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Thursday Jan 22, 2009
Farewell, Auf Wiedershen, Sayonara, Alvida
Farewell, Auf wiedersehen, Sayonara, Alvida
This is my final blog post on this site. You might say that this my "S(un)wan Song". My long journey at Sun has finally reached its end.

I am writing this with a sense of pride, excitement and anticipation. Pride for my accomplishments at Sun and anticipation for what the future holds.

There is an incredible panoply of talent that I have been fortunate to interact with in this journey. A lot of them are strewn across various companies in the Valley. There are many that remain at Sun. I wish them luck and success.

I continue to hold hope that Zembly will become wildly successful and urge not just the Zembly team, but the Sun Management to relentlessy pursue that goal.

There are various ways to contact me to keep in touch:
email kpn320@gmail.com
AIM/Skype kpn320
Twitter @kpn320
LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/pub/0/164/a53
Facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php#/profile.php?id=590153627&ref=name
Blog http://kpn320.blogspot.com/

Find me online and let us connect ...


Posted at 04:39PM Jan 22, 2009 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[2] Add to Technorati Favorites

Thursday Jan 01, 2009
Farewell to 2008, Happy New Year
Farewell to 2008, Happy New Year
As we bid farewell to 2008, it is time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the coming year.Happy New Year 2009

I had started the year blogging that "2008 promises to be an exciting year". It was exciting allright. No one could possibly have predicted the reasons why the year turned out to be one of the most "exciting" in this decade. I am not just referring to the the Beijing Olympics and U.S. Election (more on these two events later). It was the worst year for stocks since 1931. There was the credit crunch that resulted in a meltdown on Wall Street. Main Street suffered too in the aftermath with a jump in unemployment and steep declines in housing prices. We also saw vermin like Bernard Madoff run a ponzi scheme that could involve losses of more than $50 billion.

Inspite of all the gloom and doom, there is a silver lining. Social Networking and Social Applications are seeing a boom. Chris Hughes, a former founder of Facebook, ran Obama's media campaign and, arguably, contributed to his victory. Several athletes gave us first person reports from Beijing and provided us personal insights immediately after their events. "myPicks Beijing 2008" and "myPicks U.S. Election 2008" were social networking applications built on zembly that ran successfully during these two global events.

We are bound to see a turnaround in 2009. Crowd sourcing and social media are just a natural way for the web to evolve. I believe that zembly is poised to be "the right product at the right time" in this turnaround. There is certainly a lot to look forward to in 2009.

Posted at 01:50PM Jan 01, 2009 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Wednesday Oct 22, 2008
MyPicks U.S. Election update 2
myPicks U.S. Election update
myPicks U.S. Election 2008 is getting more users every day - as you can see on the chart to the right. 

We have been adding new features steadily. I don't mean just additional poll questions or trivia questions. Here is a list of features that we added recently:
  • Included a Rest of the World graphic to indicate the preference for Presidential Candidate from users outside the U.S.A
  • Comments included by users in "Voice Your Opinion" are also tweeted. Follow @mypicksus on Twitter to see the stream of comments
  • The application is now available on MySpace. So, you can login to your MySpace account and run the application. The poll data is aggregated across both Facebook and MySpace.

What strikes me is the similarity in the data in the myPicks application and the CNN Web Site. I have included the two electoral charts below.

Electoral Map Poll Data from the myPicks application
Electoral Map Poll Data from CNN.com

Posted at 03:36PM Oct 22, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Friday Oct 10, 2008
SOA Symposium, Amsterdam
SOA Symposium, Amsterdam
I was in Amsterdam earlier this week (pictured at the Van Gogh Museum to the left) to
give two talks at the 1st International SOA Symposium.

I was invited by the organizers to give a talk on SOA and Java EE (on account of the book that I have co-authored on this topic). I responded that I would really like to talk about SOA, Web 2.0 and building Social Applications. They asked me to give both talks.

The conference itself was well organized. It was held at the Amsterdam Arena (home to Amsterdam's AJAX football team). They had secured the whole stadium (pictured to the right) for the event over the two days. The stadium can seat 75,000 people. There were 500 people at the event. So, we occupied a part one section of the stadium! Nevertheless, the audience that attended were well informed and asked deep, probing questions.

