Putting tech to use

I am happy happy happy and the below ramayana explains why! My trip to "land of bolstered ego people" is assured (for some time to come). .

How many of you use any kind of online calendar as a reminder service. I have never used one and was feeling that I needed one these days. Since Google Calendar released not so long ago, I was thinking of giving it a shot. Now, the problem with any online reminder service is that the reminder is usually a pop-up or an email or in the case of yahoo even an IM window. But all these modes of reminding requires you to be in front of your comp which doesn't necessarily have to be the case.

With this as my problem statement I went around looking for a solution. The reminder service that is most personal and almost always accessible is your mobile. So, if you can get your online calendar to send you reminder messages on your mobile, you are set! You then don't need to go for a PDA or a smart phone, any phone capable of receiving SMS will do.

With a hack here and a tweak there I have gotten google notifications to come to my mobile! This currently works only with airtel mobiles but it works.. it works.. it works. . Big Thanks to Sadu and Dimpy at office in helping me waste the whole of today to get this working. .

Hey can this be dugg??

Disclaimer: From here on is the way to actually do it, for the interested.

Detailed Steps:
1. Add a reminder in google calendar in the primary email address.
2. Go to google calendar and enable email notification.
3. Add a filter in gmail to filter these notifications into a different label, auto-archive it and also forward it to your secondary email address.
4. Now login to your secondary gmail id and enable pop3. If necessary apply a filter to auto label these mails, helps in easy delete.
5 Go to a reasonably recent linux distribution(I am using Ubuntu Dapper Drake), and install the following:
a) perl: Also the perl modules Getopt::Compact, MIME::Lite, Text::Table, Text::Aligner {This can be furthur optimized}
b) mailx : For simple text only mail sending {To send the mail to the mobile}
c) getmail : To receive pop3 emails from your secondary gmail id. The reason we need a secondary email id coz the conf file for getmail(under ~/.getmail) needs the password mentioned.
6. Write a script that:
a) Calls getmail to get your mail from secondary server
b) Calls a perl script that can parse the "inbox" file which stores the "popped" mails and picks up lines starting with the "Title:" and "Time:" and save them into a file.
c) After parsing is completed, used mail command to send this file from your machine to the free airtel email-to-sms gateway, for karnataka its 91(your mobile)@airtelkk.com
7. Now, finally add this script to your crontab to fire every 5 or 10 minutes.

Voila: You are now ready to receive notifications to your mobile phone from Google Calendar

If anyone is interested and is ready to setup a system with the above prerequisites, mail me and I will send you all the stuff needed to setup the system and all the support to get this thingy working.

p.s: No, just forwarding the notification mail from primary gmail id to 91(your mobile)@airtelkk.com does not work!! Ofcourse I tried that....

Categorized As:

• Tech
• Google

Thank You!

This journey took some 6+ months and we have now reached this milestone I once doubted we would ever reach. This is my 100th post!

When I started on Sankranthi day early this year, I was looking for someway to amuse myself. Never did I think this amusement would last this long or transform itself into a more serious vehicle of expression. The initial excitement lasted some 3-4 posts and I soon realized that I was writing more for whoever was reading rather than me. Then a friend of mine, Baligs, mentioned that I should write what I want to write, when I want to write, how I want to write. Coming from a non-blogger it made a lot of sense, I think he was lucky in making sense.

From then on, I blogged when I wanted to blog. It was no longer a chore and was something I wanted to do, something I looked forward to. There were ups and downs though. Sometimes office work resulted in my absence from blogging and sometimes personal commitments. But 6 months on, I think I am a more mature blogger now and think I have the confidence to express myself and not necessarily what my readership wants to read. This has been the single most important learning from the whole blogging experience.

This is as good a time as any to thank all the readers of my blog, For reading what I had to say, giving me feedback, for not giving feedback.

Thank you again....

Categorized As:

• Blogging

Movie Review: Lady In The Water

I haven't missed any of Manoj Night Shyamalan's movies to day and no amount of review would have scared me away from his latest creation either. One thing that was known about "Lady In The Water" was that it did not have the "expected" twist in the story. This was a bit of a surprise and a possible spoilsport. We nonetheless took the chance and advance booked tickets for Saturday.

