don’t you hate when a promo comes with something like – “free for a month, and unless you remember to cancel, we’ll start charging you”. Ugly, sneaky and cheap.

just look at the load pattern : 250,000 total test takers, taking the test over 10 days, spread across 105 testing centers, where they have 2 test sessions per [...]]]> it appears like the testing system for Common Admission Test (the aptitude test for admission into Indian business schools) crashed on the first day it opened to students.

just look at the load pattern : 250,000 total test takers, taking the test over 10 days, spread across 105 testing centers, where they have 2 test sessions per day –> pretty much yields 12,500 concurrent test takers across the entire system, and 119 test takers/center.

Update: each test taker takes about 150 questions over a 3-hr period, so that’s about 1.875M transactions over 3 hrs, 173 transactions per sec. Can India not achieve THAT? What a shame.

not being able to handle this type of load pattern is outright pathetic. blaming it on a virus is even more tragic attempt at someone covering their butt with a transparent plastic sheet.

the folks that took the test wont get a credit if the entire testing method is invalidated. those that didn’t take the test need to go through the stress another time. those that took the test will stand at a disadvantage because the question bank gets leaked in nano-second.

Update 2: according to WATBlog, here’s the notice against leaking, provided to test takers: “Disclosing, publishing, reproducing, transmitting, storing, or facilitating transmission and storage of the contents of the CAT or any information therein in whole or part thereof in any form or by any means, verbal or written, electronically or mechanically for any purpose, shall be in violation of the Indian Contract Act, 1872 and/or the Copyright Act, 1957 and/or the Information Technology Act“.

Are they really going to hit with an 1872 law?? really??

whoever deployed this solution should be fired for massive incompetence.

… and ironically, i found this ad in a newspaper couple of days ago. this is one sure way to solve all scalability problems – beg users to spare the system.

You call THIS simple?

contrast the state of simplicity elsewhere – e.g. designing simple personal web pages made simple -

was shocked and saddened to see this email from my bank, touting a SIMPLE design. my first reaction was you call this simple? is this the state of design expertise in India?

You call THIS simple?

contrast the state of simplicity elsewhere – e.g. designing simple personal web pages made simple -

The ‘Before’ Shot: here’s how my post titled Laloo School of Business is shown in google and yahoo search result pages.

The ‘After’ Shot: here’s how the same page [...]]]> got my hands on search monkey preview for developers, thanks to an old acquaintance from verity days. looking at the ‘before’ and ‘after’ shots, the results are quite stunning.

The ‘Before’ Shot: here’s how my post titled Laloo School of Business is shown in google and yahoo search result pages.

The ‘After’ Shot: here’s how the same page can appear after being customized by search monkey on yahoo! search

this, after a hapless product manager with half-baked programming skills hacked at the tool for a couple of hours. imagine what a PHP stud could do?! some some of my quick take-aways:

• the long toil to generate better automated summaries of pages is blown to bits
• yahoo is essentially handing the serp real-estate over to the content owners. a stark contrast to big brother mentality of the past
• the serp is essentially a listings display page, a la ebay, and each page is no different from a listing
• ability to show the image is good, but when would video be playable? why wait?
• will SEO’s now stop griding their noses and focus more on a more deterministic messaging for each of their pages?
• not sure where microsoft kicked yahoo, but it sure restarted blood circulation over there

very nice product indeed.

msft withdraws the bid. i guess (a) msft will come back again (b) yhoo probably has one more quarter to blow open the growth in sales (c) and for employees, a bit longer view of what they’ll be working on.

yahoo ego has been wounded by this whole saga, and there are still many [...]]]> Posted by mobile phone:

msft withdraws the bid. i guess (a) msft will come back again (b) yhoo probably has one more quarter to blow open the growth in sales (c) and for employees, a bit longer view of what they’ll be working on.

yahoo ego has been wounded by this whole saga, and there are still many folks in the company that can kick some serious butt. pual kedrosky has a good post on it, including very good comment stream.

until then, i guess it’d be google’ lapdog than msft’s bitch.

New Delhi: You [...]]]> today’s Times of India (very much like San Jose Mercury News in content and coverage) front page carried a very interesting article about how the reserve bank of india will issue guidelines for payments through a mobile phones. since their e-paper is so pathetic, i have copied and pasted the article below (sorry TOI).

New Delhi: You can soon make your payments through your mobile phone rather than using a credit card or debit card. The Reserve Bank of India, in its annual policy statement on Tuesday, said it was formulating the guidelines for a payment system using mobile phones. RBI is in discussions with banks, service providers and industry bodies to develop the payment system. The bank said the draft guidelines would be placed on its website by June 15.

The reach of mobile phones in India has been increasing rapidly. There are about 250 million mobile phone connections in the country. This is much larger than the number of credit card holders at around 10 million. Therefore, use of the mobile for payments is being considered for quite some time. The rapid expansion of this mode of communication has thrown up a new delivery channel for banks, RBI said in the policy statement.

Many countries have adopted the mobile phone as a mode of delivery to spread the reach of the banking facility to remote parts. The statement said: This channel facilitates small value payments to merchants, utility service providers and the like and money transfer at a low cost.

A senior banker, who has studied the system, said a person can access his bank account through his mobile phone. He can also transfer money from his account to another person’s account. He said that later, the mobile phone could also be used as a charge card. In this you can load a certain amount of money in your chip and make payments.

with standards-minded indians that aren’t too much into bending the rules, this ‘guideline’ from an undisputed higher authority in indian financial system might just be the catalyst to spur the mobile payment market.

but check this out: with a “mobile phone” you can already take photos, shoot a video, play games, listen to music, check email, get directions, organize calendar, watch videos, use as a vanity mirror. its a a sidekick, a travel partner and a concierge. people boast the magic pattens of numbers in their phone numbers. the speed-dial is a reflection of our proximity to our social/family circles. it’s a style statement and status symbol. it’s where you bury your head in uncomfortable situations. it’s what you twiddle when you are stressed out.

there was an ad for the ambika agarbatti brand a few years ago, which goes ‘this agarbatti is the bridge between the god and the devotee’. well, it the mobile phone now. check out the 59994 that allows you to send an SMS message to Sai baba of Shridi. the SMS’es are placed in the temple wish box connecting all devotees, around India through SMS.

it looks like very soon, we’ll be calling it our wallet. may even be your belt a buckle, heh! with all that, can you really call it a phone? case in point, we don’t call a blackberry a phone, do we? what it’s place in our lives?

here’s a thought – there was once a time, when i was a student, we used to place our books near the pooja area during the Vinayaka Chaturthi (ganesh chaturthi for some) ceremony. it probably symbolizes blessing of the tools of our trade. we then gradually moved to placing our computer. may be this time around, it’ll be my blackberry.