Must Read:Higher Ed Roadmap!

So, the grand finale of your B.Tech life is getting closer every day, and everybody is busy saying goodbyes and trying to have one last shot of college life before it all turns into sweet memories of some of the best days of our life...

Here are some ten-things you can squeeze in-between while the apocalypse nears... if you plan to do Masters or some other higher education. Even if you don't just do these 'coz you never know when these will come in handy!

Get all your papers and their certificates.

Because in the end, certificates are all that matters boss, clear as much of "supplys" you can, correct all those mark-sheets if the university somehow messed up any figures, don't wait for college to get over, do it now and get ready for that final piece of paper that turns you into..... just another engineer among the millions in India :P

Get as many Letter of Recommendations as you can.

Get as many as you can... In all forms and shapes and sizes. Because you never know what fits whom. I'm sure not many of your professors are gonna sign off whatever acts of academic bravado you have put in your LOR as authentic... Hell I don't think all of them are gonna give you an LOR in the first place even :D So, get those LORs, the good ones, and get the contact numbers and mail ids of those benevolent professors who agreed to vouch for you despite.... you know! Also prepare a 'general' LOR so that you can produce it for more than one course.

Get all the official documents from your college.

By this I mean conduct certificate, migration etc. Also don't forget to get back your tenth and Plus two certificates if you were forced to give them at the time of joining.

Get the most important document after your degree certificate: the transcript.

Most foreign universities don't accept the mark sheets for individual semesters from your university. Instead they ask for the transcript of marks. The transcript is a consolidated mark-sheet that tells us what all subjects you took and how did you score through the whole eight semesters at one look. Transcripts are usually single page documents on a university letterhead.

As far as I know, M.G university and most other Indian universities requires you to prepare the transcript on your own in the prescribed format, put it on a C.D and produce it with all the supporting mark list copies after applying for transcript at the university office.

Don't get scared at the sound of this, it is most probable that the DTP centre in front of your university will do this for you for a small fee. Apply for this along with your application to issue degree certificate.

By this time, you will be at home.... either wondering what to do now without the faintest of clues, or rabidly facebooking away alll your time. Any way there is gonna be one day when you finally get borred with both and decide to do something about it. :)

And that is the day we start part two....

Get yourself a passport, PAN Card and all those umpteen cards.

And be careful not to mess up the procedures of any of these, like the passport especially. Applying for passport and then 'accidentally' missing the police verification or anything are the last thing you want to do.

Get all the government documentations ready.

Cross check all your old but still important documents like birth certificate, etc and see your name spells the same everywhere. If possible get documents from your village office proving residency etc. Never know these will come in handy.

Prepare yourself for GRE/TOEFEL/IELTS or whatever.

First decide which of these is necessary for you depending on which part of the globe you are targeting. Keep in mind that for applying for the above exams, you need to produce a copy of your passport.

Open a new e-mail account and dedicate it for course hunting.

Use this inbox for official communications with universities only; which means no stupid ids also. It should preferably be your name with normal characters and preferably on gmail . And for gods sake avoid cluttering the inbox with all sorts of spam by registering for all sorts of free Facebook t-shirts and other sites... you know :D

Upload all scanned copies of these certificates and documents to the Google docs account associated with your new id so that these are always accessible from anywhere.

Prepare the killer Statement Of Purpose and C.V.

You get lots of templates on-line but its best you write one for your own, and try to be as convincing as possible about the fact that 'the sole intention of you joining the course is your un-quenchable thirst for knowledge, and that you have no plans to stay back in that country for job since you will be very busy contributing to and serving mother India after the course'!!.......... :D 

This depends, since some countries may actually want you to stay sometime after you complete the course. So just get a good SOP. Keep in mind that big time lying will screw you up big time in the future so keep it real.

Prepare a small general purpose resume' and C.V that is quite detailed and that which can be modified for specific courses. Keep these also in your Google docs account.

Now you are almost ready. Get out there, and start firing your applications far and wide.

Oh, and by the way don't 'acccidentally' mix up applications and screw yourself..... Believe me, Shit Happens :D

ALL THE BEST FOLKS!

