Let go off books. Our children deserve a better future.

Now that the world has multiple e-book readers after Kindle and iPad, it looks like the future of books is definitely digital. The only problem is that a substantial number of people are still opposed to that idea. The feel of paper, the smell of that newly bought book, the ornate bookshelf and Oxford in Park Street are experiences which are too emotional to let go.

Nexus One Vs iPhone, Wrong Competition.

Well that is a tall claim, specially when even people like iWoz are starting to use it but let me give you some reasons.

Google is not a consumer product company. While they do make one of the most widely used consumer products out there, Google Search, enterprise is where Google really wants to be. Whether it is Search, GMail, Google Docs or Chrome, the entire Google juggernaut is focussed towards taking on Microsoft in the enterprise space. Because that is where the real money is.

10 Movies I can watch a 100 times.

There are some movies which you are not tired of watching over and over again.

So here are the 10 movies I can watch a 100 times. They are in no particular order.

iSlate: Let the Gold Rush Begin!

The most disruptive new technology or device for 2010 will be the iSlate or the iTablet or whatever Apple decides to call their tablet computer.
Listen, I don’t know what this device will look like, I don’t even know how much it will cost and I don’t even care. But what I care to know or understand is the number of use cases a 7 inch or 10 inch hand held computing device like iSlate could enjoy. So here’s a few of them

What not to do while interviewing programmers

I have over the years interviewed 10s of Java Developers or Web Developers .This blog post is about what not to do while interviewing.

Cringely, here’s an idea for text entry.

Cringely has hit the nail on the head regarding the future or handheld devices. These things are not phones anymore. They are all handheld computers which happen to have phone hardware as well. Processor speed, memory capacity and all such critical hardware inputs which make a device snappy are all doubling in capacity but halving in cost. We are in the midst of the same cycle the PC went through between 1998 and 2004.

However as Cringely pointed out the holy grail for handheld devices is the accuracy and speed of typing. Ergonomics wise Blackberrys with their full QWERTY keyboards are slightly ahead of the rest, but even then typing more than a 3 sentences at one go, would be an extremely painful experience. So what’s the solution.

It’s called Auto Complete.

BB Apps I downloaded from App World

Blackberry launched their App World in India a few a days ago, and so I went ahead and did a bit of look into.

First thing. Paid apps are not available. Only free apps. While this may be a good thing to draw more people in, there are a whole lot of users willing to spend money to buy some great paid apps. Allowing paid apps would have also given Indian Developers a platform to showcase their India Specific Blackberry apps.

Anyway, over to free apps.

Decided to re-join Facebook

I have written a lot about the negative aspects of Facebook over the past few weeks. My chief concerns were that

1. Facebook in the last few years have allowed in a lot of spoky and shoddy advertisers. Some of these are openly and brazenly duping a lot of people.
2. Facebook is sharing too much data about our personal lives and the conversations that we have with our friends with it’s partners.
3. Facebook is closed. You can get your photos, videos and other stuff in, but will not be able to export them out of Facebook.

Some new eateries in Kolkata

In the past few weeks, I have been to a few new eateries in Kolkata. While some where good others were, well not so good. The trend that I am seeing is that there is a definite leaning towards Indian Food. Kebabs are in and Chieeenich Chicken is out. Bengali isn’t doing well either.

Ok so here’s the first one, and do remember that these are generally all buffet lunches that we tried out

How to store passwords in Java

There are two choices

Jasypt

Here are the cardinals rules of storing user passwords, and these not only apply to Java but to all other programming language as well.How to encrypt user passwords.Read this before going any further

To summarize, you must use an secure hashing algorithm which which allows for a random salt as an input, and one which hashes the resultant output at least 1000 times.

The generic form of any secure hashing works like this.

Generating a Hash

salt = GET salt
hash_bytes = algo("data to hash",salt,number of rounds)
hash_string = base64 ecnode(hash_bytes)
store(hash_string)