Thought Garage

Most of my friends use Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, Gmail or rediffmail. What it takes to send an email to receive an email. Open an account with Yahoo or Hotmail or Gmail or as a matter of fact any email provider. Irrespective of what mail service each of us use, we can send mails to each other and receive from each other. Its cool.

But what it takes to send an instant message or chat with my friends? Unfortunately the answer is not as simple as with the email. I need an account with each of these, since the messengers from these companies will not work together. I can not talk from my Yahoo messenger to a buddy who uses MSN mesenger. I can not talk to a friend who is on AOL. Now the new entry in to the instant messenger, googleTalk, do not address this issue either. If you install googletalk you can only talk to buddies who use googletalk.

I ended up installing all kinds of messengers including the new actors on the scene, skype and google talk on my laptop, so that I can always stay in touch with my buddies. So does most of my buddies. The problem does not end there. It is almost impossible to keep the account name same across all these services. So I had to create a new unique id or send an email giving my account list to my buddies. Unfortunately, I may have to do this every time I get a new messenger.

Each of these companies are committed to be Open when they talk and yet they are Closed forever in their deeds. Why don’t they make their messengers interact with each other and make life simpler. If they talk about user experience and convenience, come on. Forget it. They don’t care. They have a different agenda.

There are some things Google Search engine does a lot better than all other search engines. The most important one is the relevance of search results to the query. Used google for some time, and I kinda fell in love with it. When MSN search is out, I tried it to see if it is better. I was very disappointed then, and the same to date.

Here are the top 3 results. Month of August did not appear in the first page at all:
Webcast Archive: July 2005Search Microsoft.com for: Go Browse by Type Information For Resources Product Families Events Worldwide Webcast Archive: July 2005Published: August 5, 2005 The following webcasts from July 2005 are available for viewing anytime. This list automatically sorts webcasts in reverse chronological http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/library/200507.mspx

Webcast Archive: May 2005 Search Microsoft.com for: Go Browse by Type Information For Resources Product Families Events Worldwide Webcast Archive: May 2005Published: May 31, 2005 The following webcasts from May 2005 are available for viewing anytime. This list automatically sorts webcasts in reverse chronological order http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/library/200505.mspx

Webcast Archive: February 2005Search Microsoft.com for: Go Browse by Type Information For Resources Product Families Events Worldwide Webcast Archive: February 2005Published: February 28, 2005 The following webcasts from February 2005 are available for viewing anytime. This list automatically sorts webcasts in reverse http://www.microsoft.com/events/webcasts/library/200502.mspx

I went to the on-demand web casts website to verify whether this page has the latest web services webcast or link. And I found that link to be absolutely true. Now this is what I call, relevance to the context. Google is far better than MSN search when it comes to searchin the web, even on the microsoft web site.

When it comes to searching MSDN content, I do not know much about MSDN search. But here is an expression of pain from a microsoft blogger. It looks, Andy do not use Visual Studio online help system. Do not use MSDN search on the web either. He uses google to search MSDN content. Does it tell some thing?

An interesting summary of thoughts on what Service Oriented Architecture mean to different people by Martin Fowler. Each camp says aloud one and just one aspect of it and calls it the SOA. But he summarized all of them and bunched them together to see the real picture. It proved to be very true to me, after being struggled to see through the marketing jargon and hyped up talks to comprehend what it really means. I am afraid, very few understood what really matters.

It is not uncommon in India to buy attendees for Political rallies to demonstrate strength of support in the public. And it is quite common to buy film stars to attend major functions to add some glamour to the evening. But have you ever heard of buying some guests to appear in a marriage?

 

I Came across a news story(Entrepreneur cashes in on rented revellers, http://www.freelanceuk.com/news/1311.shtml) talking about a booming business of “arranging” guests for marriages in India. The enterprise, called ”The Best Guests Centre” in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India supply guests in the required traditional attire to the ocassion for a charge. The madeup guests do everything they can do to make sure that the ocassion is celebrated in the true(?) spirit.

 

What else you can buy for your marriage? Hell no. Don’t say, bride.