One of them Geekettes

Conspiracy and Pronoia

2010-04-16T20:30:00.000+05:30

“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

I really do believe this is true. Well, I should elaborate - I used to believe this at a more magical level... recently, the magical thing around this has gone completely missing for me and I see logical elements of that phenomenon (how sad, right? ;) )

Why do I think this?

Well, okay. To explain that I have to first introduce you to Ms. danah boyd (yep, no caps :)) or zephoria. She is one of the most coolest social media expert around. Or well, at least thats how I've always thought of her and the information she tweets/buzzes about. Lately, I've seen that I see a lot of concepts around education(which is my most relevant to me right now) that seem to be coming from her and a whole bunch of other people I follow/read/watch etc. This sudden increase in the information coming my way reminded me of that quote... the one that says that the world will conspire to make it happen for you. All of this information that I am seeing is so highly relevant to me right now that i feel like there is this healthy conspiracy going to lead me in the right direction (a phenomenon also called Pronoia). So here's my little twist on what Emerson said - once you make a decision, the world of information conspires to make the connections for you and get you closer to your goal. Its not that the entire world has suddenly realized that I needed this information around learning/education and supplying me with it but its just me who is looking at all of this information from the angle that is influenced by my present state of mind. And I think thats really what it is.. and there is really no serendipitous or magical element to it (did i just ruin something for you?)

Well the good news is, if you believe this theory is true then real world also to a large extent makes sense. When you are focused a lot on a certain thing/object/concept you start to see a lot of things in your life that are in some way connected to this desired object. The world isn't especially conspiring, its always been on your side... its just that you've never noticed it :)

Wish there was a similar explanation for Murphy's law though ;)

in a state of confusion

2010-03-06T22:56:00.001+05:30

back of a bus in Andhra Pradesh that an 'artist' used as canvas to display his feelings towards the political leader KCR

a Telangana lover in Hyderabad changes his bike's number to depict that he is in Telangana (as opposed to being in AP)

2010-03-06T12:11:00.001+05:30

Me: Hello
Telemarketer 1: ~pause~ Hello Ma'm
Me: Who is this?
TM1: Hello Ma'm
Me: Yes, tell me. who is this?
TM1: Mam we are calling to offer you a flat in ..
Me: Sorry wait, how did you get my number?
TM1: Mam?
Me: My number, how did you get it?
TM1: Serial wise only I am calling ma'm
Me: Excuse me
TM1: I am calling serial wise.. like 740, 741, 742
Me: Oh so you are randomly calling people and asking them if they want a flat? (in my most non-sarcastic tone)
TM1: *hangs up*
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Me: Hello(this time on my landline number)
TM2: Hello, I'm calling from ING vysya bank, we are offering a home loan..
Me: I'm sorry, who do you need speak to?
TM2: Hello mam'm
Me: Yes, who do you need to speak to, there are four people in this house. Who do you need to speak to?
TM2: Are you a user of this phone?
Me: Yes
TM2: Then I can speak to you
Me: Eh? you don't care if i'm unemployed or employed or a psychotic killer on the prowl.. you'll offer me a home loan nonetheless?
TM2: My management has given me this number and I am calling ma'm
Me: Well you can be assured that we don't need a home loan. Now if you will please be kind enough to take our number off your datab...
TM2: *hangs up*

I think I am on a hat-trick here. If I manage to make one more telemarketer hang up on me I'll take that as a personal victory :)

2010-02-21T13:57:00.000+05:30

Anindyee Dhar

Yadiah

Anindyee Dhar - a student from Pune lost her life at the German bakery blast
Yadiah - a student from Nagarm Andhra pradesh, immolated himself at the OU campus for "Telangana"

Two students. An entire lifetime ahead of them. Charred to death.

One lost her life to the evil plans of a terrorist organization while the other gave up his life for the false hopes and instigations made by selfish politicians. I can't decide which is worse.

We all have enough problems in our life. Enough things that threaten our existence - including terrorism, incurable diseases and natural disasters. Despite all of these, if you think killing yourself is going to achieve something - well then you probably don't deserve that life anyway. You don't respect it enough to so carelessly throw it away.

Its disgusting when media tries to show Yadiah's death as some sort of a sacrifice. If anything, its a sad event that a 19 year old was made to believe that setting himself ablaze was going to make him a martyr.

Idea has been accepted!

2010-02-20T22:15:00.006+05:30

The idea: Create infographics that are street child-friendly. Come up with a scalable/sustainable way to get these infographics to the kids on the street.

