processing”

4. Sent an e-mail to customer service asking for the status of the order and got a prompt reply that it will be shipping soon

5. Another 2 days passed, no change in status and goes another e-mail from my side. This time no reply from customer service

6. Another e-mail couple of days later is promptly answered telling me that it will be shipped at any cost

7. 2 days passed since I got the last reply and my order is still under “processed” status.

8. Today mark 10th day( 8 working days) and dont know how long it is going to take.

Will post an update once my parents receive the photos and hear the quality of the same from my parents.

[UPDATE] – My parents received them today which is exact 10 working days after I ordered. The best part of this is that my parents are very happy with the quality of the prints. I would love to do business with these folks again if not for the delay. 

Recently I stumbled across a site for finding road directions in India. I am quite surprised to see that something of this kind existing for India given the poor demographic and geographic data that is available. Even if the data is available it is only privy to government agencies like NRSA. Anyway the site I am writing about is www.mapmyindia.com.

The site is quite interesting and is a very easy to understand kind of one for those who got used to google maps and yahoo maps. I tried it to get some known routes and bingo it is there on the dot returning the results to 100% perfection.

I feel the user interface is a bit cluttered compared with what we see in other famous sites. As the usage of internet grows in India, I am sure more and more people will flock using this sites and so does the competition increase. I can see lot of competition is coming in photo development and printing sites that cater to India and I am sure this will expand and people will embrace technology to make their lives easier.

One year passed by into the dawn and new year started with a bright horizon. Year 2006 is a eventful year for me both professionally and personally. Spending the entire year off my home country and living in the land of dreams. This is something which I never thought will last the whole year living in Amerikaaa. My job kept me continuing month after month and month and month until December came and I realized, I spent the whole of 2006 in this country which I am feeling as my home now. The best part of this year is myself evolving as a proud dad where I seen the transition of my daughter from an infant during the summer into a toddler by the time fall is over and now when it is winter she just started running(oops..I mean walking). First child always stands a special place in any one’s life and for me it is not an exception. I spent my best time with my first child in 2006. Personally this year stands eventful. There are some defining moments which I am sure will stand out during my life during this year of 2006.

1. Buying my first car
2. Getting my first drivers license in USA after failing once
3. Trying to speak english in american accent( Kool for cool, wassup for whats up?, raoute for route, skedule for schedule , zee for Z) and falling on my face every time
4. Brining my family from India to join me after my kid is born
5. Spending one eventful week without power in USA where power is basic amenity.

Professionally, I moved (I slipped into) from a techie to a managerial role. Both sweet and sour. Got to meet some good people and got to learn a lot on planning things. Learned a lot on how to maximize the productivity with respect to the time spent at work.

As usual I never got a good opportunity to jump with my shorts and get on to explore this great country. Some odd things stopped me in the last moment going on some of the tours that I loved to go.

Well, I don’t think a page is not enough to summarize the things. Thank you for all the good things 2006.

Welcome 2007.

Anyone who knows India, vouch for the name Airtel as a good telecom provider. Not anymore. I learnt a bitter truth albeit very lately to know that their new service for the expats by name airtelcallhome(www.airtelcallhome.com) sucks big time. The website which looks like a small bollywood poster has the functionality just like a bollywood movie.Big name, Big stars, Poor story. End result, super blooper. Whoever designed and built this website need to be sent to hell.

It all started one day with myself seeing advertisement in Rediff and jumping the rope to be among the first to get registered to this service without looking elsewhere or thinking twice since it is backed up by a brand name called Bharti Airtel. That is the first mistake I have done

The second mistake is myself propagating to all my known friends about this so called best and cheap service(7.9c against Reliance 12.9c) and cursing reliance for robbing us all these days.

The immediate next hour the problems started. I never got the so called username and password to log in to the site even after 24 hours since registering. The next day I got on the phone only to stay on it to hear a human voice on the other end after 1 hour. Yes, 1 hour = 60 minutes. The conversation lasted hardly 3 mins before I got an e-mail (which looks like a young school boy writing his name on his book label) informing me about my PIN,PIN password( are we not supposed to had PIN as password for most of the services), UserID and another password.

