The small World; Infinite Possibilities

2009-07-04T22:36:00.003-05:00

Here is my first 436 megapixel panorama,

Goodbye my friend....

2008-12-31T19:54:00.000-06:00

Hello 2009!!!

Yeah! time to say goodbye to one of the most happening year. The year that went almost in recession. It was the year full of surprises and it was a year for record books.
It was a roller coaster ride if you ask my personnel overlook at 2008. This was the year proved me wrong in many occasions and taught me the new reality. I had so many 'firsts' (so called) in my life during last 365 days. I was proved to be wrong in many of my judgments about people orientation. Some changes came in as a unfamiliar or unethical way, but some was surprisingly better. The illusion of some old memories came back strongly stressing themselves as nothing more than an "illusion". Overall it was a good educating year for me and shown a good direction about being realistic in future. Now I am confident, 'any illusions (may be years old) are just another stupid illusion'; no hard feelings about it...:)

Coming back to this small world, 2008 was a year better forgotten. The finance industry through out the world took a dangerous place in the jaws of recession. New bankruptcy, bailout and layoff news ruled the news papers columns. The economic giant (although worst effected by recession) USA gets the new young dynamic president to battle the recession. Terrorist activity increases throughout the world with Mumbai attacks retaining its highest rank. This initiates some new challenges infront of world peace makers.

On the other hand, it was one of the years which had maximum number of natural disasters. Global warming indicator reached new heighs. The 6 degree effect became 'terrifing factor' for the life on earth. Increasing number of storms, hurricanes, floods caused millions of victims.

2008 turned out to be one the years which world looks to forget. But it gave the opportunity to learn new things and warned the residents of this small planet earth to be prepared for anything that comes on their way.

Goodbye 2008....

I am feeling couple of years younger today!!

2008-12-26T16:57:00.003-06:00

The day long cloudy weather busted some rain in late afternoon and later when rain stopped, it was completely foggy with wet surface all around.

I was sitting all alone at home (working) and had a 10% Barnes and Nobles discount coupon in my mailbox. I just realized the Barnes and Noble store right in front of my apartment complex. When I remember the starbucks counter, they generally have inside the store; there was no reason for staying back at home.
Within 10 mins I was inside the huge Barnes and Nobles store.
This was the perfect atmosphere that uses to be, while I spend hours in Crossword stores in Pune couple of years ago.
I had almost stopped buying books (visiting book stores in fact as I can't control myself if I visit) after coming to US. I had a tough time dispersing my collection of CD/DVD's and Books (mini library) while leaving Pune. So, I made a resolution of not to buy more than 5 books/year so that I can carry it wherever I go. But unfortunately I broke the resolution. I cant resist if I see any good book especially related to travel or photography; just like today I saw the book 'Long Way Down' in B&N. I just remembered the way I struggled to get the book 'Long Way Round' by same authors couple of years back in India; so bought it.
I am feeling refreshed after spending couple of hours in B & N with a midium starbucks white mocha ( my all time *$ favorite ) and getting a book I didn't expected to buy.

NASA - Unfurling

2008-10-15T11:00:00.000-05:00

NASA - Unfurling

NASA - Mirror Images

2008-09-23T09:36:00.000-05:00

Good One!! thought of sharing it here!!!

NASA - Mirror Images

Cars of future.....

2008-09-21T14:57:00.010-05:00

Courtesy: article in msnbc.com dated 09/20/2008.

NASA - Ike Comes Ashore

2008-09-15T10:18:00.000-05:00

Just got this e-mail from NASA News service. Look at this, it looks beautiful; but its dangerous and did a good amount of damage in southern Texas.

NASA - Ike Comes Ashore

Not so good!!!!

2008-09-09T15:32:00.010-05:00

I always have a fraction of fear while taking a air journey, especially domestic through regional jet aircrafts. The reason may be the size and shape of aircrafts. These regional jets are small and thin body aircrafts with the tail mounted rolls-roys/general electric engines which eject around 8900 pounds of thrust and built by Embraer. As the weather being bad this year throughout the summer, it is become very common to have a bumpy ride en route. That is the major point makes me bit hesitant before choosing the air travel through these RJ's.

There is a peace of mind if you get to travel by either Boeing or Airbus aircrafts (Generally B737 family or A320 family), as it has a well recognized name in the aviation industry. Boeing 737 is one of the world’s most ordered aircraft even after 40 years of its first flight.

