Desicritics Category: BizTech: Software

Software Review: Seesmic Look - Twitter For The Masses

Aaman Lamba — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 13:27:04 EST

Innovation comes in little steps, it has been said, until one finds a new paradigm has been reached, and then its like things were always that way. Back in the old days, as it were, a telephone connection was a wondrous thing, connoting affluence of sorts, or at the very least, connections to the powerful.

Connections have become the currency of the social age, and a telephone is no more a means to share news and views with people one knows. It is fair to say that more information is broadcast to strangers today than to one's own family. This might explain the explosion in popularity of services like Twitter, which allow you to listen to the chatter of the masses as much as to the thoughts of the powerful.

There still seems to be a magical barrier though that Internet communication services have not yet crossed - that between the extraordinary and the mundane, where a mode of communication becomes commonplace enough to be accessible without needing to learn how to use it.

Seesmic claimed to have cracked the puzzle with their launch of Seesmic Look, a new Twitter client built on Microsoft's Silverlight platform, styled with Windows 7 thematic elements, and Tablet-friendly.

It is structured into channels that move in and out of the central space. Lists finally become easy to view and navigate, appearing as sub-folders in the Social space. Tweets vary in size as you scroll up and down, a somewhat disconcerting effect at first. The fonts are also not one's first preference, and there doesn't seem to be any way to tweak the interface other than to switch between light and dark.

Hot topics and trends have their own zone, and are visible even to not-logged in users. This is the first innovative step as Seesmic Look provides a preloaded set of channels and topics, giving the general Internet user a look-see without having to sign up. This does not translate to ubiquity but does increase the curiousness factor, making Seesmic Look more immersive than the lame Twitter home page. The application carries a 'Powered by Twitter' seal, quite unusual among third-party apps.

The most interesting innovation is the Playback mode, where recent tweets appear and disappear as floating bubbles. The effect palls after a while, though.

The channels are actually sponsored timelines by brands such as Red Bull, the Huffington Post, and Time. A channel has its own color theme and logo. Photographs and videos auto-expand, though not all sites. It isn't a feature regular users will stay with much, though.

Seesmic Look has really nailed Twitter Lists, with the easy navigation between a list and the main timeline. I'm running Windows 7 and the UI renders beautifully. There is an occasional graphic glitch though where a blue bar that appears when you switch windows from Look to another application. The application does freeze occasionally when scrolling through the timeline. The 'in reply to' link between a response and the original tweet also seems to have been lost in the interface design. A final quibble is the poor placement of the refresh button - bottom right of the window, leading one to click the settings button which is right next to the update bar on top.

Overall, it is a good departure from the norm and fits more smoothly into the new Windows UI metaphors than Adobe AIR apps, for example. The television-style interface and glossy feel will draw it many followers, although it will be hard to measure Twitter usage uptick purely as a result of Seesmic Look.

Book Review: Practical Intrusion Analysis

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 3 Jan 2010 19:00:33 EST

With a core emphasis on intrusion detection systems(IDS) in networks, the book includes further topics like wireless IDS, Intrusion Prevention System(IPS),etc.

SNORT and Bro are the two main IDS tools discussed. Both of them are open-source tools. While SNORT is representative of signature-based IDS, Bro is an example of anomaly-based IDS. A signature-based IDS looks for signatures in the network transmission indicating an attack in progress whereas an anomaly-based IDS goes by a normal traffic pattern and raises alert if there is an abnormality detected.

There is some discussion on writing signatures for SNORT. There are sites on the internet where signatures can be downloaded. However, any intrusion analyst using SNORT in detail, would need to know the techniques for writing signatures. There are methods discussed in this book for strategy to create good signatures while going through a vulnerability' life cycle.

Some of the other network analysis tools described in this book include vulnerability assessment scanners(ex. Nessus, Nikto, router audit tool a.k.a RAT), packet sniffers(ex. Wireshark, TCPDump), file integrity checker(ex. Tripwire, RANCID, AIDE), password auditing(ex. Cain and Able, Brutus, RainbowCrack), wireless security toolkits(ex. AirCrack, AirSnort, Kismet), vulnerability exploitation tools(ex. Metasploit), network reconnaissance toolkits(ex. Hping2, nmap, ngrep, ntop). The distinctions between these may be small and sometimes even overlapping such as an essential packet sniffer in an intrusion detection system.

