Month: August 2008

“Use your brain stupid” – Which one? The right or the left?.

Posted on by Rayan

Imagine someone in an authoritative position (your boss or your wife) chiding you to use your brain to solve the problem at hand. And you reply like, “Which one? The right or the left?” you are obviously smarter. Experts say you can only go up to some level in solving your problem if you use your logical side (the left) and at some point the creative side (the right) should come into play to reach a brilliant solution. The famous Edward De Bono suggests the use of ‘Six Thinking Hats‘ technique to switch our style of thinking while solving a problem. So that means at a given time we need to be aware of which mode we are in, say; being pessimistic or optimistic or cautious and switch it deliberately to widen our perception and that needs some disciplined thinking.

What if there is an easier method that makes use of both parts of the brain simultaneously, and let you see the result immediately and also is something fun to do? Luckily there is one and it is the use of mind maps pioneered by Tony Buzon.

Personally I feel the mind maps come close to our natural way of thinking (a scatter brain approach). Using mind maps, even as we jot down ideas in free form, we follow a structure. Looking at the partially developed mind map, we plug in the missing elements in our thinking as we go along. Before we know it, we will be amazed at the extent of territory we have covered and realize it was all fun and the job is done.

Before the advent of PCs the use of mind mapping technique was confined to scientists, executives in big corporations, students and professors at university. Though it doesn’t need much in terms of resources (a sheaf of papers and pen will do), it wasn’t popular and perceived to be an elite exercise. But now that PCs have become popular and along with the proliferation of mind mapping software, mind mapping has come to be within reach of every one.

I am convinced that if used properly, mind mapping exercise will enable you to create a ‘WOW’ effect in all your ventures.

Uses of mind maps:

Uses of mind maps are many as they are outlined here.

To show a live demonstration of the use of mind maps, I have taken browsing my website as an example. Please click on the link below to see how easy it is to navigate my site using mind maps. (Some of my visitors complained that they find it difficult to locate in my site what they came searching for)


Using mind map to navigate my website .


You may notice how easy it is to navigate web sites using mind maps which no one has talked about so far (at least as far as my knowledge goes. Please correct me if I am wrong)

I may even go further to suggest mind maps should be the first interface users see when they turn on the computer. Due to its intuitive nature this would make any operating system very user-friendly.

What do you think?

Like the rest of us we are unique

Posted on by Rayan

There is an universal belief that no two persons are alike. Each one of us is unique in our physical makeup, mental abilities, personality traits, our life experience, and so on. A news article I read in National Post recently has weakened my belief that we are unique in this world. It is not my concern whether the lady Ms. Bernann McKinney was really Ms. Joyce McKinney in disguise or the former is the clone of the latter as the title of the article suggests.

But what interested me was that she paid $50,000 to clone her dead dog Booger and became a proud owner of five black puppies cloned from it. That reminded me how close we have come to reality from the science fiction movie, The Sixth Day in which Arnold Schwarzenegger starred with his clone(??!!) Do you remember in the movie there is this pet shop where ‘made to order’ pets can be picked up by their proud owners?

Well it has become a reality now and from now on, at least for those who can afford, they need never have to suffer any loss or tragedy on the demise of their pets. In one of his comedy shows the late George Carlin makes fun of pet lovers who bring home a pet and shower it with all their love and tender care. He said that they really have brought home a tragedy while they may think it to be a bundle of joy. His reasoning was that one day or the other the pet has to face its demise and that will be before its owner passes away. Sorry George, for once you are proved wrong.

Human Cloning

This story also made me wonder whether human cloning too is going on illegally somewhere on the high seas? Let us be optimistic that currently there is no large scale human cloning. I said optimistic because the unique talents that we develop as we go along, is our only insurance in this uncertain job market. Already we have enough competition and we stand even less chance if our clones start competing against us. Don’t you agree?

Talking of uniqueness, did you see Robert Muraine’s audition in the TV program ‘So you think you can dance?’ Of course the judges and the audience where blown away by the awesome performance of Bob. But one of the judges scored his performance to be so unique that he would have difficulty approving Bob to the next level of the competition. For a moment I too was thinking this young man has wasted a part of his life learning something too unique. But this time I was proved wrong.

Look at the recent IKEA commercial in which Bob replicates his success so well and I am sure he must have made a ton of money doing this commercial. As of this date no one in the world can do what Robert Muraine has done and do you understand now why I stress developing our unique talents and also why I fear my clone ?

“You only live twice or so it seems”

Posted on by Rayan

Websites have a life like James Bond and apparently they get to live only twice. Visitors visit any site, for the first time out of curiosity, to see if there is anything interesting to browse. If they find anything that grabs their attention, they visit a second time to see if there is any new content added. If the site fails to impress at either of these two times it can bid goodbye to its visitors and there are ‘no comebacks’.

