Facebook usernames

Facebook announced on its blog today that it would introduce Usernames @ midnight on Saturday. The link to my facebook profile currently is http://www.facebook.com/people/Madhan-Sivakumar/715745522 The claimed reason for the introduction of these Usernames is to remove these numbers from your URL (makes my profile http://www.facebook.com/madhans for example) so that is is easier to type, share or search. Some people claim that this will make you more googleable. Huh....?? Googling for your full name already returns your facebook profile page! So, why are they introducing this now? One major reason 'might' be their recently acquired "twitter envy". All communications on Twitter are based on user names. For eg. to reply to a person you just have to tweet "@ message". My twitter page is at http://twitter.com/madhans. We should expect more changes from Facebook centered around these user names as they try to fight Twitter's rising popularity. So, grab those good user names while they last ;)

Twikini

I have been experimenting with some twitter apps for my Windows Mobile and came across twikini around a month ago. Today, twikini v1.0 was released. You can download it from here. I love the interface (especially the scrolling part as I hate scrolling on some Windows Mobile apps (designed for stylus use??)). You can configure the refresh interval, update your location automatically using GPS, upload pics to twitpic and tweet the songs you are listening to. Give it a try and follow me on twitter (madhans).

Summer Blockbusters are here!!

It's the beginning of Summer 2009... beginning of a good season of Hollywood blockbusters.. last Summer was pretty good starting with The Dark Knight. I have a big list of movies that I want to watch in the theater this summer.

• X-Men Origins Wolverine - 5/1 (Done!)
• Star Trek - 5/8 (Done!)
• Angels and Demons - 5/15 (Done!)
• Terminator Salvation (Christian Bale) - 5/22 (Done!)
• Up (Pixar) - 5/29 (Done!)
• Transformer 2 - 6/24 (Done!)
• Public Enemies (Christian Bale & Johny Depp) - 7/1
• Harry Potter 6 - 7/17
• Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarentino's) - 8/21

This is more like a personal note and some recommendations for you guys.. I'll keep updating this blog... Have a great summer!!

Rihanna's unfaithful in tamil - courtesy Vijay Antony

I've been listening to Suryan FM for the past few days - thanks to Loka. I listened to this tamil song (2nd video) being played on the radio. First, I thought it was some ad/promo. Then I realized that it was a song from a movie (Kaadhalil Vizhundhen). Deva's tradition still lives on in the tamil music world.... Remove around 60 sec from the beginning of the first video and you get the second video...

Unfaithful has always been one of my favorite songs, but to listen to this version just makes me puke. When will we get another Ilayaraja or Rahman again? Is anyone at least trying to be original?

MediaCenter, Xbox and my work

It's been a long time since my last post. It's just that I have become really really lazy.. Too lazy to even blog, chat with friends or do anything useful :P As usual, I'm just sitting on my couch and watching movie after movie, series after series, game after game......

One of my friends asked me to blog about my work. I thought I would start with that, without getting technical ;-) It's close to one year since I started work. The past year has been a lot of fun. Now, that we are 'almost' done with Windows 7, we can relax a bit before we start planning again. I spent most of my time working on the Windows Media Center - Extender streaming scenario. For people who are not familiar with that (most people outside U.S are not), go here. My idea of home entertainment has changed completely after I was introduced to Media Center and Xbox (I have been using my Xbox more as my home media hub than as a gaming console). This is the setup I have at home

These are some of the perks of working with this team, I get lot of cool stuff at home. I've never even imagined that I could enjoy HiDef TV wirelessly, streamed from my living room to my bedroom. It is fun even at work. I was working on a bug for close to one month. We were using a Seinfeld HD episode as our test stream. I ended up watching that episode a zillion times before I fixed the bug. I can tell you each and every dialog in the episode even when I'm sleeping ;) Now, they've given me a TV. I can watch TV 24x7 (or more precisely 8x5 a week!).

People in the U.S, please give the Media Center a try. You can use your xbox360 as a media center extender, stream live and recorded TV from your PC to the 360, pause, rewind or record live TV, stream videos from the internet and so on...... so, this is short summary of my work so far - fine tune the networking in the home media scenario. Hope you all enjoy Windows 7... I'm planning to write some more as we get closer to the release... Until then, enjoy the beta and RC versions ;)