love i$ in the air ....

"Love For Techonology" was the tagline for BarcampPune4 which was held at ThoughtWorks pune on 16th Febuary 2008. it was conducted in high spirits. it was one of the well organized barcamps i have attended. found it better than the last BarCampMumbai .... not that it wasn't good but just that this was better. i have always appreciated all the volunteers putting their time efforts into this. kudos to these organizers (of all barcamps ever held :) )

well the day started with some jRuby stuff which was not all that great ... as the guy was going too much into details. could have been better if ppl start with generalized concepts first and then dive into the details. easy said than done ... maybe... i never gave any session @ barcamps so not sure what could be the reason why ppl touch upon details directly (considering that the audience would be from mixed backgrounds) .... maybe time constraint ... not sure .... anyways.
the next session was on how to be safe ... cyber safety topic by Rohit Srivastwa the same guy who is one of the core members at clubhack. he spoke about various attacks including MITM and ARP poisoning including some demos to crack some of the volunteer's passwords ;) it was good to play around with.
the next interesting session was a guy (nick) named "Sidu" from ThoughtWorks. he gave us an interesting talk on "Why Ruby" he started with general stuff @ Ruby ... very basic stuff ... easy to digest ... simple language ... and then some compare n constrasts with the existing platforms such as java, .Net etc. it was good enough. after that the most intneresting part (the lunch). it was good as well. not better than BarcampMumbai ... IIT though ;)

post lunch, i attended the "e-discovery" by Chetan Gupta he works at Symantec. he had given a talk in clubhack as well. after that i headed to "The danger of search engines & how to protect" by Diwakar Goel (he has co-authored the book titled "Google Hacking"). it was really kool stuff. some of it was from his book but some tricks were new for me as i have not read the book completely. after that it was more of hanging around with fella-campers, getting to know other ppl etc .... this is the best part about barcamps.

so the day ended on a good note. and then i was also fairly impressed with ThoughtWorks in general :) the infrastructure, culture, agile thingy bla bla bla.
photos can be found on flickr here and my bits of memories here. despite all these, im sure i ve missed lot of action @ other sessions. but i was full already ;)
keep up the good work guys.

theres another barcampmumbai coming up in march and so is OWASP on 1st of March. lets see i'd be attending OWASP for the first time so pretty excited. the only sad part is i have to skip my trip to mumbai whenever i attend conf @ pune. but then this was certainly worth it.


- signing off
ameyas7

shop online .... r we ready yet ????

technology has certainly made our lives simple. internet has made it even better. today we do so many things online in our day-to-day life. book tickets, pay bills, trade, banking, shopping just to name few. i know that one should not blame anybody based on one incident, but then this blog is to make you aware of such mishaps so that you can avoid them.

well this is my "personal" experience. on January 26th, 2008 i ordered a Onida Candy DVD Player from HomeShop18. payment was done by credit card (not cash on delivery .... on second thoughts, i seriously feel that this is the best option to make such transactions hassle free) . after placing the order, i just called the customer care to know the expected date of delivery and i was told that it will take 10 working days to get the order delivered but that is the max time estimate. i was also told that since your payment has already been done, you might get it early. 10 working days even if destination is metro like mumbai. man can you beilive that, i have received international couriers in much shorter time than this. i got a verification call on the following tuesday to verify my name, phone #, card details etc. i was pretty happy as i was expecting it in some time after verification. they have off on saturdays and sundays i.e. 5 days week. i perfectly understand the staff is just human like us all. but then there was nothing to be manufactured. all you need to do after verification is deliver the product by courier which should not take more than 3-4 days even with the worst kind of a courier. i am not sure where the product is shipped from but i beilive NOIDA being their main office, they might be shipping from there.

Day 3 - 8:
i am waiting for the product to arrive and at times checking with the customer care. on 5th Feb i logged in to my a/c and checked the order status which said "Normal Courier ( Shipped on Feb 4, 2008 ). ( 2140315123 ) "

Day 9: Thursday 7th, 2008
i called up the customer care again just to track the status and i was told that the product was shipped on "6th February 2008" but i will be getting before 10th working day. i ignored the mismatch in the date of shipment.

Day 10: Friday 8th, 2008
i am still waiting but the product has not arrived till 4:00 PM i called up the customer care and i was told that wait for EOD which is 6 PM . just few minutes after i hung up the phone with the customer care, i got a call from ONIDA's andheri office / shop and was told that i wil get it today evening.

finally the product arrived in the evening and to my surprise they had sent some other model. i got Onida DFX-5957 model. the HomeShop18 price difference between these two products is Rs 600. i called up the customer care again to raise the issue and i was told that the exchange procedure could take "10 working days" but then thats the "max time estimated". i was like #&*^$&*#&*^&$*^*$. after a very heated conversation, i was told that give us an hour's time and you will get a callback.

and as you might have already predicted i am still waiting for the call ....
lets see how many "working days" do they take to call back.

few points to learn (check-list before you check-out):
1) go for cash on delivery option whenever available
2) always read the terms before you place an order
3) if the discount is not more than 20%, it is really not worth taking the risk and then traditional shopping wins over online shopping as you get to see, feel the product, zero waiting time and many other advantages.
4) always prefer some reputed site .... actually i was sold by the name of "Network 18" but then i was wrong so this totally depends on how lucky u r ;) and homeshop18 has certainly failed the "test of trust" and to loose goodwill over a dvd player is far higher a price to pay.
5) if anything goes wrong, keep this URL handy National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (click here) and/ or Consumer Online Resource & Empowerment Center
6) always make sure that you can hold one person responsible for this. apparently these customer care services are useless as you cant really hold any one single individual accountable if things go wrong.
7) ensure that the order can be tracked to the finest level. i.e. right from time you place the order till the time you get the product.

the mystery still remains unsolved as if they had shipped the product by normal courier on 6th Feb (or 4th Feb god only knows), then howcome the product is delivered by onida office in andheri. i assume that the mistake lies with HomeShop18 as the bill and the product packaging clearly says that "Onida DFX-5957" which looks like they received wrong instructions. i am not sure whose mistake it is but i am certiainly suffering for no reason. frankly speaking i really dont want to waste a single moment thinking about it. well that does not mean i will accept the wrong product.

after all this, i really wonder what kind of procedure is followed at homeshop18 that takes "10 working days" to deliver a wrong product.


- signing off
ameyas7

yahooooooooooo ....

MS offers $44.6 bn to takeover Yahoo! everyone is aware @ the big news by now.
well with respect to the current condition, the bid sounds pretty lucrative. but if you consider the potential, it would not be a good move to accept the offer.

with the script price currently at $ 27.90 the market cap is about $37 bn and just check out the stock price chart for about past 2 yrs and the picture is pretty clear that its only past few months (with just few hiccups last yr) particulary from november 2007 the stock started falling down without any support on the lower side. but again i feel that its just temporal. i mean come on .... everybody goes through some rough times, you dont sell out so easy .... would you? if the shareholders decide to encash the oppurtunity, then it will be very sad day. $31 per share is not that great a price. i am not sure why it is sooo well received. i understand that it is around 60+% premium but then looking at the previous records, it doesnt really sound that HIGH.

personally i would not like to see Yahoo takenover by MS. i know they are going through rough times and with the Terry Semel's resignation, this could be the best time to make an offer but i hope they choose to hang-in there. ye i am big fan of Yahoo :P fairly impressed with their developer network particularly with the YUI and will always be. Yahoo rocks! but of course this is just my opinion /analysis :P hehehe
so will it be Yahooo or will it be Boohoooo ... only time will tell you my friend!

- signing off
ameyas7