Sify Technologies and Google has signed an agreement that will Google applications and suites to Indian Internet users. Current agreement will power Sify applications including Sifymail and Sify Chat. Google Applications will also power some other Sify applications also. Google Apps will be available on Sify’s Website and The company will begin making the tools available to users in the months ahead

Raju Vegesna, chairman and CEO of Sify Technologies, said:

There is a perfect confluence of the mission of our companies in enhancing the quality of life of individuals and businesses by empowering them with the Internet. Our agreement with Google makes superior applications available for communications and collaboration, coupled with our understanding of the needs of Indians, on our popular portal Sify.com. We believe that we can make compelling applications, tools and content based on Google’s expertise for many more Indians to use the Internet to enhance their productivity and quality of life. This agreement enhances our relationship with Google beyond powering the search on Sify.com.

Shailesh Rao, managing director of Google India, said

We’re pleased to work with Sify to offer its customers access to our leading communication and collaboration tools. Our companies share a vision of giving consumers innovative choices that will the change the way they interact with each other and the world.

Source Associated Press

For those who do not have an idea what I am talking about, let me tell you about the best part of this year’s Olympics opening ceremony. When Chinese athlete, Li was coming down after lighting the olympic torch, nearly everyone noticed the biggest Blue Screen of Death ever, projected on the stadium’s roof. According to the news sites, it was there for nearly an hour, but was noticed only when a broadcast camera showed up its image. Few of the viewers in stadium has also capture pictures of same. Since then, every where in any technical forums, discussion is going on, about the same. Everyone is blaming Microsoft for the fault. But is it seriously an issue that should be dealt by Microsoft only. Lets check out.

The first point made by those criticizers is that why didn’t they used Linux, or Mac, instead of Windows. The obvious reason is the simplicity offered by Windows, over other operating systems, which is an advantage when there are so many of peripherals connected.

Next question obviously is why only XP, and not Windows Vista. For that, Olympic organizers committee said, that after so much of negative reviews of Vista, they didn’t felt like it will be worth going. Even Microsoft is against using XP, as it definitely is outdated, by today’s standard. Although Vista is resource hungry, but being far more stable now, it should have been the choice for opening ceremony.

Are we sure that XP version used in Beijing was not pirated, as China is well known for its piracy only? For that question, the answer is No, XP wasn’t pirated as it would not have been possible to use this many peripherals with normal XP, so the XP used should have been the one for Embedded Systems, which is by far not yet pirated.

Techies also asked, why it doesn’t restarted automatically in case of Fatal error, as in case of normal PC usage. Obvious answer is that XP version used was for Embedded Systems, so the user should be quite aware of basics of troubleshooting, hence showing up the troubleshooting information is necessary.

So, the fault definitely was not from Microsoft side, as they have shipped the right thing to the olympics committee. The fault definitely lies in some other hands. The fault must have been from drivers. But which driver actually failed, is not yet known. One reason as stated by some techies is that display drivers cause this kind of errors, most commonly, as they run in kernel mode. That’s why they should have used Linux or Mac. But still Linux or Mac would have failed in that case, the only difference is the information shown on the screen would have been replaced by some stupid animation, or the system would have simply restarted.

Restarting seems a good option here, as the Olympics committee officials just needed to run those projectors and LCD’s, they are not supposed to debug. But should Microsoft have provided the patch to simply restart the system, in case of failure, or a new OS for that matter. Obviously No. They are not supposed to write a new patch specifically for an event. May be Olympic committee should have asked them for that patch.

And why not some one saw that screen for nearly an hour, and restarted the system. That’s a human fault obviously, from organizer’s end. Even though the system didn’t restarted automatically, some one should have taken care of that. And then, its because of faulty drivers and not because of XP’s architecture. So, why is everyone blaming Microsoft for something they don’t even have any relation with. May be this is the price that Microsoft is paying for being the best in OS market.

Well, fairly speaking its not an idea that struck my mind. I was surfing through archive of one of the programmer’s blog, and found this post. According to that post,

It’s unbelievable to me that a company would pay a developer $60-$100k in salary, yet cripple him or her with terrible working conditions and crusty hand-me-down hardware. This makes no business sense whatsoever. And yet I see it all the time. It’s shocking how many companies still don’t provide software developers with the essential things they need to succeed.

