Vivek's Web Log

Boycott yaari.com!

2007-10-22T22:58:00.000-07:00

Well, I happen to be a recent victim of yaari.com - a cheap trick on social networking! This is totally outrageous! It spreads like a virus by stealing your gmail/yahoo contacts. This is started by some Prerna Gupta, you can find her with this name on Facebook and she is Stanford 2004 alumni. Her email is Prerna@Yaari.com - spam her with your complains if you are victim like me and others. There are many others who are victim like me - read posts by Arun and here and here.

Everyone who received invitation on my behalf please ignore it. It was without my knowledge and un-authorized. I reported yaari.com on invasion of privacy to ftc.gov and also reported to google about such web 1.5 web sites trying to bring shame to social networking!

iPhone Hype and reality!

2007-06-30T09:37:00.000-07:00

The kind of hype iPhone has generated, I am not really sure if it lives up to its expectations! Specially when compared with the existing phones.

I love gadgets and for any new thing out there I want to try my hand on, with iPhone the first reviews out there is not so encouraging. Some of the comments I got so far from various posts on internet forums/blogs

The Goods

Phone is so sleek and thin it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese.
Fast and dead simple easy to use software.
Each thing on screen has physics of its own
You don't check the Voice Mail, it checks you. Sroll thru and order the way you want. Nice!
Great Email support! Pretty well formatted text with graphics and supports excel/word/pdf attachment viewing.
Excellent Web Browsing experience.
it makes Treos and BlackBerrys look obese.

The Bads

Making a phone call takes as many as 6 steps - Making a call, though, can take as many as six steps: wake the phone, unlock its buttons, summon the Home screen, open the Phone program, view the Recent Calls or speed-dial list and select a name.
Average call quality
Clumsy text editing using the soft buttons on the screen. Maybe it will take time for people to get used to it. Blackberrys are not going away any time soon.
There's no way to cut, copy, or paste text! What a mistake! How am I suppose to efficiently compose email or create documents for that matter! How can Apple miss such a feature.
No A2DP. Basically you can't stream audio to your stereo Bluetooth headset. My Nokia 6125 does that and so many other latest phone. Such a bummer!
Sorry can't use music - your mp3s on iPhone as rigntones! You got to buy them from iTunes or from AT&T. How the hell am I going to use my 24 mp3 as ringtone?
Won't record Video, only snaps! How does Apple loves YouTube, it should realize large number of videos out there are taken on cellphone.
No MMS! Such a bummer! You can send your snaps thru email but MMS is so convenient.
No expandable memory support.
You can't replace the battery by yourself. Apple says between 300-400 recharges battery may go down and to replace it bring to them and will replace for a fee!
No GPS support, although it is capable, you may expect within a year or you may be able to insert a chip and make it GPS enabled.
iPhone has some kind of Mac OS X, but the footprint is whopping 700MB!

Maybe I should wait for second generation iPhone. Sorry Arti you are not getting it soon:-)

Another wonderful JavaOne...

2006-05-16T20:32:00.000-07:00

This is another wonderful JavaOne and there is estimated 15000 people this time - one of the largest. I got to attend mostly General Sessions and got to see Roberto's nice Phobos demo at Graham's session.

There is lots of buzz around AJAX and there is lots of cool things that have been done and are in the process of development around AJAX support in Java.

I have my bof at 9:30 pm.

Another cool thing - project tango, that I am working on currently is now live, see the press release about it.

Muzaffarpur has home on the web

2006-04-07T11:30:00.000-07:00

My birthplace Muzaffarpur is on web. This site doesn't have lot to offer at present. But I got to know it's history. Check it out.

CTU Ringtones

2006-03-18T12:59:00.000-08:00

Me and my wife like Fox series 24 and were looking for 24 ringtones and found one. The best one thats as realistic as it gets is CTU24.mp3.

To get it to my Mtotorola Razor I used Mobile Phone Tools and now all the calls I get sounds like phones in CTU. Its another thing that I got Motorola Mobile Phone Tools by paying 30 bucks which kind of sucks as the previous phone I used was Nokia and Nokia Phone Toolkit is completely opensource and is free. Lets hope someone hacks Motorola Phones and brings it opensource.

W3C Plenary

2006-03-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Being Sun's rep on Web Services Description Language (WSDL) working group, last week I was at the W3C Plenary at Mandelieu, France.