We created some initial prototypes based on an iterative user centered design process. The results were encouraging. Based on this we came up with some very basic design principles while designing for street kids. We are working on bringing out more infographics and also creating a space to share these infographics with the urban online population who we plan to leverage on as a resource to get these infographics to the kids on the street.

While we were in the process of developing the idea further, we sent an abstract of our work to IIT Bombay for the DesigningForChildren.net conference. After going through rounds of selection process, the paper was published and we were invited to the conference to present the paper.

That's the short version of what happened in the past 5 months (to an year) :)

One of the most profound learning that I had from attending the conference and presenting was that the idea
had value. When a designer who has been in the field since you were born tells you that he is absolutely
impressed with your idea - your confidence hits roof top!

I also saw that a lot of other designers were also focusing on the visual language and they had some
awesome ideas that will help my own project further.

Thanks to the kids at Thara who let us into their world with open arms :)

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

In case you are interested, the full paper is available here.

The paper presentation is also available online here:

Leveraging The Power Of Participatory Culture For Awareness

View more presentations from mydh.

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A thought that occurred at a traffic signal

An idea that was discussed over phone

A project that we discussed on and off until it finally found a starting point

A project that was brought up in conversations with friends (some got it most didn't - a lot of them had questions that helped me shape it furthermore)

A social experiment that was run and found success

A paper that was accepted by IIT Bombay

A presentation of the idea that some very senior designers absolutely loved

Our project can be defined using any of the statements above or all of them. I will probably never be able to put a count on the number of hours we put behind this thought that happened at a traffic signal. I can definitely not imagine the number of hours we have to put behind it to take it further.

I remember we were talking about it on the morning of my presentation and we realized that this is only one of the many steps to take before we get this project somewhere.. it eased my mind about me - a design n00b, presenting to a whole room of designers. It was one of the first steps to go a long way down.

2010-01-18T22:48:00.000+05:30

The media scene in Andhra Pradesh, especially Hyderabad is any geeky media student's wet dream. The series of 'unfortunate' events in AP is as follows:

2nd September 2009: Helicopter crash of YS Rajasekhar Reddy, the chief minister of CM:
3rd September '09: K Rosiah swears in as the (temp)CM
- Is followed by hue and cry of many many YS Jagan(late CM's son) supporters to make Jagan the CM. Rosiah's appointment as the permanent CM of AP is followed by many a Jagan followers resigning their MLA positions.
- Rest and peace restored until K. Chandrasekhar Rao, former leader of Telangana Rashtra Smithi starts to make some very interesting comments which the media starts to paints a comic color to.

9th December 2009: KCR starts-stops-starts to fast for a separate Telangana state which ends on with a rather 'vague' statement from the central government .
This is followed by 165 MLAs(of 250 MLAs) resigning and expressing their demand for Samaikhyandhra - united Andhra state.

20th December 2009: Lagadapati Rajgopal - an MP and united AP protestor disappears from a Vijayawada hospital.

21st December: L Rajgopal reappears in NIMS - the same hospital in Hyderabad where KCR fasted.

23rd December, 2009: The Central government asks the MLAs consensus is needed before going ahead with the formalities of forming a separate state.

25th December, 2009: Meanwhile, ND Tiwari, the 87 year old governor of Andhra Pradesh is caught in a sex scandal

28th December, 2009: Government accepts ND Tiwari's resignation on 'health grounds' and appoints ESL Narasimhan as AP's governor.

8th January, 2010: Fans of YSR attack Reliance stores in the city based on a news report by a Telugu TV channel that claimed that Ambani plotted the crash.

5 years ago, about the same time now - I picked the topic '20 years of AP's politics' as my topic for presentation at my graduation in Political Science. I would love to be a naive BA student right now, trying to choose between so many exciting diverse topics from AP politics! Alas, the age of innocence and ignorance is long gone.. now it is time to sit in front of TV and watch three knucklehead politicians all talk at the same frikkin time and none of them making any sense anyway.

Dear Firefox,

2010-01-05T19:20:00.001+05:30

If you don't remember my passwords, who will?

2010-01-05T11:59:00.000+05:30

"Design is so simple, that's why it is so complicated"

- Paul Rand

Overheard someone say...

2009-12-19T12:15:00.000+05:30

"Customer service is the new advertising."

Then what was the old advertising? Word-of-mouth, I think. Which in turn was dependent on just the usefulness of the product.

What happened before that, you ask?

