Monday, September 15, 2008

Microsoft Internship

My interview experience with Microsoft:
  1. Questions asked
  2. Pictures
Here are some more pictures:
  1. Intern Event
  2. Soccer Match, DSP Event, My office (building 34)
I also visited couple of other places during internship:
  1. Canada
  2. Oregon
Overall the experience was awesome. I got an offer at end of internship, but had to refuse it to pursue PhD. My team lead was Bogdan Crivat and my manager was Raman Iyer. Both of them are amazing guys and it was a great learning experience. I contributed a "little" in development of Table Analysis Tool for Cloud. In all, I think it is amazing product. If you haven't tried it, I encourage you to do so (atleast the online version).

Sunday, September 14, 2008

GatorMemo version 3.0 is ready !!!

After I decided to do PhD, I always wanted to improve my study process (especially my notes management system). After several discussions with my internship manager Raman Iyer, my friends Raja Nadar and Kishore Malani, I decided to go ahead with GatorMemo. It is build on principles of SuperMemo (spaced learning) and Mindmaps.

It started out as Windows Form application which resulted in version 2.0. I feel the user interface is too complicated for normal user, so decided to build it again from scratch using WPF instead of WinForms. Functionally, there is no difference between these two versions (except WPF doesnt have facility to play audio/video files. I might add them as soon as I get time to work on it).

Suggestions:
1. Read a book, research paper, or go through lectures/podcast/videos, etc ...
2. Then, create a mindmap after completing understanding the topic. I usually refer to 3 or more books and then organize my thoughts into mindmap. I strongly suggest to put huge amount of efforts to create a good mindmap.
3. Now, create card for each node. Front side of card can be a question about the node or simply node name and Back side can be the answer or description about the topic that the node represents.
4. I recommend adding mnemonics and bibliography to mindmap and cards. Mnemonic will help you recollect the subject matter and Bibliography will be extremely useful if you are planning to write a research paper.
5. Periodically, revise the card by using the Autolearn under Action tab (This software uses SuperMemo algorithm developed by Piotr Woznaik).
6. I also suggest using Lateral Thinking especially if you are planning to write a research papers.

Here is link to setup version 3.0: (I encourage you to to use this version)
http://niketan2.googlepages.com/GatorMemoSetup.msi

You can import following file (see Action tab):
http://niketan2.googlepages.com/OSMindMap.zip to see how s/w works :)

It is still in Beta phase, so expect bugs / exceptions :) ... (Infact I am so busy with my studies/assignments, that I did not time to any kind of corner case testing). Please mail me if you find bugs and help me improve the software.

If you are interested in improving the software, go ahead and download the code and modify it.