Sudeep D'Souza

I just went through process of getting a Freelance Permit and the visa to accompany that and I had to go through a few twists and turns as I learned about the process and accomplished getting my new visa. I did my freelance permit through Sajeev ( sajeev@fmaaudit.com  contact number +971 55 694 2016) at FMA Accounting & Auditing ( https://www.fmaaudit.com/ ) and they in turn used Al Baraka Typing Center to assist with the Immigration formalities. The whole process was done through RAKEZ ( https://rakez.com/en/ ) and almost all of the process was done online without the need to visit their office. It was smooth, logical and straightforward.  One of the limitations of the freelance permit is you cannot open a corporate bank account and you do not get any office space. If these 2 are not needed for those working from home in a gig economy this type of visa is perfect.  The total cost came to about AED 19,000 for a 2 year freelance permit + one visa for 2 years (including...

It is getting harder for freshers to break into the software industry and land a good job especially if you are from a tier 2 or 3 colleges. So what can you do. The answer to this is very simple – the industry is looking for people who can do a task that is given to them – when you join the industry the key is to be able to “write code” as that is what you will be hired as a fresher to do. Let us say you go for a training you should ask yourself at the end of it – can I write code and if the answer is NO – then you will find it extremely hard to get a job in the software industry. The key is to get a computer and get comfortable with it. The more you work on the computer the more comfortable you will get at it. So go for the training and come back to your PC and you need to work hard at it writing programs – what programs? – You may ask and the answer is simple – any program that will teach you the concept that you learnt. You can find these programs to code at these locations ...

I logged into my online account on Axis Bank today and this is what I found They have come up with a new security initiative for doing bank to bank transfers and the user has to pay for it. They do not even give you the option of doing the transaction without using the enhanced security. If you don't use their new security mechanism then you cannot use the bank to bank transfer feature. I am just amazed at how the banks find new and innovative ways to make money. Also the online transfer on Axis Bank is generally bad. They take ages to transfer money from one bank to another and also the user interface seems to be stuck in the 17th century.

All the jargon around the credit crisis has had my head spinning over the last 4 months or so and then I watched this video which explains in plain English and very nice graphics what the crisis really is. After watching this video you get to understand why the huge bailouts that the US Government is giving is just not working. I'll let the video do the rest of the talking. Crisis of credit visualized - Part 1   Crisis of credit visualized - Part 2  

If you ever wanted to know what offices look like around the world, visit  Office Snapshots  which gives you a peek into some of these offices. Its a nice site that gives you an idea of the diverse range of offices that exist out there from the "kewl" offices of Ogilvy to the drab offices of craigslist.org  . Then there are the usual ones like Yahoo, Microsoft and Google that we all know about. Anyway take a look and let me know what you think is the kewlest office out there.

The Olympics is over and I guess the dust is slowly settling on the euphoria surrounding the so called stupendous show India put on this time (1 to 3 medals is a 200% improvement). I just found out that IBM gave Ideapad laptops and video cameras to some of the athletes and got them to cover the Olympics with pictures, blogs, tweets, etc. IBM them aggregated all of those entries in a website called Voices of the Olympic Games . Be sure to visit it and get an insiders view of the olympics. Abhinav Bindra is one of the atheletes who is part of this initiative and you can read his blog by visiting http://abhinavbindra.blogspot.com . Rajyavardhan Rathore is the other Indian athelete who is part of this program http://chillyrathore.blogspot.com/ .

I came across this article on Engadget that talks of a 50 Megapixel camera from Hasselblad that costs something in the region of 37 K USD (Pricing is not yet released). Which got me thinking about why would anyone need such a high resolution camera when a 4 Megapixel camera can print a hoarding that is 12 feet X 9 feet. (Source : The Megapixel Myth ). Anyone that is planning to buy a digital camera or thinking to upgrade one that they already have should read the megapixel myth .

Dear readers, Thank you for posting questions that you would like to ask me. I will try and answer them as and when there are 2 or more questions. Please continue using the skribit widget to interact with me and I would love to hear from you. What is your most challenging aspect of blogging ? My most challenging aspect of blogging is trying to find content that would engage my readers and that I enjoy writing about. Informational articles tend to do very well and are always among the top 10 articles on my blog. But it is not always easy to write informational articles as there is only so much information that you can give that is not already there online. I usually try writing informational articles from what happens in my real life that I think others can benefit from but then it is not everyday that I do something new and exciting to write about. So that's where my challenge lies in generating blog content. The upside to this is that it forces me to do new things in life so th...