Wave Movie madness :)

2009-12-17T12:19:00.000+05:30

I absolutely absoluely love these!

and oh, still have some 18 wave invites, let me know if you need 'em :)

Objectified

2009-11-11T22:46:00.000+05:30

I remember watching the trailer for this one and being all excited. Forgot about it until @vemana reminded me last week about it. It is such a good watch, I can't recommend it enough to all those who are interested in design and design thinking even in the most remotest way.Personally, the overwhelming message seemed... design needs to be subtle. The SVP of design at Apple says how they don't want their users to think about the design of a product as struggles that designers and engineers would have had to go through. Design should just be a calm and considered solution and you should only wonder about how to use it better. Karim Rashid, a designer from NY asks why the shape of the digital camera is the way it is. It takes on the archetype of the film camera. And the film camera looked the way it did because of the film that went into it but we don;t have to stick to that shape in digital. A very valid point. I'd like my digi camera to have a touch screen where I can adjust exposure and focus on things I want too, choose flash etc.. instead of having to move through buttons and knobs :) many many more things that i liked about it.. but maybe later :)

2012

2009-11-01T20:54:00.000+05:30

Ok so the producers of 2012 can stop worrying about marketing their movie in Andhra Pradesh, India. The TV channels here have clearly take it upon themselves to scare the living shit out of people here by constantly showing the low quality trailers of the movie they ripped off of the internet.

Host of the show goes 'the world is going to end in 2102, there will be a tsunami - a bigger one! a wave that will make the entire world go underwater.... but why ? ......details after the break'

because of course listnening to what the advertiser has to say about his latest product that is going to make your skin glow is and has been the purpose of universe. world destruction can wait..

media and its stupid methods of keeping people constantly afraid... 'If swine flu didn't kill you.. 2012 will!.. what is it you say? 2 deaths? every three minutes? in India? TB? yea of course darlin, but that's old news.. we want to give our audience adventure.. spicin' it up you see!"

How I wish, I could slap some sense into the guy who comes on tv everynight trying to tell his viewers a scary story... dude! Halloween's over, cut the act!

beta love

2009-10-25T22:40:00.000+05:30

twitter and facebook decide to make me their beta tester in one day, to what do I owe the privilege... not quite sure

Farishtho ka 'Thara'

2009-09-29T00:04:00.000+05:30

You'd think they'd be a closed group... that they wouldn't let you in. you'd think they wouldn't want to be bothered... that they don't need you you'd even think they are not worth your time... that you are better off spending your time with a friend. But.. They are so open, free-spirited, and full of soul.. every word they utter comes from the heart they need you.. a hand that'll ruffle their hair and an eye that appreciates their little art they will take your sorrows away and bury them in the same place they buried theirs they are the little people with no roots, no family, no home but just a smile sometimes they make you wonder if they're angels.... people call them orphans...

sorry, but...

2009-09-07T22:18:00.000+05:30

Yes, we are sad he's gone.... Yes, we do miss him... but! this is not a kingdom that his son can just take over.

The Hangover learning

2009-07-14T11:28:00.000+05:30

I know I know everyone's been going gaga over this movie and how awesome it is. However, this is not about the movie per se but about my experience while watching it.

So it turns out during Mondays, struck with the blues, women (dare I generalize) tend to make quick (sometimes stupid) decisions (that turn into interesting experiences). (Tell me later, if you read that sentence with/without the parentheses, ok.) After a friend and I decided to go watch The Hangover and reached the theater only 20 minutes after the show started we realized our seats were at two different corners of the hall. We figured we'd make puppy eyes at strangers and manage to get good seats. Turns out the hall was full and the puppy eyes strategy had a flaw (its usually dark in theaters?). And so we ended up sitting in two different corners.

The first half, I spent watching the movie from one corner of the theater that seemed to be occupied mainly by males. The second half, me and the friend decided to swap seats and I ended up sitting on the corner of the theater that was female and couple dominant. So it was easy to distinguish how these two groups react to the same movie. While the guys made discrete signals to each other during a completely A rated scene, women tend to just say 'eww' or 'how stupid.' the couples just giggled. At slapstick comic scenes the former group would just laugh and leave it at that while the later group would say something like 'why don't they just leave the tiger alone!' (oops, did i mention spoiler alert? :D ) or other such 'helpful' comments. (For all you people who are thinking of the G word, no I am not generalizing, I am only putting down what I saw) Also, I saw that I reacted differently to the movie in these different settings too. I realized that I was laughing oh so softly (and almost forbidden-ly) and watched the movie tapered to my side of the wall as far away I could from strange men who seemed to be loving the 'dirty jokes.' While my tolerance levels of the 'dirty jokes' seemed to have gone up when I was watching the movie with a bunch of girls who found the humor to be 'ewww'. Experiences such as these teach you a lot about mob behavior; gender differences in enjoying entertainment - sensible thinking Vs. mindless watching and not to mention decision making on Mondays :P

While you're at it Sibalji

2009-07-08T22:21:00.000+05:30

Our path-breaking Minister of Human Resource Development has taken same 'bold' steps in fixing India's completely out-of-fashion education system. If you haven't already heard, Sibal saab is proposing to do away with the 10th boards and have the 12th board examinations only. Boy, when I look back, 10th was the only period in time of my life that I struggled the Most! Anyway, so if a kid can now have the most grueling 12th year of his or her education instead of the 10th, so be it. Right now, I'm on a different case altogether.

