The following tips, which apply both to attendees and the chair of the meeting, will help minimise the chances that you'll be similarly aggravated.

1: Determine whether the meeting really is necessary

Does the meeting really need to occur? Do multiple people really need to interact with each other? Reducing the number of attendees saves time for everyone, both those in the meeting (because it probably will end sooner) and for those not attending (because they can do other things).

If the meeting involves a review of documents, status reports, or other material, sending them to attendees prior to the meeting saves time and might even make the meeting unnecessary.

2: Be punctual

Have you ever been on time for a meeting and found that only about three-fourths of the attendees were present? Did the meeting leader say, "Well, let's wait a few minutes for more people to arrive"? Think about the message that action sends. You, the person who showed up on time, are being penalised for doing so. The people who are late, conversely, are being told that their lateness has no consequences. How likely is it that you will be punctual to the next meeting this leader holds?

I've heard of companies that remove all extra chairs from the room once the meeting starts, forcing latecomers to stand. While that technique may be extreme, it does reflect the idea that peoples' time should be respected.

In the same way, if you're going to be late, try to let the meeting chair know in advance. Simply showing up late might send a message to the other attendees that to you, the meeting is unimportant.

If you're the chair, try to end the meeting on time. Attendees have other commitments, and keeping them late is unfair to them and to the others with whom they have commitments. A friend blogged about how she hinted about the late running of a meeting, which was supposed to end at noon: Her stomach growled audibly at12:05.

3: Be wary of recapping for latecomers

On a related note, be careful about recapping a meeting for latecomers. By doing so, you are in effect starting the meeting over.

4: Be prepared

Did you receive background material prior to the meeting? Reviewing it and being prepared with comments saves time for everyone. You might even spot something that could make the meeting unnecessary. If you have questions about the material, consider e-mailing them to the author or to the other attendees in advance, so they have time to think about what you've asked.

5: Have an objective

Author and consultant Stephen Covey counsels readers and clients to "Begin with the end in mind." When planning a meeting, therefore, ask yourself "What do I want to see as a result of this meeting?" Put another way, ask yourself (as a famous politician and U.S. president did), whether, at the end of the meeting, you and the attendees will be better off than you were at the beginning.

If you have no objective and no purpose, why meet at all?

6: Publicise the agenda

Having and distributing an agenda prior to a meeting alerts attendees to the nature of that meeting. Attendees who believe a particular item should be added or removed have an opportunity to discuss that issue with the meeting chair.

7: Be clear about responsibilities

In your agenda and in conversations beforehand, be clear about your expectations for the attendees. Regarding a particular topic, are you looking for a short update, a discussion, or a formal presentation? Being clear about expectations leads to efficiency and avoids embarrassment.

8: Address important things first

Dr. Covey uses a demonstration involving sand and a collection of medium-size and large rocks. He challenges audience members to place all of them into a pail, so that there"s no overflowing of sand and the rocks all stay below the top of the pail. After many people fail, Dr. Covey shows them how to do it: He puts in the large rocks, then the smaller rocks, then pours in the sand. Those who fail do so because they reverse this sequence.

In your meetings, as in other aspects of your life and work, try to address the most important issues first. Get them out of the way, so that if you do run out of time, all you have left are the less important things.

9: Avoid being distracted by side issues

It's easy, during a meeting, to be distracted by side issues. If that happens, you risk losing control of your agenda and the meeting itself. Is the issue one that really needs to be addressed right now? Does it need to be resolved to continue the meeting? If not, consider "parking" it. Section off part of a flipchart page or whiteboard, write the issue inside, then continue the meeting. Afterward, document the issue, as well as any others that have similarly been parked.

If the issue really does need to be addressed immediately, you have a difficult decision to make. Among your current attendees, do you have the necessary people -- and only those people needed to resolve the issue? If so, and this issue is important, you may have to take time to address it with the other attendees. If you lack the necessary people, you might have to defer the issue. In that case, try to proceed with other agenda items you can resolve.

10: Document your meeting

Within a day or two after the meeting, distribute minutes so people have a record of it. Make sure that the minutes list the specific people assigned to specific tasks. Without minutes of a meeting, questions will arise as to who said what and who committed to what. Follow-up actions from the meeting might happen more slowly,
if they happen at all.

Twelve months ago there were many questions about the remaining relevance of Sun and possibly who would end up owning the company. Now though, the M in LAMP is Sun"s. CEO Jonathan Schwartz said that it puts his company at "the centre of the global Web economy". Facebook, Google and Nokia are among the big names that already use MySQL.

Not to be left out, IBM decided to part with $5 billion for Cognos.

Amongst all this, KDE4 appeared sporting a new look and a paint job. The old joke about it taking forever to compile KDE on Gentoo holds more water than ever -- it makes GNOME feel like a set of binaries in comparison. Flame on, C++ and C freaks.

Have a look into this also.

IE platform architect Chris Wilson detailed in an IEBlog post a new third rendering mode in IE8 that will provide enhanced Web page rendering. IE7's two current modes, "Quirks mode" and "Standards mode", will remain as they are now and will be the modes available by default in IE8.

Defending the decision, Wilson said: "In IE7 we made a lot more changes to improve IE's standards compliance, particularly with CSS. We limited these behavior changes to IE's "standards mode" only, and we expected that this would help limit compatibility problems as it had in the past. Unfortunately, and somewhat surprisingly to us, this wasn't true."

Wilson stated that this new meta tag is needed for IE and not Firefox or Safari as "developers of many sites had worked around many of the shortcomings or outright errors in IE6, and now expected IE7 to work just like IE6. [...] In many cases, these sites would have worked better if they had served IE7 the same content and stylesheets they were serving when visited with a non-IE browser."

"Some men see things as they are and ask why?
I dream of things that never were and ask why not?"

- George Bernard Shaw

This is the official launch of my 2^nd blog, the first one being now obsolete. Not exactly, my first blog is now just used to store my personal pics :). This one in fact I'll be trying to totally devote it to TECHNOLOGY!! Anything related to web, media or anything that catches my eye would be here so that I don't have to search it again or even bookmark it!! Interesting how the blog culture has evolved over a period of time. Mind my words 'A period of time' which is at the most 2-3 years. And now it has become a trend in the same way as have become Community sites (like Orkut).

But I kind of like it since it gives me power of Storing!!
Storing web pages + pics + anything available on the web, even my ever increasing bookmarks (which sometimes are not available) this is an immense power. People used to say I've got Mail, then they said I've got Search (mainly Google) and now they say I've got Blog. Simply Amazing, Google already has blog search which searches all the blogs for the required phrase. Just wondering what next in store for us but to put it simply the last two decades have been path breaking and trend setter for this generation.

For a long time I've been in a dilemma and was soul searching the reasons for strating this blog. The two main factors were:

1. Whether it's too late to start it.

2. What would be its content?

Since ages have been thinking about the pros & cons, and after much debate with myself finally came to the conclusion that 'Better Late than Never' and this conclusion was totally drawn by the fact I'm a technology guy and hence got the essence (technology) for the blog too. It never even occurred to me that what if people don't visit it because firstly it's meant for me and then if someone can benefit from it then I've no issues.

Frankly speaking I've got fed up keeping track of important links from mails or bookmarks or even some results from searches, so from now on this would be my Tech Book :).