There is some discussion on web application firewalls, wireless IDS/IPS, some other less frequent topics like physical intrusion detection and geospatial intrusion detection. Web Application Firewalls are specialized IDS to cater to the practicalities like more percentage of secure network protocols in use and wide variations from web applications across organizations. This makes the the general IDS tools practically ineffective as a intruder can go within a tunneled traffic which is not configured for monitoring out-of-the-box.

To summarize, the book covers a lot of topics within its scope. It is a good read for a introduction to current intrusion analysis,detection and prevention techniques. A more continuous discussion with more real-world examples and their solutions within the topics would have made this a delightful read.

IIM CAT Snafu Continues - Mismanagement and Inconvenience

Aaman Lamba — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:19:45 EST

The first online Common Admission Test (CAT) for the Indian Institutes of Management presented a poor showing for the institutes and the company conducting the test, Prometric, as problems continued to plague some test centres, impacting a number of students across the country.

Problems started on the first day of the CAT, which runs up to December 7th, with students being unable to log in to the test, and a variety of excuses being made by the test centres and IIMs, ranging from hardware problems and virus attacks. Test examiners and invigilators did not appear to have been well trained. Often, computers hung while tests were underway, creating an unfair advantage for the student. The central server is reportedly affected by a virus or malware, and it is strange there was no backup server. Fail safes and alternatives did not seem to have been sufficiently planned, and students were mostly left in the lurch with little to no clarity about students taking the test at alternate dates. Many students travel across the country, take leaves, and generally prepare mentally for the test, thus new slots might be inconvenient in various ways, and affect the general outcome.

Over 50 out of the 360 labs were reportedly closed and problems have continued on day 3. A press conference convened by the IIM Convenor and Prometric representatives seemed to have nothing concrete to offer, apart from platitudes and promises to accommodate all the unfortunate students who had faced problems. The convener seemed to have not taken care of even basic courtesies like turning off his cell phone before the conference and provided generic answers to questions, before trying to pass the buck to the test vendor, Prometric, not best practices from a management institute. As the Wall Street Journal put it, the IIMs need to practice what they are supposed to preach,

The weekend CAT fiasco, in which 50 of the 360 centres had systems fail and students could not take the test, has reinforced the perception of poor coordination and collaboration of IIMs. Going by feedback from some of the candidates who took the test , it seems they not only failed to manage the technical aspects of the test but also did a bad job in training the staff present in various centres. If good management is about reducing uncertainty and systematic errors, then the IIMs have failed that test .The way the coordination committee of the IIMs reacted to the fiasco is also a matter of concern.

The HRD Ministry, under whom the IIMs function, has sent a letter to the IIMs and the CAT Convenor, Professor Satish Deodhar, asking for a factual report on the disruptions of the Test.

The CAT fiasco also creates a problem for broader adoption of computer-aided testing, that is expected to be a major growth industry for test-happy India.

Will Manmohan Get An Economic Nobel?

Vivek Sharma — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:44:01 EDT

It is about time our Sardarji got it. Sardarji who is credited as father of optical fibers managed to dodge the Nobel by a whisker. I often look at that name on the wall of the Subway stop of Kendall Square/ MIT, and marvel at our inability to remember and recognise his name. But Manmohan Singh is a name that strikes a familiar chord in the West. Had there been no Manmohan Singh, we, Indians, could have been eating chai-pakoda, filter coffee-samosa, thumbs up and chaat in place of MacDonald's Burgers, Pizzas and KFC nuggets. The man who leads the greatest democratic nation in the world, (and emphasises the fact that India has more voters than the living and dead voters of the United States in the twenty-first century), the man who leads the most destitute crowd of voters into a capitalist, globalized economy, the man who has helped India become a keyboard thumping nation of 'code-monkeys' and 'phone-donkeys', making late-night forays into their stylised cubicle prisons from where they answer phone-calls with assumed Western accent / name, that man, his team, his party deserves some Western pat on the back. But maybe Sardarji will not get it for precisely these reasons and others that we will see in rest of my post.