Reservations - a brilliant concept introduced by Dr. Ambedkar that made sure that the upper caste of India gave a better chance to the lower to get even with them. He however forgot to add a footnote that should have read.

"PS: Check back on this rule 25 years later with a committee or whatever you please that will determine how this system has faired. Scarp it once you think it has served its purpose. Basically, folks! plan an exit strategy for the reservation system."

Of course the addition of this footnote was overlooked and consequntially proved fatal and made a lot of Indians angry. For good reasons, may I add. You can tell its a sort of a screwed up system when two students can afford to have the same over-priced education but only one of them gets to go first because of his/her caste. We have got to understand that backward caste is NOT synonymous with poverty, not anymore.

Sibalji, don't you think its high time we took one long hard look at our reservation system and fixed it up. While the concept of reservations is actually pretty darn intelligent it needs its own set of checks that will keep the system healthy. So, I propose that (I'd like you to put your "idealist" hats right about now)

a) Reservation based on the caste system needs to plan its exit strategy. That is to say, the government will announce that in say five years time, reservations in education and government jobs will not be based on caste.
b) Reservations in education: Will be provided to students who can only afford to study in government schools. Someone who can not afford education at a private institution is the only deserving candidate for a reservation. This ratio should vary for students from rural/tribal government schools and urban.
First of all, this is not to say that our government schools suck. Have you seen government schools? They usually come with decent campuses and on rare occasions even decent teachers. The reasoning here is that they provide cheap education. Logic being, I'd prefer cheaper/free education if my family is below the poverty line. So most probably, I can't afford a costly education and therefore will be a good candidate for the state to give a nudge.
c) Reservations in job: is a pretty lame concept. Expecting the state to support you throughout your life time (remember that reservations play up for preference to backward castes during the time of promotions too) is a little too twisted. Enough reason to pronounce it not only useless but malignant.

The above is my opinion limited to reservations based on caste system and I won't go anywhere close to examining the rest of the reservations. Although, I would like to add that reservation for anyone should be an optional privilege. Try asking 'If you are eligible, would you like to be considered for a reservation?' in government application forms.

I hope the idealistic caps you put on before these points, helped you reach this point without raising an eyebrow or dismissing the idea with a pfff. In case you haven't... lets have a conversation! :)

If you thought Mac made the best ads

2009-06-25T15:08:00.000+05:30

think again :D

hindi version

tickle your curiosity?

2009-05-29T22:49:00.000+05:30

If you've read Pygmalion and remember its subtitle - 'a romance in 5 acts' the above will probably make you curious.

This play has an interesting history. Shaw's fifth act has him closing the play with Eliza saying that she doesnt need Mr. Higgins and Higgins laughing at Eliza. As one can guess, Shaw left it to the imagination of the audience to interpret the ending they liked. Eliza could marry Freddy, Eliza could marry Higgins, Eliza could go back to Convent Garden... there are so many possibilities. However, this was not agreeable with the audience back then. They wanted Eliza to marry Mr. Higgins so badly that they pushed Shaw to write a sequel. Of course, Shaw gave them an ending they were better off not hearing.

So, I decided to write a sequel for three reasons:

1) While the play made sense to me, the prequel (for me) didn't fit. It was funny nonetheless :)

2) I didn't like the play ending with Higgins having the last laugh

3) I had to do a project for my class.

The poster you see above is one of my unsuccesful attempts :) As soon as I'm done with the poster and have it all ina presentable format, I'll put it on my site in pdf format for you all to be able to download and read it.

