The Third Eye

moving on...

2007-10-15T22:49:00.000-07:00

I left Microsoft last week and joined Facebook. This is a huge change from me, a big company to sort of a startup, as well as moving from Seattle to the bay area. Today was my first day, still trying to figure out thework, culture, and stuff.

AAPL + GOOG = MSFT?

2007-07-05T15:16:00.000-07:00

Based on market caps as of July 5, 2007:

114.82B + 168.74B = 283.56B ~ 286.91B

Free clean infinite energy?

2007-07-04T22:42:00.000-07:00

How can this be real?
http://www.steorn.com/orbo/

Inconsistency

2007-06-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/06/consistency.html

At an individual level, is it even possible to be consistent?

Microsoft Home

2007-04-25T18:29:00.000-07:00

Got a tour of Microsoft Home (read: home of the future as imagined by a team in Microsoft) this week. V-E-R-Y C-O-O-L!

Instead of me thinking about "in what detail should I talk about it?", you can read some about it here: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/286739_msfthome28.html

Thanks to Bill for organizing the tour.

The New Green Revolution

2007-04-22T10:24:00.000-07:00

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/15/magazine/15green.t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&ref=magazine&oref=login

Whats wrong with Linux?

2006-12-18T21:17:00.000-08:00

http://www.gridter.com/linx/linux.html
(Via Stumble)

IE7 is live

2006-01-31T10:18:00.000-08:00

check it out!

Mihika is starting to have fun

2006-01-02T13:44:00.000-08:00

dsc03219
Originally uploaded by vishugupta.

more pics will be coming soon...

Happy New Year!

2006-01-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

Here's wishing all of you a very happy new year. Time for new year resolutions...(and to check on last year's resolutions too? ... shhh...)

Back 2 Work

2005-12-29T14:22:00.000-08:00

I am back in WA after the much needed break in India. It was a lot of fun. I arrived back on the 12th of December. The flight was good and we did get some sleep during the 12 hour stopover in Seoul (Man, it was cold there!). The last couple of weeks have been slow, with many coworkers taking a break till the new year. Waiting for new year for the fun to begin.

India Diary - 3

2005-12-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

The Cheese Has Moved

A few years back, Delhi was choked with traffic and pollution was alarming. The government tried to force the bus operators to use CNG as fuel to reduce pollution, worked on building more and more flyovers over choked intersection and started the ambitious and unexpectedly-successful Delhi-Metro project. No doubt all these helped a great deal to ease the problems Delhi was facing, but there was another factor in action.

Delhi started spreading. It has always been spreading like any other big city in the world but here the spread was so fast and effectve that it looks like Delhi has not only spread but moved. With the outsourcing boom and better road infrastructure, Gurgaon, the sleepy suburb a few years back has almost become Delhi downtown. I visited Gurgaon a couple of times this week and noticed that whatever traffic Delhi was missing was not only because of Metro, but because those cars were in Gurgaon :). Malls and high-rises abound. There is dust all over the place: not because its a village, but because 50% of the land is under construction. Real-estate has risen 10-fold in the last few years! What does this tell about the population here: they are moving with the cheese.

India Diary-2

2005-11-15T20:15:00.000-08:00

Delhi Metro Rocks!!!

I travelled on the new (couple of years old but new for me) Delhi Metro for the first time yesterday. Just mind-blowing! What do we have here:

automated billing using passes which can be flashed at entry and exit.
escalators at every metro station (remember this is not new york).
reduction in travel time by at least 50%.
decent parking availability at every metro station for Park-n-Ride ease.
fully airconditioned (Compare that to the state of Delhi buses)
affordable pricing.
one metro every 3-5 minutes.
good swanky stations.
not over-crowded (what!!)
amazing, amazing, amazing!

UPDATE: Added link.

India Diary - 1

2005-11-09T18:20:00.000-08:00

I have been traveling in India for the past couple of weeks enjoying a much needed vacation. the trip by Asiana Airlines was pretty good. IMO, they provide the best route from Seattle to Delhi. Service is good. The food sucks however, I believe its just a matter of taste. Watched a couple of movies inflight. Cinderella Man is good! Took out some time on a blog entry for Internet Explorer I couldnt get to in Redmond (you should see it on IEBlog anytime now). Its about a very important new feature in IE7.

Flew to Bombay for a week and am flying back to Delhi today. I must say the pollution levels in Delhi is just alarming, though I think it has got better than a couple of years back. Delhi is changing for the better I would like to believe. We'll see how it continues to handle the ever-increasing/migrating population burden.

Some thinking for a change

2005-10-04T22:15:00.000-07:00

I am kinda forgetting where I read it, one of the blogs I read, but anyway, thats besides the point. The point is lately there has been a lot of talk about "Network being the Computer" and OS being irrelevant. Being on the IE team, I really think all that is possible. The browser is a huge platform and with all the funky apps coming out lately, it does look like that all of us will be spending an increasing amount of time on the browser rather than other apps installed on the computer, thus making software as a service model possibly more and more acceptable.

Then I think that this is exactly what everybody was talking about 10 years back, then whats the difference? Well, the difference is ubiquitous broadband presence, and cool more usable apps form Google and others demonstrating what all is possible. One thing I think is still missing: the willingness of people to trust their unsaved data on network connections and the willingness to trust their personal data on the remote servers.

I'm a dad!