The movie starts with the very boring life of an apartment upkeep superintendent. The residents have some oddity or the other and the introduction is quick and no time is wasted. He is appraised of someone fooling around in the pool after swimming hours and decides to catch the perpetrator. In one of his usual rounds he does find somebody in the pool and in the process slips and falls into the pool. Next he finds himself in his bed with this "lady", a narf, watching over him. She gives him some hint of how she is from the blue world. He then conveniently finds a chinese lady who stays in the same apartment complex, who seems to remember a story her grandmother told her in more vivid detail than believable. Anywayz, our hero slowly but steadily figures out everything to know about the "lady in the water". She is here to find a writer and the hero helps find this writer, who is played by Shyamalan himself! Usually he has kept himself to a couple of scenes in his earlier movies, but here, he over does his exposure a bit.

The story from now on is to get "Story", name of the narf, back to wherever she came from. Her path to her world is blocked by a rouge scrunt which does not follow the rules of the blue world and earth. The guardians of these laws are tartutics, who are supposed to born out of evil. For some reason, these law keepers don't seem to stop the scrunt. To help the narf get back, our hero finds a healer, a guild, the sister pact, the interpreter etc etc. At this point, I am sure most of you who have seen the movie would be confused to the reason for existence of these characters. Trust me, I cannot clear this confusion and I doubt if watching the movie will either. So, I trust y'all to watch the movie and decide for yourself.

The movie as usual has got the Shyamalan touch to story telling and cinematography. It has enough scares and shrill sound effects, but not enough. The biggest disappointment has been the story. The story unveils itself in flashes, as the hero seems to somehow figure out why and how everything and everybody is connected. The humour is sometimes misplaced and kills the little suspense the director has managed to conjure up. Overall, the movie is an attempt to make a kiddish story appealing to adults and it fails somewhat in the process. Definitely the most disappointing of all of Shyamalans filsm films. I still give it a rating of 6.5/10, the extra 0.5 was for Manoj Night Shyamalan who dares to say a different story each time, "Lady In The Water" included.

Categorized As:

• Movie
• Review

New FM

Nope... nothing to do with Mr.P.Chidambaram.

Bangalore has a new FM station, Radio One [Freq: 94.3]. This is probably the reason why Radio Mirchi is moving from 93.3 to 98.3 from August 1st. Wonder which media group is behind Radio One?

Categorized As:

• Timepass

Reality Check

Woke up today morning to read the horrific news of the murder of a BPO staffer, Tanya Banerjee from Bangalore. This news immediately revived memories of the ghastly murder of another BPO staffer, Ms. Pratibha Murthy, late last year. It didnt take long for the usual course of events, with newspapers questioning the safety and security in Bangalore and again questioning the social responsibilities of the BPO firms to ensure the safety of their staffers.

I have been receiving mails about such incidents and also been seeing media reports. Though these incidents are disturbing and does leave us feeling vulnerable, don't you all think we are trying to live a dream by hoping for the best that life can offer today(in India) and also the level of security that was associated with Bangalore some 15 years ago? Take the incident that happened yesterday, the media report clearly states that she had a clandestine lifestyle and chose to ignore the security setup put forth by her employer, Aviva. If anyone puts themselves in a position where they could get killed and then gets killed, is the city to be blamed? I believe she would have got killed in any city! I can chose for arguments sake the other metros of India and pummel their security setup by describing the crimes that happen there. But then, that ain't the point!!

I am not claiming that Bangalore is the safest place around, but just that its like any other place in Urban India. The police staff need to tighten up and be strengthened. The employers need to continue to maintain and improve their security setup. But above all, the people need to be cautious in their choice of lifestyle!

Categorized As:

• Bangalore

Fighting M$

I use WinXP and don't have any unbearable problems with it(fingers crossed). I am very much interested in seeing alternate solutions for everything. The alternative is always cheaper and comes with a huge coolness quotient. :-) This the probably one of the most important reasons (other than the performance) for Linux to be as popular as it is today.

