Usability of Kaspersky support site

I had to visit the Kaspersky support and I was totally lost. I dint know where to go from there cos I was using one of those midget laptops (I now hate those things) but its equally bad on a normal 15" wide screen. Here's a screenshot of the page.



Guess where the links to the next page(s) are! Give it a though, there is no mouse over animation except for the pointer indicating its a link.

The link is actually the "Home Products" and "Corporate Products" text. Yes, only the text, not the image, not even the dark band behind the text, ONLY THE TEXT. Go check it out urself -> http://support.kaspersky.com/. And its this way on Chrome & IE. Didnt check FF or the others. The text look more like a header than a link.

This is a classic example of bad usability as its on the support page which leaves the customer totally lost. I was (and I'm a paying customer). Were you??? Let me know.

Americanised Ramayan

From a forward I got. Really hilarious :)

---------------------------------------------

" So, like this dude had, like, a big cool kingdom and people liked him. But, like, his step-mom, or something, was kind of a bitch, and she forced her husband to, like, send this cool-dude, he was Ram, to some national forest or something.... Since he was going, for like, something like more than 10 years or so.... he decided to get his wife and his bro along... you know...so that they could all chill out together. But Dude, the forest was reeeeal scary shit... really man...they had monkeys and devil s and shit like that. But this dude, Ram, kicked with darts and bows and arrows... so it was fine.

But then some bad gangsta boys, some jerk called Ravan, picks up his babe (Sita) and lures her away to his hood. And boy, was our man, and also his bro, Laxman, pissed... all the gods were with him... So anyways, you don't mess with gods. So, Ram, and his bro get an army of monkeys... Dude, don't ask me how they trained the damn monkeys... just go along with me, ok...

So, Ram, Lax and their monkeys whip this gangsta's ass in his own hood... Anyways, by this time, their time's up in the forest... and anyways... it gets kinda boring, you know... no TV or malls or shit like that. So,they decided to hitch a ride back home.... and when the people realize that our dude, his bro and the wife are back home...they thought, well, you know, at least they deserve something nice...and they didn't have any bars or clubs in those days... so they couldn't take them out for a drink, so they, like, decided to smoke and shit... and since they also had some lamps, they lit the lamps
also....so it was pretty cooool... you know with all those fireworks.... Really, they even had some local band play along with the fireworks... and you know, what, dude, that was the very first, no kidding.., that was the very first music-synchronized fireworks... you know, like the 4th of July stuff, but just, more cooler and stuff, you know. And, so dude, that was how, like, this festival started."


---------------------------------------------

4. Position of a number in a sorted array

4. How many comparisons are required to find the position of a number in a sorted array.

Answer: Using binary search it would require O(log n) comparisons.

find the k largest or smallest numbers from a set of n numbers

3. How do you find the k largest or smallest numbers from a set of n numbers

Solution:

Build a min/max heap of size K from the available set.

Time complexity: n Log K

Reverse a string

This is one of my favourite and has several correct solutions.

2. Reverse a string.

The best way would be to loop through half of the sting and swap the characters at either end (without using an extra variable!)

A data-structure brain teaser for the day.

Hey guys,

Well I intend to put up a data structure related puzzle, problem, brain-teaser; whatever you wish to call it everyday from today. This is to keep my dedicated at keeping my skills sharp as I recently discovered that I'm faltering big time. So I shall shart off with a few basic old timer problems and then move on to more tricky problems. I shall provide a solution along with the problem and you can better it and enlighten me. So here goes.

1. How do you find loops in a single link list.

Tortise and Hair solution:
Use two pointers and move the first pointer at double the speed of the seconnd, ie, jump the first pointer by two two nodes while the second pointer moves one node at a time. If at any time the two point at the same node, there's a loop in the link list. If you reach the end of the list, there are no loops in the list.

I'm happy that I started this and hope to stick to my plan for a very long time.

Images from shotgun & proto.in

Well for those who dont follow me on twitter (www.twitter.com/gsunil), I along with a couple of friends from work took part in a competition called shotgun startups. The challenge was to come up with a winning idea and build a working prototype all under 48 hours. We came 2nd and I really do think the team that came 1st deserved it. Here are the pics and links from both shotgun startup and the talks at proto.in.

Just a few points I wanted to mention rather than write a big post
1. Great experience participating, even greater experience winning, but I do believe everyone deserved to win for their work. Marketing/Presentation is where we won I guess.
2. Organization could have been quite a lot better for the shotgun item.
3. Met amazing pple and worth all the effort.


Working our asses off, I'm not kidding, our asses were all tired n asleep quite soon.


The bean bags that could have saved our asses.


Me presenting, with Rohan & Pradeep hiding (hidden) behind the podium.


Rohan and Pradeep doing their part, the actual demo which got us the 2nd place.


Tool to compute the cloud computing cost based on your requirements.


The winning team explaining their design of this really innovative lamp. Deserved to be on top.


Blackberry like service for a normal mobile. Alerts you when you get a mail.


Audience vote.


View from stage.


Leaving our foot print behind.

Fog blankets bangalore

Early to bed, very early to rise and caught a wonderful sight




Above: View from my balcony
Below: Caught while walking my dog











The view really makes me miss ooty & kodai, places I used to visit very often as a kid. A visit is overdue I guess.

This is a treat after 2 hard days spent working on shotgun.proto.in where team phoenix (my team) were 2nd. Slept quite early (before 11, don remember when I last did that.......high school may be) as we havent been sleeping much during the event.

These pics were taken around 6:30 AM on 25th, January 09