So true. I personally calculated myself, the cost of increasing infrastructure quality (read, better system, and better facilities) can be recovered in just a month, provided that it efficiently increases one’s productivity by atleast 10%. And then, the fact that better infrastructure leads to better state of mind, which means better productivity again. Not just me or other developers think this way, but whole gaming industry is running according to these principles. And no one can deny the fact that it is the fastest growing sector in IT industry.  I know it sounds ridiculous according to the managerial concept that those HR guys learn in their IIM classes. But sometimes you just have to think outta box to make sure you are the leader.

Anyways, to adhere to this bill, is totally a matter of choice of the HR. We can just hope for the same. By the time, we should just make a list of what changes can seriously affect the productivity and hence should be included in this bill.

P.S. – Few of them are my own thoughts and few are from other developers all across the world.

So, here is the list.

• Every programmer shall have a bigger workspace :- Well, easily this is one thing that can radically change the time required to search for a pad or pencil, while you are busy discussing the issues with your clients. It happened to me a lot of times. Dropping the pad, while looking for a whiteboard marker is not something that’s rare.
• Every programmer shall have two monitors :- Although increasing the number of monitors, reduces the amount of free space available on your desk. But it really helps to open multiple windows at times, and thus can save the time used for switching to help window every now and then, and coming back to code window. Also, it helps decreasing the frustration of accidentally closing a window while minimizing it.
• Every programmer should have better PC :- Programmers deserve the rights to work on best in class hardware, as they are the persons using computers for half of their life. And other point is that no one loves to wait for a program to compile or for a application to load, looking at those silly progress bar or status bar.
• Every programmer should have comfortable chair :- I should say I personally prefers bean bag, but if chair is comfortable, that’s good enough. After all, we have to sit on that chair for too long, and I don’t think your brain will work, if you are feeling pain in your arse.
• Every programmer should get enough of coffee and snacks :- Every other day, a programmer works for more than usual time schedule. So, enough of coffee, and snacks can always help him keep going for hours. Oh yeah, if s/he is a smoker, providing enough of smokes can be a good option too.
• Every programmer should get better mouse and keyboard :- At work, I just like most of the programmers, use a sticky keyboard, and a scroll mouse, and I really feel this is an important point for consideration.
• Every programmer deserves his own space :- What if some one keep on nitpicking on your just-a-draft webpage, saying that it doesn’t look cool? No one likes it, right. So, does the programmer. But, sadly managers just don’t understand. They keep on asking you to tell them how much percentage of task you have done to complete the homepage structure of the website. It simply hurts.
• Every programmer should have fast Internet connection :- In case, you don’t have offline help, its very important. I can still remember those days, when I was stuck on some stupid syntax error, and googling for same, took 15 minutes of my time, thanks to that silly 54kbps connection I have got at my desk. Just by increasing the speed to 256kbps, this time could have reduced to 5 minutes. And if you consider the fact that you encounter same situation every hour, that accounts for 15% of your productivity.
• Every programmer should have rights to ask “Why?” :- How many times you have felt as a programmer that something you are working on is not properly justified? That the spacing between two textboxes can be decreased by 10% to make the page look better and to fit more information? I felt it almost every day when working on a enhancements project. And then, you have got no right to ask why you just can’t do it. Is it because, some stupid jerk called Business Analyst didn’t thought of it first. I know it sounds crazy. People who have got no idea about coding, defines the way we should code, and we can’t even argue on that.
• Every programmer should have access to all the documentation, books and Google :- Why does the managers think that being a programmer, you should know every thing about your programming language, and environment used? Why can’t I just use Google to look for an answer, when I am stuck?  And do you know about any manager who have crammed every single management principles,he learnt from the business school?
• Every programmer should be given full right to wear any outfit :- I am never able to understand how can one’s outfit affect his work. One reason is that I have to wear professional outfits for those daily meetings, I may attend. But then, if I am supposed to attend those meetings, why the hell we need those managers for?

So, here is the list of points what developers think, should be included in their rights. I would definitely love to hear about other points that you think, should be a part of this bill. Well, till that time, I am off to file a petition to the programmer’s union about this bill. Oops, i forgot, i don’t even know about any union as such. Do you??? Do you even care about your rights????

The rampant practice of inflating one’s CV in the IT industry seems to have hit a major road block. TCS has just fired 20 employees at its Kolkata centre supposedly for their fake CV’s after background verification made hollow their claims. Even though it is common knowledge in IT circles that inflating one’s CV is rampant, still it is very uncommon to hear about employees being fired en-masse for fake CV’s. Earlier Infosys had asked close to 100 employees to leave in FY07 due to discrepancies found in the resumes. Some time back it was even reported that Wipro would be sharing with other IT firms the database of job applicants who have faked information in their CV’s.  This strong step sends out a clear message to all those job hopping professionals who till recently so unprofessionally inflated figures like their past salary, designation and in some bizarre cases even the technology that they may have worked on and still managed to get away with it!