Coming to Micro$oft, though WinXP brings in money and the delayed Vista will probably be just as much a money making machine, the real milking cow is the Office product suite. Do they make money on it or what! Even a Linux fan will have to agree that the Office Suite is very good and OpenOffice though a good substitute is still only a substitute. So, it was obvious for anyone who wants to dent M$ will attack this market. The biggies like google, oracle, sun and also a host of Web2.0 companies are targeting this growing market space!

There are two clear leaders in this market. One is Zoho and other is Writely. There is also the JotSpot service which presents the same online stuff in wiki format. Google has tried its bit at eating into the M$ pie. It started the mail service, the chat service, the spreadsheet service etc etc. They have seen this as the possible opportunity to hurt M$ where it hurts and they have bought Writely.

Though this online document editing and simultaneous editing etc. are good features, would the enterprises(where the money lies) really want to keep their sensitive data with a 3rd party? This is the biggest problem with these kinda solutions and this probably could be solved with some high level NDA/SLA's. This again points to whether Web2.0 apps will ever penetrate the real market or forever stay a consumer fad.

Categorized As:

• Tech
• Web2.0

Buy-Sell-Merge...

I don't understand business, not even the tech kind. But since it has an impact on my day to day life and more so on my job I keep tabs on it and remain confused!

For e.g. Nortel and Lucent decide to merge. Now, these are two huge corportations and the resulting company is gonna be one massive player. Yes, this is what all would expect. But what turns out is very very different. The day the deal was decided, both their stocks fell and Alcatels went up. Now, if the "street" thinks its such a bad deal then why did the big honchos of the company go for it? As this was happening or maybe slightly earlier, Lucent decided to buy Riverstone. Now, as nice a company as Riverstone is(they pay very well), their products didnt have the market penetration and were going to file for bankruptcy. But here comes the already bleeding Lucent to buy it over and pay quite a fortune for it! Why?


The latest buyout doing the rounds is the AMD-ATI deal for 5.5B. Now, I have an AMD at my home and in my laptop, and I have integrated graphics from ATI on both. I like both these companies, but cant make sense of how this deal will help either. With Intel concentrating on multimedia apps, AMDs forte was/is gaming. The gamers go for dedicated graphics cards from ATI and nVidia and there is no clear winner. But with this deal going through, anyone who has bought nVidia or likes nVidia can forget about AMD integrating well with it. Why would AMD want to alienate its bread-and-butter community? I am a believer that no matter how much the small fish(startups) moves, its the big fish that makes waves. If buying a graphics card company made economic sense, wouldnt Intel have already thought of it and lapped up ATI or nVidia?

Sometimes all the business sense in the world does not translate to common sense as understand by mere mortal techies. The world of business, the more clarity you seek, the more murkier it gets?

Categorized As:

• Tech

Destabilization Catalysts

The umbrella organization Al-Qaeda has now managed to get an outfit or more working for it in almost every country. Call it Lashkar-e-Toiba or SIMI in India, Islamic Jehad in Uzbekistan or Moroccon Islamic Combatant Group in Morocco or Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in Libya etc. But what they also count on is local destabilization factors. For e.g. we have Shiv Sena in Maharashtra.

As it stands, Mumbai is a favourite of terrorists when it comes to bomb blasts. I wonder if any other major city in the world which is not involved in any civil war or any across the border conflicts has got bombed as badly as Mumbai over the last 15 years! Now, Mumbai does deserve a lot of the anger thrown at it, but not bomb blasts! When the cosmopolitan melting pot that is Mumbai is trained into believing itself to be narrow minded, what results are communal riots and general disagreements over the smallest of issues. For e.g. "Somebody" supposedly vandalised Meenatai(Bal Thakareys late wife) statue. As a result, Shiv Sena ended up vandalising the rest of Mumbai! This kind of ideology polarizes thoughts and that forms for a intolerant society. This intolerance when mixed with heady religious justifications results in the terrorist groups getting help and support within the country! Now, the reports of our defence establishments being infiltrated by militants is serious but is less dangerous than the common man helping these forces.

