Trying out Chrome OS in VmWare

Today, I had downloaded the Vmware image of Chrome OS from http://chromeos.hexxeh.net and trying to boot up Chrome OS.  I was struck with logon screen for quite some time before googling for an offline user name / password for Build. Then based on some suggestions I looked again on the site where I had downloaded the Vmware image to get the valid user id / password. 
Only thing, I am seeing now is chrome browser tabs without any network connectivity. I am yet to figure out how chrome will use my ethernet or wireless connectivity on this machine. However all other guest OS I had tried on VmWare were able to get connectivity easily

Hello World

I am just going through the experience of recovering a crashed computer (which I uses for work).  It was cranky and crying for attention quite some time now.  Last week, I was trying to install virtual machine (Sun’s Virtual box) and playing around virtual network card configuration. And in the same time,  I got my Win XP service pack upgraded to SP3.  I don’t know if that was due to driver mismatch or something.  I was getting Blue Screen of death (BSOD) while starting Windows (both normal mode as well as Safe mode).

When tried to rescue with BartPE boot CD, I was not able to see C drive and in the same time, I could see other logical partitions.  So only option is to reinstall the operating system. 

Who is the product owner ?

In agile, specially I am taking about scrum method,  who is the product owner. As per the definition at Scrum Alliance – Scrum Roles page, the product owner is defined as

The Product Owner has the following responsibilities.

• Define the features of the product;
• Decide on release date and content;
• Be responsible for the profitability of the product (ROI);
• Prioritize features according to market value;
• Adjust features and priority every 30 days, as needed; and
• Accept or reject work results.

With my limited experience in using scrum in a globally distributed team, me and my team has to work mostly with IT Organization of the customer and we are assigning a person from customer side who is typically managing / involved in the application for more time (when compared to others in practical scenarios). 

And the following are my observation and thats based on my experience in implementing this practice

Product owner can define features for the product. It was more like a requirement / use case definition through story points or use cases or both. This works well when we are migrating a existing application into new platform. And while working on any new feature or use case story, role of the product owner is becoming more like a Single point of contact for gathering the requirements and if you have very short sprints (say 2 weeks) we are spending more time.

Any one have better experience in this aspect.  I am interested to listen from someone who had done this role

Disabling USB storage devices on Windows XP

One of the recent problems we had in our team is virus through USB storage devices.  I had noticed people using both pen drive and USB external storage.

I am not against usage of these devices, but the people who uses the devices should know what they are doing.  Though these USB storage devices are just carriers in spreading problem and whole problem is un-patched operating system or IE or any other windows components, our client and our management team does believe that disabling or preventing usage of USB drives would solve this problem.

I was looking for a simple VB script to perform the operation and found one here.

Setting up reverse proxy in Apache Http Server

1. Install Apache web server.

2. Edit the httpd.conf file with following modifications.  You can find this configuration file under <Apache installed directory> /conf directory. Take a backup of existing configuration files before making the changes.

3. Uncomment the following lines under LoadModule section.
(assuming you working on windows environment/ the file name and path for Load File entry will change for linux)

LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so
LoadFile D:\downloads\apachedll\libxml2.dll

4. Reverse proxy requires the following libraries (if you are downloading the Apache binary files, these files are not included in the distribution)
libxml2.dll
iconv.dll
zlib1.dll

Attached zip file contains these files for windows environment here.
For linux, you have to get equivalent libraries

5.Setup reverse proxy entries by adding the following lines at the end of httpd.conf file
ProxyPass   /a1/site    http://mysitename/consumer/site
ProxyPass   /a1/services  http://mysitename/consumer/services

Test blog post from ScribeFire

Test entry from ScribeFire

Pro Web 2.0 Mashups – e-Book

Raymond yee’s book on Web 2.0 and mashups is available online at his blog. Currently all the chapters are available as PDF files at this page. He had released the book under creative commons license.

Bangalore Traffic information Systesms (BTIS)

At last, the silicon valley of India – Bengalooru (Bangalore) had got some online information systems to find way to roam the city.  BTIS is a partnership of Mapunity, Airtel, and Bangalore Traffic Police.

At a first look, the site provides a decent live traffic conditions and directions.  I tried giving my home location and work location – the route or directions given is almost close to best possible route.  But the auto fares given at site is not close to the actual rates we have to pay for the given distance.

Nice job … keep it up.  Its a good source for any one new to Bangalore.

Ruby on Rails

After long hesitation, I tried installing Ruby on Rails and to wet my hands with some Rapid Web application development with Rails. As noted in various web articles and documents on web – installation and configuration is very smooth.

1. Download the Ruby installer for Windows from here. I had downloaded version 1.8.6.25
2. Once Ruby is installed, we can use gem to download & install rails framework.

gem install rails –include-dependencies

This works.  I am not sure what is gem yet.  I understand its some sort of packager and installer for ruby platform.  But not sure how it works yet.  Once rails available on my ruby platform, I just need to use some simple commands to create working web application in mins.

Looks very interesting at first look.

Got a new mobile phone

After a long time (closely five years), I had changed my mobile device from Nokia 6310i to Nokia E50. A metal black edition with built-in camera.

I loved my old phone very much. It never given any problem over these years until I had broke its  power switch. Till that time, I never bothered to find Nokia service centers in Bangalore. When I visited one of the nokia care center in Jayanagar, Bangalore, I was told that this phone model is extinct and I will not able to get original part replacement for the switch.

I tried to work around by not switching off the phone for a month and some times used pen tip (or) some nails to switch it one. But could not help further and now I had replaced it.  Nokia 6310i was a robust piece and it had withstood my crude usage patterns. I was using the power on switch for changing my profile settings several times in a day. I guess that caused its failure.

I was looking for a similar phone, with huge battery capacity and some decent infrastructure  and  I had a budget limit in my mind. With this criteria, I just zeroed on Nokia E50, a simple but elegant model which had all the basic features I was looking for.

Now I am trying to learn some basics about S60 platform and new applications for this phone. I guess it would take couple of weeks to understand and utilize the new phone to its capacity.