A few things about the city of Amsterdam struck me:
  • The beauty of the city - with its canals and ancient architecture
  • The availability of public transport to travel around comfortably and easily (I never had to use a taxi!)
  • The fact that a lot of people travel by bicycle. There are separate bike lanes, auto lanes and tram lanes everywhere I looked!
  • The prevalence of smoking (I guess I am just not used to seeing so many people smoking in public!)
  • Admiration for people. They don't have much by way of natural resources - so their entire economy is based on their resourcefulness, ingenuity and engineering skills. Netherlands is home to two of the top 10 companies in the world - Shell and ING
Posted at 05:47AM Oct 10, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Thursday Oct 09, 2008
myPicks U.S. Election 2008 update
myPicks U.S. Election 2008 update
Word about myPicks U.S. Election 2008 is getting out and more and more people are sharing their opinions on the various campaign issues in the U.S. Presidential election. Given how polarized the two candidates are, this is not surprising at all. It is good to see folks getting excited about it. We have also received some good reviews:

We are constantly enhancing the application (and fixing any issues). After we launched a week ago, we have added new features in response to feedback we have received. For instance, when you enter data for "What do your friends think", you can now include a comment that gets sent to the friend(s) along with the notification.

There are a few more features that we are working on which are quite cool. I don't want to "pre-announce" them here. I will be writing on the application's wall when these features get added. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, if you do have comments and feedback on the application, feel free to post them either as a comment to this blog, or on the discussion forum for the game or on zembly's getsatisfacton forum.
Posted at 04:08PM Oct 09, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Thursday Oct 02, 2008
myPicks U.S. Election 2008
myPicks U.S. Election 2008

   Close on the heels of myPicks Beijing 2008, the zembly team has developed a game around a topic that is on all of our minds - the 2008 U.S. Presidential election.
 
   This application is also powered by zembly and built by Pramati. This time we wanted to develop the game for both Facebook and MySpace users. A unique characteristic of the game is that it aggregates the data from both Facebook and MySpace users and displays this data at each location. This compelling game lets you voice your opinion on the Presidential campaigns and on the issues being debated by the candidates. You can invite your friends to participate in the poll by guessing their views on the various issues, and giving them the opportunity to agree, disagree and comment on the issues themselves.

In addition to the polls and discussion around the campaign issues, users can also participate in a game. You score points just by participating in the polls. There is also a Presidential Trivia that lets you answer questions on past U.S. Presidents. You can even donate points to your friends or seek donations from them.

Use the widget to the left to see how the candidates are faring in each state and then click on the Play button to be taken to the landing page for the game. From here you can navigate to either your Facebook or MySpace profile.

Posted at 02:44PM Oct 02, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[3] Add to Technorati Favorites

Monday Sep 29, 2008
Web2.0 Expo NY
Web2.0 Expo NY

 

Robin Wilensky and I at the zembly boothI was at Web 2.0 Expo New York from September 15th through the 19th.

Sun was a gold sponsor and we had a decent booth right near the entrance. I have posted a blog entry on zembly.com on zembly's success at the show.

I gave a BOF on the Anatomy of a Highly Scalable Facebook Application on Wednesday night.

Given that I was the only person from the zembly team that made it to the East Coast, I could not attend too many sessions. I was ably assisted by an SE from the NY area, Robin Wilensky. Even though I had submitted an abstract for the Web2Open unconference, I did not have the time to present there! I did, however, attend the keynote sessions.

On the first day, Fred Wilson opened proceedings by walking us through a history of New York's Web industry. "We live in the public" was his chant. It was good trip down the memory lane. Fred certainly provided us some keen insights. Things, however, went downhill from there. There were a series of speakers who spoke about general stuff. "Listen to your customers," one speaker said! "Technology changes, people don't," another speaker said.

The second day began with a keynote by Tim O'Reilly. To a large extent it was a reprise of his keynote at the San Francisco event. He continued to exhort people to:

  • Work on stuff that matter
  • Create more value than you capture
  • Build technology that makes the world a better place

As he did in San Francisco, he concluded with the recital of the poem, "The Man Watching".