Well, WSDL 2.0 being a solid spec has hurdles on its way in becoming recommendation. Right now
Woden is the only implementation of WSDL 2.0 and to become recommendation WSDL 2.0 would need atleast 2 of them. Well we will see...

Other highlights were lots of interest on Semantic Web and Microformats and there was good panel discussion on Tech Plenary day, you can get the slides of them from here, see session 3 - Microformats.

Here are some photos from Mandelieu and Cannes.

Started blogging on java.net

2006-01-17T17:54:00.000-08:00

With this new year I have started my weblogs on java.net , I guess its more meaningfult to you if you care about Java/XML/Web Services or maybe not...

Prashant's meeting with Amitabh

2006-01-01T19:50:00.000-08:00

Prashant his wife Rekha and daughter Ria in their last visit to India met with Amitabh and Abhishek Bachchan on the set of Sarkar.

Here are the photos I got from him and I must mention that Prashant is the biggest Amitabh fan I have come across:-)

Java and .NET

2005-11-08T22:58:00.000-08:00

Today sun announced its commitment to implementing WS-* specs and interoperability with Microsoft's upcoming Windows Communication Foundation or WCF, a.k.a. Indigo. Indigo is the next generation web services technology in their Vista (a.k.a. Longhorn) platform and would be a major piece for their SOA story.

The WS-* specs include:

The specifications include:

WS-Addressing
MTOM (Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism)
WS-Policy
WS-MetadataExchange
WS-Security
WS-Trust
WS-SecureConversation
WS-ReliableMessaging
WS-Coordination

From the above list, I happen to be the MTOM lead and right now in the middle of action at Microsoft's Redmond campus in the interoperability plugfest :-) I will be blogging more about it but mostly on java.net.

Etymology of Eid

2005-11-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

I know Vasmi thru Khalid and have met him couple of times in Khalid's Eid/Diwali parties. In his recent email he described the etymology and some interesting details of Eid. Here is the excerpt from his mail, its a nice read for people like me who didn't know what this word means:

The way the word is written in urdu (or Arabic, where it originates) is with the three letters - "ain", "ye" and "daal". Now, "ain" has a tricky sound, and an Arabic speaker will be able to pronounce it. So the word as spoken by an Arabic speaker would sound something between "A-ee-d" and "ee-d". There isn't any accurate representation in English or Devanagri. So what does the spelling "Eid" convey, and who come up with it and why? I don't know.

Anyway, the dictionary meaning of the word "eid" is "festival", so "eid mubaarak" is literally a pretty generic greeting - "festival greetings". The full name of this particular festival is "eid-ul-fitr", which translates to "festival of the breaking of the fast". Breaking of the daily ramzaan (or "Ramadan" - but that's another story!) fast is called "aftaar". The word "fitr" is related to that. Giving charity (fixed amount per household member) is obligatory, and that is called "fitraa".
It is customary to pay out the fitra just after the eid prayers.

Interestingly, the amount of the "fitra" is determined based on the current price of grain, and so varies a bit every year. Eid marks the end of the month of Ramadan. Hence it is the first day of the next month, which is called "Shawwaal", and is the tenth month of the lunar calendar.

My new role

2005-10-28T08:29:00.000-07:00

I have taken up a new responsibility as rep in Web Services Description Working Group at W3C. The outcome from the WG will be WSDL 2.0 (web Services Description Language). More on this latter...

Gender Jihad

2005-10-28T08:26:00.000-07:00

It may sound politically incorrect to some but I know its liked by many progressives. Women liberation in islamic world is long overdue, this is what is needed more and more.

Fifth Nail blog

2005-07-08T01:17:00.000-07:00

Joseph Edward Duncan III a sick freak - carged with sex offences has been blogging since past few months at Blogging The Fifth Nail. This is crazy as no one noticed and reported. This freak did kidnapping and murders after couple of days of his last blog on May 13th!

Primer - a movie

2005-07-05T10:52:00.000-07:00

Over the last weekend I saw Primer (its ageeky-time travel movie) and could'nt sleep properly and even the next day I was analyzing the recursion and trying to straighten it!

Saw it second time but still the timeline was not so obvious as there could be any number of recursion. Thanks to this timeline, it clarified lots of confusion. Also the forum is helpful.