Jyoti Amge is the world's smallest girl at 15 years she is 1 feet 11 inches tall and weighs just 11 pounds. Caught this on twitter a few minutes ago - so twitter is really not too bad but you have to wade through the junk messages that do come in it.

I was driving the other day and I noticed this truck filled with sand in front of me and a couple of things caught my eye. The spelling of power "break" (should have been brake) and I thought to myself if this guy even nicks my car I will for sure be broken - so it is quite appropriate. Notice the guy sleeping on top and relaxing - this is a moving truck and he looks like he is sun bathing on top Well thats India for you - you never know what you are going to see next. So when in India always keep your eyes open and your camera shutter off :).

For the next two weeks life is going to be a bit too busy to post everyday - the reason being that ourspace.in is having its annual christmas sale and I am helping out there. I am sorry about this and I thank all my regular readers for coming back each day and checking if there is something new that I have posted. Please use the new features that I have added to the blog and that is to be notified by email or subscribe to the RSS feed. That way you don't have to come everyday to the website. In case you have any queries in using either of these features do let me know by mailing me at sudeep.dsouza (at) gmail.com. I thank all the readers who come to my blog for giving me an average viewership that is out of the single digits for a complete month now. This is for the first time I have achieved this since I started writin my blog almost 3 years ago.

I know it has been a long time since I have posted anything on my blog. But there was a lot happening in my life on the work front and I was trying out a lot of the blogger features moving back and forth between a lot of websites. Anyway I think I have now settled on this website address http://sudeepdsouza.blogspot.com and I hope to start blogging again. Thanks to all the readers who kept coming back to check my posts and I hope to have something for you'll to read soon.

Setting up a off-shore development center seems to be the latest buzz word for a lot of companies around the world. The reasons they do it for is varied and many. The cost factor is not the only reason. Some reasons why one might choose to set up an off-shore development center are To tap into the local talent pool that may not be present in the on-site location. To make use of the time difference between the time of the on-site and the off-site locations. To spread the risk of having a single development center. To be able to scale with quality man power. What ever the reasons might be the most important thing to do once the decision is made to start a off-shore development center is to identify the person that would be able to run operations. This person should ideally be from the location where the center is being set up. Why do I think it should be this way? Well, I hope to illustrate in the rest of this article as to why I think it should be this way. A person who is local would b...

Due to the blocking of the website http://sudeepivan.blogspot.com I have been forced to move to a new location http://www.ourspace.in/sudeepblog . Moving there was pretty straight forward - I already had the website http://www.ourspace.in which is a baby clothes shopping site being developed by my wife hosted at http://www.domaing8.com . All I had to do is create a subdomain there for sudeepblog and then come to http://www.blogger.com and change the publishing information to publish into the subdomain. The only part where some thought had to be put into was that once you create the subdomain - domaing8 does not create the subfolder automatically you have to do it yourself. One issue that I am facing is that I am not able to view some of the images from my new website. I am not sure what the problem is - so if anyone out there reads this post and knows why I can't see some of my messages do let me know.

I have been able to post articles in Blogspot by going to http://www.blogger.com but then I can't view any of my articles at http://sudeepivan.blogspot.com . I have tried this on two service providers Tata Indicom and Airtel and both give me absolutely the same behaviour. The ISPs have blocked access to blogspot (all the blogs on it) where users cannot view any blogs due to anti national elements posting articles as blogs (just a few blogs - 13 of them is what i understand) but then it has not stopped them from posting on the blogs by allowing access to http://www.blogger.com so that the rest of the world can read the articles. All I think this is doing is showing how technically inefficient we are when we are trying to show the world that we can develop and manage their software systems however complex they are. Its time we pull up those responsible for this chirade and sort out all of this before we become the laughing stock of the world.

Sorry about not putting up anything for so long but there was and is a lot happening in my life that has prevented me from putting up anything meaningful. For those of you that do read my blog I will be back soon with some new articles of some of my good and not so good experiences of late so stay tuned in.

A lovely moonlit night from my house. 

Today turned out to be quite a significant day in my life for three reasons. First of all there are two people out in the world that read my blog and posted comments. A big thank you to them and I will try and reply to your mails as soon as I get some time. When people post comments it has a ripple effect - it motivates me to keep writing and it also gives me new topics to write about. So all you people out there who happen to read my blog do keep your comments flowing in. Secondly my blog introduced me to another person who happens to be in Hyderabad and have exactly the same name as me - yes he also goes by the name Sudeep D'Souza. Well, its quite wonderful to know that in this world of over 6 billion people there can be someone who has the same first name and last name as yours and also live in the same city. And the third reason is that I got myself into google . Feels pretty good to get listed there although I know it is pretty far fetched that someone would type in "sude...