By Sharath with 1 comment

My Pick: Windows phone; Cool Tool in the wrong hands!

Windows phone had been the hype-du-jour for the past few months. While admittting that it succeeded in creating its own fan-base, we should also point out that being proprietary has kept the potentials of this platform leashed to a the market interests of Microsoft.

Read this article about how the platform could have been made more attractive, now that Windows 8 is gonna come, this might be what you can expect.
Presenting… a vision of what Windows Phone 8 might look like: Read ON>>>

By Sharath with No comments

My Days at Infosys.

I joined Infosys Technologies Ltd. on November 28th 2011 as Systems Engineer. Like any other fresher, who was just out of his college days, I didn't have a clue about what Infosys was all about, or what corporate atmosphere is. All I had was the impression that all ITES companies like Infosys belonged to a class off companies that made their living out of the shitty brainless and monotonous jobs outsourced by Europe or North america. In fact I looked upon Infosys (and other IT companies) with much contempt and disgust much akin to that shown to his humble servant (who makes a life out of washing under wears from all over the world )by his aristocratic master (who happened to be a fresh Electronics & Communication Engineer). Well, the servant might be damn richer than the master here, but who cares! He made all of it washing under wears!


During my never ending wait for Nov 28th which lasted almost 5 months, I was busy renovating this blog, trying to learn some media-graphics tools like After Effects and Maya, scouring the web for what to do after B.Tech, sometimes applying for some Masters programmes with no expectation of studying at one ever, Facebooking, Sleeping and more Facebooking. Finally it seemed like I was bored with whatever I could think of to spend a day. It was so much that soon I was asking myself questions like "What is the meaning of this life...." and the sorts which probably should be happening after a few more decades.

Infosys Mysore was a turning point... no, this is not the turning point for the sake of my probably stupid article sounding good; it really did change some things in my life forever.

Infosys Mysore allowed me to have a glimpse of what professionalism is. Pretty sad that even after studying a 'professional course' in a 'professional college' I had to come here to actually feel it.


Infosys pampered me with lots of luxury care and friends all around. It is probably the best place in India to make friends, with people coming in from all states for their training.

And finally, the most important thing Infosys taught me was that I am capable of more.


 More than what challenge the I.T sector would probably offer me... maybe not in terms of money, but still I felt that in the end I will be as bored as I was when I sat at home waiting for November 28th. During the initial months of training, I religiously stuck to GECs, reviewing the study materials and routines. But soon I found the whole thing to be too  easy; I was even put in a fast-track batch that required good performance in the Generic Training sessions.

While I still admire the way some young entrepreneurs from India started a small company with almost 100$ and the way it grew into a billion dollar global enterprise, and the way Infosys 'cared' for its employees, there was always this lingering feeling in my mind that kept reminding me that none of this success belongs to me.... At Mysore, I was still doubtful about this queer feeling.
But when I came to Trivandrum (TRINFY) these doubts became proven facts. Infy never cared (and it could not; practically thinking) about the interests of the 'employee'... Many of the straight '5 point CGPA' trainees were assigned to the dreaded testing stream, and people who never wanted to work were put into 'hot technologies'... Pretty soon, the picture became clear before me

Infosys and the many other ITES companies are basically organisations giving engineers for hire... it doesn't matter whether this engineer likes to work in this field or that, or even whether he knows anything at all about the field is of little concern. This fact gains more significance when you add to it the fact that most of the work or the so called 'Projects' done at these companies are basically clerical jobs or requiring similar brain work. You don't do anything, no, you don't even think! As the funny chain-mail says, the whole IT employee community owes their livelihood to who ever invented Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V.

I don't want to think further about what will happen to you sitting in front of a computer, going through code all day long, but it sure will strip you off whatever you gained in Mysore. (You'd gain some weight around the tummy for sure :D )

So when I got an offer from a University which I thought probably wouldn't even take a look at my resume, I just couldn't let it pass. Life is always filled with twists and turns... and for me most of it has been unexpected ones. But without them, I'd become as bored as I was, when I waited for that November 28th. :)
So, its time to bid adieu to Infosys although these memories of Mysore will always be close to my heart.....

By Sharath with No comments

FLIPBOARD FOR ANDROID LEAKED!

