“So, do you earn a lot of money?”

Okay this cute chick asked me the question few days back. And I, kind-a, sort of, changed the topic to something else.

But then it actually got me thinking, does any of us ever earn enough? And unless you earn enough, you can never earn a lot, right? Would it be a relative answer, or would it be the fact that I feel I’m seriously underpaid. Then again, I’m the dreamer kind, and very few people value dreamers – financially at least. Anyways, so going back to the original question, do I earn a lot of money? Well I know I keep myself happy, I know people around me love me for my work, I know I’m energetic in its truest sense, and I get to do some really cool things, and well I am looking out for a raise, just like anyone else. Of course I have some aspiration to be wealthy, not rich. But sometimes, it ain’t just striving for money, but having fun doing what you are doing, and having a lot of time to “live”.  Life experience is more than anything to me, and I work to live, don’t live to work.

I guess it still didn’t answered her question, but how much would would it matter if I didn’t?

A few words on IE/Windows bundling issue

So it seems a good number of people has been claiming Microsoft having an unfair advatnage with their browser as it’s pre-installed with Windows. But, oh well, since it’s the same company who’s making the OS too, that’s an advantage that should go to their credit right? I mean, what about Safari on Mac? Or even the browser that comes in iPhone? Toyota cars had stereo systems made by them built into the cars, but I doubt if that was considered as an unfair advantage. And if this allegation is right today, what stops another company to point the same about Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, Messenger – and pretty much every other application that comes with Windows? I have a lot to learn about business laws but I’m really confused on this: where do we actually draw the line for bundled apps anyway?

Beware of cheap, so-called, “Blu-Ray” movies in Dhaka

So you’ve been thinking what could be sweeter than getting Blu-Ray movies for 800 Taka? Well, think again.

What stores selling here are NOT Blu-Ray movies. Apparently Blu-Ray exact copies are still impossible, and even when stores are telling you these are “pirated” Blu-Ray movies, they themselves have very little idea what it is. The packaing is an exact copy of Blu-Ray movies, but nothing else is. These are just basic DVD9 discs that have some down converted video recorded in them. At best the resolution may get 720p – which is not Full HD. Besides these are not Blur-Ray discs either. A technology called AVCHD (used in High-Def personal cameras for video authoring) is being used to record DVD9 discs the down-sampled version. Because of the reduction in resolution, file sizes are smaller and can be burned to regular DVDs instead of the more costly Blu-Ray discs. So yes, it does not replace the Blu-Ray experience, especially for your Full HD based system. Rather spend on best quality DVD movies and up-scaling DVD player to save the cost and get something decent (not like AVCHD though). If HD is the thing you’re into, it doesn’t kill to buy 1 genuine Blu-Ray movie a month and keep a good collection for your A/V system.You are just being fooled buying DVD discs packaged in Blu-Ray boxes.

When it comes to the world of High Definition, every detail counts.

Metal Gear comes to Xbox, not Snake though

Hmm… what would I want to see more in Xbox 360: the Metal Gear Solid franchise, or a game that has Solid Snake in it? Being a die-hard fan for Metal Gear Solid (which is, by the way, exceptionally common), and as Hideo Kojima will always be one hell of a storyteller – I hope MGS would have something to offer even without Snake. My past experience with the 2nd installment (where we all terribly missed Snake) was pretty awful compared to all 3 other episodes. But somethign tells me that Kojima production would put up something sleek as they bring the ball to Xbox 360’s court. There’s just somethign about Snake that makes it all work in Metal Gear – there neeeds to be a lot in this game so we don’t miss Snake. I can’t recall if the second part was made by Kojima, or was is just a Konami production.

But at least we now have Metal Gear – Long Live Kojima!

Things to consider when writing your Resume

Okay, to first time job seekers to HR managers, I have seen also sorts of unnecessary creativity when it comes to working with Resumes. First of all, what most people I’ve known don’t know is: Resumes aren’t exactly the same thing as CV. When you are asked for a CV, it means a more in-depth information about yourself, while resume is more like a highlight. Usually resumes are better if they are just one page. CVs are good if you have some publications, research works, and other such stuff – in general they work well for academic purposes.