You got it right my intention if you have aviation safety tracking as your hobby. I am talking about the 4 incidents involving 737 family took place in one week, i.e. last week of august 2008 and a total of 5 incidents in 2008. The major one was Boeing 737-219- Itek Air Crash on 24th August leaving 65 fatalities. Two among 4 those crashes were of the airline which is banned by EU unions. That means, they are known to for not following the security standards set by commercial aviation industry.

Here are those 4 incidents.

What do you think? Am I forcing you to think ‘how safe am I?’ when flying next 737 flights?? No!!!! That’s not my intention. Don’t bother, when it comes to Boeing you are in safe hands. One of the most trusted aircraft manufacturer in the world. This is just a coincidence and doesn’t harm the aircrafts image as largest flying medium sized aircraft. So, don’t bother fly ‘BINDAS’!!!!!

Another Update:

Just 5 days after my post, yet another 737-500 goes down near russia. No clues of why it happened yet. Aviation-safety.net says " Radio contact was lost during approach at 3,600 feet. Wreckage was later found in a ravine near Perm city limits." It leaves behind all 88+6 fatalities. Is it another Flight 427??? We have to wait for investigation reports. This is definitely not so good!!!!

2008-08-25T07:59:00.003-05:00

Its monday morning!!!

Yet to have a cup of tea.. How can one imagine start working? Definately not. So thought of giving words to a serious thought that sparked on my way to office by looking at a signboard.

Let me grab a tea and come to the signboard now. The world is on the curb of fuel crisis since past several months. Since then, it gave opportunity to a new trend of marketing; "buy xyz product, you could be the lucky to win a year of gas for free". Several motor companies announced the fuel price gaurantee for 3 years of their vehicle purchase. Its like a fuel insurance. Please make a note, this kind of offers comes from a brand which is known for making gas sucking vehicles. The signboard I saw today was also the same which stated 'come and win a supply of gas for full year'. It was a add posted by a local Casino company.

The moment I saw this add, I started thinking of all the adds I saw in past regarding the topic. Is this the solution for increasng fuel price? does it solve the problem permanently for even the person who is lucky enough to win the prize? If the answer is yes, then rest of this article goes no where. Else, my thought is why dont these companies spend this money towards the research of an better alternate? I have not seen any single add of these companies who said I am taking any steps towards shaping up the future or I am ready for the future without natural oil. I do agree there are some maor companies who are coming up with technologies like hybrid, hydrogen fuel etc. But those are not reachable for a common man even in progressed countries like USA.

The major point I wanted say in this discussion was; to be frank and be ready to welcome the future with full of crisis rather than using the issues just as marketing tac-tics. This should be the work of direction for at least major auto makers and consumer companies. When they can do so much to serve the customer pleasure, why cant a few proportion to build a better tomorrow? Its their tomorrows business; long drive on a Porsche is no more pleasure after paying more than a dollar to drive a mile.

Its just my thought.. think on it and share your views.

--Prashant

What is iPhone?

2008-08-18T08:40:00.000-05:00

Hello folks...

Its been a long time since my last post geeky stuff. There are quite a few reasons why I wasn't appearing on this place. Now after a long break I am back with something I felt like I should write about. Here you go...

Last month, july 11th to be precise I was totally confused about the new iPhone 3G. I was searching the whole internet world for the reviews and comments on the same. Surprisingly I was getting only the reviews which highlighted what iPhone is not or in better words the drawbacks of the new Apple product. Some places its been narrated as 'Steve Jobs new toy'... sounds funny.. :)

These are the comments made me wait for couple of weeks to think about it rather than changing my almost firm descition of bagging one. Sometime during last week of July, I had 'Steve Jobs toy' in my pocket. Now after playing with this toy for almost a month, I am in a kind of position to answer the reviews I saw on some websites.

Here is my comments on some of the drawbacks,

no MMS :- With such a powerful internet capabilities of iPhone, I would prefer sending the mail attachments rather then messy MMS. So I dont care about not having the MMS as a feature.
no Video Recording :- Can someone give me a video that is in watchable condition from any mobile phone? I would prefer taking no videos in that quality rather than taking a videos that could not identify own face. ( Nokia's N93 may be the exception with a good quality video recording)
no front camera :- What??? Feature that makes the mobile phone a real toy.
no A2DP Bluetooth :- This could be a major drawback as per me. But this technology is yet to be matured enough to emerge as a complete technology. The A2DP you get currently has lot of problems like connectivity. The A2DP headsets available in the market gets unpaired once on an average 15-20 mins. So may be Apple doesn't want its users to get into that frustration?
old 2M pixels Camera :- Buy a good digital camera and carry instead of carrying a huge higher resolution camera built in phone all the time even to the places where it is not meant for.