The modus operandi of the people involved in the racket is extremely professional. There are people who create shell companies and let loose candidates in the industry who are supposed to have worked for these companies. The faking happens at all levels: companies worked for, experience, customer projects and sometimes academic qualifications. The fake CV racketeering is not just at the candidate level, but it’s a well-oiled machinery that’s operating which has to be handled.

In the recent past all the major IT firms, including Infosys, Satyam and Wipro, and many mid-sized firms have taken a hard stand on fake or fudged resumes. However, the incidents continue. First Advantage, a leading background screening firm, in its recent report states that 30 per cent of all the resumes they have screened have discrepancies. The company screened some 2 million resumes in 2006-07. And the problem is not just limited to the fresher level, it goes up to the senior level as well. "One of the leading IT firms was hiring a practice head. But after his background check it came to light that the gentleman with over 20 years of industry experience had fake IIT certificates," says a spokesperson from a leading background screening firm in India.

One praise worthy solution to tackle this problem has come from the industry body Nasscom, which created the National Skills Registry (NSR), which has a candidates personal, academic and employment details and undergoes professional verifications. It had almost 160,000 registrations by 2007 end.

As of June 2008 organizations who processes credit card must comply these 12 new credit card security standards. These 12 new security requirements are standards are made to prevent fraud, hacking, and various other security vulnerabilities and threats, or risk losing this ability and being audited or fined.Any company or government agency that processes, stores, or transmits payment card data must comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, a set of requirements to enhance data security. Some of the PCI standards are common sense, such as building and maintaining a secure network through common practices and not using vendor-supplied defaults for system passwords.The following 12 security guidelines will be mandatory for any organization that processes credit cards.

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Working in IT industry is not always very pretty, You may not get always chance to work with new technologies, development projects and some challenging. 40% of IT industry in drive by banking and Insurance sector and most of the development is already done only people work to maintain that software to keep running fine. Maintenance is also very challenging job but there some other worse IT jobs. I find out some seven worse IT jobs in IT industry have a close look to all of them.

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India’s wait for the popular touch-screen gadget, iPhone, would be over before the year-end. Although the phone is available in gray market for quite a time, but it is not officially launched in India. Till now the preferred way to grab an iPhone in India was to get someone to bring it from USA . But such phones had to be unlocked by selected software’s available online. Unlocking the Apple iPhone without losing call quality has been a matter of hot debate since the time of its global launch. But, the wait for officially available IPhone, seems to end now, after the announcement made on May 06, 2008.

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1) IBM - Right now this is the most firing company for IT professionals. In the last 6 months, this company has fired nearly 20% of their employees because of BG check and performance issues. This is the most insecure company from an IT professionals point of view. They don’t have any strategic plans at HR policies regarding employee security. No appraisals (maximum 10%).

2) Accenture – This is second top most firing company. The firing rate is around 5%. This depends upon outsourced projects; they have a unique system where Accenture development centers around the world bid for a project coming into the company. Currently Philippines centre is taking the cake and the Indian centers are in a firing mode.

3) WIPRO - Firing people with very frequent back ground checks and firing them with out even experience letters and relieving letters (will mention as terminated from services)but will promise the employees that they will retain them. After the project is over they will fire away. Will threaten of criminal cases against such employees if they oppose the move and has also filed against some.

4) Intel - Recently joined the league. Running in heavy losses, hence firing 3000 employees in the Banglore center in a phased out manner.

5) CTS - Has a steady firing policy (checking the Educational background and previous employment and also employee performance in work). In a Recent HCL walk-in, around 50% attendees were from this company. Sadly the I-pods have not helped them.

6) CSC - Excellent package but fires folks in Background check and those on bench regularly. Recently fired 400+ employees from its subsidiary Covansys.

7) Satyam - Currently stopped firing. The Attrition rate is very high. No firing from 2005 until now when 1000 employees were fired in Hyderabad.

8. Patni – They fired so many employees that currently they are facing understaffing and deficiency with number of employees. Very high attrition rate.

9) Keane India – This USA based company is always involved in firing employees. Although they proudly say that they don’t have hire and fire policy. Recently they fired java and as400 professionals after which most of the employees have started to pack their bags. Employees change this company within 1 year.