10 things to choose from in Hyderabad

One quality inherent to a Hyderabadi is the relaxed way in which they do things. And this is reflected in the way the city functions. Sneha Kakodkar lists down 10 things that visitors can do at their own pace.

Rockitecture

Hyderabad is known for its beautiful architecture but little is known about the natural rock formations of granite dating back to prehistoric times that are found here. So if you are an early riser, head to Durgam Cheruvu near Jubilee Hills. The pristine lake and the rock formations make a wonderful early morning sight. Carry your binoculars along because the intriguing rock formations and water body also catch the eye of the early birds. These hillocks are also popular for rock-climbing and trekking hosted by various clubs like Great Hyderabad adventure club.

The Veiled Rebecca

What's a visit to a city without the glimpse of its museum? The Salar Jung museum houses the largest private collections of the Nizam era. Travel through time and experience the exquisite art pieces that the royalty lived with.

The Veiled Rebecca is an icon of innocence and purity that Giovanni Benzioni skilfully created in 1886. It is believed that Benzioni made four copies of the statue and one among them is in the this museum. Rebecca is the bride of Isaac according to the Hebrew Bible and the statue of marble is crafted in such a way that the veil almost gives a silk like effect along with the breathtaking transparency achieved in stone by the artist.

View from the top

Every great city needs its proud civic phallus, which offers a great view and some entertainment. More often than not, these places have either great architecture combined with a panoramic view or they end up being tourist monstrosities. Hyderabadis have found their own version of a scenic lookout near Birla Planetarium. The place offers a great view of the Hussain Sagar lake along with the city skyline. It's one of the few spots in the city where the thought of relaxation would come naturally.

Food halt

If you have wondered the reasons why Hyderabad is so mellow, it is because of its gastronomic delights. To experience this state of nirvana, one has to try the dum ki biryani and khurbani ka meetha. It's deliciousness has a lot to with the spices and meat. Try them in the old city area or one of the newer joints opened up in swankier parts of the city. No matter where you eat it, the food never disappoints. Try Madina Hotel orHyderabad House.

Buy pearls

Although Hyderabad doesn't have any kind of pearl culturing within its precinct, it houses the largest variety of pearls from the famous coasts of Japan, Australia, Sri Lanka and China. Historically, the Nizam's jewellers had gained and honed the skill of threading the pearls together in a string without damaging the quality. This skill has passed on from one generation to another and today they are famously known as Hyderabad pearls. Patterghatti area houses the city's oldest and the most experienced goldsmiths with their treasure troves of pearls from around the globe. A pearl souvenir is for keepsake and makes for an everlasting memorabilia.

Jumme raat ki bazaar

This is the ideal flea market in a historic city with antiques sold at throwaway prices. Jumme raat ki bazaar means a Thursday night market. It combines antiquity with the best bargains and offers a pleasant concoction of the old world charm. You can buy anything from watches to original paintings to silverware and you wouldn't regret owning a part of a past. Although the market is traditionally a night bazaar, the jumme raat ki bazaar is more of a name than timing, so to get hold of a few antiquities, one has to be an early riser to get to the market by 5am. The bazaar is open till mid-afternoon.

Taramati Baradari

Taramati Baradari has a history of being a traveller's resting house for the kingdom of Golconda in the early 1500 AD. But the fables about the romance between the seventh ruler of the Qutub Shah dynasty and his infamous courtesan Taramati are the stories that are told in the well-honed acoustics of the building that make it more fascinating. The building historically has changed from a guest house to a courtesan's palace to the present venue for most sought-after musical concerts and dance performances. This building also houses a guest house and a restaurant.

Rickshaw ride around the Charminar

If you want the entire Hyderabadi culture in a package at once, a visit to the Charminar is a must. With its haphazard streets, the glitz and the glamour of street-shopping and the everlasting Charminar, the place is buzzing with activity. One of the best ways to explore this is by hiring a cycle-rickshaw to take you around the streets. The slow pace of the rickshaw will let you indulge the sights and smells of the good ?ol Hyderabad. You could also walk around Charminar but the streets are almost always a battleground for the oncoming traffic, pedestrians, and hawkers.

Walk around the lake

Hussain Sagar lake is one of the most prominent features of the city and with its wide trees that away in the breeze, the lake has become one of the most popular public spaces in Hyderabad. The spot with its surrounding greenery give visitors a break from the chaotic skyline of skyscrapers. The necklace road makes an ideal space for a quick timeout.