If the terrorist organizations are spreading terror, they are doing so using the catalyst effect that many mainstream right-wing parties inadvertently cause!

Categorized As:

• Currentaffairs
• Politics

The resurgence...

After Pulella Gopichand reached dizzying heights in the world of badminton and then had a very quick fall from the top, I had lost touch or interest in Indian Badminiton. To be fair to Gopichand, he fell off the top not because he played bad, but because he failed to adapt. This was when the IBF moved to 7 point games and the Indian shuttler never got off the blocks fast enough. This rule did not last long and badminton has now moved to 21 points game like Table Tennis and has also taken from T.T the winning of points on others serve. This was done to make the game more TV friendly and also faster.

I was watching Thomas Cup on TV the other day and saw two shuttlers Chetan Anand and Anup Sridhar in action against the fancied Denmark. Peter Gade(Ranked 3) beat Chetan Anand and Kenneth Johanssen beat Anup Sridhar. But to my surprise, both the matches were unexpectedly well fought and entertaining. Chetan is ranked a decent 23rd in the world and is still pretty young(25). Lets see how far he goes...

A resurgence in mens badminton and Saina Nehawal doing her bit would mean a lot to Indian Badminton and Indian Sport.

Categorized As:

• Sports

All in the family

If the world were a family, Bush would be the father, Blair would be the mother(Britons generally give that girlie feeling) and Israel would be their brat child. Now, what would parents do when their kids go around fighting with the neighbour(Lebanon) or neighbour's kid(Hizbollah)? First they would try to reason with the child to stop the fighting. In this case, they realize that the child is going to be in a bad mood for many days to come and its better to shout at the neighbour rather than their child. Ofcourse the Bush-Blair kid and their neighbour's kid study in the same school(Middle east) and the matter is brought up in the PTA i.e. Parent Teachers Association(G8 Summit). The Principal(Kofi Annan) wants this problem to be solved so that he can move on to topics more close to heart(Many African nations in turmoil). He therefore wants the Bush-Blair kid to stop the fighting and he wants the neighbour's kid to also stop the fighting and in the process get the accolades for having stopped the fight before he retires(Annan is due to retire soon).

Since the PTA has still not come to a consensus on what needs to be done, the angry parents have a chat about the situation and being as dumb as they are, the whole world now knows what the really think about the Principal, the PTA, the neighbour, the neighbour's kid and their kid.

Categorized As:

• currentaffairs

Movie Review: Superman Returns

After a long time I hit the movies this weekend, went to have a look at the man who got the concept of underwear all wrong. It was a longish movie and it didn't necessarily get through like a breeze.

The hero has got such an uncanny resemblance to the predecessor, Christopher Reeve. The heroine is a little too skinny and I happen to see her on one of the red carpet shows on TV today and she is even thinner than in the movie! The movie has the usual faster that the bullet, lifts heavy stuff, blows away fire, burns through rock with eyes, see through opaque etc. in good dosage. The story is humongo boring with most of the movie tending towards the heroine fight against infidelity. Kevin Spacey as the only superman villain worth his salt, Lex Luthor, has done a great job as expected. He has a bunch of goons helping him and a lass to boot. The only reason we need to bother about the goons is Kal Penn, he is an American of Indian origin trying to make it big in Hollywood. I think he is next only to Naveen Andrews among the actors with some desi connection in Hollywood.