The major thing I liked about this is, it doesn't hang too much. The screen resolution and touch flow is much better than the any other touch screen device in market. The only time it hung for me was when it ran out of battery below 10%. This is the major problem in symbian/windows based phones one gets irritated most by pressing the red button to turn it off.

Believe me it is not just an eye candy. It does well with 'always connected platform'. It accomplishes its task what it is meant for unless lot of devices those forgets the main purpose and does everything else it wasn't intend to do. Selling a million units in just 3days is not a joke for any brand any device in my opinion. I mean anyone cannot make a million fools in 3 days just with his marketing tactics.

Geeky Stuff...

2007-10-13T15:28:00.000-05:00

Geeky Stuff - Vs. 1.1

Geeky Stuff - Vs. 1.0

This post looks quite contradictory when one compares my claim in 'About Me' with this one. But as per as I am concerned both doesn't give any wrong information.

I survived Tornado!!!!!

2007-08-21T19:45:00.000-05:00

.....Yes it was my first live tornado experience. It was yesterday evening, a siron sounded like a blast; floating a scary wave around. It took us around 5 minutes (5 minutes are too much when tornado's are concerned) to come for a conclusion that it is a tornado red alert.
There was a series of flashes from lightning. As always I was behind the cloud, waiting it to colloid with other causing the flash that I could capture. I failed completely this time; that is different matter altogether.

The entire building was gathered under the ground floor appartment. One should not stay in the top floor of the building during the tornado warning. As soon as we reached the ground floor, a strong wind started and it was just the introduction of the forthcoming (going???) storm. The weather channels was alerting that the tornado may touch the ground in eastern part of Omaha. Now it took just half a minute to come to a conclusion that we are in western part of Omaha. The red alert was just for 40 minutes from 7:20 pm till 8:00 pm. As the clock running towards 8:00 pm the rain reduced and the storm was trivial.

So at the end of the game, it was a kind of fun filled 40 minutes. But remember we were in western part!!!

.......Don't go with the title, it is too fancy at this moment!..:D

Forum Nokia Profile

2007-08-03T14:00:00.000-05:00

My profile in the Nokia developers forum:
Click Here

Latest Nokia devices in market...

2007-07-17T13:01:00.000-05:00

The 5 recent releases from Nokia;
Device Details -- Nokia 6121 classic
Device Details -- Nokia 6267
Device Details -- Nokia 3500 classic
Device Details -- Nokia 6500 slide
Device Details -- Nokia 8600 Luna

Dollar value depreciation; good or bad???

2007-07-16T23:13:00.000-05:00

Recently there is a new topic of discussion raise around the 'Desi' community residing in US; the 'dollar value depreciation'. Whenever I came across those discussion, I really ask myself is it too bad? I thought it was good for India? Good to hear Indian economy is on boost?
Later I realize the truth. The community whose major intention is to make “money” out of their US trip or stay is the ones most bothered about this.
I am not the right person to say whether it is good or bad because economics is the area in which I stand very low. Still I feel really happy for Indian economy boom and rupee gaining against dollars.

My Review of Celestron 10 - 30 x 50 Upclose Zoom, Weather Resistant Porro Prism Binocular with 4.1 Degree Angle of View at 10x, U.S.A.

2007-07-10T10:15:00.001-05:00

Originally submitted at Adorama

Celestron 10 - 30 x 50 Upclose Zoom, Weather Resistant Porro Prism Binocular with 4.1 Degree Angle of View at 10x, U.S.A.

Overall a good package

By Prashant from Omaha,NE on 7/10/2007

Pros: Works Well With Glasses, Quality Lenses, Close Focus, Strong Construction

Cons: Bulky

Best Uses: Bird Watching

Describe Yourself: Birder, Casual/Recreational, Avid Adventurer

It is a good product for any terristrial watching. The magnification provided is really superb. easy to use and focus. Smooth focus and zoom controls. I would definately recommond this product to anyone looking for a good terristrial binacular.

(legalese)

Refreshing Flashback....

