Nishant Verma

Why 160 why not more? Have we ever asked ourselves why SMS length is fixed to 160 characters only? SMS is the oldest application to be used in GSM phones. Currently it has more than 3 billion active users. It’s an age old application but we are hardly seeing any modification/up gradation with the advent of new technology. Yes we did see the upcoming of MMS but SMS remained the same. Ever wondered why 160 characters? One day while going through some bookmarks in Delicious , I found an article on the same. I found it irresistible to share and go this way… Alone in a room in his home in Bonn, Germany, Friedhelm Hillebrand sat at his typewriter, tapping out random sentences and questions on a sheet of paper. As he went along, Hillebrand counted the number of letters, numbers, punctuation marks and spaces on the page. Each blurb ran on for a line or two and nearly always clocked in fewer than 160 characters. That became Hillebrand's magic number -- and set the standard for one of...

It’s pretty easy to enable +1 Button. Open a browser and sign into your Google account. Then search for Google Experimental or just type in the following URL http://www.google.com/experimental/ . You will see “+1 button”. Click 'Join this experiment'. Now navigate to http://www.google.com and search for any item. You should be seeing a +1 button next to the search result.  This button will not be enabled for http://www.google.co.in . Initially I thought it’s Google version of Facebook “ Like ” button.  But after trying it out I felt it sucks! Big Time! I search for some stuff and get the Google results page. How could I rate the result with my “+1” without actually going through it? Also the preview of the search result (another feature which Google introduced recently) doesn’t empower me to do so. So if I am actually interested in marking a result “+1” then I have to open one of the result, read it and then religiously go back to the Search Result page and Click “...

“What happen when we move in a new situation” or for the sake of simplicity of understanding let’s say what you feel when you join a new team. You as an “individual” bring in your learning, your individuality to the whole team. You get acquainted with the processes prevailing in the team. Some of these processes you would have experienced before, some you would have never heard of. Things which are new are tough to digest and practice. We react to it: we start questioning, we feel little uncomfortable towards the new things. We start influencing the process by “trying to modify” the existing process. That is the “individuality” you bring on to the team, which should be highly respected. Some of these processes are good, efficient, valuable etc. Some has room for modification, replacement. During the initial phase of settling down we feel strongly about these processes. Given a chance we would want to change it or replace it. This feeling of bringing change lasts from starting few d...

Individuals with their own individuality, style and uniqueness forms a Team. A Team is defined not by the uniqueness of the individual but by the coherent vision and capability they share. It’s a group of focussed people who lead to the success of any project rather than a bunch of highly talented individuals who just wants to get driven by themselves. Team is very similar to a chariot shown below. If all the four horses starts to run in their own direction then the person riding this horse will never reach his/her destination. The goal of a team should be to achieve higher level of cohesion, trust among peers and increased focus on delivery. It should be performance oriented. The biggest advantage of team is learning from peers. One should be open to learn. I may be good at certain thing but there is always a room for improvement in each of us. Also it’s the onus on each one of us to shape the behaviour of team. There are people who make you feel positive and spread positives vibe...

In my previous post “ Bridging the gap-the ‘Analyst’ way ” I have briefly discussed the role of Business Analyst. One important role in addition to that is “testing” the system frequently.  I strongly believe that BA should test the system frequently. They should verify the acceptance criteria of the story and augment the QA testing. This is especially important when we have more than one BA on the team. One should continuously be in touch of the system by testing it. Also this will inculcate the feature ownership, which sometimes get lost in day to day rush.

Few questions when asked I don’t know how to reply. It’s not that I don’t have answers but just that the questions are not appropriate I feel. Some of the common questions are: How are things ? How is it going ? How is the project? Problem I see with these questions are they are not Quantifiable, they don’t make me think to answer. And most of us are little optimistic by saying “Things are going good” or “Yeah it’s good” or “Going on”. Instead questions should be asked in such a way that helps us get an insight. “ How good are we looking in terms of velocity planned ”, “ Are you implementing any new practice ”, “ What are you learning these days ”, “ How is Team Confidence looking? ” etc. There could be many questions like the one above. I wanted to highlight that Questions when framed properly can get you fruitful and real information. Also it will make other person think through which they might not have been doing.

I will give you 6 easy steps to configure your iPhone 3GS to work on cellular data. I have a Reliance connection. On Main menu screen, click on Settings. Click on General. Click on Network. Turn “Cellular Data” ON . Click on Cellular Data Network. Click on APN. Enter “ rcomnet ” in small letters. You are good to surf on Cellular data network. Enjoy !!!