The movie starts off with Superman coming back from his long vacation and taking up his old job. He finds that his flame, Lois Lane is not married, but has a kid and a full-time boyfriend. Lois Lane still has the hots for Superman and most of the story revolves around fighting this attraction. While Superman is busy romancing and saving the odd person from death, Lex Luthor is out of jail and is back to his evil ways. His idea is to use the kryptonite crystals that forms the basis for land mass and more to create a new land mass and sell it to the world leaders, as land is always at a premium. He also manages to somehow figure out that some meteor that fell in ethiopia is actually the green crystal from Superman home planet which is fatal to Superman. Superman is still too busy romancing his lost love and does not see this impeding problem. Again, in a very loosely explained way, Lois Lane ends up with her son on the boat that is actually going to be used by Lex Luthor for his big plan. Superman and boyfriend comes to the rescue and save the lady and son, the boyfriend can fly a plane and also has a plane (ain't that convenient)! In the process, Lois comes to know(didn't she know already??) that the son is actually Superman's. Superman tries to fight Lex on this new landmass created, but since the land mass is created using both the white and green crystals, Superman is helpless and gets his ass kicked. The now escaped Lois lane convinces her boyfriend to turn the plane around to save superman (All of 200+ pounds) who is surprisingly stopped from drowning and in fact saved by Lois Lane(100 pounds or lesser). Anywayz, after being saved, Superman attacks Lex again, and this time he somehow manages to not lose his strength around this land mass. Now, its not explained how he manages this and I guess we are not expected to question either. Lex again escapes(of course we cannot end this franchise) and Superman ends up being in coma in some hospital.

Now at the end of all this, Superman does not die, Lex Luthor does not die, Lois Lane still has the hots for superman, the boyfriend is still around, the child does not know that his father is superman, and all in all, nothing has changed! So, yes, the end was kinda meaningless! Overall, the movie had good special effects, but we come to expect that these days. There is not much of acting to be done, so that is also okayish. I think this movie is a 6.3/10 and could only be lesser.

The next movie I am looking forward to is "The Devil Wears Prada", my friend Baligs suggests that it is a good movie. So, waiting for that to release...

Categorized As:

• movie
• review

Our Leaders!

The Mumbai blasts will not fade away for some time to come and left to the politicians they will have it reverberate in our minds as long as needed. Minutes after the blast happened, Advani who was in the middle of a speech somewhere, changes the course of his speech. He was on a "repair BJP image" mode of speech and the skilled orator that he is, changed to pointing fingers at the Congress for lenient policy! The was followed by the BJP starting a nationwide campaign with BJP leaders visiting all corners of the country and showcasing the irresponsibility of the government. Hey BJP, how about helping Mumbai get back on its feet before you go lamblasting the government?? Seeing this obvious politicisation of the incident, Congress squarely attacks the insensitivity of the BJP and shows its concern by having the PM visit Mumbai. But surprise surprise, the entire route that the PM took was covered with posters of "Welcome PM" mixed with "Mumbai is resilient" slogans. Hey Congress, Isnt this politicising?? With the two heavyweights going at it, the jokers by the side had to make some noise! Mr. Mulayam Singh desperately needs the minority vote in his state and finds this as the best possible time to swing into action. He first tells that SIMI has nothing to do with the blasts and is not a terrorist organisation. He then withdraws (or plans to) all cases that the state of UP has on SIMI. Hey Mulayam, still have a heart in there... somewhere??

I think if the state of India has to effectively fight this terrorism, it needs a martyr of political value. Something like what Indira Gandhis death did to Khalistan terrorists or what Rajiv Gandhis death did to the LTTE!

Categorized As:

• currentaffairs

A Change Of Heart

I resent the high handed attitude that mumbai in general represents. I have had many an argument with friends from mumbai on this topic. Actually I feel the same about all metros. I feel that for the amount of special funds that metros get, they dont give back enough to the country. Along the same lines, I resent the way the TV media forces a certain opinion on any situation or problem with biased, inaccurate or insufficient reporting.

The last couple of days I have had a change of heart on both of the above! The TV media has been continuously harping on the "Mumbai Spirit" and how it was going to bounce back no matter what. To be frank, the interviews that I saw on TV on the day of the blasts, now made famous as 7/11, were far from spirited. But there was this piece which was quite different:

Reporter: Aap ko kaisa lag raha hai blasts ke baad?
Person: Bahut bura laga. Mein khud 12 bodies ko nikala hoon. Mumbai mein aise jeena mushkil hai. (almost in tears)
Reporter: (To the camera), The common man has come to the rescue of mumbai again even before the administration. Mumbai again shows its resolve amidst adversity.
Reporter: (Back to the person) Kal se aap phir se trains mein jayenge? Kaam pe jayenge?
Person: (Hears the earlier praise of mumbai spirit) Haan! Zaroor jayenge. Dukh hotha hai yeh sab dekhke, lekin Mumbai kisi ke liye rukega nahin!