Manmohan will not get it as he is overqualified as a politician. He is too gentle with words, too urbane and he lacks the element of drama so essential for getting credit for things. He does not offer to change the world, he has already done that to 1/5th of the world (or been largely responsible for guiding it through). He does not have a monstrous predecessor who ruled his country before him, he is neither fighting any wars nor spending great amount of public money on financing big banks that hand out million dollar bonuses. Manmohan does not have the charisma to carry a Nobel Prize into the front-page controversy anywhere except in Pakistan and in China. Both these countries are significant to the stability of the world, and who would want to enrage them by offering the prize to an Indian.

In fact, we Indians would be enraged if he got a Nobel, after all Gandhiji did not get one, after no writer after Tagore managed to get one, Bose (aka Bose-Einstein theory) got none, Bose (aka JC Bose) did not get one. We are happy this way; this Nobel is quite inconsistent with Eastern values, where we don't value individualism and temporary success as much as we value good karma, i.e. good action, and success which arises in form of good effects seen by coming rebirths and generations. Nobel prize in economics has been awarded in past to people who guided world economy into great recession of this decade: showing it is a transient award, given for predictions rather than results. It is given for things that look mathematically consistent (though all real life conditions are ignored), for things that help the richest country now remain the richest country with people carrying greatest amount of personal debt, which finances luxuries that requires largest per capita consumption of energy, causing oil companies to become rich by waging monopolistic campaigns in oil-field-carrying nations, causing first rate energy crisis which will follow. It is given to policies that create Banana republics, not to policies that provide cheap health care and education to masses. Exceptions are always there, and of course, if it were not the free flow of ideas that spawned this post, I would have believed and said the opposite to everything I said here so far. I don't verify facts and figures while writing such conundrums, and sometimes awards are given in similar vein, so maybe my approach to saying things here is not totally vague.

Maybe the Chinese Premier must be given the Nobel, for allowing Marxism to be reinterpreted in such a way that China has now more billionaire than any other country, that is if we forget to count the billionaires in United States. To redefine communism in this way took less than two centuries after the issuance of Communist Manifesto. I am sure Karl Marx is re-reading his theories and trying to understand what went wrong, that his brainchild Marxism is now interpreted in this way. Also the Maoists in India, who want a China-like communism in India, must be quite confused by the turn of events in China itself. Perhaps by shifting 70% wealth into the hands of 1% people (according to some unverifiable propaganda estimates), by reinventing the meaning and purpose of communist party, and keeping 1/5th of world population under control while they did it, the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese Premier have made an unprecedented economic breakthrough that deserves a nod of approval from the Nobel committee. Maybe Arvind Adiga or his character from White Tiger, are already rooting for the Chinese Premier. China already produces every toothbrush, shoe nail, nut, bucket, dinner plate, door handle, undergarment, comb, hairbrush, (maybe even flags of other nations), TV remote, table-lamp switch and imitation weapon (read Charlie Wilson's War for details) used by people in rest of the world. Such progress deserves a prize, more than our progress indicated by our Sardarji's facts and figures.

Who knows though, maybe Manmohan will get it anyhow. He might get it as the committee has never given a prize to a person of his community and its about time that the economic prowess of Punjabis was awarded. He might get it as they begin to comprehend that the growth rate on Indian GDP and inflation has defied most of the World Bank estimates in the past two decades. It will be a good idea to award him the prize and claim that International Monetary Fund, and the intellectual and economists are supportive of former professors even after their leaving practices and posts for offices of political intrigues and power-plays. It is no small matter however that when Chanakya, the famed economist of Mauryan empire from twenty-three centuries ago, was the prime minister, the Indian contribution to GDP of the world was a decent 33%. We are only off by the second digit in that figure, and 3% is not bad by any means. We had 1/3rd of world' population back then, and through middle ages, the GDP was decently high, provoking so many attacks on the nation. To safeguard ourselves from colonists, Mongols, Greeks, Huns, Islamic tyrants from beyond the Hindukush, to safeguard ourselves from a repetition of those bloody war, we as a nation decided to stop being so rich. But Manmohan wants to make India look rich, and he needs encouragement. He definitely needs encouragement. We could have been spending money on getting rid of insurgents everywhere, on borders, in bordering states, in Maoist-infested states. We could have been spending money on providing possible places for professors and researchers to make their grand discovering in India. We have avoided all these temptations, ensured that we export our talent, and we keep our farmers dependent on foreign seeds, so that our commitment to world economics is not questioned.

