Archive for July, 2003


Holy Crap! Get ready for the final showdown!

Filed under: technology by Arjun Ram — 1 Comment
July 31, 2003

Stay out of technology for a few days and you get outdated. It’s just amazing how many developments have taken place in MP3 world.  

Two threads to keep track of here,

  1. Evolution/Maturing of music services by the end of the year.
  2. File Swapping/RIAA hide and seek!

I thought I’ll take the liberty to make a couple of predictions

  1. Mp3 prices are going to come down crashing by the end of the year!
  2. The standard pricing model will not work, you will find the price of the tracks that are popular go up while others come down (The current pricing model does not go well with the artists and hence will not succeed.
  3. File sharing networks will continue to exist and RIAA will continue to play catch up with the new technology (Unless there is a genuine change in attitude in the common man RIAA will not win the battle)
  4. By summer next year, some of these services will cease to exist!
  5. Amazon, Microsoft, AOL (yeah u heard me right, expect AOL to jump in!) will jump in big time!
  6. Yahoo will partner with one/many of these folks to offer this service! Yahoo has the most reach across countries and it makes absolute sense for them to partner with many of these guys.
  7. File swapping battle move to the east and history will play itself again. Remember broadband it taking off big time in India and china.
  8. Expect Music services to popup in the east as well.
  9. The single biggest problem will be the file swapping from users sharing files outside the US. (Who is RIAA going to sue then?) Some of these countries do even have laws in place and hence no law is broken!

However I did have a few questions.

  • Has anyone seen the Ad for movie piracy? I think the Ad did hit a home run, was nicely done. I can’t find a link to it, let me know if know the link.
  • Has anyone tried buymusic.com, I’m really tempted to try it!
  • How’s this dude Mitch Bainwol? Anyone heard of him?

Aahhh, feels good to be back!!

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Regular broadcast will resume tommorow

Filed under: blogging by Arjun Ram — Leave a comment
July 29, 2003

Way too many things happening @ my end, which have kept me busy(work, personal stuff and bunch of things that need to be sorted out). Life is getting way to complex these days. I should’ve probably put an update :( Sorry about that. I totally out of touch with the blogsphere in the last one week and hence have a lot of catching up to do. I know theres a ton to blog about, but I’d have to wait :(

Let me leave you with a thought that my friend said to me

“One who tends to expect a lot of life is likely to be disappointed more!” I thought it made a lot of sense and has been thought provoking, might even change the way I look @ life.

Back in a few …

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One more reason to be part of OpenSource!

Filed under: technology by Arjun Ram — 7 Comments
July 19, 2003

Coding even before an interview?

Is this a new trend? When one applied to a company the hiring manager came back with the following

“write something new. It doesn’t have to be extensive. The goal is to impress our developers as to the depth of your technical chops…”

If your are the developer that needs to be impressed (in this case Windows programmer) what would be looking for? What in general about a code would impress you? Would it be the idea or how concise the code would be? Please sound off. Would be interested to hear back from you!

One more reason to be involved in OpenSource!

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New Generation of PDAs!

Filed under: technology by Arjun Ram — Leave a comment
July 19, 2003

Hubba! hubba! what can I say! Neat eh? (I can see my brother drolling at this one right now :) . Time to aspire for this new PDA rather than NZ90 Bro! This has Sony’s own processor! Most of the components are sony made including the memory stick! That might something to think about! Too bad it runs for Palm OS 5.2, I would assume that running Palm OS 6 slated for end of year release would make sense! Why else would one spend 700$ and realise its outdated in 6 months! Too bad its not priced @ 400$ to kick the hiptop’s and danger devices of the world! It has bluetooth and WiFi and all the other goodies. Need to put this one in my Amazon wish list! Any takers ;)  

Update: Want to droll more? Check out

 

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Back from a short break

Filed under: blogging by Arjun Ram — 2 Comments
July 19, 2003

I have been tied up with a boat of stuff and hence needed to take a break from blogging to focus on the other stuff. Lots to blog about and very less time :) Feels good to back. Belated birthday wishes to Matt and Greg!

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Intersting twist in file sharing

Filed under: technology by Arjun Ram — Leave a comment
July 13, 2003

Napster’s Fanning has come up with a new technology that does audio finger printing. Read more here. He has approached the major labels for funding. Interesting his technology piggy backs on Kazaa! Wonder what he has up his sleeve. I like the idea that is a mix between kazaa and some thing legal. Cant wait to hear more!