For the first time I saw the hopeful reporting of NDTV actually lift the spirits of a person! If it did that to one person, how many mumbaikars would have a spruced up spirit after constant reminders to their undying spirit! Mumbai needs to stand up... for itself, and more so for the country. India has always been seen as a weak state when it comes to being threatened, as proved in Kandahar. But times have changed and so has India!!

Categorized As:

• CurrentAffairs

Quote Of The Day

"California is a fine place to live - if you happen to be an orange." - Fred Allen

Categorized As:

• timepass

Sacrificial Lambs ... HUMANS!

13 yrs and 4 months later the financial heart of India is attacked AGAIN!! 7 blasts in all and of course they were planned. The usual suspects are LeT, ISI and Dawood. I thought we had our toll of blasts for a few days to come when we had serial blasts in Srinagar today, but looks like it was just a precursor to the real terror planned!

The terror networks have always tried to sensationalize any such attack and hence they seem to believe in serial blasts, 9/11, 7/7 and now these! As the world leaders supposedly unite (while playing their respective political cards) against the terror groups, the terror groups also seem to be uniting against anyone and everyone. And right now, I think the terror groups are doing a better job!


As sad this event is, its also very very enraging! The helplessness of the Indian public against such attacks is appalling. A few months back there was one bomb blast in Bangalore and even then I felt this rage taking over.

We can't wield guns! We can't expect the terrorists to stop! We can't trust the administration to prevent! We can't trust the police to protect! What are we to do?

Categorized As:

• politics

Quote Of The Day

Zidane retires after delivering the two best directed headers of his career, One stopped by Buffon and the other by Materazzi!

Categorized As:

• sports

A first...

This wimbledon, A man wins the Ladies singles title!!!

Categorized As:

• timepass

Look and Feel Change

I have got a few requests to change the very geeky and very xterm like black and white look of the blog as its not very pleasing to the eyes. I have been on the lookout for a while, but unfortunately its kinda difficult to find a good template. So, I have fallen back on one of the better templates that blogger itself has put out.

Lemme know what you think....

Categorized As:

• blogcustomize

The month that was...

It has been a month and some of very engrossing football and its finally coming to an end. I believe this world cup has made the biggest dent into the cricket following in India. Now, if the broadcasters were to take the cue and start popularising the sport by bringing the copa america and african nations cup along with the euro circuit, we definitely have a winner.

Here are some useless but nonetheless arguable titles this world cup(my take).

Best Forward: Henry & Klose
Gonna Be: Podolski & Robinho
Best Midfielder: Zidane
Gonna Be: Van Persie & Christiano Ronaldo
Best Defender: Cannavaro
Gonna Be: Zambrotta
Best Goalkeeper: Buffon
Gonna Be: Ricardo

Best Match: Italy vs Germany
Honourable Mention: Brazil vs France, Ivory Coast vs Netherlands
Worst Match: Ukraine vs Switzerland
Biggest Pop: Podolski
Biggest Dud: Ronaldinho
Most Ineffective: Pauleta

My Dream Team: (4-4-2)
1. Buffon
2. Cannavaro
3. Zambrotta
4. Thuram
5. Lahm
6. Zidane
7. Robben
8. Christiano Ronaldo
9. Ballack
10. Henry
11. Klose

Substitutes: Ricardo(G), Mertesacker(D), Ayala(D), Van Persie(M), Essien(M), Podolski(F), Robinho(F)
Coach: Marcelo Lippi

Though the World Cup has more or less progressed as expected(at least for me), I have to admit that I feel very much for 3 teams, Brazil, Argentina and Germany. Two south american teams let down by pedestrian coaches and one let down by lack of experience. I have not supported Germany all this cup and now predict that the next world cup belongs to Germany!