2007-05-23T19:01:00.000-05:00

Hello...
It was quite a long time since I have made a post in my blog. I really hate to say 'I was busy; was not getting time!!!'; but it is the fact. There was two things that made me stay busy in the past month. The first one is quite obvious one, 'the office work'. The second one sounds quite interesting!! Of course it is interesting... The game for which countries like India go mad in times, yes its "CRICKET".
Being in a country which cannot imagine anything other than a leaping insect by the word 'Cricket', we play the game every evening for around 2 hours.
When I was a kid, I had been told about the reaction of Americans about cricket. It goes something like, 'Cricket, a game played by 11 stupid people just to entertain another 11 million stupid people watching it for hours'.
For me it is the time to refresh my engineering days; the days our group spent more than 6 hours a day in cricket field. I was quite stunned when I saw a group of people playing cricket in our colony. The immediate reaction was to go and join them for a couple of games. That was just the beginning. As the days rolled on, the cricket getting popularity in the 'Desi' community around and the team is growing. Now it is the daily activity after the office hours. I am playing cricket on daily basis again after the break of around 3 years. I am hoping the trend to continue throughout this spring and summer.

The double tennis court, where we use to play cricket... ( definately I am not in the picture).

Flying High....

2007-04-28T10:12:00.000-05:00

I know what you are thinking at this moment; when did this waste fellow started flying? But it is true. Anything is possible today in the world of simulation. Yes! You got it right; I am talking about the Microsoft Flight Simulator I bought couple weeks back.
I salute Microsoft for developing such a wonderful product. I was able to fly with just one training the simulator comes with. The controls of throttle, pitch, wings direction, flaps etc are simply awesome. The wing direction control is quite complex with keyboard still it could be controlled pretty well. I am waiting for joystick to come to enjoy the flying experience completely.
As per the experts the MS flight simulator provides the more than 80% behavior of the actual aircraft. The radio service simulation is excellent in this product.
Till now my flying history with Microsoft Flight Simulator is quite bad, as I crashed the aircraft most of the times while landing. In fact I got the landing proper only couple of times. But I was good at take off and cruising (quite simple part of flying). Even in the direction sense I showed good development over days and I am about to reach the perfection (waiting for joy stick which is in transit).
So, to conclude I will strongly suggest the product for all who has enthu to fly someday.
If you want to dig into the product please follow this link to Wikipedia.

Stunning MIDP 3.0

2007-04-24T16:14:00.000-05:00

I don’t know whether, MIDP 3.0 be the answer to mighty symbian? But one thing is for sure; the specification of MIDP 3.0 creates a wave of excitement in the java mobile community. I am not the exception.
Things are changing around. There is not much of difference between the CLDC and CDC devices. The memory is not a constraint for small devices. So is the expectation of the mobile market.
The MIDP 3.0 is an attempt made by market leaders like, motorola, nokia, sony ericson etc to meet the market expectations in java platform. The MIDP 3.0 became the java specification request 271 (JSR 271).
The final specification is due at sometime mid 2007 and I think I can expect a MIDP 3.0 device in market by early 2008?
Following are some of the features of the spec,

Enable and specify proper behavior for MIDlets on each of CLDC, CDC, and OSGi, for example:

Enable multiple concurrent MIDlets in one VM (I am eagerly waiting for this one)
Specify proper firewalling, runtime behaviors, and lifecycle management issues for MIDlets
Enable background MIDlets (e.g. UI-less) (The feature current MIDP's lacking)
Enable ?auto-launched? MIDlets (e.g. started at platform boot time) ( 'Must have' for many business applications)
Enable inter-MIDlet communications (Nice feature)

Enable shared libraries for MIDlets
Tighten spec in all areas to improve cross-device interoperability.
Increase functionality in all areas. E.g. ( Good to have features)

Improve UI expressibility and extensibility
Better support for devices with larger displays
Enable MIDlets to draw to secondary display(s)
Enable richer and higher performance games
Secure RMS stores
Removable/remote RMS stores
IPv6
Multiple network interfaces per device

Specify standard ways for doing MIDlet provisioning through other means (e.g. OMA (SyncML) DM/DS, Bluetooth, removable media, MMS, JSR-232, etc.)
Extensive device capabilities query
Localization & Internationalization (if appropriate, integrating/augmenting JSR-238 as needed)

A key design goal of MIDP3 will be backward compatibility with MIDP2 content. This is a must, because of the number of MIDP 2.0 devices running in current market.

Okay... let us hope for a device implemented with MIDP 3.0 soon...

SOA for developers... part 2

2007-04-18T08:58:00.000-05:00

Note: This post continues the web service basics from the point ended in last post..