Samsung had announced earlier that its latest gadget Galaxy SIII will have the Android version of the popular iPhone app flipboard.

Flipboard is a pretty app that collects the content of social media and other websites and presents it in magazine format and allows users to "flip" through their social-networking feeds and feeds from websites that have partnered with the company.

Originally designed specifically for the iPad, in December 2010, the application was updated to add support for the iPhone and iPod Touch. On May 5th 2012, it was announced that Flipboard would be released for select Android phones, beginning with the Samsung Galaxy S3.

It is produced by Flipboard, Inc., a United States-based software company founded in 2010 by Mike McCue and Evan Doll and headquartered in Palo Alto, California.

Unfortunately, the app was announced as Galaxy S III exclusive at launch, which meant the only way for you to get it is buy a Galaxy S III. Thankfully, though, one XDA user managed to extract it from the device and made it available to everyone right now. 

For download links, CliCk Here.

By Sharath with No comments

Learn Some Multimedia Skills. For Free!

While you spend all that spare time you get between your end-of -college and finding-a-job Facebooking eating and sleeping, you could actually arm yourself with some awesome multimedia skills like video editing and rendering, 3-D modelling etc.What more,you get to learn to use the industry benchmarks tools like Adobe AfterEffects, Autodesk Maya etc.AND its free!

FREE AfterEffects tutorials are being offered by Andrew Kramer at Video Copilot. Unlike other so-called free tutorials out there on the net, these are uber-cool, no-bullshit tutorials, and by far the best I have seen. They also don't stop in between and ask you to buy the rest and all. :D


Thanks once again to Andrew Kramer. Meanwhile you might want the latest After Effects software which you can find on our very own Pirate Bay.

As for Maya, you can get tutorials from Autodesk themselves here. Again back to Pirate Bay for the software. ;) Enjoy the tutorials. Find out more. You never know when they will come in handy, but you sure would thank me when you do !

By Sharath with No comments

NEW HORIZONS IN BUSINESS ANALYTICS.

A new star is on the rise in the Data analytics horizon. Big guns who have monopolized the markets and ran the show the way they liked are now trembling before the sheer lightning-speed and performance of SAP HANA.

Short for High-performance Analytics Appliance, HANA combines a lot of what is “future technology” for its competitors, and SAP has done an excellent job pulling it off. In fact the entrance of HANA was so unexpected, even the competitors rolled out by Oracle and the lots are in no way a match for it.

SAP first announced its plans for working on in-memory databases at the SAPPHIRE conference in May 2011, and was immediately met with sharp criticism or rather sarcasm! Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, openly mocked SAP's goals during an event in January.

"Get me the name of their pharmacist," Ellison said at the time. "I mean, I know a lot about in-memory databases. In fact, we have the leading in-memory database, TimesTen. This is nonsense. There is no in-memory technology anywhere near ready to take the place of a relational database. It's a complete fantasy on their part."

In-memory databases store information in a system's main memory, instead of on disk, providing a performance boost. The technology, which Plattner also discussed at last year's Sapphire event, is now beginning to be reflected in SAP BI (business intelligence) products, such as BusinessObjects Explorer.

HANA is available in appliance form on hardware from a number of vendors. Built in part upon existing products at SAP, HANA places data to be processed in RAM, versus reading it off disks, which provides a performance boost.

SAP HANA runs on high-end commodity hardware and provided you have enough memory to run your database, it doesn’t matter what you run it on from a technology standpoint.

Initial certified hardware solutions are still quite expensive – I priced up a 1TB Dell system for $75k – not including disk storage, which will probably double that number at retail price, so think $150k. But really that’s nothing compared to what an equivalent 10TB database cost 10 years ago (SAP HANA compresses 10:1 compared to databases back then).

And worryingly for Oracle, Teradata, IBM and HP, it is nothing compared to what Mainframe or Teradata/Exadata hardware costs.

While HANA so far is positioned primarily for analytic workloads, SAP has long-term designs of porting its flagship Business Suite to the platform, a move that would provide an alternative for SAP customers currently running their transactional systems on databases from Oracle or IBM.

