Ankur Shah’s random thoughts!

The best of both worlds! I can’t take credit for coining the equation above, but I did always wonder if there was a way to combine powers of two of the greatest “web apps” out there, WordPress and Facebook. If you spend enough time on Mr. Gore’s greatest invention that we call the internet, and you haven’t heard of either of those two things, I suggest you change out of those caveman clothes into something more comfortable and read up!

But I digress. So yeah, I found WordBook a while ago, but couldn’t quite take it for a spin because apparently it didn’t work with my then-old-wordpress 2.0, but now that I recently saw the latest announcement of the WordPress release 2.6 (Congrats guys!), I felt rather compelled to upgrade and test out the new offerings by WP, along with what-sounds-like one of it’s coolest plugins, WB.

So, without further adeu, testing 1,2,3

One of the most inspirational videos I’ve seen on YouTube. My personal favorite quote in the video: “If you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived!”.

Apparently Satya Paul is inspired by Google, as well. Not sure if it’s worth the ~$300 price tag. Pretty neat, nonetheless.

Never do you see Google and it’s “products” showing any signs of weakness. Specially in the technological arena. However, tonight at 11:37 PM EST on 3/31/08 when I logged into my GMail account, I noticed a new link appear in bold red titled “New! GMail Custom Time”. With my curiosity level spiking high, I clicked on the link and, get this, got a “Page Not Found” error or a 404 error for you HTTP junkies.

I was expecting to see something unique from Google, which I guess I did as I’ve never seen them make such a blatant error before. Let alone on a main page to one of their most popular products. I can’t help but wonder if Google is starting to lose it’s “oomph”, or if it is simply some sort of a Pre-April-Fool (pre for us US netizens, at least) gig.
Screenshot below:

I’ve been in India for almost a month and a half now (Happy New Year, BTW!), and every now and then I post pictures from this side of the world on Facebook. Check them out here if you’ve got nothing better to do.

Besides spending quality time with the family, I am trying to get some work done as well. Some of which relates to Ankur Lighting, a family ran lighting business in India since 1978. I’m proud to say that over the years, the company has been established as one of the biggest lighting manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers and exporters in the country. The company is participating in one of the most renowned lighting exhibitions in India, and so I would like to take the opportunity to insert the plug for it here (Click on the image to go to the main page):

First, the background. My lovely wife got me an iPhone for my birthday. Yes, I love her! Well, I was supposed to get it on my birthday — the 16th of Nov, if you were curious — but my “inquisitiveness” got the better of us and I ended up finding out about my present in the umm… present? Did I mention I loved her?

Second, a brief review. With a never-ending list of news articles, commercials and talks in social gatherings around the iPhone, to the point that many are sick of hearing it’s name, I can say that after having used it for a few days, all the hype around it is in fact true. I’ve used many smartphones in the past, including WM5/6, Symbian and Palm OS powered phones. FWIW, the HTC Hermes (Cingular 8525) with Windows Mobile 6 is my favorite combination. That is, until I got the iPhone. The phone is very slick with both the hardware and the UI (user interface) far superior than it’s competition. Not to mention, the many cool applications it offers out of the box — you can use it as an iPod, take advantage of it’s seamless integration with YouTube to watch your favorite videos on the fabulous VGA screen, and if you’re “curious” like me, run a ssh server or web server on it (!).

Finally, the issue that cajoled me into writing this post. Among other things, the biggest problem I had had with my iPhone was to make it work with one of my laptops, which was recently upgraded from Windows XP to Vista. Note that the phone worked just fine with other computers running Windows XP and Max OS X. So, after spending many hours of installing/uninstalling iTunes, monkeying with the system registry and everything short of duct taping the darn thing, I’ve finally figured out a way for iTunes on Vista to recognize my iPhone. Ultimately, the problem turned out to be the default drivers loaded by Vista (!). Because of which, the phone was actually recognized by the OS, but was in fact only usable as a camera to import/export pictures. I fixed it by going to “Device Manager”, right clicking on “Apple iPhone” under “Portable Devices” and selecting the “Update Driver Software”. The appropriate drivers are stored under “C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple”. After the successful driver update, your iPhone will happily show up under the “USB Controller” indicating that the phone is ready for action. I’ve found many people having similar problems online so I’m hoping this post will save you some duct tape If it does, do not hesitate to leave a comment or two.
By the way, I’m still on a look out for a good exchange client so I could get my work emails (with push mail?) work on the device over the air, and a “task manager” so I can kill unwanted tasks/processes. Got any suggestions?

I’ve been using the Cisco 7960 and 7940 phones for several years now, and have learned a few tips and tricks over the years. Among those is a simple *, 6 and settings key sequence that reboots a 7960 / 7940 device, which acts much like power cycling the phone. I have a friend who, to this day, thanks me for “revealing” this secret key code to him. So, FWIW, here’s the complete list of keys and URLs that you may find useful while playing around with the best-sip-phones-ever-built:

• * 6 Settings Reboots the phone as mentioned above.
• * * # Unlocks the configuration. Unless you’re using SIP versions greater than 7.X, in which case, you’d have to manually unlock the phone by going to “Settings -> Unlock Config” and entering the configuration password. Default password is “cisco”, just in case.
• Cisco document on converting a 7960/7940 from SCCP to SIP
• Archived images of Cisco SIP firmwares
• A nice, descriptive and very helpful page offered by Cat 24 that guides you through the process of upgrading the device from one of the older SCCP/SIP firmwares to the latest 8.6 version.
• An exhaustive page on cisco 79xx phones hosted by voip-info.org

I usually don’t start my work day without a cup (or three) of coffee. It has helped me stay awake, focused and wired during the many days and countless nights of working diligently. So, here’s my attempt at paying back to the great caffeine by dedicating an entire post (!) to it. Credit goes to someone who goes by the handle of jon-e on flickr for contributing this genius work:

I like good commercials, and outside of some of my favorite Heineken and Mountain Dew commercials, my wife and I like some of the Geico commercials as well. Among those infamous caveman broadcasts, is one where the guy is at the airport walking past his poster on the wall. Well, for the longest time my wife had asked me about the background music in that clip, and so thanks to Y! Answers, I finally found out this morning that the song is called “Remind me” and is by Royksopp. Take it for what it’s worth.

As I mentioned earlier, I’m about to take the next big step in my life by tying the knot with my now-fiance, Neha. Well, today’s the big day (!!) and while I hear ~200 people downstairs in our house in India, dancing to the beats of the DJ, celebrating the beginning of the day, I just want to take a minute and acknowledge this great moment in my life here.

To that effect, I’ve also dedicated sites NehaAndAnkur.com & AnkurAndNeha.com where I hope to cherish many such great moments in our lives together as husband and wife.