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Dumb Advertising!

Filed under: technology by Arjun Ram — 3 Comments
July 11, 2003

Ran into this yahoo Ad while lookuping up my mail! Look @ the punch line! Why should I store them online so they’ll never get smudged, I can bloody well use my own PC! dumb! really dumb!

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Erik's pulse – Favourite Java bloggers

Filed under: java by Arjun Ram — 2 Comments
July 11, 2003

Erik’s seems to like my blog! Made it to his favourite Java blogs!!

 Arjum Ram: Arjun is a relatively new blogger, but he gets it.

Thanks for kind words Erik! A good moral booster.

BTW, its Arjun not Arjum. Seems like we have come full circle from the days of me calling you Eric with a “C” ;)

For those who dont read Erik’s blog, he does the surfing for you ;) So if you missed out on something for a couple of days make sure u go back and check his site! Thats exactly what I do :)

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Java.net and weblogs: The Road ahead

Filed under: java by Arjun Ram — 2 Comments
July 11, 2003

Its been almost a month since Java.net and weblogs were started @ java.net. Its was a descent start but im afraid that SUN’s starting to start back on it laurels of launching such a service! This aint the time! Although java.net has a impressive set of bloggers, its has not taken an off as it should have. It seems as though many of the bloggers are blogging for the sake of doing it. The topics have been pretty mediocre and it seems to be as though it there is lack of passion. The sad part is even though repeated calls we made for interoperability between Javablog.com and Java.net’s weblogs nothing has been done about it. Meanwhile artima is doing a wonderful job of creating Technology Buzz RSS feeds which is similar to JavaBlogs but it across technologies. Fortunately for SUN, the tools for the blogsphere have started to mature (feedster, techborati, etc); its sad to see SUN not take advantage of these tools. Just take one look @ http://weblogs.java.net/ and you will release who behind they are. They are inventing the wheel all over again (ok they have used Oreilly’s blogging technolgy, im not too impressed with it). Whatever happened to reuse? If I were @ SUN managing this, this is what I would be doing:

  • Use Java.net’s weblog are parent/umberalla for all Java technology blogs.
  • Use the exisiting blog feeds from Javablogs.com and artima’s Technology Buzz RSS feeds 
  • Provide specific RSS feeds to various java technologies.
  • Start JCP community blog (Yeah I would love to see a blog track JCP for me and get the JCP participants to write to that something similar to Mobitopia)
  • Start Java Open Souce community blog (that just talks about opensource java projects out there)
  • Start Java Products blog (Similar to industry.java.sun.com)
  • Continue the good job of getting star power to blog on java.net
  • Integrated feedster search with weblogs.java.net (FYI they use JIVE forums in java forums, so I dont see why they cant do the same for their search. I have always hated their search engine. Now under the http://weblogs.java.net/ if I search for a term I expect the search to happen under weblogs not their whole site!! duh!)
  • Improve content and get folks to address Java/.NET technologies.
  • Reuse existing blog technologies rather than reinventing the wheel all over again. Its time for SUN to realise and use the enthusiastic following which is willing to go out of the way and help!

Why am I being critical? Cuz I care and I think SUN has the capacity to do a better job, just needs to be spanked from time to time!

 

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Perfect example of an opensource project!

Filed under: java by Arjun Ram — 2 Comments
July 9, 2003

Whoever said that opensource projects dont have good documentation! If you one of those who have the same misconception that its time you changed your mind! Look @ hibernate! WOW Im impressed! Many companies that charge you boat loads of money dont have such good documentation! Clear Concise and Very well thought off from a user’s perspective! Aint gonna get better than this. kudos! Guys! I can confidently walk up to my boss and pitch this if need be! To the untrained eye the stuff looks like its a company (Site/documentation/etc). As for the product, I have read rave reviews on blogs and Roller uses it as well! Cant wait to see how this works!

In comparison, im pretty dissappointed with MiddleGen (grr … bad!) Although there is documentation it is not well thought of from a user’s perspective. Alright may be my brain is fused, I just cant get the Swing App to work. Has anyone got middlegen swing app to work? May be its late and I got to go home .. Any help is greatly appreciated!

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