In the past few weeks (probably even earlier) my site has been hacked. Being aware of the high expectations of my visitors, I had been carrying out some desperate firefighting measures to bring my site back into shape. During this period my site has been acting weird and I couldn’t fix it as quickly as I wished and as a result I might have lost some valuable first or second time visitors who are never going to comeback.

Nevertheless I have learned several valuable lessons out of this painful experience which I would like to share with you and may help you if you maintain a site of your own.

Clues that your site has been hacked (it will bring out the inner Sherlock Holmes in you):

* If you log into your account at your web host, you see your file size bloated without any reason. (Mine shot up from 35MB to something like 170MB)
* You will see some weird characters on some of your pages alongside normal ones like the one below pointed by the arrows
* If you display Google Adsense ads like I do, you will see a lot of Adsense Ads that are not relevant to your page’s content.
* You will see an unusually large number of hidden external links pointing to sites that serve hackers’ interests.
* You will see a very long list of random words hidden inside some of your pages and code and may take a little of digging to find where they are hidden. Again these are to serve hacker’s interests to place Google ads related to these random words instead of your site’s content.
* You will see some of the pictures missing in your page and if you hover your mouse pointer over it, they point to a location in an unknown folder and not in the folder you originally uploaded.

The cause of my problem:

1. I was using an earlier version of WordPress platform for maintaining the site which is known to be vulnerable to hacker attack
2. My password was not strong enough and could have been easily cracked.

Remedies:

1. If you are using a platform other than the older versions of WordPress (say FrontPage or Dreamweaver or Blogger), look into appropriate forums of webmasters to see any vulnerability of hacker attacks and implement necessary actions to improve security of your site.
2. But if you are using an older version of WordPress immediately upgrade it to a newer version. Also please implement every one of the following suggestions mentioned in the following links.

Before I let you go, I request you to stay with me or come back as often as you can and I promise I will not fail you.

Given your loyal support, I challenge the agents and the sentinels determined to kill my spirit or destroy my ship ( taking cue from the movie Matrix) ,

“Try as you can, you cannot stop me. This Neo will always rise like a phoenix from the ashes.”


I love apples

Posted on by Rayan

I love apples raw, ripe, and cooked. Even if I go to any McDonald’s restaurant my eyes instinctively look for apple pies. But lately my attention is drawn towards different kinds of apples and Macs: iMacs. I have always been using Windows OS running on PC Clones and had little incentive to look outside ‘windows’. No one could dissuade me from using them for three reasons: my familiarity with Windows, its compatibility with a wide range of applications and its economy of use.

Every time I see the Mac vs. PC ads put out by Apple on TV and print media, a sense of anger builds up in me. It is as much due to my loyalty towards Windows, as it is about ignorance of Macs and my jealousy to those who can afford Macs. A chance exposure to this YouTube presentation made me only too happy that at last Windows gets its due recognition.

I am told for simplicity and ease of use nothing comes close to Apple products. A customer of ours who bought a few computers from us running Windows recently bought an iMac and was quite happy with it. In fact he was so enthusiastic that he was selling me on the merits of iMacs in particular and Apple products in general! Internally I started to worry whether I lost this customer forever to Apple products while I am devoted to selling PCs and laptops running Windows.

His reasons seem convincing enough that I may become a convert soon. See for yourself.

  1. User is totally freed from the details of hardware and the connection details. You bring home the iMac, connect the keyboard, mouse in the respective ports and turn it on. That’s it and it is ready to use. Rest of the items like monitor, webcam, wireless connection, all the hardware integrated and out of sight makes things simple. There is very little chance the user can go wrong in setting up the computer for the very first time.
  2. The system is intensely focused on giving the user the necessary help in getting his (her) job done. By that I mean all the necessary applications that an average user needs are preinstalled and come as a single package. The user need never have to worry about compatibility issues, no product key to forget and retrieve during installation or reinstallation.
  3. Apple is not content with just making their systems user friendly but even the after sale service is dedicated to giving an user friendly introduction to the use of Macs and solving Mac related issues on an ongoing basis. If you go by their slogan “Come to shop. Return to learn“, you will understand what I mean. Of course this service is not free but is on chargeable basis.
  4. Contrast this with us the Windows vendors, who are busy pushing hardware and software to a saturated market and in the process ignore the pleas of a customer who bought a Windows system but is beseeching to learn the basics. Often times I have come across customers who ask me as to where they can learn how to use the PC. To be honest with you, I directed them to some bookshops, library or the Internet!
  5. We learn about Windows from such disparate sources as friends, outdated books, manuals, internet articles, forums. A little here, little there and we are never sure we have learned enough or in a professional manner.

I believe there is a real business opportunity for us (the vendors selling PCs and Laptops with Windows on them) if we can combine training customers with selling them the system. Even if we don’t do this in a proactive way, soon we will be forced to be on the defensive as Apple continues to gain market share at the expense of Windows.

In writing this post I have become a traitor to myself.