Trying to make sense!

I decided to celebrate this Holi in Riyadh. Well, not really. But that is how it is. I somehow landed up here.

So what did I expect to see here? Actually no expectations. I did not realize that I am headed off to a desert until the plane touched the King Khalid International Airport @ Riyadh. You immediately notice the dryness and the desert. The airport was quite deserted, like the surroundings. Surprisingly, very few airport staff. The immigration counters were also deserted. I had to wait for sometime before I [...] Continue Reading…

Never ever I have realized the importance of proper documentation until I decided to try out Shibboleth, an open source web single sin-on solution.

Shibboleth is supposedly the best open source alternative to achieve web single sign-on across applications, against more established enterprise offerings such as IBM’s Tivoli (TIM and TAM). While I do not intend to talk about the purpose of such solutions, I want to emphasize the importance of documentation for any product like this. It has been over a week that I have been trying to set-up a simple end-to-end SSO in my local environment using Shibboleth. [...] Continue Reading…

I usually do not post my work related stuff. However, this one deserves a post!

Over the last couple of weeks, I got an opportunity to be a part of a demo, whose scale dwarfs all the projects I’ve been so far associated with (barring one during the early stage of my career). And the client was none other than the Indian Air Force!

My role in the entire solution was quite limited, so I got an opportunity to observe and understand what goes behind the scenes in such high net worth, high risk bids. The proposed solution spanned across various aspects of [...] Continue Reading…

Google Voice Dialer (courtesy TechCrunch)

Google and Apple certainly fall on the opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to the business philosophies.

Google is more of an open book while Apple is a closed one.

With ‘Google Voice’ being released last year, Google had created an iphone app for the same. However, Apple hadrejected it citing direct business conflicts with iphone’s core voice and messaging features (it could have been more of an AT&T decision):
Apple Is Growing Rotten To The Core: Official Google Voice App Blocked From App Store
Now Google responds with this:
Google Voice Does An End [...] Continue Reading…

The Free Reebok Watch!
Yes you read it right! Read this post all along and I will give you a free Reebok watch worth Rs. 2499/ 2599/ 2999.
Almost every other company is offering a free Reebok watch with their products/ services. It has been over a year now, and this has shown no signs of abatement. Interestingly you can get this for free even if you are buying products/ services for as low as Rs. 500 or so.

What’s wrong? What are the companies trying to sell? Their products or are they using Reebok’s brand to push their products? And [...] Continue Reading…