If you have not watched it rent the DVD you may like to see it. Some interesting facts about Primier:

- sci-fi movie without any CGI effect.
- shot at 16mm tappe and latter coverted to 35mm
- total budge - $7k!

Microsoft at JavaOne

2005-05-28T07:17:00.000-07:00

This is further proof of how serious sun and microsoft are about interoperating .NET and Java. There are 3 full sessions and a BOF at this years JavaOne.

* TS-3552: Interoperability Track Keynote - Mark Hapner (Distinguished Engineer) from Sun and Andrew Laymen (Director of Distributed Systems) from Microsoft kick off the interoperability track! Mark and Andrew will be covering WS-* Web Services Architecture.

* TS-9886: Advanced Web Services Interoperability - Simon Guest(Microsoft) and Raghavan Srinivas(Sun). This is on recommendations and strategies for using Web Services to interoperate between Java and .NET today.

* BOF-9095: "On the Couch with Microsoft and Sun" - Marina Fisher (Sun) and Simon Guest(Microsoft) . The format is simple: 3 people from Microsoft (Doug Purdy, Dino Chiesa and myself). 3 people from Sun (Marina, Ray Lai and Laurence Moroney).

* TS-3367: Interoperability using Techniques other than Web Services - everyone is aware that there are many ways to achieve interoperability between Java and .NET. In his session (on Thursday), Kevin Wittkopf from Microsoft will be examining some of these. Expect to hear about different types of connectors, bridges and RMI/Remoting techniques.

So plan to attend. JavaOne starts on June27 and goes till Jun 30th at San Francisco.

Sun's next generation web services offering

2005-04-08T10:15:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we released JAXRPC 2.0 Early Access - next gen web services tools and engine. Get it from here.

Main features:

Annotations

Pretty much a developer would annotate a remote java interface with @WebService annotation (defined by JSR 181 - Metadata for Java Web Services) and pass it on to wscompile tool of JAXRPC with configuration file to publish his web services endpoint.

import javax.jws.WebService;

@WebService
public class AddNumbersImpl {

/**
* @param number1
* @param number2
* @return The sum
* @throws AddNumbersException
* if any of the numbers to be added is negative.
*/
public int addNumbers(int number1, int number2) throws AddNumbersException {
if (number1 < 0 || number2 < 0) {
throw new AddNumbersException("Negative number cant be added!",
"Numbers: " + number1 + ", " + number2);
}
return number1 + number2;
}

}

WSDL -> Java customization

This is mostly applicable to Web Services client or server endpoint that compiles a WSDL. wscompile tool in JAXRPC compiles a WSDL and maps the WSDL defined components to the JAVA equivalent in a standard way that has been defined by the JAXRPC 2.0 specification.

Dynamic Client

A client developer can use Dispatch interface to dynamically invoke a remote webservice.

Dynamic Service

Provider interface can be used to develop dynamic webservice endpoint.

Asynchrony

JAXRPC allows asynchronous invocation of remote webservice endpoint. You can do it in one of the 2 ways: using wscompile with async customization or dyanimcally using Dispatch interface.

Improved Handler Framework

JAXRPC provides both Logical as well as Protocl handlers. Logical handlers will have access to only the SOAP payload, everything inside . Where as Protocol handlers will have access to the entires message.

I hope its liked by the developers!

AJAX - Asynchronous JavaScript + XML

2005-04-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

Have you ever wondered how does google's gmail updates the new mail received without refreshing the web page or when you try Google Suggest, type in anything that interests you and magically the drop-down list is populated with suggestions! Same with Google Map, you pan/zoom, things happens without refreshing the web page.

Before I go any further I must mention that AJAX acronym was coined by Jesse James Garrett of Adaptive Path. This all became known to everyone once he published his blog and talked about it.

All this is possible with something called AJAX. Basically its asynchronous XML data transfer that happens between the javascript in that web page and backend server using HTTP GET/POST with pure XML data. All this is enabled by XMLHttpRequest object that IE provided. Its not yet standard JavaScript object but supported by all the major browser.

This is going to be a major shift in traditional web programming. My main interest is on the server side that handles the HTTP GET/POST and responds with HTTP header type text/xml and some XML data. This all happens with the web services, where instead of SOAP Binding you provide HTTP binding and that's it, the web services engine don't talk in terms of SOAP, it just talks plain XML over HTTP! Google and Amazon already expose their web services endpoints thru WSDL and also XML Schema.