Trends in music

2009-05-24T19:30:00.000+05:30

I wrote about how creativity should be for free in this post a while ago. I know it sounds preposterous (and selfish) to ask artists to distribute their work for free but just hear me out. Over the last few weeks I've been exposed to some very interesting, heart-touching and goosebumpy music experiences over the internet. They are all connected by two things: copyright and creative commons and they brought me back to that short little post I made a while ago. Let me explain to you what these were. Jason Mraz Mr. A-Z, as he is sometimes referred to, is an artist I've been following a long time before he got famous on the mainstream pop scene. I love his music for his brilliant lyrics and of course his guitar. Anyway, a friend of mine passed these virals that Jason Mraz produced on the streets of Paris as a part of promoting his upcoming European tour Its beautiful to see the two musicians (with two completely different histories) to just sit there and play their respective instruments. So what Jason Mraz did was - a live impromptu show on the street, recorded it, enjoyed it thoroughly and put it online. Equals promotion. Some more diggin up led me to La Blogotheque production. Their concept seems pretty interesting to me. Of course not all the videos on their site are giveaways but the fact that some are open to having one of their impromptu jamming sessions be downloaded for free is pretty cool. I mean if you are only jamming on the street and not really "performing" at abig stage or a costly studio, you might as well give it away for free right. The audience will promote you, for you. Check out the other artists they have on their site who've done more such "take-away shows." Sean Fournier and Coldplay

What do these two artists have in common? Well, you might know and even be a huge fan of Coldplay and may not have ever heard of Sean Fournier. Well what they both have in common is awesome music and a free album give away. I found Fournier on thesixtyone.com His track - 'Put the world on stop' was one of the tracks I ended up loving on the site. You can imagine the smile on my face when I found out that he was giving away that album for free. His site here: http://www.sean-fournier.com/ohmy I sent that link to at least 15 of my friends and proudly showed it off on twitter too. Equals Promotion.

After you hear his music and like it which i'm sure you will head over to his twitter handle @seanfournier to tell him about it.

Two days later, I found Coldplay was giving away one of their new live albums for free too - LeftRightLeftRight

"LRLRL has to be free because there's so many backing singers." - Coldplay

Fair enough, don't you think? Well, I guess there's more to that than why they were giving it away for free. Yes, equals promotion.

Imogen heap There was once a time when hers was the only music i had on my mp3 player, my laptop and my ringtones too. Yes, I adore her. So, when I found her on twitter(@imogenheap), I had to follow her immediately. Luckily, the very same day she was trying out a trial on webcasting her performance from her living room.

To listen to one of your favorite artists do an impromtu performance on their piano broadcast live, while you are at your desk, is indescribable.

While Imogen Heap may not have intended this to be a form of promotion, just pure silly pleasure of connecting with her fans, she has convinced me that I should buy myself and a friend tickets to see her show live whenever I have the opportunity to :) Equals promotion

So, as I see it, in case you're not comfortable putting your work under creative commons, giving an album or a free live session of your band jamming once in a while, shouldn't hurt. Thoughts? Update: Sean Fournier talks about this post. Thanks for agreeing with me Sean! :)

Dear Customer care industry of India,

2009-05-24T17:38:00.000+05:30

You have eons to go before you get it right.

Thanks,
A customer.

Democracy is a fun place.

2009-05-19T21:19:00.000+05:30

In the past 8 months I have witnessed two countries going through their election processes. Participated in one and been an observer in the other. Its interesting for me to see how people responded to elections at both these places (US and India) I was in the US on a business trip in October when the US citizens were going through a historical election. I was in San Francisco and (therefore?) the issue of prop 8 was a popular topic of discussion. I indulged in conversations with my Indian friends as well as US colleagues about prop 8 and who they supported. 'My polls' suggested that Obama was surely going to be the President. McCain, apparently was not doing a lot of things right. Basically, whoever I spoke to had a good grasp of what was going on and they knew exactly why they were going to vote someone their president. II, of course, spoke to a very limited set of people (not making up for a good sample size, that is) my colleagues, cab drivers and an 80 year old lady on a plane but each of these people knew what they were talking about. In fact, on the day of results, I was trying to see the news on my mobile(walmarts somehow don't have TVs) and there were these two girls in the same isle who just got to know the results and one of them said to the other "michelle, we won!" they celebrated a little and moved on. The next day at work a lot of my office folk too were celebrating a success or nursing a failure. That is when I realized that Americans took their elections very personally. Meaning, their choosing one political party over the other was a very conscious choice. Fast forward to India, I see a detachment between emotions and the election process. As a kid, I saw my parents vote. However, they never really celebrated the results. The reason was that they had always found themselves voting for the lesser evil. This seems like an obvious reason for the emotional detachment. The other reason, of late, has been the sly alliances that have left the voters feel powerless. It doesn't really matter who we vote, they are going to chose their friends and enemies and therefore they, as opposed to us, are the king makers. Surprisingly however, even this level of maturity in thought process is hard to find. And its a very varied, this set of forward thinkers (who are at all levels of socio, economic and literate population). The reasons for the detachment for the rest of the population with the election process could be found in some of the quotes below (heard directly and indirectly): "I won't vote because I am not interested in politics" "నా చేతిలో వెయ్యి రూపాయలు, ఒక సార బాటిల్ ఎవరు పెడతారో వాళ్ళకే నా వోటు" - Whoever'll give me 1000 rupees and a bottle of alcohol, they'll get my vote. "what for. it's not like my one vote is going to make a difference" Call it learned helplessness or classical conditioning this is a very real problem that India is facing. Only when we can learn to keep our differences of caste, creed, gender and religion aside and see credibility and potential of the candidate we are voting for - meaning, only when we can take our election process personally can we do something about the nation. I have chosen this man to be my leader. Not because he was lesser of the evils but because he has an ideology that makes sense. Its an ideology that the rest of the political parties are afraid of taking up and an ideology that is hard for most Indians to imagine. Their excuse being its "too ideal" #learnedhelplessness. On the day of election results, I sat in front of the tv waiting patiently for them to announce the results for my constituency. Once they did, I celebrated. I felt the high that democracy gives you. I hope every Indian can feel that someday - that ecstatic feeling of being involved. Take your elections personally, your right to vote seriously. And may be, you will :)

