Tech's Rule's the WORLD

We stopped at a place after travelling 60km for breakfast. Rice was ordered and the plate was full with side curry’s while we enjoyed with a Srilankan style “Reggae” music bringing smiles to the faces. SUPER breakfast after a long time finished with a “buddy” bottle of Ginger Bear ! Guess what….name of the place is, “Raata Aran avith Kaaala yamu” (Bring the bottles at night for drinks and eat and go") – attitude with a difference.

When we arrived at the destination there was a ceremony organized by the regional government authorities, schools & the general public to facilitate the sponsors for the donations by ICTA & Microsoft Sri Lanka. It was wonderful to see recognizing the talent of the youth - who are actually disconnected from the fast paces society in Colombo while very few opportunities to become IT literate to face the challenges of new world.

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The program was launched by Microsoft Sri Lanka to bring IT to rural parts of the country with the governments vision in the calendar year 2009 as the year of IT & English. That included many programs by Microsoft which was successful globally. Multipoint is one of the new generation educational programs which went on to boom the skills of younger generation. (ref: http://www.microsoft.com/unlimitedpotential/TransformingEducation/MultiPoint.mspx)

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Opening of the “MULTIPOINT” center in an area where Information Technology is a dream made me think, how many of these kind a schools are there in Sri Lanka, how can we help the rural areas like this program which is a highly successful from the day of inception in “NIVITHIGALA” (another 134km south east of Colombo). It’s sad in one way where all the schools, kids will not have the same opportunity as the other kids in “Pallama”.

As for the kids who was introduced with “MULTIPOINT”, I certainly hope one day they will become the smartest set of people – challenging the world. As for the drive back home which was in the midst of heavy rain pouring down from hell, I had to say my colleague was an excellent racing driver :-)

  http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/one_mobile_app_for_multiple_platforms_a_reality.php

http://www.microsoft.com/oneapp/product/appgallery.aspx 

Wanna try in your mobile ? – it shouldn’t be a high end :-)

Got a mobile dongle for ease of use when in Colombo Sri Lanka. I was actually cheated by the advertisements which went out in the TV.

Mobitel is one of the leading mobile operators in Sri Lanka which is a child company of the national telephone operator Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT). They were the first to introduce the HSDPA 14.4 & 7.2 MBPS to the local market which was a success.

One of the major failures in a management of an Sri Lankan company is that when the money is good they tend to forget the service for the customers. When they figure it out that the service is also important to grow and sustain in the market, they are already failed and exposed their limbs to others. If you don’t believe me check Dialog Telekom & it’s share price fluctuations for the past year or so.

Below are a series of pictures that I took while trying to connect to internet to download mails. If anyone of you ask me for the best internet service provider in Sri Lanka – the answer is NONE. But the below is absolutely pathetic !!!!!

Customer service is absolute necessity in the modern fast paced economy where there are thunder of competitive counterparts. That is why there are so many organizations & individuals grooming to teach – team work, customer satisfaction, interpersonal speaking behaviors etc; But the old generation where they do not adhere to the new trends fails to deliver what is “right” to the time.

Last week we released the newest version of Microsoft Exchange Server system to manufacturing… it was a nice to see how Microsoft R&D teams (which is one of the biggest in the world) rehearse and develop a system which was requested by customers who were using and about to use the last version.

What many people don’t believe is that in a product development cycle, research is an important portion. Take an example, of the Linux distributions – we can always download the “FREE” software without anybody’s intervention and also get a GNU license. But have you thought that even if you have the product free, who is going to develop the new additions which we always need. For an example – a security loop-hole fix or a new Printer driver….

If I got the download from the Red Hat site, I may need to pay to get the support. Then I will be able to download the fix for the security loop-hole (do remember Linux also got security loop-holes). But if the distribution which I download isn’t got any registered trade-mark of a company, then it’s a shame to use your valuable time and bandwidth download. B’coz there isn’t any R&D team backing you-up for the support.

It’s just like you buy a Merc S Series and then you figure out there is no spare-parts available :)

But the “hard-core” extremes got few myths for the general public – one of them is Linux distributions are “free”.

What actually carries is that you get a free Operating System from the web – but you do not have support. If you don’t believe it do a small research of the top enterprises in our country.