Next, it’s always a good thing to avoid family background, no matter how grand that is. I think an applicant’s quality shows in his/her willingness to prove him/herself as the right individual solely based on own accomplishments. Some worse mistakes are putting in biological information (such as: height/weight). You may want to put in your date of birth as it’s sometimes needed for evaluation. Unless explicitly asked for, I don’t think photographs are important. Although our country’s HR managers are just as much interested in the look of the applicant as they are about everything else – a unconscious selection criteria that hugely weakens the evaluation process.

Another common mistake is putting in information prior to college life. Unless you won medals in the Olympics, or somethign as such, it’s a good thing to keep away those stories before you were 20. These sort of things show immaturity in proving yourself. Furthermore, stuffs like SAT/GMAT/GRE scores are really not a part of a professional resume; even when applying for grad school, you have a separate place to put all that in. While use of CGPA still remains a debate, I guess it’s more about the society where you know better what people would look for. Unless you have some seriously bold points in your work experiences, you may want to keep your academic performance as an indicator of your ability to compete.

Lastly, when you show-off your extra curricular talents, make sure it is what you have really given time to. Just because you did scuba diving on a summer vacation, doesn’t really mean it needs to be indicated as one of the things you do. Also, instead of being generalized and having too many extra curricular activities, it’s better to point out fewer but focused interests. Trust me, it’s easy to figure out if you are just trying to boast yourself or being real.

In a nutshell, “Keep it simple, keep it real”.

Track your personal finances easily and free

This might sound cheap, but using a software to track all your financial activities is a smart way to deal with your spending habbits. You wouldn’t know just how awful lot of expenses you have unless you start tracking it all. When I was looking for such a system, these were the stuffs I had on my checklist:

• User friendly interface
• Needs very little accounting knwoledge (if any)
• Enough customization options to fit one’s needs
• Accessible from anywhere (online based system)
• Free of cost

A day of searching and testing gave me this exciting and simple web application called the Clearcheckbook. It met all of the above requirements and had enough options to fit anyone’s need. It also supports downloading QIF, OFX, QFX data formats from financial institutions. Moreover, you could set your custom monthly limit, track your financial activities (with graphs), check monthly reports, and add multiple accounts easily. I would highly recommend this to anyone who wants to keep track of their own financial expenses in great details as well as cut-off unncessary expenses.

Views on NSU Admin’s comments (on the incidents of May 10th, 2009)

For obvious reasons I do not support the recent steps taken by some of the NSU students to protest against sudden increase of tuition fees on 10th May 2009; but to some extent I was also dis-hearted by looking at NSU administration’s advertisement on newspaper on this subject.

Comments by the university administration were published on the first page of popular newspapers on 13th May, 2009. NSU seems to have enough tuition fees coming in to fund such publicity, but it was unclear if it’s a press release. (The way this has been published, I doubt it meets any standardized requirement of press releases.) A bought out advertisement space used for mass communication of “their” thought, and not necessarily that of the press, is a fact that’s unclear to the reader. Sadly, this information is not explicitly written in any part of the article (or by the press). Although I am not assuming NSU administration is giving a wrong picture, I certainly see that they provided certain facts about the event. My next question would be, did the press try to verify the source and the authenticity of the information that was provided? The general people would barely notice the difference of press releasing an article against a certain organization. If this is practiced, anyone can start paying for spaces in newspaper and start telling their view of an incident.

The published comments seemed a bit funny half way through, as if I was reading those complain letters that kids write (and partly edited by their parents) to their teachers. While the figures provided may not have been wrong, they certainly do not provide many of the obvious facts on the story that is highly relevant and provides through understanding of how tuition fees are truly going to affect. For example, while the article provides accurate value of the amount of tuition fees increased on “per credit”, it does not mention the total amount of additional cost that will now be needed for a full load semester (12 credits) - including all additional charges, neither does it state the total amount of additional tuition fees a second semester student has to pay till s/he graduates (for the rest of the 11 semesters). The expected course load per semester is 4 (12 credits) with a suggested minimum of 3 and maximum of 5 courses depending on situations. May be, instead of complaining about what happened with vivid details, the article could thoroughly explain the tuition fees increment process and how it affects the current fees. Additionally readers don’t get to know the fact that NSU administration actually agreed not to increase the fees, and this decision was made in in the semester break to minimize any sort of time for feedback from the students.

