I’ve just been informed that Rediff has done a story on me titled: “PostMaster of the Internet“.

Well what can I say?

The story is passable. It could certainly do with a few corrections. Having said that, I’m delighted with the title! :) And extremely flattered. This is the point where it would be appropriate to acknowledge the fact that PostMaster occupies its position today because of a team effort. My partner Ajit, the development team, the sales guys, our business partners and of course our users. May there be lots more of you… :)

The Rediff story also references this site. And SharadWare is something I haven’t mentioned to anyone as yet. Therefore this post is happening in a hurry. Don’t be suprised to see a few really back dated postings over the next few days, as I finish stuff that I had started and not bothered completing. Nothing like a little bit of visibility to overcome procrastination, what? ;)

The story is linked from the headlines of the main front page and is the headline in the Business Section right alongside a pretty picture of Angelina Jolie. The story is available here.

If you are still reading this and asking yourself what is Angelina Jolie doing in the biz section of Rediff, well… it’s a picture of her attending a session at The World Economic forum. Now what was that about beauty and brains again? :)

Excerpting from NASSCOM’s site:

I am happy to say that my company QuantumLink Communications Pvt. Ltd. (QLC) was one of the short-listed companies. One thing that came through clearly from the presentations that followed is the sheer potential we have in India as far as IT is concerned. Diverse, innovative, cutting edge and world class. Now we just need to tap into it. Properly. The government would do well to keep this in mind and constantly work towards building an IT friendly environment.

My presentation was wonderfully received. However, QLC didn’t make the second (and final) selection. I console myself, for now, with the fact that we were in great company. No pun intended. Next year may be another story…

My recent postings all seem to be about “birthdays”. But how could I not mention this one? QLC is nine years old.

Gosh. It’s been that long, huh? Hmmm… And there are miles to go before we sleep.

My thanks to the QLC’ites (current and ex), who made this possible; and on behalf of the entire QLC team, a big thank you to all our customers. May your tribe increase :)

The first public beta of Netscape Navigator was released on this day ten years ago. Netscape has been one of the most significant products in the history of the web and in fact, has created significant web history.

MozillaZine contains some interesting links and CNet News.com covers the decade in interesting stories, from one of which I have taken the liberty of extracting the following timeline.

Today, the 25th of Aug, 2004, Linux turns thirteen. Happy Birthday Linux! :)

While on the subject, here is a quick factoid: Linux is not the operating system, as most people mistakenly believe. Linux is the kernel, a vitally essential and core component of the OS. Simply put, the kernel is responsible for allocating a computer’s resources to other programs running within the system. Other components add to and make up the context which forms the complete operating system. The GNU Project provides these components. You may want to read a more detailed explanation of this factoid by Richard Stallman.

Linux systems as we often call them today, are more accurately referred to as GNU/Linux.

Talking about browsing, some of you are possibly reading this using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). During the early years when Netscape Navigator ruled, Microsoft was agressive, worked bloody hard, did a good job and made IE into a pretty fine web browser. IE eventually stole the market share from Netscape. After that point however, the improvement curve of IE declined fairly rapidly.

IMO, current versions of IE suffer from bloat, still don’t have productivity features like tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking, and have a rather unfortunate history of security vulnerabilites.

I don’t use IE myself (espcially since Microsoft hasn’t ported it to Linux as yet ;)), but for those of you who do, here is a site that may be of interest to you:

Have a look at what people there have to say about IE, why they switched and what they switched to. Four alternative browsers are mentioned, including my current favorite, Firefox.

The site is small & light and has a refreshingly clean look. I like it :)

Like many technologists, I spend a lot of time on the Web. Much too much for my liking. Searching for information, following digital trails and finally consuming it.

The primary search generally begins via a search engine and may occasionally involve a fine tuning of the search query for better results. Not too bad in itself. The next step to reach the actual information is where is fun really begins. Click-click-click. First level pages open up. As one quickly scans them, bright blue (generally) links tempt us to click on them in our quest for information. Click, click, click… and before you know it, your desktop is literally littered with windows, consuming resources, distracting you and confusing you.

Unless of course, you happen to be using a browser that supports tabbed browsing (or tab browsing). In such a browser, a single window can contain multiple pages. Every page loaded in its own tab and is reachable with a single mouse click. The open page is your active page. The benefits are tangible and immediate. No new windows, no taskbar clutter, less confusion. It gets better. Its possible to configure the browser, so that links clicked on the active page open up in new tabs, in the background, while you continue to read. Which means they are ready for you when you want them, saving time and increasing efficiency.