My ordeal does not end there, armed with all the required things, dreaming of talking for long with my dear ones, I started dialing with the information I got.

Try 1- Please check you PIN and try again …disconnected

Need to dial the stupid 1-877 number again

Try 2 – Please check the PIN and try again …disconnected

Try 3 – went through all the down and tried calling number to India ( 0091-10digit number)..Please check the number you dialed..disconnected

Try 4 – Repeated everthing as in try 3 and was speaking to the other party…

Spent good 20 mins for the above trys, Finished my conversation in 5 mins…too tired.

The customer service number is always engaged now a days

Moral of the story :: Guys, My experience is that cheap is not always the best even it comes from a good company. Stick to reliance.

By the way, reliance is now offering calls to India @ 7.9c per minute.

We won’t realize the value of an object lying next to you unless we miss it. This realization came to most people in and around Seattle last week when the heavy storm that passed by Peugeot sound region on Dec 14^th knocked down the entire electric system before it left.

With freezing temperatures ranging from upper 20s to near 30s, life became real miserable without heating or cooking next to impossible, almost everything that is invented to make life easy became useless without electricity. Basic necessities in life are compromised.

It is just not myself or my neighbors who lost power. We are around a million of us who lost power and the radius is around 25 miles without power from where I live. Literally life came to standstill. No gas, no hotels, no heating, no shower, no cooking. we are thrown into a medieval world where people lived closed to nature adjusting along with it. The first day passed by a variety by eating some fruits and bearing the cold with comforters to keep ourselves warm. The second day felt like too slow to move. Probably one of the worst weekends in America. Back in India this would not have been the case. Electricity just gives us the privilege to see each other and watch television. Food and sleep were never a problem without electricity.

Fortunately things started to improve with electricity getting restored during the last hours of weekend. And we are lucky to have our friends among the luckiest ones to get electricity on Saturday itself. We moved in to their place to find ourselves a cozy night.

Probably this taught us the value of having friends in life. Being a non-native of this land and where I can just have friends in this place, I am fortunate to have good friends who never made me or my family feel as outsiders during the entire 4 day stay when I took refuge in their house.

I found that I had done many things which I never done while electricity was not there.

• Stayed for 3 days without shower
• Listened to radio always
• Probably for the first time, read all the local news websites
• Refreshing the local electricity provider(www.pse.com) website every 5 mins to see if there is an update.

Oh boy, did I tell you how I felt when electricity was restored to my apartment, It was probably one of the most relished moments in my life.

At the time of writing this, I found that still there are near to 80K people who are waiting for their power and are hoping it will be in by Christmas time. Hope their holidays will be back to life soon.

    In a nation where electricity is scarce and where power cuts come along with mangoes as package in Summer months, passage of nuclear bill by US lawmakers finally mark the dawn of new era in electricity generation. President Bush is expected to sign this bill today to make it into law cementing the already strong relationship between the two countries.

It is surprise to see such a strong support from US since it is the first nation which implemented blocks on the technology transfer after the Pokhran blasts during the Vajpayee Regime. But lately, world came to accept India as a peaceful nation with nuclear capability and treated India separately from rouge nations.

If everything goes as planned, India should see a big chuck of its electricity generated by nuclear powered plants which is economically suitable for a country like India. Being in a phase where we need to step up our infrastructure growth in tune with the services growth, no one can ask for a more appropriate time other than this for the passage of nuclear bill.

Prime minister Manmohan Singh and President Bush should be credited for making this a reality amidst lot of criticism and opposition in both the countries.

Two of the recent judgments in India where two of the popular legislative members Shibu Soren and Navjot Sidhu are convicted of deaths bring back the faith in the Indian Judiciary system. Judgments like these reposes the faith of the people in the most important pillar of democracy

Comment by lok sabha speaker expressing reservations about Judiciary intervening in Parliamentary affairs is uncalled for his stature.

One top of this, recent ruling by Supreme court telling that there is no need to take any ones permission for prosecuting people in high offices is a welcome sign for a better democracy and hope will keep people like Laloo in check.