Java Platform Enterprise Edition (JEE) provides one among many answers for the above challenges. The web service development with JEE could be based on below two possible standard technologies,

1. XML Technology :

XML represents data in serialized format that can be transported over the network from one endpoint to another. The building stones of web services, WSDL and SOAP are written using XML.

Web Service Description Language (WSDL): WSDL is an XML based language used to describe a remote web service and facilitate application to application communication. A WSDL file describes what a service does, how to invoke its operations, where it can be found on the net, and its interface. Hence WSDL of a service could be used to build stub and is used as proxy to invoke the service.

Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP): SOAP is an XML based protocol that provides an envelope for exchanging object data on the internet. It uses standard formatting conventions and encoding rules, binds to HTTP as its transport mechanism, and relies upon RPC. It could be called as a wrapper over HTTP to access the web service.

2. Java Technology :

Java technology provides API to author business and presentation logic for the service publisher/client. The enables, developers leverage to a whole new level of functionalities.

Figure 3. Protocol level view

The above diagram makes use of JAX-RPC to demonstrate the protocol view of a web service model. JAX-RPC is a remote procedure call based programming model introduced in J2EE 1.4 onwards. The basic purpose of JAX-RPC is to provide a set of API’s for java applications to communicate with each other using SOAP.

The following diagram shows the exact flow of events that took place in a remote web service (java) call from a java client.

Figure 4. Web Service Flow of events.

Once the service is published it could be consumed in many ways. Here I am giving brief of three types of web service clients,

Stub Based

To use this method stub are generated from WSDL (Description of the service interface) of the Service (from available tools. E.g. WSDL2Java etc). Once the stub is generated, it encapsulates the complexity of invoking service and for developer and client; it would be just like a method call. Over stub instance

Dynamic Proxy

It follows Proxy architecture of Java Reflection API and the process Involves manual look up of service, getting the port etc.

DII (Dynamic Invocation Interface)

This technique involves dynamic calls during run time. Get a reference to an object that represents a single Web service operation, in the form of a method, and to invoke that method without needing to access the service factory or to use a stub and a remote interface

Why for Web Service?

The following few points support the use of web services:

Interoperable – Connect across heterogeneous networks using regular web-based standards like XML.

Economical – Recycle components, no installation and tight integration of software

Accessible – Legacy assets & internal apps are exposed and accessible on the web

Available – Services on any device, anywhere, anytime

Scalable – No limits on scope of applications and amount of heterogeneous applications

So, here we reach the end of basics lessons on web service. In next post I will try to give some working example and then starts the real thriller, 'SOA'...

Basics of Web Services.... SOA for developer part-1

2007-04-15T22:42:00.000-05:00

At the first glance we can define SOA as architecture which enables development of software solutions as discoverable services over the network. This is not a new technology which born day before yesterday. It was there in market since long time, but the approach and design was different then how it was being looked today. The major reason for the popularity of the SOA is "Web Services". In this paper I first looking into the web services with Java technology and later I am trying to link this with the architectural concepts of SOA.
Basics of Web Services:
"A Web service is a software application identified by a URI, whose interfaces and binding are capable of being defined, described and discovered by XML artifacts and supports direct interactions with other software applications using XML based messages via internet-based protocols"

……..Definition given by W3C

The promise of web services is to put any application - regardless of the platform on which it is developed or the architecture on which it is deployed - within the reach of any client. It seeks to create an environment where any networked client, running on any kind of device, can find a service on the network and use it as though it was a local service.
Web services are computing services offered through the web that are accessible from any web-service-enabled machine with Internet access. Web services enable interoperability through a set of XML-based open standards. Publisher use the XML-based Web Services Description Language (WSDL) to explain their Web services on the Internet and list them in an XML-based registry such as the Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI). UDDI allows one to find publicly available Web services as shown in Figure 1. A client sends a service request to the registry, which informs the client about the registered services that meet the criteria of the request. The Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) is then used to communicate between the applications running on different platforms.

Figure 1

There are three major challenges in building a web service that participates in a business web:

Build client-tier connectivity to allow applets, applications, business partners, web browsers, and PDA’s, connect and make use of a web service.
Implement the web service including any workflow logic, data transformation logic, business logic, and data access logic. This is the functionality behind the web service that performs work remotely on behalf of the clients.
Connect to back-end systems which may include one or more databases, existing enterprise information systems, business partners that publish their own web services, and a shared context repository for user information shared across many systems.

Figure 2. Simplified Web Service Architecture

SOA effect...