Why so many?

2009-05-11T09:23:00.000+05:30

Often, lately, when I am using some of my favorite online tools, i can't help but wonder why so many. I use twitter, reader, posterous, this blog, FB to acquire and disseminate information. These might seem a like a few but there is quite a bit of an overlap and differences in what these can do.

For example, twitter and FB both ask me to update my status (what I'm thinking/doing with an emphasis on right now). But what I choose to post on these two is quite different. No, it's not MPD but its because whatever I say I am doing on twitter is a rather short experience. Fleeting, if you may. An article I am reading through, a thought, a question or an idea. The audience also is a mix of my own friends, acquaintances, people I've never met and random bots. Which means that there is a certain level of privacy that needs to be maintained. On FB on the other hand, my status remains constant for days, sometimes weeks even. I am reluctant to changing it every hour or two simply for the reason that I wouldn't be interested in knowing my friends' status/state of mind every two hours. The audience here is strictly people I know and trust but wouldn't like to bore with mundane details.

Posterous is a really convenient way to post things you find interesting over the net. From articles to videos to pictures to anything found on a webpage. Much similar to services like delicious, digg or tumblr. But how is this different from Reader? Well, while GReader lets me broadcast these interesting things only to my friends, posterous allows me to create a space with all of this info that I find cool, open to everyone. While it might seem like the difference is the audience, a question to ask myself is wouldn't my friends be the first ones to know about my posterous blog. Posterous is also an easy way to keep organize all the interesting stuf I find online in my own space. But then, so is google reader. While posterous raises the the e-junk, eating up the webspace issue, reader doesn't (afaik)

Again, this blog is very similar to posterous and twitter because I end up tweeting about something interesting that I might also choose to post on posterous. The difference however is twitter is a microblogging tool which only needs like 1/10th of my opinion on something.. posterous is an easy way to put things onto a blog when I stumble on something extremely cool at work but I have no time to write down my thoughts on it... and this blog is where I wrote my long winding thoughts without periods and only ellipses...you get the drift.

So, essentially its the same goal, acquiring and distributing information, how we do it may involve more than one tool. However, its important to have a hold on yourself when you find absolutely cool new tool and ask the yourself if you're doing the same thing in a different format.

Other questions to ask ourselves, do I need friendfeed if I have twitter, do I need FB if I have orkut or vice-versa of the above.

when virtual crosses over to real...

2009-05-10T17:21:00.000+05:30

....you say :P pppphhhbbbbttttttt when you have no comeback

Brilliance in simplicity

2009-04-23T14:49:00.000+05:30

Have you ever had an Aha moment from something as simple?

i can feel them... i can feel the voices returning

2009-04-15T17:18:00.000+05:30

@mphaxise: you are a pyschedellic on twitter
@myd: am not :P i am a perfect little boring tweeple

a world of half aware people?

2009-04-06T15:06:00.000+05:30

I know we propogate for a world of aware citizens... what happens when all citizens try and stay aware of everything but are only half-aware about things?... because they can't possibly be aware of every single damn thing in the world.. what happesns then? We fight? or do we arrive at a disagreeing consensus?