How AJAX fits into J2EE, see java blueprints catalog.

India/Pak cricket live streaming

2005-03-25T20:48:00.000-08:00

Wow! I must share this with other cricket lovers! I saw couple of times on http://www.pakistanvision.com, click on a button with 4 ? on the left sidebar. You can see live video or in worst case audio commentary! But it was not so reliable.

Even better, try http://www.brain.net.pk/ and click on Brain TV link to your left and enjoy Sehwag's batting! I guess its illegal for them to broadcast but perfectly leagal for us to watch it;-)

enjoy...

SOA Article on eWeek

2004-10-22T18:26:00.000-07:00

A long philosophical article on SOA: Taking a New Tack With SOAs By Peter Coffee - October 18, 2004 . Good reading.

Dhadkan Mein Tu Hi Tu - music album by Hemanga

2004-09-27T10:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, this is the name of a new and the first music album of hindi songs by my firend and ex-colleague Hemang Das. I met him at a baby shower party last weekend and came to know about it. Interestingly, we have listened to his guitar and songs earlier at informal get-togethers but this was a news!

Yep! I saw the music video of the title song and also listened most of the songs on the cd, they're pretty refreshing. the promos are coming on B4U and soon will appear on other hindi channels.

All the best Hemanga!

ZFS--the last word in file systems

2004-09-20T17:08:00.000-07:00

Pretty cool! A breakthrough file system from Sun, will be part of solaris 10. Some key features of ZFS:

- endian-neutral
You can easily move disks from a SPARC server to an x86 server.
- Simple administration
ZFS automates and consolidates complicated storage administration concepts, reducing administrative overhead by 80 percent.
- Provable data integrity
ZFS protects all data with 64-bit checksums that detect and correct silent data corruption.
- Unlimited scalability
As the world's first 128-bit file system, ZFS offers 16 billion billion times the capacity of 32- or 64-bit systems.
- Blazing performance
ZFS is based on a transactional object model that removes most of the traditional constraints on the order of issuing I/Os, which
results in huge performance gains.

WS-I Basic Profile 1.1, Attachment Profile 1.0 and Simple SOAP Binding Profile 1.0 are final

2004-09-07T15:08:00.000-07:00

I am late on reporting this, but its great! All these 3 profiles are final! You can get them from WS-I site. I am member of WS-I Basic Profile working group and contributed to these profile documents. I also implmented Attachment Profile 1.0 in Sun's JAXRPC 1.1.2.

Picasa and Hello

2004-08-23T17:05:00.000-07:00

Back in May 2004 Google acquired Picasa Inc. which makes Picasa one of the best Photo Editing software.

Guys, get Picasa and its companion Hello. Both are freeware. They are just way cool!

Google IM

2004-08-23T16:15:00.000-07:00

Is Google working on an Instant Messanger tool? There are lots of rumor on the net about such a thing. I read a very interesting blog on slahdot. According to this blog its going to be a Jabber based AIM kickass IM. Here is an imaginative picture taken from that blog

.

WS-Addressing and WS-MessageDelivery

2004-08-19T13:54:00.000-07:00

Sun in its coninuing truce with Microsoft put the differences aside and joined WS-Addressing - A transport neutral mechanism to address web services. From a web services message flow point of view, WS-Addressing would "enable messaging systems to support message transmission through networks that include processing nodes such as endpoint managers, firewalls, and gateways in a transport-neutral manner." WS-Addressing form a key part, is a building block, of many other WS-* stack, such as WS-Policy, WS-Eventing, WS-RelianbleMessaging etc. Also as per MSDN, WS-Addressing will provide several key foundations for a full SOA (Services Oriented Architecture) implementation.

Looks like WS-MessageDelivery and WS-Addressing have become one camp. WS-Addressing is led by Microsoft/IBM and WS-MessageDelivery by Sun/Oracle. Conspicuously Oracle is not a member as part of WS-Addressing submission to W3C. The other participants of WS-Addressing are SAP, Iona Technologies BEA Systems and Nokia Corp.

One of the biggest difference between WS-Addressing and WS-MD is that WS-Addressing does not have any reference to the WSDL description where as WS-MD ties to WSDL 2.0, such as WS-Ref.

Dave Orcahrd (BEA) has a blog on comparision between WS-Addressing and WS-MessageDeliver.