Thejesh GN

All the best Nandan

Thejesh GN — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:14:56 +0000

Well, what should I say? Farewell function was long and very senti. It looked like whole of @infy had gathered to catch a glimpse of Nandan. I am cursing myself for not carrying a camera on such a big occasion. Here are some pics from my mobile.

Nandan has been with Infy for almost thirty years. It is not easy for Nandan or Infy, not to miss each other. He is a great executor and brand ambassador. I am sure he will do well in his new role as chairman of the new Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI). All the very best Nandan.

Disclosure: I work for Infosys.

Remotely lock (do what ever you want) your compute using outlook

Thejesh GN — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 06:18:53 +0000

This is a tip to use your outlook to control your machine remotely. Before we start please make sure…
1. Machine with outlook running…
2. You are solely responsible for what you are doing…
We will use outlook rules to control the (*your own*) machine from any where in the world as long as you have access to email.
Create a .bat file on your file system with

@echo off
rundll32.exe user32.dll, LockWorkStation
cls

save it as act-outlook.bat
1. Go to Tools -> Rules and alerts
2. Click on *new* rule
3. Start from blank rule and check message when they arrive
4. Click next
5. Check when specific words in the subject
6. Add your *super dooper password* as that subject word
7. Click next
8. Check start an application ( and use act-outlook)
9. save rule

Now when you want to lock the machine send a mail to yourslef *hoping your own machine* with the subject *super dooper password*
Your machine gets locked. Well you can do anything using this. lock, shutdown, format….use your common sense. (in the screen shot it even verifies for the email id from which the command has come. Added security)

Reading blogs ( feeds ) inside outlook

Thejesh GN — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 13:09:52 +0000

Recently I have seen number of users reading my feed on outlook. Its been increasing month by month. So I thought there could be many more users who will be interested in reading feeds in outlook. The recent version of outlook, i.e outlook 2007 has feed reader built into it. Using which you can read the posts just like mails.

This is useful as most of us, corporate users have outlook installed by default. You don’t have to fight with your IS/ITS department for a new software or you don’t have to keep your browser always open.
Your browser should recognize outlook 2007 as a feed reader when you access a feed. You can easily subscribe from there.

If that is not happening, then you can go to
Tools -> account Settings -> RSS Feeds tab and click on new.

Enter the url of the feed to subscribe. Once the outlook finds the feed, it throws the settings. By default it would use your inbox to store the downloaded posts. Change it to external folder (pst) so your inbox is saved. You can set the enclosure download if the feed is of podcast. You can use the same menu for managing your feeds like changing the settings or for unsubscribing (remove).

You can also import or export set of feeds in the form of OPML. You need to go to File-> Import Export. This is useful if you want to import your feeds from GReader.

Like mails you can tag your feed posts, Flag them, Forward them, You can search, sort them or share the whole feed so other outlook users can easily add it to their subscription list.

I have been using it for more than three months now. I must say I am impressed. But I make sure, I subscribe to only important feeds like that of my blog in outlook :) For the rest of the feeds I still go to GReader.

MJ is no more

Thejesh GN — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:54:32 +0000

Long live MJ.

My experiences from first 50kms of Cycling

Thejesh GN — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 10:07:30 +0000

Its been three weeks that I got a cycle for myself. Unfortunately I couldn’t cycle much the first two weeks. I live beyond electronics city on Hosur road. I have done couple of trips to Koramanagala to meet my friends. Its about 15 kms one way from Koramangala to my home. Other than that I cycle to office on Fridays which is about 4.5km one way. Those were the only chances I got in last two/three weeks. I have done close to 50kms.

With the above experience of cycling in Bangalore, Here I am sharing my experiences this blog post. I am also trying to address some of the questions raised by my friends. I hope it helps.

I got my bicycle from track n trails store at Koramangala. So my first ride was to ride from the store to home for about 15kms. I started to ride with the helmet and I was wearing formals. The ride was pretty smooth until I got to know that I am center of attraction for other motorists on the road.There were at least two BMTC buses which came close to me near silk board flyover. But then both the bus drivers and others had a smile on their face and in fact the BMTC guy almost stopped his bus to allow me to climb the flyover. The point I wanted to make is people love cyclists more than others. May be the helmet made a difference.

I reached home in an hours time. My parents were surprised to the fact that I was serious about the cycle. The next Friday I rode to office. My neighbors and their kids were very curious about my cycling. They are probably going to link it to recession and what IT companies are doing to their employees :) Of course you are a hero amongst neighboring kids with superbike that has 24 gears and disk breaks. All in all until now, its been great.