For this level of incongruity in practice and values, in poorman's pocket and rich man's mansion, in supposed technological advances that create only code-monkeys & phone-donkeys, for this level of dedication to profits of world's multinationals, for this level of focus on removing hunger by letting the hungry die, for removing insurgents by giving them the lands they ask for, for liberating India from licence-raj, where politicians made direct fortunes, and taking it into an era of economic liberalization where politicians still make money, and unknown forces get the profits, for all this chaos and trying to make sense of it, I recommend Manmohan for the Nobel prize of economics, and if that is not possible peace. The nomination process for 2010 will open up soon: start casting your votes in his favour folks!

Technology in Education

Harsha Goolya — Thu, 8 Oct 2009 11:57:07 EDT

There is excitement in the classroom as orange white devices are handed out. The children in 7th grade look in amusement at this device as it resembles a Mobile phone and begin to punch every key curiously.

The teacher joins in the excitement and declares that he will conduct a science test through this device. He explains that this device would eliminate paperwork, will help him compile results in real time and will also indicate the actual time taken by every individual to solve each question.

The test revolves around the lesson related to the study of atoms,molecules and elements. It has 15 multiple choice questions with 3 options as answer key and 10 questions which are to be answered as true or false.

The time duration set for the test is half an hour and every question is set between a half or 1 minute.

The test gets taken within 20 minutes and the teacher gives out the result in 2 additional minutes and streams the result as modifiable graphs indicating the time comparison and the accuracy of every response.

This has been possible because all public schools in San Francisco received a grant for technology upgrades and every teacher underwent a training module to use Promethean active classroom devices.

How does this software impact/ redefine the role of a teacher-student interaction?

- Teachers will spend lesser time in evaluating and assessing student performance
- Teachers will have to become tech-savvy in order to improve the content and presentation of their subject in order to effectively use these tools
-Teachers will be spared of allegations of bias or favouritism for certain students as evaluation is automatic and accurate
-Teachers will have to let go of expecting answers in essay format which will ease the burden on the children
-Teaching will become interactive, fun and current. There are modules as part of the software where mangas and other popular animation are used to present educational content
-Storing records, details of tests and other administrative functions that usually consume a teacher's productive time gets reduced and becomes more effective and efficient
-Students will enjoy presentations, movies and other visual form of representation of concepts which will help them retain, correlate and analyse better than the traditional system
-Students will be able to maintain and excel in time based reviews and assessments
-Students become automatically accustomed to technology and their interest in subjects such as Mathematics is bound to increase

The limitations in utilising this software are mainly the cost and infrastructure required to implement it. The usual roadblocks of training, resistance to implement and slow decision making could also stall technology implementations especially if the state is involved.

However, as a community of concerned teachers, parents and students one should welcome these technological developments as life solutions that are bound to simplify, stream line and strengthen the education system.

Book Review: The Process of Software Architecting

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 07:26:24 EDT

Software architecture developed as a profession with the increasingly high-level and comprehensive understanding required for OOP paradigm. There is a plethora of definitions available for these two words in different contexts and mentioned in various standards and consulting company documentations.

In the The Process of Software Architecting, the authors start with discussions of the various definitions and terminologies associated th the Software Architecting field and go on to illustrative test cases and project scenarios where the issues and possible solutions are discussed.

The book is divided roughly into three parts. The first part gives briefly the core concepts of architecture, architect and architecting, documenting a software architecture, and reusable architecture assets. The second part provides a guided tour through a typical software development project. The last part brings out how the concepts described in the preceding parts apply to architecting complex systems.

The task of the software architect comes in between the requirements phase and the development phases in a software development project. Initially the architect has to make a logical architecture based on the requirements which have to be made into a logical detailed design in the development phase. Based on the inputs of requirements, logical architecture and logical detailed design, it is the job of the architect to create physical architecture taking the available technology into account.