2005-08-23T22:11:00.000-07:00

My sweet little daughter Mihika was born on July 10th and you know why I haven't blogged again for so much time. We had a small get-together of friends last weekend and it was great to meet them all together. Freaked out or not? I can just say its a wonderful feeling!

back again

2005-07-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

Okay again a month since i blogged last, but dont blame me, I told ya I wont be back for some time. The last month has been rough! But now it all looks right, as one of my coworkers said to me "Whatever doesn't kill you only makes you stronger"! Almost settled in my new house this week (I got net access!) I feel that this "buying the house" stuff is probably not that bad after all!

Things continue to happen at a fast pace. To keep track of stuff, I started using Microsoft OneNote at work. Well, I considered using it because I get it for free for work purposes. But I can say I might actually shell out money to buy it if it is not free for me. I am totally bowled over by the utility of this app! Till now, even when I used computer for doing/keeping track of almost anything, for daily ToDo lists, I had to go back to good-old post-its. But with OneNote and a laptop, you can carry your todo lists, quick discussion notes, etc everywhere alongwith yourself. Combine it with a tablet and enjoy!

Doing my part for the community

2005-03-14T22:18:00.000-08:00

The blogosphere strikes back! In an unprecedent show of "link power", bloggers are linking to this wikipedia page to get it to the number one position in the google search rankings when anybody searches for "online poker". Currently, it is at third place. I support this because these poker sites have used blog comment spam widely to improve their rankings. But, the more interesting notion here is community having the power to subvert the search engine ranks. This power is obviously being utilized for a good thing right now but is this still desirable?
UPDATE: The bloggers have succeeded in moving it to the second place.

Funny!

2005-02-27T21:44:00.000-08:00

Its been more than a week since I blogged last. Well, I have been working like crazy (Remember the unlimited nights and weekends plan?) This weekend I chilled out (literally), ended up going to Steven Pass in spite of pain in the shoulder. Well, it didnt really matter coz I didnt ski, just sat looking at the snow under the amazing NW sunshine :), reading my book all to myself while friends measured the slopes. I guessed you would like to know that I hurt my shoulder while playing...playing darts :)

IE 7.0

2005-02-15T11:40:00.000-08:00

After a huge time gap and after the great IE upgrade for XPSP2, my team has decided to deliver the next version of IE for XPSP2. Yes, IE 7.0 is coming with the beta planned somtime this year. I look forward to "unlimited nights and weekends" in office:) Here's our Product manager's post announcing this publicly.

I got my Cube!

2005-02-06T01:37:00.000-08:00

This week I got my first cube! No, I am not talking about a separate cubicle or something, Microsoft office space is pretty good, I am talking about the cube that comes with filing a patent for Microsoft. Here it is:
Update: picture-deleted for non-disclosure purpose, will put it back once this becomes public.

Sign of a Geek Community

2005-02-03T22:59:00.000-08:00

I got my degree from the CS department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Being one of the top schools in almost all the engineering disciplines, its expected that the geek ratio is pretty high. That's why something like this coming from there is not a big surprise.

Having a mesh wireless network is technically not a big deal. Making it easily doable by anybody is, and can lead to geek communities (or at least wannabes) springing up all over the place. Wow! How easy will it be now to have LAN parties without leaving the house. What about saving money by easily sharing a broadband internet connection!

Having worked on wireless network security in the past, I am just afraid of what a security nightmare this might turn out to be! And the worst part is most people won't even realize that. Well, I trust geeks at CU to deliver on this front.

Speculation in Overdrive

2005-01-26T00:36:00.000-08:00

Don't know what it is about Google that everything it does or says or creates makes news; and its not just news, it is "news". Personally, I really appreciate the company and I have lots of friends working there telling me good things about the company's culture, latest publically released products, and also the stock price :).
Yesterday, when I saw the slashdot post on Google venturing into VoIP, I was taken by surprise not only because I didnt expect such a thing from them (I didnt expect them to start scanning all the printed material in the world either) but because I found it so illogical and unrelated to their mission. Well, I thought there must be something that I cannot appreciate right now.
Om Malik clarifies why this is just pure speculation gone into overdrive.

The Terminator

2005-01-23T01:52:00.000-08:00

Slashdot reports that the US army is planning to deploy robots for combat operations in Iraq. Though I understand the motivation of saving lives there, I cannot comprehend the machines taking over the judgement involved in killing a person in such a sensitive area. The irony of all this is evident when we start viewing even this in the light of job losses.

Interview Objective

2005-01-08T22:36:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I interviewed a person for a post similar to mine but with 10 years more experience than me. Working in Microsoft has one distinct advantage. Brand recongnition. Considering the number of people hired regularly and the extremely low ratio of those hired to those who interview, its a very common sight to see people waiting in building lobbies with a visitor sticker.

What always amazes me is the importance of a few hours of interviews for a person's career and also for the company. That's why searching for "Microsoft Interview Questions" on Google (or anything else) returns zillions of relevant results. What to do in such a scenario when interviewees use a sea of information to prepare for the interviews? When the interviewees arrive armed with all the research (online and otherwise), the toughest job is to differentiate what the they know from what they just read. That is never easy and thats why its a science! But the interview science is, in the end, totally dependent on the persons who actually use it...persons on both ends of the table. The interview objective is not to not err at all. No doubt interviews can always lead to wrong 'Hire" "No Hire" decisions, the objective is to minimize the error.

Flag on the Ground

2005-01-03T16:52:00.000-08:00

Today, the 3rd day of January in the 5th year of the 3rd millenium (2001 was the first, and not the second), I, Vishu Gupta, am taking time out to start my blog. I dedicate it to all of my friends whose blogs I have wasted time reading.