2007-04-15T18:20:00.000-05:00

Today afternoon, I got an idea of starting a new series of posts on my favorite topic SOA. Immediately I was in act, and logged into blogger. I changed the title of the blog to what you are seeing now. After this, happened the disaster, instead of 'Save Changes' button, I clicked on 'Delete Blog'. As usual (can say my habit), ignored the warning messages displayed and clicked 'OK' for everything. Before I realize, all my 2 months effort in building the blog was deleted :). There was no CTRL+Z for this. Thanks to google desktop search, by which I was able to recover 2-3 posts and re-construct my blog within next 1 hour.
Ok....as the title says it is the time for SOA. The next few posts would be related to web service and SOA. The basic idea behind this would be providing the knowledge of SOA and related stuffs to the developer community. Hence the series begins with the basic of web services (RPC, SOAP etc), then moves into XML messaging, TIBCO etc and then into the core SOA concepts. The business sense is discussed only when we reach the SOA lessons. Please note that, it looks pretty technical as it is prepared by a typical techie.. :)
So fasten your seat belt and get ready for your ride into the world of SOA...(Starts from next post.)

My First Thunder Bolt Photography......

2007-04-02T18:50:00.000-05:00

As you might have read in my previous posts, photography is one of my favorite hobby. Last Saturday, I got a unique opportunity to capture a lightning stroke (thunder bolt). Even though the lightning was happening at quite a long distance, I was ready to capture it with my new Canon SD 800 digicam ( actually not a ideal choice for lightning photography ). After the idle wait of around 30 mins, I got a chance to click the stroke. I was quick enough to push the trigger and capture the stroke within a fraction of second. The manual settings I have done, supported me in the process.

The result lacks the professionalism, but I think it is quite good for the first timer with the low end camera like SD800...:)The camera settings used are,Manual settings

Flash Off
ISO 400
Exposure -1
Infinity focus mode

Firing Lesson...

2007-03-19T19:25:00.000-05:00

"GUYSSS I HAVE GOT FIRE IN MY HOUSE... CALL FIRE BRIGADE.....CALL FIRE BRIGADE......." was the voice that came out in heavy american accent from top when I moved out of my apartment from rear exit along with my friend. We were bit confused as we were not expecting any such kind of incidents to happen. We realized the fire only when we saw the blackened window glass and dark fumes coming out of window and roof edges.

The guy living on second floor had put himself into balcony and tried to arrest the fire inside his house. 'The fire gone beyond his control when he was trying to boil potatoes by while taking bath', he was trying to explain. In fact we are more bothered then that guy. We had none other options then informing the leasing office and the other roomies and friends as both of us didn't had the fire brigade number.

Meanwhile I would like share a lighter moment. As we moved out of flat, my friend opened cigerate and lit it to smoke. Immediately he noticed the fire alarm and moved out in hurry. I was laughing by myself. He was thinking the fire alarm was because of his smoke.. :)

By the time of all panic and hurry, the neighboring guy had called fire brigade and the fire brigade siren was audible. The siren was quite relaxing to everyone. The apartment crew vacated the building to make the fire mens job easy.

I need to appreciate the response time of the fire brigade here. Three extinguisher vehicle, one rescue vehicle, one red cross vehicle and a cop vehicle was on spot within 6-7 mins. They were into action within next minute and the fire was under control within the following minute. Even though it looked like they are breaking up every possible thing, it was to ensure there is no spark of fire is left.

The over all incident was full of panic, anxiety, excitement and fear. Later it was the issue to discuss for next couple of hours. Anyhow it was a unique experience and added excitement to the boring weekend evening. I was witnessing the fire accident for the first time.

I searched for all emergency contact numbers of Omaha and stored into my mobile as immediate next step.

No... It is not irritating technology.... ( An approach towards call XML and voxeo)

2007-03-15T17:45:00.000-05:00

When your phone rings and shows some anonymous number, you pick up and say “hello”. But the from the other side you here something like,“ ‘XYZ’ telecom presents the new series of hello tunes. Please press ‘1’ to activate it right now”. Based on your mood you gets irritated, activate the service they are promoting by throwing away some bucks or gets curious about how these applications may work?

Even though I got irritated most of the times with these calls, I got curious some time. This is the result of that curiosity developed from the irritating promotional calls from the operators.

Goal: To explore and develop a hello world application which is capable of making outgoing calls and recording the message given.