The article gives an idea of how the NSU authority sees the university and its students as two separate entities. As if the student body does not represent the university, when these students are the most valuable asset they have. The part that made me feel more sorry was to see how the university authority itself talks about its students. The incident was not highlighted nor projected as badly by the press, as through the university’s own article. The choosing of words and facts demonstrates the sheer amount of vengeance the authority has, and it’s ability to go as public as they did, to prove a point. It’s sad to see NSU administration forgets how its world class students have helped making it “a center for excellence” over the years.

The increase of tuition fees are practiced in many universities around the world, and I must reconfirm, what some of the students did in NSU was not the right way of protesting, at least not a way of thinking by the most elite students of this country (note that, alternate souces also suggest students tried a peaceful way to protest). Nevertheless, NSU administration’s recently published comments only show the immaturity and lack of recognition of its prestigious student body, which makes others see how such a great university is fighting among itself. While the university can take legal actions, these sort of public comments certainly put the entire university into question. I was hoping for something more professional, insightful, and nobel, from the country’s most prestigious private university.

Customize libnotify in Ubuntu

Ubuntu’s newest 9.04 does a great job in using libnotify engine for many of the applications. With this support, application specific notifications appear in a pop-up style notification on the corner of the screen. But the problem is, the color theme for these notifications are deafulted to ubuntu’s color theme and doesn’t match with your modded desktop. If you are also a mod junkie like me, you can simply do this edit to match the libnotify pop-ups with your curent GTK theme: Open the Configuration editor via running gconf-editor at the Run Dialog (Alt-F2), or the terminal. Navigate to apps > notification-daemon. Change the ‘theme’ option to ‘normal’ (instead of ‘ubuntu’). Now they will have a cooler theme that matches most themes.

If you want to add transparency to it, go to ‘CompizConfig Settings Manager’, select the ‘Opacity, Brightness, and Saturation Adjustments’ option, then under the ‘Opacity’ tab, add a new Window type, with the parameter: Notification-daemon. Choose your required level of transparency, and wala!

Can the right MBA give you a fortune?

Here’s an interesting study by Indeed.com that shows average salary for people with different post-graduate academic backgrounds:

Of course, the average John Doe might never start at 100K with an MBA, but it does give him a better boost than MS, if pursued in the right way that is. While salary is important, it is certainly not the deciding factor to get an MBA. The ability to manage and deal with a wider range of issues, and the immense knowledge one gains on business and social world is probably something that is more than academic, it’s a way to transform one’s inner-self. And it’s always good to see that such transformation is recognized well in the professional world.

Recap: The ever so blissful Web 2.0

Internet had been an indirect platform for most of the people. An average user simply wouldn’t write html or make massive websites but use applications and services that are made by professionals to share information. The major part that had been missing was the feature of getting the view of another person who might actually have the same taste, views and questions. With this new revolutionary model, called “Web 2.0”, the end users finally got to the front in terms of publishing, sharing, and getting involved on the Internet.

Web 2.0 gives a user more than the chance of getting information; it provides everyone the opportunity to be the provider of information easily; which is also updated fast. The trend allows a better model for the information stream, which just works! Imagine a store telling you they sell the best meat in town; and now compare this to another buyer (just like you) telling you that that store actually does sell the best meat in town. Not only does this add more value, but you probably would have never believed the store if it wasn’t for the second opinion. This also reduces chances of false claims. Knowing that a store’s quality will be commented by another buyer, they would be less likely to sell things that give them bad reputation. Apart from making the content on the Internet more acceptable, this sort of technology also brought millions of new users to the World Wide Web. It also makes the Internet harness collective intelligence, the simple formula is experience that gets better as more people use them. As people become more familiar with benefits of such user generated content, it will become more widespread, increasing the quality of information.