Clay Shirky gave an interesting talk on the Information Overload that is facing all of us. The video for this talk is available. If you want to be entertained, I would recommend viewing it.

On the final day, Tim O'Reilly interviewed Ariana Huffington. The funniest line was when she called Sarah Palin a Trojan Moose.

 

Posted at 05:06PM Sep 29, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Monday Aug 25, 2008
myPicks Beijing concludes
myPicks Beijing concludes
The 2008 Summer Games had a spectacular Closing Ceremony in Beijing last night. It has been said that these were the most memorable Summer Games since they were reborn in Athens in 1896. The Games were remarkable not just in how the athletes participated (43 new world records and 132 new Olympic records were set), but in how technology was used. NBCOlympics.com, supported by more than 160 SunFire X4450 and SunFire X4150 servers, allowed delivery of digital content to viewers including live streaming of events, video archives of completed events, blogs and more. More information on the use of Sun technology to drive the site can be found here. I am told that NBC Universal had set themselves a goal of 1b page views. A quick check reveals that they either met or exceeded this goal.

These were also the first "Social Network Olympics" or "Web 2.0 Olympics" - with athletes having blogs and pages that fans could interact with, leave comments, etc. I have included a few sample blogs below (nothing like hearing directly from the athletes!):
Many athletes also have Facebook fan pages:
This brings me to the myPicks Beijing application. With the conclusion of the Summer Games, we will be shutting down the application in a week. The data will be viewable for another week, until August 31st.

I finished in third place in the Individual Leaderboard. Not bad - considering that I went with the crowd in many events by selecting from the Favorites tab. As can be seen in the Game Summary, the Gold Medal was won from among the athletes in the Favorites tab 82% of the time. Congratulations to Victor Guido of Venezuela for securing the top spot.
 
The best compliments that we have received for the game came from the players of the game. Here is a sampling of what was said in the myPicks Beijing discussion board:
  • "We are all WINNERS and have done absolutely marvelous at this Olympic prediction game :D. Will be missing this application for the next 4 years and I hope Sun would reintroduce this awesome game for the 2012 Olympics!", Maya in Malaysia
  • "The game was excellent", Victor in Venezuela
  • "I just love to take part on games like this. Thanks a lot, I had great fun.", Robin Blikle in Germany
  • "This game was the best experience I've lived, because I played with people of other countries similar to the true Olympic games", Carlos in Columbia
I had mentioned in an earlier post that I will talk about the strategies we used to scale the game to allow 300,000 users to make predictions simultaneously. This document is being worked on. I will post a link to it as soon as it is completed.

I have included a few Screenshots below: myPicks Beijing Game Summary
myPicks Beijing Leaderboard
myPicks Beijing MyStats
Posted at 02:31PM Aug 25, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Tuesday Aug 12, 2008
myPicks Beijing Update 2
myPicks Beijing Update 2
It was good to see myPicks Beijing is listed as a "Top" Facebook Application alongside Scrabble, Causes and Word Challenge on the allaboutfacebook blog.

My Stats on myPicksBeijingMany folks are asking me how I am near the top of the leaderboard. The first question I am asked if this is "rigged" :) The trick is to make predictions for more events. You will see that my accuracy is just 26%!

Of course, I do research on the various sports in the Olympics before I make my picks. The picks close 1 hr before the event for me - just as for everyone else :)

I thought I will share some of  the resources that I use:

   * Greco-Roman wrestling
   * Weightlifting
   * Judo

to name a few ...

I certainly look forward to seeing more of you playing along. Do provide feeback (either as comments on this blog or on the discussion board in the game).


You can go here to start playing the game.
Posted at 11:52AM Aug 12, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Thursday Aug 07, 2008
myPicks Beijing Update
myPicks Beijing update
The myPicks Beijing Facebook game is spreading. More and more people are joining and making their predictions. It will become exciting as the events complete and we start seeing people score points.

