Ramesh Vijayaraghavan

Every one in the tech industry very well know about the Microsoft’s love for Yahoo. But if you look closely its not love for Yahoo, but love for search share. But as long as you don’t have quality results people are not going to try. Yahoo do have better quality compared to Live (I don’t even remember what they are calling it now) search, but there are multiple overlapping products.

So, what I feel is Microsoft should go after twitter which can dramatically improve its search results. Google’s secret sauce for its search result is PageRank. Page rank uses the linking structure to determine the weight of a given page. The higher the weight the more important is the page and hence appears on top of the page.

PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page’s value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important". - PageRank 

Now, if we slightly modify the parameters used for determining the PageRank and add some real time web into it, we get TweetRank. A Tweet with a link like

geetadayal: This is hilarious: RT @drewvigal Print Media Gets a Lifeline -http://tr.im/iGZJ

, contains valuable information regarding the following

1. Link
2. Tags / Keywords associated with a link
3. The user who recommended it.

And twitter as a system has the below information.

1. Number of times the link is tweeted / re-tweeted uniquely by a given user. (These are to be considered as inbound links in page rank)
2. The authority of the user who recommended the link (based on the followers, This has to be considered as the authority when some one links to the page)

And all these in real time, can provide valuable data for indexing the web. So, Microsoft don’t let this skip away if you really want to get some search share.

Note: The current Firehose FAQ mentions -

We do not intend to allow anonymous, unregulated public access to this stream for any number of legal, financial, and technical reasons.

So, I don’t think twitter is going to let these valuable information leave the system.

I was composing an email today at office and when I hit the send button, there came my favaorite (favorite) tool the spell checker. I just cannot imagine myself how it would be without this small usefull(useful) tool. 

It all started when I was a small kid. During the times when we learned to write the the albhabets(alphabets)  i always had a confusion between b/d/p. I used to struggle a lot to get that “B” right. Also, I am very famous for my bad figures. When doing the math , I will write a number in the flow, when I try to read is again, I will not be able to get easily get what number it is. Ahh the number 8 – it took me so much practise(practice) to get it right.

My teachers will go crazy looking at my spellings. It will be consistently inconsistent. Like in a paragraph if a word repeats itself, there would be different spelling in different places. And my most favaurite(favorite) is – sawpping (swapping) of “since” and “science”. In all my science exams, in the answer sheet top, I used to write since and in all places where I have to write since I would write science.

To overcome this, I used to practice words and now thanks to the spell checker, I am saved. I suspect two problems over here. One the speed at which my mind computes is not matching my speed of writing and mind, ignores to look for this minor details. Later after seeing the movie Tarae Zameen Par I came to know that this is a common Phonological disorder known as Dyslexia.  (note: OMG I wrote one paragraph without spelling errors)

One thing to remember is, this is not something which cannot be fixed. With continious (continuous) practice this can easily be addressed. For all those who know my laziness, I just worked around it, by choosing this computer industry where I can always have my close buddy spell checker review everything I type.

So, I thank whole heartedly all my teachers from Akilandeswari Vidyalaya from where I did most of my schooling, my tution(tuition) teacher Kalyani mami for their constant support and encouragement which has helped me to be successful.

Double Checked Locking (DCL) is commonly used pattern / anti-pattern for creating singleton objects in a multi threaded applications. This is denoted as anti-pattern because the implementation is broken and in versions before Java 1.5. As of JDK5, there is a new Java Memory Model and Thread specification. With respect to .NET its controversial. People suggest to avoid DCL in .NET. But the .net framework itself relies on DCL when instantiating providers.

If you use Reflector and navigate to the Membership / Roles class Initialize method you could see them using the DCL.

So, care must be taken while using the Double-checked locking pattern to ensure safety of your code

Its always sweet when you talk about friends, and its always sweeter to remember your first friends. Yes, childhood friends. Days where we used to play merry go round, and live our own world with dolls, build castles using sand and chasing the colorful butter flies, without the worries. man - that’s life.

So, this post is about my first friends. Kids of my same age group where we used to play before even joining the KG. There were three friends. Sudhakar, Vyshalya and Suresh. We were staying in the same neighbour hood and their respective caretakers used to meet together in the evening and thus we became friends.

The time passed by and I never realized I had bid farewell to them. Lost touch with Sudhakar from 1st standard, Vyshalya on 5th std and Suresh way before UKG. But, the world is small. Suresh and myself again met in Higer secondary and thanks to the Internet we are still in touch.