The entire lifestyle of people has been changing based on Web 2.0. Countless number of social networking sites have popped up fueled by this revolution. It’s inevitable, unbelievable, unexpected, yet just perfectly fine. Our social lives are moving towards the electronic revolution, changing how things work. From making new friends to keeping up with friends from junior high, updating thousands of people about what we are up to everyday, joining groups who share the exact same views as we do, or showing off our new toys – everything in our personal life is now public; but the most interesting part is, this is all by our choice. Privacy to personal information has always been a key concern, but people themselves chose to put it there because it brings us exposure – something that everyone craves for. Web 2.0 is the spark that really makes anybody and everybody a celebrity on the Internet. The Internet social life have merged so vividly with us that it’s almost as essential as anything else. People would go online before tooth brushing to find out how their friends are doing thousands of miles away. In fact, now it seems alright not to look good while you are running to a store nearby, but to make sure you look the finest online – the effect is of such immense proportions that it has become a part of our identity.

Tim O’Reilly, one of the founders of Web 2.0 says “Many people concluded that the web was overhyped, when in fact bubbles and consequent shakeouts appear to be a common feature of all technological revolutions”. People need to have something new, something that really makes Internet different form everything else. Web 2.0 gives us the chance to address such limits by making everyone a publisher. It has made Internet, the biggest publishing platform ever made, and I doubt that’s about to change anytime soon. We don’t need to write codes or use sophisticated tools to make websites; content generated by anyone can easily go up on the Internet. Blogs have given us the power to have our online journal, where we put our thoughts and share with anyone we want to. We don’t need to have certification, or permission to express our views on politics, economics, and finance or even review products and make comments. Web 2.0 brings democracy to the world; everyone has the right to convey. Artists are no longer bound to have galleries, photography is not limited to exhibitions, writers do not always necessitate publishers – Web 2.0 is the place to express. This has increased the imaginative potential of millions of people around the world, who always wanted a platform for publishing. Kids with hidden talents who never got to express, or someone who was too shy to make an opinion public now has the power to do so. The technology has so much potential that even advertisement for US Presidential Elections, or opinion of VP of a company is also coming to these platforms. If compared to NEWS, such information on Web 2.0 might lack the polished feel, but is determined to give the true picture. Information available on Web 2.0 platform is not controlled by big companies or politicians, making it a better reflection of the proper story. Web sites like Wikipedia made the encyclopedia obsolete. Millions of articles on just about anything got published by the users for the users, making it the most fascinating encyclopedia ever made.

Videos, photos, write-ups, music or any other media can now be published by the end user. This also makes us discover things exactly of our own interest. The process has become so integrated with the way of life that many of us are actually posting without even using a computer. GPRS, EDGE, and new 3G networks brings more power to Web 2.0. Some sites support the ability to post articles, photos, and videos directly from the mobile phones; making the content on Internet rich, updated, and more practical. The technology has even grown to such standards that people are actually broadcasting live from their camera phones to their websites.

Another focus of Web 2.0 is bringing applications online. E-mail services on the Internet has made our lives easier, we don’t need to download everything all the time, and can always work with emails from anywhere. The photo and video sharing websites have started to give us such features too. The idea is to make information hardware independent. Such applications typically require little or no disk space, upgrade automatically with new features, and provide cross-platform compatibility. Imagine having programs like Microsoft Word being an Internet application. We can browse into the site, open the word processing program and work with it. Our files and information can be on the Internet, letting us open, edit or share our files practically from anywhere around the world. We will not be tied to our computers because of the need for access to basic desktop software. The value of Information simply becomes higher when it is more accessible, and that’s exactly what Web 2.0 wants.

Web 2.0 makes information itself the actual capacity of the Internet, not the software. This lets people discover that they can help themselves to solve problems and get information, Internet is only a platform. This in proper sense is not a technology that is different from the earlier version of Internet, rather a trend of how things work on the World Wide Web. It brings innovative approaches that offer new ways of building, deploying and using IT applications. The society of the digital natives as well as the digital immigrants is empowered by the value of Web 2.0. For countries like ours, the barrier still lies within the overall Internet speed of an average user. The digital immigrants still find it hard to see the needs of the digital natives. We need to make sure that more of us can connect and keep up with the global information highway by adding more bandwidth. The Web 2.0 enhancement is not just for making new possibilities but driven by the fact that it actually provides superior end user experience. It is a platform that is fueled by the users themselves, a technology that is here to stay and only grow bigger.

This post is a re-published version of my original article published in Financial Express BD in 2008.