Selecting the technology: There are hundred’s service providers who provides the VoIP solutions for this need. But when it comes for reliability, developer friendly, and mainly cost factor, I go for Voxeo.
What is Voxeo?
Many of you must be knowing, but for those who don’t know, Voxeo is one of the leading enterprise IVR/VOIP solution provider within the reach of small/medium organizations. It provides the hosting facility for hosting of the IVR/AVR applications in voiceXML, CCXML, CallXML etc.

Why Voxeo?
I have done a small POC couple of years back, using voiceXML. I had good experience with the support they provided for the developer at no cost. And I think they are only organization providing the 100$ worth outgoing calls/month for the developers for free.

How Voxeo Works?
You know how your web browser in which you reading blog works? Voxeo works exactly similar to browser. The browser renders the HTML to generate the visuals. The voxeo renders the XML (voiceXML, CCXML,CallXML) to the audible medium. It converts the specific data in the form of XML to equivalent
human speech.

Ways to get it working:

Get a voxeo community developer account for free. It is simple free and best part it includes 24/7 extreme support without paying any cent.
Once the account set up is done, you need to write a mail to voxeo support with your company and credit card details. Don’t hesitate to give credit card number as they will charge only if you exceed the 100$/month (0.18$/min) limit. (Please note that the step 2 is required only if you need the outgoing call facility.)
Create a new application and ask voxeo support to map your application with the call token.
To test, host your callXML document on internet, and make this document URL as start URL for the application.

Please mail me for working sample code or you can download some sample code from community voxeo site.

Very soon whenever I find time, I will try to write about the debugging technique's as well.

A tribute to my favorite aircraft….

2007-03-03T20:03:00.000-06:00

Since I saw some documentary on AN-225, it got added on top of my air crafts chart. It is the largest jet in the world, which took off more then once. Totally 2 air crafts were manufactured with this batch and I think none of them are in operation at present.It was designed and built by Antonov Design Bureau (headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine), known for their outstanding achievements in producing heavy transport aircraft

Antonov added two more Lotarev D-18 turbofan engines to An-124 to meet the requirement of 6 engines to carry extra capacity (up to 250,000kgs). The smaller fighter jets like sukhoi can fly thru the AN-225 with nose and tail open.

The general intention of building such an aircraft was to carry the Russian space shuttle (Buran) to their launch center and later it is customized to carry other cargo as well. This aircraft flew first on December 21st 1988. Due to Soviet break down in 1990 and cancellation of Buran space program, the AN-225 were mothballed. It hurts me to say that, as per some information, the engines of AN-225 were removed and used to build AN-124 air crafts.

This aircraft was known as "Mriya" meaning "dreams" or "Inspiration" in some Russian language.

If it sounds interesting to you, you can get more info on following links,

Specifications ( taken from wikipedia)

General characteristics

* Crew: 6

* Payload: 250,000 kg (551,000 lb)

* Door dimensions: 440 x 640 cm (14.4 x 21.0 ft)

* Length: 84 m (276 ft)

* Wingspan: 88.40 m (291 ft 2 in)

* Height: 18.1 m (59.3 ft)

* Wing area: 905.0 m² (9,741 ft²)

* Empty weight: 175,000 kg (385,800 lb)

* Max takeoff weight: 640,000 kg (1,411,000 lb)

* Powerplant: 6× ZMKB Progress D-18 turbofans, 229 kN (51,600 lbf) each

* Takeoff run: 3,500 m (11,500 ft) with maximum payload

Performance

* Maximum speed: 850 km/h (460 knots, 530 mph)

* Cruise speed: 750 km/h (400 knots, 465 mph)

* Range:o With maximum fuel: 14,000 km (8,700 mi)o With maximum payload: 4,000 km (2,500 mi)

* Service ceiling: 10,000 m (33,000 ft)

* Wing loading: 662.9 kg/m² (135.5 lb/ft²)

Click Here to view my top ten pictures of AN-225 on airliners.

Thursday Morning Winter Storm....

2007-03-03T13:15:00.000-06:00

Once again I am here with some more photographs of icy winter in Omaha. It was 1st march, thursday. Ignoring the heavy snow and strom warning I was on my way to office. When I walk out of my appartement at 7:00 in the morning, there was heavy snow fall going on. As I walked down on the snow, I was able to feel the freshness of the snow. In fact I was creating the first foot steps on the 1 feet snow deposited.

For my surprise the bus was at stop already, it was like waiting for me. After I got into the bus, I came to know it was not the one I was suppose to travel. But in the down pouring snow, the bus took 45 mins to reach my office 12 miles away.