Great Product Design

2009-03-16T21:35:00.000+05:30

Body Shop is a company that makes awesome products. What is interesting about their products, apart from the kind of flavors they come up with, is their design. Their products, since they are international and all, have to have a lot of text and not just in English. Instead of putting their product in a box and then have a little instructional paper in it, they make peel over stickersand you can read all instructions in all languages, if you know them, that is. Apart from this, they are an environmental friendly company that produce recycable containers.

Image1: Tea tree oil soap; Image2: cocoa butter moisturizer. I can't find my lipbalm that has similar instructions :\

Sites/apps that made a difference this last year

2008-12-31T13:37:00.000+05:30

So there are some sites I check or look at first thing in the morning everyday... some have been a constant for the past 2 years for obvious reasons. Here are the ones that have become a part of my 'Most Visited' in the past year:

Twitter: this one has been huge.. from a huh? a twi..what? to promoting twitter to friends.. I've come a long way with twitter.

Facebook: was a welcome change from other social networking sites in the beginning... it started to slip into that typical mode and thats when I turned this into my experimental ground :)

Pandora.com: Oh yes.. I love you pandora!

Google Reader: yes yes, I was slightly slow to catch up that way :P

The oines that have stayed on:

Flickr, YouTube, Google mail and calendar

2008-2009

2008-12-30T22:01:00.000+05:30

Everyone seems to be making predictions for next year... so, here's my shot at it (why not right?)

Video is going to continue to be the next big thing for some more time... a little later in the year though.. mobile will start to realize its true potential.

Let me know if you agree or disagree with me :)

iPhone in India.. yea yea finally

2008-08-21T12:06:00.001+05:30

Are we going t'see lines like these tonight? Could someone please go to your nearest airtel store at 12 tonight and take pic for me please :) (i'd do it myself if it wasnt for the curfew :P )

Searcher, collapsible bike by Citizen

2008-08-01T13:20:00.000+05:30

Citizen Bike

Line of the day.

2008-07-30T14:36:00.001+05:30

"If you wanna know what technology is gonna change the world don't pay attention to 13 year old boys, pay attention to young mothers because they haven't not an ounce of support for technology that doesn't materially make their lives better. This is so much important than x-box and a lot less glitzy."

- Clay Shirky

2008-07-28T16:04:00.001+05:30

Click To Play

There will be

2008-07-22T15:42:00.000+05:30

There will be a day when governments across the world will step off power and declare to its people that they are ready to lead themselves and that they need no rules or law. It's not necessarily a world full of saints or peace-seeking hippies. It's simply a world of good-intentioned people. Guns will be put in museums and the notes on making gun powder, bullets and bombs will be burnt. The seven evils will still survive but only to do their part in making the world a better place.

social statuses on a sunday

2008-07-06T14:13:00.000+05:30

____ is dreading Monday! ____ is loving that tomorrow isn't Monday. (not sunday on this part of the world... yet!) ____ is looking forward to tommorrow :) ____ is happy to have a 3-day weekend again! see a trend? :)

creativity for free

2008-07-02T16:07:00.001+05:30

How about if artists didn't sell albums? They make music, they distribute it for free on their site and let the users do the marketing. And whenever a user embeds the song on their site/blog, an ad appears along with player (of course, an ad that is non-intrusive and as relevant as possible). advertiser gets clicks, artist gets popularity depending on the song's worth and on the word-of-mouth of the world wide web ok artists can still sell albums, but i bet you cant say that last sentence too fast :P

Some architects take theselves a tad bit seriously..

2008-06-27T10:47:00.000+05:30

"life span extending villa... we want to reverse the downhill course of human life" In a way it is cool, because its like trekking around your house. Of course depends on if you like trekking... umm... like all the time. Secondly, not the ideal home for babies or older people or disabled. Jondi Keane, the visiting researcher puts it very well towards the end of the video, when the interviewer asks him if he feels any younger.

"I would like to be pretty and Thin too!"

2008-06-17T17:56:00.001+05:30

No, this ain't Mydh, this is her laptop speakin (typin in your world, whateva). What's the deal with all these pretty young Mac air 'thin'gys taking over us eh? HP, if you think you are in bad shape.. I'm an IBM! keep doing those crunches baby, I'm with you on this one. -The Laptop

Belief the new faith? Science the new religion? That makes geeks the new priests :|

2008-06-16T14:12:00.000+05:30

How much of science is science. how much of science is provable. how much of science is facts. This video simplifies (& adds humor) to the argument.

Mark your calendars! June 17th is it!

