The `Kill Hollywood’ call if put in the right perspective, is more of a call to ‘Disrupt Hollywood Model of Business’ than killing the entire industry altogether.
January 21, 2012
by shashi
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October 22, 2011
by shashi
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Zimbra – Add newly added email accounts to an all-hands distribution list
Zimbra, by default does not provide any trigger or tool to add newly added email accounts to an all-hands distribution list.
I wrote a small shell script to achieve the same. Modify suitably and add it to your crontab.
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October 12, 2011
by shashi
1 Comment
… and fustrations unto thee!
Continue with caution. Guaranteed to frustrate you no end!
Some years back while still in school, we were made to recite Swami Sivananda’s Universal Prayer every Saturday morning. The lines
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May 15, 2011
by shashi
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SkypeOut – MicrosoftIn
A joke that’s making the rounds of the Internet goes like “Microsoft buys Skype for $8.5 Billion. Nobody told them you can download it for free.” 
Though rhetorical, it hits the point right on its head. It is a matter of common knowledge that the current owners of Skype were very edgy and wanted to sell it off to anybody who could pay up its latest market valuation (around USD 3 Billion). Various analysis of the buyout have explained that Microsoft is looking at the value that Skype shall add when integrated with Outlook, Sharepoint, Office and their other enterprise collaboration tools.
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April 20, 2011
by shashi
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Raising Credit for Startups through Banks – CGTMSE
Bootstrapping a startup can be an arduous task. Especially raising capital while growing can be a daunting goal to achieve. The most popular approach seems to be approaching Angel Investors for cash in lieu of stocks or a partnership in the startup. Though less risky and usually reliable, this approach also has its own pitfalls like determining how much ownership to cede?, involve the investors in management roles? etc.
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March 11, 2011
by shashi
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My submission for MacBook Air Contest: How Do You Move Applications to the Cloud?
If you like it, please “Like it” :p
And you too can write your take on moving tech to the cloud.
You can find it here: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/03/the-road-to-the-cloud-how-do-y.php#comment-161898196
Contrary to popular perceptions, implementing cloud for the enterprise has to be a planned and carefully executed exercise. In fact even migrating from your locally hosted email and collaboration suite to Google Apps could turn out to be a flop if you dont have the necessary variables sorted out.
Some basic and necessary steps towards a successful move towards cloud
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February 13, 2011
by shashi
1 Comment
Successful resuscitation of the blog
Some weeks back, while cleaning out the cruft in our server I managed to erase the database of this blog. Unfortunately there was no backup of the DB as well. I was resigned to the fate of starting the blog all over. And the story would have ended there, but for the successful resuscitation using cached content from Google, Bing and Blekko. Thanks to @twistedlogix for his professional online stalking expertise that the blog is back with each and every blog, comment, category, tag, plugin configuration intact.
My blog has its own share of search engine driven traffic and a few popular articles include the ones on configuring Gnokii for Nokia phones, Zimbra tweaks, etc. In addition, I also maintain some links to websites covering the mankuthimmana kagga. Hence it would have been a tough task to create everything from scratch.
The only surprising element in the whole process was that the Internet Wayback machine has no record of my seemingly popular website :-p
So if you happen to erase or destroy your website or blog due to any reason, you know whom to contact!
January 1, 2011
by shashi
2 Comments
Google or Search?
The term google had entered our dictionaries not only as a proper noun, but also as a verb. We had stopped searching for information. Instead we googled for information.
But of late, things are turning around. and are their googled information. Try searching for “” and you’ll understand.
March 21, 2010
by shashi
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Google getting googlied in China
It’s with great amusement that I am watching the ongoing battle between Google and China. What started as an almost diplomatic allegation over “hackers” gaining entry to Google’s developers’ desktops in its Chinese offices, is now threatening to blow over to a full scale war.
But however, is it only me who is seeing Google and China as unlikely opponents? Here are some similarities I found between them:
- Google operates as a monopoly, so does the Chinese government.
- The Communist party has a two tier membership – one for the influential and one for the masses. So does Google – Class A & B shares divide the influential and the peasants.
- Chinese practice an open “people’s government” in which it chooses what should be open and what not. Google too practices an “open internet” policy, in which it chooses what is open and what not.
- A world economy without the Chinese manufacturing backend cannot be imagined in any way. Similarly, a world economy without Google’s information peddling backend cannot be imagined.
- China aims to achieve global superiority by being totally self-reliant and also by buying up other countries. Google also is trying to be self-reliant in its own sphere of economy by entering into diverse areas such as Electricity, Broadband, Wireless, TV/Radio and even Real Estate.
These similarities do not end here. But does continue in other areas. Nevertheless, we will never know the actual reasons behind the current face-off between Google and China.
But, IMHO Google must strike a deal with China and stay back just in order to live to fight another day.
May 29, 2009
by shashi
2 Comments
An XMPP Wave
The web is of engineers at Google and next generation communication tool – Wave. The service looks awesome and sure is a next generation material. And obviously scores of copy cats will try to mimic or even exceed the Wave in its appeal.
But where Google rules is that they’re open sourcing the entire platform (supposedly). Better still, the whole technology is purely built on top of standards and using technologies already available in the open source world.Wave is built on top of .
We at have been heavy users of XMPP and eJabberd from quite some time now. We’re also coming up with innovative solutions based on XMPP and integrating XMPP with various e-governance apps which takes the entire platform/environment to a whole new high level.
This development not only validates our technology choices, but also serves as the bell weather for things to come. I just hope, people in charge of the decision making processes understand these developments and encourage more open and standards based technologies.