After reaching office I realized more then 80% of community announced the "snow day" and they were working from home after a red alert of winter strom in the city. But I was already in office and I doesn't had any option other then staying back in office at least untill I get someone from which I can take a ride back home.

I was not able see anyone working in office though. everyone was busy in planning there way back to home. So even I thought of leaving office after lunch. The fortunate part was I had one of my friend with me in office trying to get back to same place as mine. So both of us planned to have lunch and travel back immediately as the red alert time was approaching. We enjoyed the lunch by sitting at a corner and watching the snow fall with occassional storms passing.

Finally we managed to find a senior guy, who could drop us at our place in his toyota camry. We thanked him and get into his car.

The drive back was not easy, as the roads were icy and slippery. The road was controlling the car instead of driver controlling it. I dont know how difficult it was to drive but, I enjoyed the back seat and kept myself busy with my mobile camera all the way. Once we reached the appartment campus it was time to take a deep breath. We took photograph of ours amid of snow and set back to our places safely.

After we reach home the red alert was withdrawn and weather was quite for rest of the day. This was just the intro for the photographs below.....:)

Winter Strom Holiday

SOA defined...

2007-02-25T16:27:00.000-06:00

Comprehensive descriptions of the lovely architecture SOA; I found in some websites,

From the point of view of a business executive and business analyst, SOA is a set of services that constitute business IT assets and can be exposed to their customers and partners, or other portions of the organization.
From the point of view of an enterprise architect SOA is an architectural style that promotes the concepts of business processes and the orchestration of enterprise-level business services. It is also a set of architectural principles (specification), patterns and criteria which address characteristics such as modularity, encapsulation, loose coupling, separation of concerns, reuse, composability, etc.
From the point of view of a project manager SOA is a development approach supporting massive parallel (Concurrent) development.
From the point of view of a tester and/or quality assurance engineer SOA represents a way to simplify overall system testing.
From the point of view of a software developer SOA is a programming model complete with standards, tools and technologies such as Web Services.

My World of Fascination....

2007-02-07T16:29:00.000-06:00

The word photography is fascinating me since last couple of years. Even though I am not lucky enough to have a good camera, I tried my best to capture some essence of photography from my mobile cam. I am trying to distinguish the pics I am exposed under categories like, 'Abstract Photography', 'Macro', etc.

The following posts of this thread will contain some of my favorite photographs.

Post 1: Tarmac Photography:

I dont know exactly under which theoretical photography section it comes, but it is always one of my favorite.

The following thumbnails contains some photographs, taken on drive in Mumbai-Pune e-way, Bangalore-Mysore highway and country roads at my village near Kumta.

by prashanthegde

Post 2: Home and Garden Photos:

This album has got some pictures of my village, I have taken when I was on vacation in last January.

by prashanthegde

Implementing the Idle thought....

2007-02-05T17:41:00.000-06:00

Couple of months back, when I was sitting idle on a sunday afternoon with my brand new Nokia 3250, an idea struck into my mind! "Bluetooth Streaming". Why cant I develope a program to stream binary data between computer and mobile phone via bluetooth. So I googled the idea and it poped up something like gnubox, MSI etc. But gnubox is HTTP porting thru bluetooth (could be used for streaming) and all other solutions available were a kind of paid softwares.
So my idea here was to develope a MIDlet which could stream data with the computer. My aim was to have a MIDlet which is compatible with all S60's. So obviously the platform is MIDP 2.0, CLDC 1.0/1.1 with JSR 82 (Bluetooth API - without OBEX).
Next there must be something on the computer (refferred as server) which listens to the incoming connections and processes the request. The next challenge was to process the request from server side. For that I selected the Serial port profile for bluetooth. Java provides javx COMM API's which could be used for serial port communication (latest version of the API is available only for Linux/Solaris). As my development platform was MS windows, I opted to use the older version of API.
Beyaond all the story, in brief the list of API's used are,
For MIDlet development:
1. MIDP 2.0 API's
2. CLDC 1.1 API's
3. JSR 82 Bluetooth API's (NO Obex)
For Server Development:
1. J2SE core libraries ( 1.4 or later)
2. Javax COMM API's for serial port communication

Icy Omaha

2007-02-03T18:12:00.002-06:00

When I landed in omaha last week after a vacation, I was quite excited by the snow around. The temperature was chilling at around 20'F (-8'C). It was the first time I was landed in a Icy place. As I moved around, I tried to capture some of stunning pics of the Icy Omaha with my mobile cam. Here I am posting those pics as my first blog post...

Icy Omaha