Piece of my thoughts..: January 2009

Jan 23, 2009

Recession or Depression - How bad will it be?

The current Recession is portrayed more as the upcoming Second Great Depression. Its the popular belief. Its the speculation that drives the economy. Its the way economy works. If you are still making good money, expect to be on job for the next 5 months, you have nothing to do with the Recession. Its just a personal thingy.

Technically, the entire globe is in great recession.

Newspapers, Magazines and Websites are churning out bad news and hopes to survive. This is my perception of how bad is the recession.

It's the worst recession since the great depression.

GM and Chrysler are on the verge on collapse. Bad decisions are the cause. It has always been so with these companies. They had respite from financial lenders. It's not going to be the case now. There is no money in the market and only the government can save these companies.

Toyota has announced loss for the first time in its 70 years history.

Microsoft is cutting jobs for the first time in its history.

Google cutting jobs for the first time.

The big US banks that once controlled the global economy don't exist anymore.

Circuit City closes chain, due to non-availability of credit for merchandise.

German billionaire tycoon Adolf Merckle commits suicide. Forbes 94th richest man on planet.

Typically in every recession, the signs are known towards the end of recession, meaning the turn around in economy is around the corner. The current recession signs seem to be just the beginning of worse.

Jan 21, 2009

When perfection becomes a curse

Image via WikipediaBeing perfect is associated with "Winning", "Pride", "Confidence" etc. But, being finicky about perfection can become a hurdle and cause negative impact on your personality.

That's the message from a recent article. It presents the uncommon perspective of being perfect.
But, nevertheless no one can deny that Perfection pays and distinguishes the creamy. We wouldn't have the great products like iPhone, Gmail, Bose or Facebook of today without someone's desire for perfection.

Here is the well written article.

Jan 15, 2009

Practice Management System as a Web Service

Image via WikipediaIn the current healthcare software market, three systems are critical and vital part of any health organization from small clinics to big hospitals. The PHR(Personal Health Record), Electronic Medical Record(EMR) and Practice Management System(PMS). In most cases, PHR and EMR are packaged together as a single software system. And, PMS is sold as separate software system. There are blurry lines between PMS and EMR features, as the features available are interchangeable and overlapping at times.

But, the two systems serve two totally different purposes.

PMS for administration such as scheduling, reports, accounting, claims processing, etc. While, EMR functionality revolves around the medical practice and PHR. There are good EMRs in the market and PMSs in the market. But, all of them are built as software and not as service to my knowledge.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have PMS available as a service for EMR systems to integrate, thereby let the PMS do the job of scheduling, accounting etc in the background and just provide the results to the EMR. As electronic health records are gaining importance after decades of neglect, more and more EMRs are going to be built in the future. And, these systems are going to require PMS functionality, which can be either developed from scratch or integrate an existing PMS available as service. But, none of the existing PMS seem to offer the functionality as service. The existing PMS are available as only web apps.

My question: Are there PMS systems available as a web service that can be integrated into a newly developed EMR?

Jan 13, 2009

AR Rahman wins Golden Globe - A tribute!

The Genius, The Maestro, The most humble person on earth.. what not?? AR Rahman is the first Indian music composer to hit the world stage and at the same time keep the Indian flavor of music. He proved his genius with the Vande Mataram album for 50th year celebration of Indian Independence. The album was awe inspiring with soulful music, that just took the breathe away from every Indian across the globe. It recreated the magic of feeling patriotic again after 50 years of independence. And, continues to enthrall the global audience.

Winning the Golden Globe is a moment of pride of all AR Rahman fans and obviously Indians. It reflects in every single news article across global web sites. With the much anticipated Oscars for Slumdog Millionaire, every Indian is looking forward to ARR at Oscars. And, i am longing to see that happen :)

Watch the slides on the genius from a true, ardent, die-hard fan of ARR. Myself :)

Jan 11, 2009

Silverlight vs Flash

Image via Wikipedia

Million dollar question. Can Silverlight raise to the glory of Flash and eventually surpass it?

As a person incharge of recommending technology to clients, it's been a tough time making a case to build websites using Silverlight. Primarily being a new technology, there are certainly questions about investing those dollars. Whether to build using ubiqutous Flash or the new comer Silverlight remains the big question. I have been following the debates on Silverlight vs Flash to help make decisions on technology for Web 3.0, which is of course RIA. Prospects, Risks and Speculations from my understanding for the curious:

Silverlight doesn't have any great showcases for technology adoption except NBC Olympics and Net Flix live streaming. Ironically, these two demostrate the streaming capability and not the power of Silverlight (maybe, this is the best MS could do at this point of time). RIA has played the role delivering media, rich user experience and ease of use. But, not to a great extent on Enterprise applications front. Leaving aside the question, whether RIA is ready for Enterprise, how can Flex and Silverlight fair in Enterprise setup. MS does have a strong position with a well entrenched Enterprise software market such as SharePoint and all-popular .NET platform. Since, Silverlight is tied to .NET, Silverlight is obviously well tied to Enterprise. Silverlight already connects or integrates with SharePoint, making it easy to RIA enable existing SharePoint Enterprise infrastructure.

The biggest selling point of MS has always been its clout over the Enterprise market with its interconnected software spread all over the Enterprise. It makes to easier to add something that extends the existing infrastructure rather than build the entire infrastructure from scratch. Hold on. In what way is this argument connected to Silverlight? You may ask. Transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0 resulted in upgrading apps(including Enterprise) from simple always-post-back web pages to interactive AJAX. With Web 3.0 on the horizon, RIA is the much anticipated replacement/upgrade for AJAX(don't know how google is going to manage the tide). There comes the Silverlight. MS will obviously push Silverlight into every single product you can imagine from mobile, desktop, servers to Web Office on the software services side. By moving to RIA, MS will be in a better position to tackle Google with much richer and intuitive web apps. MS couldn't crack the AJAX the way Google did. So, Silverlight is going to be their best bet.

With all those reasoning, i am bound to believe that Silverlight will become as ubiqutous as Windows, .NET etc.

Couple of interesting points from web(references at the end):

"In Silverlight 2 we have integration with SharePoint 2007 and Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform. What is Adobe going to integrate with beyond PhotoShop??? In the works we have Reporting Services 2008 R2 integration (think Business Objects XCelcius dashboards). The Office Web will be powered by Silverlight 3. Where is Adobe's suite?Silverlight is going to be on mobile devices: Windows Mobile, Blackberry, Symbian. Does Adobe have a mobile OS? Next version of VS 2010 integration enterprise services and workflows (WCF/WF) all under a SINGLE environment. Does Adobe have something similar? (not counting shelling out extra for 3rd party add-ons). Silverlight is getting F# a multi-threaded/statistical language...pick your choice how you want to code in Silverlight 3 first class languages plus dynamic ones. Flash/Flex needs to support true multithreading first before we can talk :)"

Read the complete thread here for an exhaustive technical debate.

Jan 10, 2009

Mind Map - Simple Analysis and Decision making

Image via WikipediaFew months back, came across the term 'Mind Mapping' in Wikipedia.

Digging further revealed, its an approach for analyzing a given situation and eventually making decisions. I have been trying to use the approach in situations as trivial as choosing between two mobile phones to a relatively complex software requirements study.

There are many software in the market bringing Mind Mapping to life. Wikipedia gives an exhaustive list. Personally, i feel comfortable using FreeMind. Its simple and powerful user interface just blew me away. Its very easy to work with just the keyboard and flowing through the maps.

Some organizations are using Mind Mapping as organization-wide tool for analysis and decision making.

Do give it a try. Its worth the time!