Sudhakar, met him on my higher secondary for brief amount of time, and my mother remembered me how we used to play. I was not able to recognize him. I did not realise to get his email id at that time.

Vyshalya, she was my best pal in LKG. It seems my teacher complained to my parents that, I spoke only with her in the class and not to any one. My mom still makes fun of me with that. As we grow the distance also grew and she left my school at 5th std. Haven’t heard about her after that.

Time could has passed by. I may not even recognize them, but their names always remain in me and I can never forget those good old days. Thanks you guys

I am not sure, how many people have seen / heard this

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

He  talks about three important things in this wonderful speech.

• Connecting the dots
• Love and loss
• Death

So, I would like to share my experience a.k.a experiments with few of his story. Also, I would like to add one more important thing to this mix. That is Learning from mistakes.

He beautifully says

you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

And, the link that it would really get connected is because of what he mentions in his second story.

You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

I consider myself successful (many may disagree). Mine may not be great comeback, but every one has the right to believe theirs is one of their greatest comeback. So, back to my story. I was doing pretty good at my studies till my 10th. Then in my higher secondary, I lost miserably. I was able to score just 80% with which I am not even eligible for an Enginnering college. But, I was passionate towards computers. I was way involved into programming. So, my Dad made a gamble and believed in me and got me a seat in a good professional college. In college, I did above average.  After three years of college, it all came down to what I was expecting for last three years. Campus interviews.

The first one to visit our campus was big consultancy which has more than a lakh employee strength. I was rejected in HR as, I didnot answer questions other than programming properly. (It was something related differentiation and integration). I didnot bother and had my belief that, this may not be the right place for me. The second one was another MNC with nearly 50K employee base. I did great in technical round. But I was not able to do good in HR where I was given a stress test.

So, the LESSON LEARNT at that time,is to handle the pressure which STILL helps me in my job. That experiment made me to figure out how to make my brain work under pressure. How to concentrate on the work and ignore other external factors. Third company is my current employer with 10K employee base. From there, I got a good recognition for my work, and right now as I write this I am representing my company at my client location in US for last 5 months and I keep learning new things daily required when you develop a new application. And all this happened in just 2 years time frame.

From my failure in higher secondary to my current status, I feel I am successful. so, if I connect the dots, everything happened for a purpose. The credit to this, should go to the confidence my dad had on me and on my passion - computers and coding and most importantly the lessons LEARNT from my failures.

And for every one of you, who are starring at the dark or not happy with what you currently in do, believe in what you love. keep looking. Don’t settle. Keep learning and the dots would connect eventually.

இன்னும்மும் தேடுகிறேன், பள்ளி பருவத்துடன்
துலைந்து போன அந்த நிம்மதியான நாட்களை.

Still In search, of those beautiful days
I lost when I was a kid…

The answer for the title is, this blog is will contain things which I come across daily or things, which happened in my life. So, don’t start to think this is going to contain my experiments with technology. I am planning to keep it very minimal. This place will mostly contain my personal experience on various stuffs, people I come across, my views and the lessons I learnt.

Even this blog is an experiment which I am trying in my life. I am working in IT(Information Technology) industry. As most of you will be aware, IT is not an easy money and it has its own pressure and work culture, which I am holding it for another entry. So, as a so called Software Engg. my life is also going at a very fast phase. Atlast I had some time, to think about why all these things happened and I realised, it is like I am running a race against time. I wish, we had a Pause button in life, which would keep everything around still, while we take a deep breath and have time to enjoy, cherish things which are around us like…

இலை மேல் படிந்த பனி துளிகள் (Dew drops on leaf), உறங்கும் குழந்தையின் புன்சிரிப்பு (Smile of sleeping baby), பள்ளி செல்லும் குழந்தைகளின் குதுகலங்கள் (The joy of school going kids), தெரு முனை கோயில்களில் நடக்கும் முதியோர்களின் சந்திப்பு (The discussions between old people in the local temples), பேருந்தில் ஜன்னல் ஓர பயணம் (Busride in a window seat), மல்லிகை பூவின் மணம் (smell of jasmine flowers) போன்றவற்றை மீண்டும் பதிவு செய்ய(to recollect and record)  and to get a break from the regular work, I am starting this new experiment.

Looking forward to your critical views, comments and suggestions.

Ramesh