Message Queues : Apologies

We've had some grief at the SMSC end - with a bunch of messages caught up in some "congestion" and some, I guess, dropped. Just realized it this morning.

Of course they did a software upgrade.

Apologies if some queries got a delayed response, or worse, Zook never got back to you.

We've followed up to try and ensure zero repeats of this, and will monitor things more closely. We're also adding a ton of very useful data directly and through some exciting partnerships which we should be announcing over the weekend.

Keep Zook.in!

Toy train? Station? A Whole miniature city in Pune!

A query came in for: Railway Museum Pune and while surfing our logs, this caught my fancy.

Answer:

Joshis Museum of Miniature Railways
17/1 B/2 GA Kulkarni Rd,
Next to Sangam Press,
Kothrud, Pune 38
+912025435378 +912025454474
ravi@minirailways.com
http://www.minirailways.com

From the site:

• There are 65 signals, 26 points, fences, lampposts, flyovers, etc. which have been manufactured by hand using chemical etching techniques.
• The entire layout can be operated manually or can be computer controlled.
• Fully functional station yard with 6 platforms, announcement systems, 3 main lines, goods loading facilities, hump shunting, a turntable, crane, etc.

Wow - if I were in Pune, I'd be calling Mr. Ravi and fixing up and appointment for the kids, heck no, for myself to visit this fascinating world this weekend!

I'm discovering so much on Zook, myself :)

"Game events conducted in Tamil Nadu sub-inspector exam"

A user wanted to know more about the process for a Sub-Inspectors post in TN. This was one of the many queries s/he fired towards that end. Amazing how users seek info, even on the move. Its facts, after all, from our point of view, asked through pretty specific questions. Here goes....

Endurance Test - Run 1500m in 7 Min
Physical efficiency:
(min qualifying 6/15)
1.Running:
100m: 15s - 2marks, in 13.5s - 5 marks
OR
400m: 80s - 2marks, 70s - 5 marks
2.Long Jump:3.8m-2marks, 4.5m-5marks
OR
High Jump: 1.2m-2marks, 1.4m-5marks
3.Rope Climbing: 5m-2marks,6m-5marks

Source: http://www.tn.gov.in/tnusrb/annexure2.pdf

Usability? Check. Now try another hat...

Bill Gates' mail about his frustration with unfriendly MS usability.

Often we assume many things about our own software - and while the above piece is more of a "Even Gates cannot stand MS software" one, it does highlight how easily software often ends up as a frustrating, non-intuitive piece of technology for the end user. The small things really really count, and developers need to keep putting themselves is users' shoes time and again to test with as little bias as possible. Or better still, ask someone who's not really been associated with the product to try it out.

The "separation", from my limited experience with startup life, is extremely tough to achieve. People play multiple roles, and the lines keep getting blurred, and what suffers is how the code develops, is tested, and very importantly, deployed. The little things one did as part of the larger behemoths - build-environment, shiphome, QA setups, release notes, operational guides - all start to have more meaning to them than they did when you merely found them bothersome stuff you had to put up with :)

Look what Sundar did!!!!!!!!!

http://www.pluggd.in/2008/06/competes-regex-bug-affected-yahoos-search-market-share-statistically

We'd heard about it in office - and now its beginning to catch on in the Indian blogosphere too. Good stuff, Sundar.

I'm really hoping this has some positive impact on the rapidly falling Yahoo stock.

How heavy are Whales, really?

A user was Zook.in for this yesterday, and the query caught my eye. My son often takes me down these trips where - for want of internet access or laziness to "switch on" - I end up giving him either hand wavy answers, or just ignore him if I'm really stumped.

One major use-case for mobile search ?

Anyhow:

Blue Whales can weigh upto 181 metric tonnes!
Averages::
Type/Weight
Blue/84
Finback/50
Bowhead/50
Right/50 (est.)
Sperm/35
Humpback/33
Smaller whales weigh in at a mere 4-6 tonnes. Heavy, huh ?
--Zook on sms:57575665--

Zoho Business is very useful

Simple collaboration - docs, spreadsheets, tasks, contacts, calendar, shareable across the team, and you can actually run multiple orgs on it too. Quite impressed, from a small org's point of view.

Check it out.

The LBS Dream

http://communities_dominate.blogs.com/brands/2008/06/elusive-pot-of.html

Thanks Siva, for the link.

LBS, imo, has always been a bit-feature that will be useful for a small subset of use cases - say your car breaks down and you need to know who the closest emergency service is, or in case you want the closest service provider for stuff the service quality is kinda standardized for. For hospitals and schools and even bike mechanics (if you bike seriously), you'd hardly be too worried about proximity. And as the article above we discusses it, for a whole lot of situations, we already have our paths known, or the means to them clear. There are a few "I'm stuck" cases where LBS will help, but thats about it.

Location specific ads, though, sound like a better idea. Especially for deals, offers, specials and new-store-in-you-area announcements.

The mobile is still a very unkmown, not-close-to-be-mature space for life-tools.

Fast Zook.in again

Phew! We migrated servers since we figured out certain mySql issues (thanks Nikhil!) on the old one - and there wasn't really a "native" 5.0 for that.

End result : Zook is way quicker than it had come to be - and we can stop apologizing for it now :)

Keep zook.in !

Coming Soon : "We've fed the answers back into the machine!"

Fire fox crash on "Browse"...

[#FL-1122] Firefox /Gecko Crashes when trying to browse local folder to upload picture - Foresight Linux JIRA - issue tracker

I faced the same and a quick search revealed others had faced it too. How about some basic regression testing, guys?