Some of the architecture related best practices in the industry are the Rational Unified Process, IBM Unified Method Framework, OpenUP, eXtreme Programming(XP), Scrum, etc. In addition to these, one of the standardization initiatives like the Software and Systems Process Engineering Meta-model Specification(SPEM) is also considered for the discussion on method elements.

Few of the other notable aspects of this book is the need for accommodating differing viewpoints through accounting for the political landscape within the respective organization, the necessity to avoid ivory towers by a team of architects too engrossed in discussions to get the feedback from the end-users/management and taking the decision to reuse architecture assets or not based on several factors.

To summarize the review, with a highly condensed text and examples, an experienced software architect would keep coming back to this book to have the improved understanding of principles, best practices as well as avoiding the pitfalls in this developing field. Drawing heavily from the software engineering principles, the book goes beyond finalizing the perfect software architecture document into the evolution stage of software architecting as an art to software architecting as a science.

Book Review: The Blender GameKit, 2nd Ed.

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 03:49:59 EDT

The history of computer games is traced back to the autumn of 1961 when two MIT scientists developed such an application on DEC PDP-1 computer in MIT,Cambridge, Massachusetts. This was the first computer equipped with a cathode ray tube monitor and a keyboard. Other notable years include 1980 when Pac Man was released, success of QUAKE in 1996 and launch of Sony PS2 and Microsoft Xbox and their advanced versions into current decade.

Another category which is having a wide following in current times is the massively multiplayer online game (also called MMOG or simply MMO) is a computer game where hundreds or larger numbers play simultaneously. Examples of these include Toontown Online, Pirates of the Caribbean Online, RuneScape and Second Life.

There is an extensive list of game engines written in C++ programming language for most of them. These allow the game designer to easily code a game quickly without building from scratch.

Blender is the free open source 3D content creation suite, available for all major operating systems under the GNU Public License. The book under review, serves as a guide for the beginner through advanced game designers using this fully integrated 3D creation suite. This is a four-colour book including a CD having editable and playable Blender games,all files for the tutorials and Blender V2.48 for Windows,Mac OSX, and Linux.

Among the topics covered in this book is the introduction to 3D and Game Engines, Blender Basics, discussion of game concepts/games in pumpkin run, pin ball, subracer-an underwater racing game,the flying buddha memory game, “Yo Frankie!” Open Game Project, cooking basic network setups for using Blender on a network (using a matching Python installation). The book also includes a reference for the Blender Game Engine.

One of the interesting chapters in this book discusses the use of armatures in game character animation. Assuming the modelling of the character and armature is made using the correct coordinate system the game creator has to take care when working with bones, basic layout, mesh deformation vertex groups, creating a walk cycle before finally putting game logic on the armature object itself rather than on the mesh.

There are a large number of example games which can be edited for having a better understanding of the concepts as well as to use the Blender suite for more effective and advanced games.

With the large number of editable games and inputs from professional Blender artists, the book is a useful read for game designers/creators looking to use the Blender game engine.

Book Review: Android Application Development

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 21:46:15 EDT

Google initially announced the development of Android, a mobile operating system running on Linux Kernel. It is now the flagship software of the open handset alliance(OHA) committed to develop open standards for mobile devices. The OHA is a business alliance of more than 45 firms led by Google and established in November 2007.

The official Android developer documentation covers the basics of Android through publishing and best practices and some sample code.

Android Application Development is directed at Java programmers to develop useful and robust applications for Android. Familiarity for some of the technologies that Android uses is assumed as a pre-requisite for using this book to optimum. These include XML, SQL, GTalk(XMPP), OpenGL-ES, and HTTP.

There are two main sections in this book – Development Kit Walkthrough, to get started with the basics needed to write applications , and Programming Topics ,exploring the effective use of the libraries.

Most of the application development discussions are organized around MicroJobs which is this book's main sample application. The aim of the MicroJobs application is to help its user locate a temporary job in their proximity, so he/she can work for a few hours and make some money. The MJAndroid Application source code and project files are available from the O'Reilly website.

The Eclipse Java Editor is extensively used throughout this book with an entire chapter devoted to knowing its features. The discussion on signing and publishing the application to android market gives the details for using the keytool to generate a key pair and a signing certificate, getting a Map API key from Google, using jarsigner to sign the application to the last steps of signing up as an android developer paying a one-time fee and uploading the application.