SAP had previously released a Strategic Workforce Planning application for HANA, which allows companies to analyze the effect of changes to their employee base. The new Smart Meter Analytics product will help utilities probe smart meter data for deep insights into customer energy usage patterns, allowing for improved system load forecasting, specialized marketing programs and other benefits, SAP said.

What does this mean for the future state of high-end systems? And in the emerging business world where the Big Data challenge is not just an isolated incident but a ubiquitous condition, is it not reasonable to expect that more and more customers will require more and more of these extremely high-performance machines?

REAL LIFE CASE-STUDYS

What does improved analytics speed mean for business? What is the value added to your business by pulling off super-fast reports and analysis from your databases? What if you could do cost and profitability analyses across millions of records spanning three years and thousands of retail outlets in less than 5 seconds—that is, in real-time—instead of in a few days? How would that change the ways in which you engage with customers, exploit the power of dynamic pricing, squeeze inventory volumes, and accelerate your moves into new markets?

How about a factor of 1,000: what if your systems could give you deep and granular insights into every phase of your business 1,000 times faster than they currently do—how would you exploit all that speed, all that customer-driven foresight, all that potential?

Only a year or so ago, all of these questions would have been largely theoretical simply because traditional IT systems and architectures were limited to delivering only incremental increases in performance, and gains of 25% or 35% were huge.

HANA enhances or rather expands old-school analytics in five dimensions. In the words of SAP executive board member Vishal Sikka, these are:

1)Are we able to ask complex questions? This, Sikka said, means that value is unlocked not merely by crunching through the same numbers more quickly than before, but by “going deeper”: analyzing more records over more time with more variables, and getting answers hundreds or thousands of times faster.
2) Can we ask an unlimited range of questions without having to submit them in advance? Current systems require some preliminary staging of anticipated data sets, which greatly limits the types of questions that can be asked and, more importantly, the types of insights that can be gained. HANA, Sikka said, has no such limitations.
3) Can we interactively arrive at questions? In the old model, a limited set of questions is submitted to an expert who then triggers the analysis in isolation—conversely, Sikka is describing an entirely new dynamic that allows multiple people to look at and question the incoming results on the fly from an unlimited set of perspectives.
4) Are we able to ask questions across data sets that are not only huge, but come in various types: structured and unstructured, month-old and real-time? With absolutely no limitations?
5) And, can people from across the organization—not just BI black-belts—make these interactive inquiries in real time and get real-time answers? Can businesses finally unlock the potential and power within their data that for too long have been trapped in traditional systems that, intentionally or otherwise, give higher priority to internal processes than to customer requirements?

It all depends on which of these dimensions you chose to exploit, and how you go about doing it.

“Our friends at Colgate told me that with their live Hana system, they are now able to run some operational reports 1,000 times faster than before,” said VishalSikka during his keynote speech at SAP’s China SAPPHIRE NOW event in Beijing. The list doesn’t end there.

Nongfu Spring, a rapidly growing bottled-water company based in China whose use of HANA has enabled it to cut its calculation of transportation costs from 24 hours to 3.8 seconds, or more than 15,000x.

Even more astounding is the achievement of is Yodobashi, the electronics retailer in Japan, where 5 million of its 22 million customers are part of the company’s loyalty program. The calculation for rewards and incentives earned by those 5 million loyalty-club members used to take 3 days—but with HANA, it now takes 2 seconds. That’s an improvement of 125,000 times!

As a result, Yodobashi can now engage immediately and more intimately with those 5 million loyalty-club members while they’re still in the store and more likely to buy, which is a massive transformation in how the company can enhance its interactions with its best customers in real time.

“Yodobashi hits 3 of the 5 dimensions we have laid out,” Sikka said, “so just imagine what can happen if a company is able to execute across all five dimensions.”

In short term, we can see IBM posting higher profits from its mainframe sales, HP is in all sorts of organizational troubles and Oracle is focusing on Exadata. But the Mainframe market is set to start tailing off by 2015. Oracle already has an in-memory product called TimesTen in developement, but it is highly doubtful if it will be able to compete with HANA. As for Teradata, they need to realize the big challenge posed before them.

By Sharath with No comments