By now, you have all seen the official press release. There have been a few blogs on this as well:
The widget that I included in my previous post is now available in Widgetbox and Clearspring. Feel free to use it from here for your own blog.

I have made my picks for the available events. Make yours too.
Posted at 05:59PM Aug 07, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Wednesday Aug 06, 2008
myPicks Beijing 2008
myPicks Beijing 2008




Over the last few weeks, the zembly team has been working closely with Pramati Technologies to build a compelling game for the upcoming 2008 Summer Games in Beijing.

This is a Facebook game called "myPicks Beijing 2008"
  • The game allows people to predict winners in the 2008 Summer Games
  • When a user signs in they identify themselves with a country.
  • If your predictions are accurate, you win points.
  • All points they accumulate are also credited to their country.
  • You can view the leaderboards of countries, individuals. See how your friends are doing. See how your fellow countrymen are doing.
Use the widget on the left to get some quick stats on the number of people playing the game for a particular country. The widget then takes you to a page that explains the game and then allows you to go to the location in Facebook where you can play the game.

Over the course of the the next few weeks, I expect to provide more information here on how we built the game - including the strategies that we used to scale the game to allow 300,000 users to play simultaneously.

Let the Games Begin!



Posted at 06:25AM Aug 06, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[1] Add to Technorati Favorites

Wednesday Jul 16, 2008
zembly at OSCON
zembly at OSCON OSCON 2008

I am giving a zembly talk at OSCON 2008 in Portland on Monday, July 21st in the Open Mobile Exchange track.

Given the success that we have seen for iPhone applications, people should be quite excited about building mashups for the iPhone on zembly.

I will post an entry later on my experience at OSCON.
Posted at 05:31PM Jul 16, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Friday Jul 11, 2008
zembly update
zembly update
There have been more postings on zembly since my last update. Here is the list:
Do check zembly out and provide us your feedback either via the forum or via the customer service portal.
Posted at 12:19AM Jul 11, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[2] Add to Technorati Favorites

Thursday Jun 12, 2008
zembly external posts
zembly external posts
If you are here to get an invitation to use zembly, the invitation widget is in my previous blog entry.

It has almost been a week since we launched zembly. Several  bloggers have picked it up and written about it. There are more in the pipeline. In this entry I list the external posts that have written about zembly in the last few days.
Posted at 10:58PM Jun 12, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[0] Add to Technorati Favorites

Friday Jun 06, 2008
zembly
zembly
I can finally lift the veil off the product that I have been working on with an exceptionally talented team for over a year. zembly launched  today for private Beta (this means that you need an invitation to join the Beta). You can provide your email address in the widget at the bottom of this post and receive an invitation key. Hurry, we have a limited set of invitations that we are giving out in the first round.

zembly is the world's first collaborative environment specifically designed for creating social applications. The paradigm shift / leap forward that I mentioned in my previous post is realized with zembly.

zembly allows users to collaboratively build, publish, and host Facebook apps, OpenSocial apps, Meebo apps, iPhone applications, widgets, Google gadgets, and other social applications on the Web, all from the convenience of a browser. Thus, nontechnical users can compose mashups and other social and situational applications out of widgets and RESTful-style web services, all built by using lightweight technologies and composed right from the browser.

Instead of the edit-compile-debug-deploy cycle that has been used for the last 40+ years for application development, with zembly the new paradigm is edit-publish-use. There is no develop-deploy cycle to speak of, because the code is live, in the same way that wiki content is live and can be immediately edited by merely clicking an “edit” link. If there is a bug in your application, simply click the button and the updated code is immediately live.

In other words, zembly makes it possible for people building social applications to employ the same behavior they are using today to edit blogs and wikis.

zembly also makes it possible for people to quickly and easily connect with other developers, participate in an ecosystem of reusable services and code, and create powerful applications without the headache of having to make the underlying furnishings work. That is, the application will transparently deploy and scale across a highly available and scalable infrastructure.

Once you get an account, I would encourage you take the product tour.  This will help get you familarized before you start building viral Social Applications with zembly.
Posted at 12:00PM Jun 06, 2008 by Prakash Narayan in Sun  |  Comments[5] Add to Technorati Favorites