The two distinct data access APIs that the Android framework offers is SQLiteDatabase and Content Provider. SQLiteDatabase is Android's Java interface to its relational database, SQLite and the latter is an interface used between applications.

Google Maps as one of the location based services is included as an application with Android itself. The MJAndroid discussed in this book uses the MapViews library. When using a MapView in the application, actual Google Maps data is used to draw the map. For this purpose the developer of the application using MapViews needs to obtain a Map apiKey from Google as a legal requirement.

Some of the other topics discussed in this book is about Drawing 2D and 3D Graphics and Inter-Process Communication. The important fact mentioned near the end of the last chapter is the keeping out VOIP from the core telephone functionality of the Android. This requires the designers of VOIP technologies for android to build add-ons instead of using the same APIs as mobile calls.

The book is a useful read in addition to the official documentation for Android developers.

Book Review: Data Warehousing with SAP BW7, BI in SAP Netweaver 2004s

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 13:59:37 EDT

SAP Netweaver is the technical foundation for all SAP Applications, part of the SAP Business Suite. The five constituents of SAP Business suite are SAP CRM, SAP ERP, SAP PLM, SAP SCM and SAP SRM. The core products that make up SAP NetWeaver include SAP NetWeaver Application Server, SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence, SAP NetWeaver Composition Environment (CE), SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal (EP), SAP NetWeaver Master Data Management (MDM, SAP NetWeaver Mobile, SAP NetWeaver Process Integration (PI) .

The newer term of SAP NetweaverBusiness Intelligence, with the more popular abbreviation of SAP BI, has the SAP Business Information Warehouse(SAP BIW, later SAP BW) as its predecessor. The current book focuses on SAP BW as a data warehouse and ignores the BW-integrated decision support tools as far as possible. 'BW' is still used to describe the underlying Data Warehouse Area and Accelerator components.

There are six main sections in the book covering architecture, data model, analytical engine, extraction and staging, BW design and BW in Live Operation. There is a comprehensive appendix at the end, dealing with special topics such as currency conversion, transportation, migration and development of metadata content.

The discussion on performance tuning for improving data analysis performance is a lucid read. Focusing on data model of Basis Cubes, it starts with the assumption that there are no fundamental modeling errors for the Basis Cube. The four approaches to optimization in this chapter are aggregation, indexing, partitioning and clustering and use of dedicated OLAP memory(BIA).

Almost all the topics are accompanied by well placed illustrations and foot-notes. The book is an exhaustive reference manual covering most of the possible topics for architecture through concepts and implementation with a focus for data warehouse part of SAP BI. One of the good improvements for this book would be a possible soft-copy format to be included as a CD or downloadable for buyers of the book. This would increase the ease of using the matter as a reference without carrying along the book to a cluttered workplace desk.

Book Review: The Art of Concurrency

Ganadeva Bandyopadhyay — Mon, 3 Aug 2009 20:18:23 EDT

There is the interesting definition of a thread monkey in The Art of Concurrency. Approximately put, it is a term for the programmer well versed in writing code for parallel applications. There is the strong case made for practical use of parallel programming with the Moore's law starting to reach the limits of material causing the introduction of power efficient, practical designs of chips with multiple processor cores.

The author begins with the concepts like difference between parallelism and concurrency, the different approach to concurrent algorithms and multi threaded programming, comparison of shared-memory programming with distributed-memory programming before moving onto a discussion of two concurrent design models-task decomposition and data decomposition.

One of the central topics in this book is in the principles given as eight simple rules for designing multi threaded applications. These are the guidelines for the parallel programmer to keep in consideration for efficient code. Some of the tips are - To identify truly independent computations,Making use of the thread-safe libraries as per suitability and using the right threading model.

There are other topics such as discussion on MapReduce algorithmic framework ,concurrent implementations of graph algorithms and threading tools for the intermediate to advanced level programmer. The concurrent variations on the serial algorithms for common search and sort techniques are also discussed without much of a computer science jargon.

To sum up, this is a lucid text with practical guidance for writing parallel applications. The program code in the book is written in the C language allowing the easy understanding for readers down to the beginning computer engineering students interested in trying out the intricacies of parallel applications.