I’m a power user and I use this feature a LOT. If your browser doesn’t support tabs, I suggest you dump it and try one that does (everything else being equal, of course). On my linux desktop, Konqueror was my browser of choice for a long, long time. Since a while ago though, I’ve been using Mozilla’s Firefox (previously known as Firebird). Its a great browser and I’m pretty certain that its here to stay. Firefox is available for the MS Windows variants, Mac OS and Linux - in case you are interested, download it and take it for a spin.

Inspite of all the advantages of tabbed browsing, I still manage to build up one hell of a intra-cluttered tabbed window. Often enough.

Example scenario 1
I open up a site, say Slashdot and check out the recent entries. I middle-click on a link to open it in tab 1, in the background. As I continue to scan the page, I see something else of interest and middle click that to open it in tab 2.

Then I move over to tab 1 and start reading. As is the case with a lot of slashdot discussions, I come across various other links that look interesting. (Middle) click-click-click. All loading in the background, in new tabs. After finishing the page, I switch to tab 2. The same thing happens. Before I realize, two postings have resulted in many tabs. Now imagine, if I had opened up five links initially. Just how many tabs would I end up with? You see what I am leading up to? I have a feeling that a lot of other power users possibly find themselves in similar scenarios.

And so?

I’d like to propose an enhancement. Grouped Tabbed Browsing (GTB). The principle is simple: A group tab contains multiple other member tabs.

Currently, I sometimes avoid tab clutter, by opening up a top level link in a new browser window (instead of a tab) and then tab browse within the new window. This window thus serves effectively as container (or a group tab) for a related set of tabs. This is a work around. IMO, a group tab solution, which seems like a logical progression, would be a more elegant approach. As illustrated below.

Example scenario 2
You come across a topic which you feel may have a lot of other related pages and you’d like to keep them together. You are on link number 1 and you decide that you’d like this to be part of its own group. Okay, so instead of middle-click, you do <Some Key>+Middle Click, and voila, it opens up in a new group tab. All subsequent middle clicks work as normal, opening up tabs in the background and automatically associating them with the current group tab. You want another group? No problems. <Some Key>+Middle Click…

Clicking on one of multiple group tabs, would make it active and fill the browser window with all its member tabs. The other tabs would disappear into their group tab, thus reducing clutter and improving organization. The group tab could also be used to conveniently control all other members of the group. Say bookmark all pages of a group. Or close or save or maybe forward them all.

One would need to think this entire thing through in more detail, but these are top of mind ideas. Are the nice people at Mozilla listening? :)

One evening during the last week, my wife and I were out with a friend at a seaside cafe. It was a pleasant evening with a gentle breeze and a mild drizzle. Just the sort of evening to enjoy a cuppa. At some point the conversation drifted to work. This friend is a support executive at a call center in India, catering to AOL customers based in the UK. She recounted a recent conversation with a caller:

I thought my friend was kidding, but she wasn’t.

At the time we all laughed. Sometime later however, I thought about that incident in a more serious frame of mind. I’ve been in the technology arena for a while now and I occasionally speak, write, etc. Its always nice to present to an audience who are part of the IT community. They know where I am coming from (more or less), understand the challenges (even if its conceptually, as in the case of unfamiliar domains) and therefore are able to appreciate the information I’m sharing. Addressing a newbie is different.

I’m glad that I’ve never shied away from catering to the absolute or the relative newcomer. In fact I think that there’s an altogether different kind of satisfaction in seeing the “aha” happening as some little wonder of technology is suddenly made visible to the audience.

I’ve been lazy, but I think that I will search out a couple of my old newbie articles and put them up here soon…

I’m back. Not that I actually went away anywhere. If you know what I mean. Now I’m here, writing this with mixed feelings.

Slightly ashamed, since writing regularly over here was something I had told myself that I would do. Unfortunately, I didn’t exercise the self-discipline required to make it happen. A little happy, since I am writing this now. The first step that overcomes inertia is always the hardest, no? And finally a little sheepish - because the main contents of this post are a little dated.

What follows is a quick cap of the year 2003. I’m copy-pasting it directly from a New Year mail that I sent out, so the chances are that a few of you have already read this. Nevertheless, I’d like to think of it as an attempt to fill in blanks - the huge time blank between my last post and this one.

If you noticed that the above email was dated Jan 21, 2004 - then you are reading too carefully for comfort. But hey, thats exactly the habit I’m trying to break. Procrastination!

If you’d like to share any ideas or thoughts on how you get things done on time, please do your good deed for the day and post them here. I think it may benefit a lot of us… ;)

Just when you thought the Net was slowing down, someone goes and transfers 6.7 gigabytes of data across 10,978 km in less than one minute!

If you think you can do better than that, you may want to participate in the competition. As of now, there’s no closing date. According to the Internet2 site, “The Internet2 Land Speed Record (I2-LSR) competition for the highest-bandwidth, end-to-end networks is an open and ongoing contest.”

All I have to say is, “More, gimme more!”