November 04, 2009
VAS for Cars

September 29, 2009
Coders at Work

September 24, 2009
FCoE
While this was going around, growth of databases and backup/recovery needs demanded high speed storage communications and the defacto standard of SCSI wasnt helping much. This requirement for high speed storage communication resulted in Fibre Channel based SANs since it gave speeds of 1,2 and 4 Gbps. Technology couldnt letFibre Channel for Storage alone and companies came with ideas like IPFC (IP over Fibre Channel) to leverage the high speed (4 Gbps) provided for data communications too, apart from SAN.
While this was going , companies also came with innovations ike iSCSI (SCSI over IP) and FCIP (Fibre Channel over IP) to leverage the benefits of TCP/IP.
Now with the popularity of "Cloud" and "SaaS" - virtualization is data center mantra. Data speeds have reached 10 Gbps on Copper. To cope with it, Storage Admins cant allocate HBAs for each and every VMs and also manage a separate network (SAN) for Storage alone.
This where, 10 Gbps is coming to rescue with the standard called "FCoE" - Fibre Channel over Ethernet. The ability to send FC protocol on top of Ethernet Frames (bypassing TCP/IP as in iSCSI and FCIP). This way , the data center can run single Ethernet network for both its communication and storage needs , but still preserving the investments on the SAN devices.
September 23, 2009
SIP...SIP-T...SIP-I
SIP is perfect for pure VoiP power play. But unfortunately this is not an ideal world and one has to coexist with legacy systems and services where the telcos have spent their capital, building innvoative IN platforms.
To fully utilize the power of SIP and also to interoperate it with existing IN, some extensions were required to the original SIP and this resulted in the birth of SIP-T(IETF) and SIP-I(ITU). These defines how IN related data like ISUP messages/context can be carried over using SIP and also some more message mapping for mid call states and signalling.
With SIP-T and SIP-I, along with the B2BUA concept, there are endless possibilities on building innovative services. Lets say for example, a prepaid voip service using the existing prepaid IN platform with automatic call termination and mid call announcements for recharge.
September 18, 2009
everywhere...nowhere...somewhere
Very rarely you leave the movie hall with a heavy heart and with the feeling of living along with the cast. "Eeram" is one such movie. Labels: eeram
September 07, 2009
Interview: Java Developers
Next comes the "tie breaker" questions - like domain expertise(telecom, in my case), some brain teasers and last but not the least, "the attitude".
September 02, 2009
Data Deduplication

Storage gets cheaper, efficient and faster...but at the same time, the need for enormous storage keeps increasing in par with it. High Res Videos, Photos, Animations, Pages of scanned important docs, Email Forwards to n number of people all eat up storage budget of an enterprise.There have been several ways to solve this which includes compression.
Data deduplication is a new buzz word in the storage world, where the backup systems gets more intelligent in analyzing the content and eliminate duplicates. For example if 100 developers of a product team had checkout 100MB worth of source code and if their desktop is getting backed up, these intelligent backup systems figure the duplication of source files/binaries and backup only one copy of the data but still maintaining the reference from all the 100 sources.
I wish the Email servers have this technology too since the email forwards within an enterprise is a main contributor to storage. Not sure whether any mail servers already have the capability to do dedups.
August 23, 2009
SELinux

May 02, 2009
Pasanga - almost heroes !
I was curious about this movie when the critically acclaimed director sasikumar announced his maiden production. The stills which were focusing just on set of kids fueled it too. Its rare to find kids movies now a days and especially kids movie which an adult can also enjoy by correlating it to their childhood.
Mani`s Anjali was the one such movie of this genre which was loved by everyone. How can one forget the cute shamli who swept away everyone`s heart, the portrayal of apartment life which made every kid of 90s , to nag their parents to move to apartments, the "gang wars", gossiping about the adult stories etc and ofcourse maestro`s bubbly music (his 500th film). I used to keep drawing the theme art of the movie whenever i get bored in classroom. I was very fond of this movie when i was doing my 10th std.
When pasanga movie was about to release, the stills of the kids in various hit movie costumes like "naan kadavul", "subramaniapuram", "billa" etc raised the expectations further. And then the trailer, it was one of the best trailers ever made recently and especially the BGM and fade shots. Its just awesome and it felt like watching a tamil version of "City of God". After this i was determined to watch this movie FDFS. There was one more small reason adding to the addiction, which is the cute heroine "Vega" , the title cast of the "Saroja" movie.
One can easily make a kids movie using fiction , super heroes etc (ET, my dear kuttychaathan, Home alone etc). Movies like "Pattalam" doesnt click with audience coz they dont show kids as kids, instead like some college adults wearing designer tees, a cute teacher who is so angelic, group discos etc...Its good to watch these in TV in "kanaa kaanum kaalam" but it doesnt work as a movie.Its difficult to make a loveable kids movie which is just a journey into their everyday walk of their life and how adults/society/culture and even movies influence their attitude and behaviour.
"Pasanga" is a one such rare movie which just makes you fix yourself into one of the kids and blend with the same. If Anjali is about kids life in metro , this movie is about kids life in a village (Virachilai). I was little disappointed during initial mins into the movie coz i had the expectation of watching something like "City of God". But that disappoinment vanished soon with the packaging of the film. If COG is about the kids life midst of crime/drug trafficking in Rio,Brazil , Pasanga is about the kids life in midst of movie influenced culture, drastic economic differences in our society and the thirst to earn fame.
The story is nothing new, a good kid, a spoiled brat with his gang, a girl who adores the good kid, their parents and their ego/fights and how the good kid transforms the brat. The highlight of the movie is the screenplay and the packaging of this simple story. The lead cast is simply awesome and they have lived the characters.
Am sure one or more scenes will remind one of their school days - be it the gang wars and revenges, being the hero of the school, craze on cycles/bikes etc. The scenes are all so cute.
The supporting cast is another real support for the victory of the movie. The parents of the both the boys are great and especially the moms. They are the typical moms one can find in the rural areas.
The director has also thought that the 2+ hours cant ride on kids alone and some little spice is needed and thats where the cute love story of vega and vimal begins. After SMS (siva mansula sakthi), this love story and cute romance using mobile will definitely be heart touching. The scene where the guy knows about the girls love is something new and very cute and also the beautiful intro between them ( the kill bill whistle ringtone exchange, "seruppu" help!). I dont want to reveal it in the blog !
Cinematography is very nice and brings out the director`s vision of the village school and the roads they walk/fight on. Its amazing. Editing is another area that needs applause coz the movie doesnt make you feel bored even a second. Music by James vasanthan is OK but one of the luv duet in rain is very romantic (oru vekkam varudhe).
Hats off to sasikumar for encouraging these type of class movies and helping tamil movie industry to reach higher levels. Its a must watch movie for adults and kids (alone or together !).
February 21, 2009
Sarvvam - Music Review