Safety:
Everybody I meet, question about the safety of cyclists. The safety factor is over hyped. To everybody my answer is “it is safe as long as you don’t compete and you are defensive”. If you check the newspaper of last six months in Bangalore, you would see more motor-cyclists getting killed on road than bicyclists. I have cycled on Hosur Road, I use the left most footpath and compete with pedestrians. I have always felt safe. So don’t worry cycling pretty secure. But always be defensive

Wear helmet. It helps in case you fall down and also the fact that it attracts other motorists works for you.
Use LED lights or reflectors if you plan to ride in night.
Plan ahead, Leave early, Be calm and don’t hurry.
Don’t compete with other motorists. Specially while crossing the road. Its safe to cross with pedestrians.
Ride on footpath if it is available but respect pedestrians.

Weather:
I was in Chennai last two weeks. I saw many more cycles inside the city than Bangalore. I saw ladies saris riding cycles with school going kids at back. If they can ride in Chennai, there is no questions about weather of Bangalore.

Pollution:
Again here, your planning comes into picture. Plan well to ride early in the morning or around 3-4pm in the evening. Beat the normal traffic. You will be clean.

Aim is TFN09
Even though I am using it everyday, My reason behind buying the bicycle is to do long rides. I am roaring to go but havent got a chance yet. My aim this year is to complete Tour Of Nilgiris . That is the promise I made myself last year, when I was a volunteer at TFN. I am sure those 919kms in 9days will test everything in me. Next six months for me will go in preparations for TFN09. Wish me good luck.

And my visitors readers come from

Thejesh GN — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:31:21 +0000

According to this post by TechCrunch about 9.7% of traffic is driven to TechCrunch is by twitter. This makes a twitter third biggest traffic source. After reading that post, I started wondering about my own blog.

In last few months I had not digged much into analytics. Today I logged into account to check the traffic sources to my site.

No wonder Google stands in the first position. Direct visitors take the second position. Surprise, Surprise Twitter takes the third position. It proves how big twitter has grown as a traffic driver. No wonder everybody is on twitter from NYtimes to bangaloremirror. My guess is very soon it will surpass digg and stumbleupon. So if you are a blogger, twitter can become prime source of traffic. Go create an account and don’t forget to follow me @thej :)

Amongst just the referral sites Twitter stands first.
Though I am not sure how Google Images is sending users to my site. (Who the heck is searching for my pictures?)

Of course the other biggest source of traffic is through feedreaders. It looks like Google Reader is the most famous feed reader. Another surprising factor here is the rise of Outlook 2007 as feed reader.

I have been using Outlook 2007 to read feed for some time now. I must say I am happy with it. You should use it only to subscribe to the most important blogs/newsites. For the rest continue using GReader.

In all I must concentrate on twitter and outlook readers in future to get more traffic.

BTW how did you arrive here?

Your Online identity

Thejesh GN — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 13:22:02 +0000

Online identity is becoming as important as your offline identity. If you are not living in stone age you will be on one of those social networks which mainly forms your identity. All those user names become part of your digital identity.

As of today, You meet most of your online business partners on Facebook¹. You share the stuff with your friends and family. Your friends or partners search on Facebook to get your mobile number. Even Google (or any) search for you leads to your Facebook profile². What does that mean to you and me? Facebook will own all your digital identity.With 250 million profiles online, Facebook is on its way to become online identity hub.

What happens if you are removed from their network all of a sudden? You are lost. Your friends, family and business partners are lost. A place where you were supposed to hang out fun has become your main identity. Now you are not allowed enter that place.

So what do I do?
Simple. Own a domain. Develop your domain as your identity. A domain can take various forms in various kinds of online transaction, but it will remain your center of identity. With your own domain name, YOU own your online Identity. Its worth spending $10/year.

Use social networks only for networking and meeting friends. Bring your friends from social networks to your site. I would like to be known as thejeshgn.com online than @thej on twitter. ²

1. I have taken Facebook as an example because it is the biggest social network today. It can apply to any online social network.Last few days there has been a buzz about vanity urls on Facebook. Some are happy and some arent that happy. All these buzz forced me to write this post.

2. Now you know why I am so serious about ego searches.

Being open online and ending relationship gracefully

Thejesh GN — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 08:45:40 +0000

I met both Tara and Chris @ BarcampBangalore 1 (yeah the first one to happen in Bangalore, in fact in India and the venue was Y!). Both of them were very friendly.They were very passionate about their work and their life. I still remember having a long conversation with Chris about microformats.

Few months back they ended their relationship. Both were very bold, open and very graceful about ending their romantic relationship. Both Chris and Tara blogged about their relationship and the transition happening in their life.

All I could do was to offer hugs to them on their blogs. And be surprised how open and graceful they were.

Why now?
Two of my friends almost reached the edge of their relationship and they weren’t that graceful. They removed each other from friends list, gtalk and what not..before coming back again.

Questions:
1. Should we be really open about our life and relationship online?
2. Why cant everybody be like Chris and Tara ( I mean be as graceful as them)?