As Africa awaits us... our longing over the next 4 years starts.

Categorized As:

• sports

Power Of Google

I have used only 2 search engines in all my Internet life. I started way way back with Altavista and switched to google during its very earliest of beta days at stanford. Googles webcrawling helps people find the weirdest of information from every corner of the internet. Looks like all this webcrawling actually helps people land up at the right corner, my blog!

Somebody wanted the great Sunita Menons prediction on who will win the Portugal vs Germany 3rd place match on Saturday. The search on google by this person was "who will win portugal germany sunita menon". Guess what the first hit was??

Now, I am sure not many football fans would want to think that Page 3 celebrity Sunita Menon can predict the outcome of the very intense world cup matches while filing her finger nails! But this person sure wanted to know and if you have such crazy questions then google will point you to the craziest of sites.

Categorized As:

• general
• google

Killing The "Golden Egg" Hen

There are rumours afloat that J K Rowling is going to kill the character of Harry Potter in the next edition of the Harry Potter Series. Now why would she do something as stupid as that??

Why is this stupid you ask? Well, this lady has not been anywhere near success till this Harry Potter thing hit it big. Somehow she has touched the right chord among the kids and hence she has got as far as the 7th book! Also, the films have helped her no end in selling more of her books. She now is getting greedy and hence wants more publicity. She tells she is going to kill two characters and her publishers start the rumour that Harry Potter could be one of the casualties. Either way, I would be very very surprised if she manages another book worth a mention after the Harry Potter series. Its like Dan Brown has written lotsa books, but that does not mean that everyone of them is as interesting a read as "The Da Vinci Code"!

As my friend Rishi would say, "Ms. Rowling doing a modern day Kalidasa", cutting the branch on which he sat.

Categorized As:

• timepass

Hardwork=Success

I upload all my photos at riya and have chosen it for 4 main reasons.
1. Ability to keep photos private
2. No disk usage limitations
3. Nice photo presentation(I dont really use their tagging funda much)
4. Its geeky.

Now, their ceo, Munjal Shah has a blog and he writes the happenings and directions at riya and some of them are very compelling reading. For e.g. he has a write up on the excitement, pressure, hardwork and sweet taste of success before riya went live and also strategic change (typical startup) within weeks after launch. He has split it up into 6 sections and they form some very compelling reading. He is taking for ever to come up with the 6th episode, hence posting the first 5. Read them at leisure.

Episode 1: March 21 6am PST to March 28 6am
Episode 2: March 28th 6am to April 4th
Episode 3: April 4th to April 11
Episode 4: April 11 to April 23
Episode 5: April 24 to May 15th


Now, though all this sounds nice, I am kinda screwed, since photo upload is no longer going to be riyas main business case, means, sites like flickr will forge ahead with new plans and ideas(on photo upload and sharing) and I will eventually have to make a move to one of them from riya.

Categorized As:

• web2.0

Surprise Suprise

We have the World Cup semi finalists lined up and there are surprises galore!
The Winners
1. Germany - Today they may look good, but they were never expected to do this well
2. Italy - Always a solid team, but this time they were woefully out of form
3. Portugal - No one and I mean no one expected them to get this far!
4. France - An ageing teams calls back players out of retirement and guess what...

The Losers
1. Argentina - One the most in form team and errors by coach causes their exit
2. Ukraine - hmmm....
3. England - Seeded high alright, but they just didnt click as a team.
4. Brazil - what?? out of the world cup? You must be kidding me!!

But I need to take some time off to gloat here... please let me indulge myself.

I did say that Portugal was my most favorite team and more importantly I did say that Brazil would not win the world cup. People who have talked to me know that I keep praising the Italian defence and that no team will ever get an easy goal against them, and if the Azzuris manage tto score one, they can soak all the pressure for as long as you want. Only the german performance has surprised me. With Ballack injured and Kahn not playing I didnt think Germans had anybody to go back to. I could not have been more wrong...

I will get back with my take on the semis, but now that I seem to be on a roll with the predictions, I think I'll take my time.

Categorized As:

• sports