The attar and the surma

Add a touch of true Deccan flavour to the list of souvenirs and take home one of these exquisite glass and silver bottles of attar and surma. Traditionally, attars are homemade perfumes worn before the prayers. There are so many varieties available that it is hard to choose. The surma or kohl is made in such a way that it soothes and enhances the eyes. The price for these bottles depends on their quality but it's usually within one's budget.

Which is better Activa or Aviator?

Activa and Aviator both come from the same production house, i.e. Honda, which is a reputed name in the Indian automobile market as of today.
There is little to choose between the two gearless vehicles. Activa has been in the market for around five years now and Aviator has been recently introduced to the Indian market.Both the vehicles are priced around Rs 52000(hyderabad on-road 'please check').
In terms of looks, the Aviator scores above the Activa by a large margin. Be sure to set heads turning when you zip past the streets on the Aviator. Activa though has better power and torque compared to the Aviator. Moreover the seating in the Aviator is a bit high so short women might have to stretch their toes a little bit extra.
In terms of handling there is nothing to differentiate between the two. Activa has a 6 litre fuel tank and Aviator has an added capacity of 0.7 litres. Another important factor in the Aviator is that the sizes of the two tyres varies and hence they cannot be interchangeable. But this helps makes it more feasible for long distance rides.
The aviator is provided with a superior braking system with disc brakes and also telescopic braking system. Mileages of both scooters are comparable. They vary from unit to unit depending on the maintenance and on average are found to be within 40-48 kms/ltr.

MY VERDICT: Go for the Aviator depending on your preferences(engine). But if you want to be on the safer side and want full value for your money then bring home the Activa.

Cloud Computing and ECM, 5 things you need to...

Cloud-based enterprise content management (CECM) is still a toddler in the mature world of the legacy big boys, walking around without much stability but tons of potential. The future is bright for this one.
Naturally, there are still way more questions than answers with CECM, and I wanted to share with you some of the most common things that I deal with when discussing it in and around LincDoc. I'm also a daily end user of a ton of cloud systems, so I have addressed these concerns for internal projects, as well.
1. Security. You must have a detailed understanding of both your cloud and internal security models. For example, how do you currently manage groups and users? How do you handle files and secure access to information? Straight up migrating to a new system might not be a good fit for your security model, so understand whether you should explore things like "single sign on," for example. You should also consider things like forced SSL, which makes users establish a secure, encrypted connection for any sites you would access.

2. Cost. This is a pro and a con, since the cost to enter a cloud solution is almost always a fraction of going with an on-premise ECM solution. Most customers I speak with could convert entirely from a legacy ECM system into the cloud for less than one year of basic maintenance on existing systems. Some of the other costs to consider are conversion, end user training, and the ongoing subscription that you will be incurring to use a CECM system.

3. Reliability. In light of the recent Amazon outage, making sure your system has a redundancy plan and that you maintain local backups of information is crucial. But Amazon's stumble is a great lesson. For example, at LincWare we use Box.net and maintain synced local copies of all business critical files and documents. So even if we cannot access the cloud, we still have local data to use. Remember, even a guarantee of 99.9% uptime per month means 40 minutes of downtime in a given month. I suspect that 40 minutes is substantially lower than the planned and unplanned downtime for on-premise ECM systems, especially when you consider the general downtime of employees simply not using your software and any hardware problems. So yes, it still helps to speak to your provider about their infrastructure; and don't let them blow that off as if every data center in the world is protected by a phalanx of trigger-happy Decepticons. While rare today, the potential for data loss still exists.

4. Access to information. A critical question to ask your provider is "who owns the information?” If the answer is anyone but YOU, go on red alert. A real world example of this: your administrator forgets his password to a CECM account and thus, is locked out on a Saturday evening. His being home on a Saturday night crying about a computer system password aside, without vendor intervention, he might be locked out until Monday. Or, maybe you get sued for something and have to produce data from your cloud ECM account but can't retrieve the information. Can you work with your vendor to reproduce information if required? Present this scenario to your vendor. Leave out the Saturday night part. And give up on Internet dating.

5. Conversion of existing systems. The age of cloud computing and CECM is finally here and a lot of the people I talk with are looking to convert from their 199X, Windows 95 systems to something more modern. The workforce is changing as tablet devices and mobile tech alter both how and where people work. To accommodate these changes, converting to the cloud makes a lot of sense, allowing you to add it to your infrastructure where it fits. Some vendors, like Box.net, provide a bridge that connects systems like SharePoint and Documentum to the cloud—a blended approach to help with the conversion.