Vijay Narayanan on November 5th, 2009

Here’s what I found when signing up for a discounted copy of Windows 7 (for anyone with a .edu email address):

Continue reading about Sloppy!

Vijay Narayanan on May 11th, 2009

Consider this. You have a list* of maps. You want to replicate the list a specified number of times. For example, if the list has two maps, and you want to create from this list another list that contains six maps. The constraint is that you have to write your own method, and you must [...]

Continue reading about Copying Maps in Java

Vijay Narayanan on February 10th, 2009

… is Microsoft’s best stab at a web browser since IE 4.

Continue reading about Internet Explorer 8…

Vijay Narayanan on February 4th, 2009

So, just like they did with Vista, Microsoft is planning to release multiple versions of Windows 7. In an interesting post on TechCrunch, Devin Coldewey clinically takes apart this strategy. The section I loved the most was: Can you imagine a Microsoft hot dog stand where they use the same wiener and bun in every [...]

Continue reading about The various flavors of Windows 7

Vijay Narayanan on February 2nd, 2009

http://code.google.com/p/blackgold/issues/detail?id=3 The greatest bug report ever. Haven’t laughed like this in ages!

Continue reading about LOL!

Vijay Narayanan on January 8th, 2009

Guess what, I received a surprise New Year gift today. All the way from Praha in the Czech Republic. A limited edition NetBeans 10th Anniversary T-shirt from Sun Microsystems! NetBeans turned 10 this past year, and to commemorate this, the folks had conducted the NetBeans Decathlon, in which yours truly was one of the winners. (I [...]

Continue reading about New Year gift

Vijay Narayanan on January 7th, 2009

Steve Ballmer announced today that “techies” could download and test the beta version of Windows 7, the latest OS from Microsoft, starting Friday. I don’t have a spare computer to try that. But even if I did, I won’t have the guts to do so. Having endured Vista over the past couple of years, I [...]

Continue reading about Windows 7: Lipstick on a pig?

Vijay Narayanan on January 7th, 2009

While I was shocked at the goings-on at Satyam Computers as reported in the media over the past few weeks, today’s news that the founder and Chairman B. Ramalinga Raju has admitted to grossly inflating the books comes a thunderbolt. As a shareholder in Satyam Computers, I am appalled at the moral bankruptcy of this [...]

Continue reading about Morally bankrupt

Vijay Narayanan on January 6th, 2009

From the Onion News Network. Hilarious! Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Continue reading about Apple’s new MacBook Wheel

Vijay Narayanan on January 5th, 2009

Interesting video.

Continue reading about Shouting in the datacenter

Vijay Narayanan on November 21st, 2008

I have been dabbling with Facebook Ads for some time for a class project, and I thought about jotting down some of my experiences. Facebook Ads v/s Google AdWords The first question that arises whenever you thrown in a new product into a crowded field with established products is “How does it compare?” In this [...]

Continue reading about Thoughts on Facebook advertising

Vijay Narayanan on November 18th, 2008

I just noticed that the three browsers that I use all have two-word names, and the words are of equal length. Google Chrome (both words are 6 letters long) Mozilla Firefox (7) Internet Explorer (8) Not inspired by XKCD: Fixed Width

Continue reading about Fixed width

Vijay Narayanan on November 13th, 2008

A couple of months ago, when I first downloaded Google Chrome, I was skeptical about whether I would use it at all. I’m (was) a Firefox junkie, and have a number of addons installed, and I love the Firefox experience. I was of the opinion that with its vibrant developer community, Firefox had the “network [...]

Continue reading about Google Chrome & network effects

Vijay Narayanan on October 20th, 2008

If you are a Java developer looking for a powerful IDE that can get you started in no time, you should look no further than NetBeans. Why? NetBeans is free and open-source. A lot of people list preference with open-source software just because it is free. But beyond just the cost, there is a lot [...]

Continue reading about NetBeans turns 10!

Vijay Narayanan on October 8th, 2008

One of the rules of competitive strategy is that if you own a successful platform, the benefits that you can derive from it can be incredible. One can see that Google is exploiting this successfully with the Chrome browser. Here’s how. In Internet Explorer or Firefox, if you navigate to a page, but the server [...]

Continue reading about Google Chrome

Vijay Narayanan on October 6th, 2008

If you use Gmail and Firefox, you should give the Better Gmail Firefox plugin a try. It is amazing!

Continue reading about Better Gmail

Vijay Narayanan on September 4th, 2008

Perhaps the best reaction ever to Google Chrome was (from the comments section of some blog): “No, not another browser, please! I am a web developer, and I simply cannot afford to add another testing environment to my current list!”

Continue reading about Google Chrome

Vijay Narayanan on May 3rd, 2008

When I started using Office 2007 a year ago, I found the transition not difficult, but frustrating. In fact, even frustrating is a stronger word. From a design perspective, it was difficult to fathom why the UI designers would not just tinker with, but significantly alter the menus. Considering that the core audience for Office [...]

Continue reading about User-centric design

Vijay Narayanan on May 2nd, 2008

… is the greatest software application ever. Period.

Continue reading about Microsoft Excel

Vijay Narayanan on April 21st, 2008

When you apply filters in Excel 2007, and then copy the filtered data from one sheet to another, you will find (to your frustration) that what has been copied to the new sheet is not just the filtered data, but also the invisible data that was filtered out. Oh, the ways of Microsoft! If I [...]

Continue reading about Copying filtered data in Excel 2007