2008-06-14T20:14:00.000+05:30

If you're a firefox fan or just wanna try out ff, June 17th is when you should visit the Mozilla site. And while you're at it, be a part of their Guinness record they hope to set too. I've actually been using ff3 beta for sometime now and totally dig the part where it remembers the names/titles of the pages. It populates all the pages with a matching title when i enter the words in the address bar. A lot more human I should say. Also, the sart bookmarks thingy. And oh! the option to save tabs to see them all later is also one cool feature. So yeah, totally worth giving a try. Here's a message from mozilla:

It's official -- Download Day kicks off this Tuesday, June 17th! Help set a Guinness World Record for the most software downloads in 24 hours with Firefox 3. There's still time to organize a Download Fest or spread the word!

Remember that the record is for most software downloads, so downlpading their add-ons etc counts. So feel free to look around their site and try out the ones that tickle your fancy :) Ooh yay! this is gonna be my second stab at Guinness record this year! woohoo! (the other one was participating in the the biggest cake making competition :D which is still under review by GR) Does anyone hold a record for participating in the most GRs in less than six months? :P

Accountants then, coders now.

2008-06-12T11:10:00.000+05:30

Are the Indian code engineers the new Indian accountants?

You say you want a revo-luuutionn yeaah

2008-06-11T14:14:00.000+05:30

Here's Ivan Markovic explaining the medium he chose to spread to the world, the revolution he and his peers started in Serbia, as youngsters . Conventionally, people (revolutionists) choose to spread their message through means such as books and movies. But Markovich, a lesser known Serbian activist explains how he, a production company and a Baltimore-based game company decided to create a video game that gives the players to practice a non-violent movement. The fact that the whole concept is based on a non-violent movement is what fascinates me the most. Very much different from the usual video games where young adults are required to use violent tactics win their game. He explains what the various elements of the game are in this video. I haven't checked it out myself but I'd like to believe that the game 'is fun and not for fun' like Markovic claims. Here's their site that has more on the movement, the principle and guidelines for a non-violence revolutionist. There have been gaes like Age of Empires, Ceaser or Roller coaster Tycoon in the past that let the gamer practive his leadership and manageent abilities, this game is in a whole league of its own by trying to create an environment that prepares gamers to launch a non-violent movement.

new age - new messages

2008-06-06T22:36:00.000+05:30

I've noticed lately... that more and more websites are moving on to making their warning messages or casual (read user-friendly) Ok - That's cool Ignore - Whatever Cancel - Nah, later Can't skip more than 6 songs in an hour - You have to listen to some you know these are mostly found on sites targeting the 18-22 demographic, bet the kiddos think this is rad.

note to self

2008-06-06T22:26:00.000+05:30

Basic usability rule: white font on black background is BAD! Because: It throws your users into a b&w psychedelic trip after they're done... see them blinking their eyes ??

Are kids different because of digital media?

2008-05-14T16:28:00.001+05:30

Kids obviously know what they need. I guess its just the adults who dont understand what exactly to tell them because to them this is alien and in most countries even wrong (either due to political or media situations).

Is film the next big thing?

2008-05-13T02:19:00.000+05:30

I was on my way to the SFO airport after a conference and had to take a cab cos my heyuujje suitcase refused to go up to the BART. 'Whe'you from?,' asked the cab guy in a thick African accent 'India.' 'On business?' 'Yea. Where are you from?' 'Ethiopia. My family is there in Ethiopia - wife and kid,' he said turning back at me and smiling. 'Came to America to make money. I will return after I make good money. Where do you work?' 'Google.com. Heard of us? we have an office in Mountain View' 'Oh ok... I dont think so. It is an internet site?' 'yeah... a search engine' Two minutes of silence... 'You heard of youtube.com?' 'I have actually! You know the site?' 'Yeah! I love that.. Funny videos and music. I go to internet on Friday for my computer class and see YouTube too. Its really nice.' 'Huh! ok.. nice!'

True Story! and exactly one year later... "YouTube's Crowned World's Second Most Popular Website" (According to Alexa.com) It's puzzling how the Ethiopian man (and the rest of the world) choose to visit YouTube, a video site, over Google - a search engine. Though this doesn't really a point of concern for any search engine, it only raises the question if users really prefer watching videos over reading text for their search queries? If this is true, it spells good news for video search marketing which has now come of age. Video search already compliments text search, if not beat it. This in turn means an amazing opportunity to original content creators who are interested in using the power of video to express or explain thoughts/ideas/concepts etc. Imagine you make a video about feeding your fish and a user who's youtubing for the same, finds your video and comments on the video to get more info or to thank you on making the video (thanks to web 2.0 communications). Or better still, you post a vlog about how you're having trouble fixing up your dvd player and someone posts a video response that walks you through the process of setting up a dvd player. More and more internet users are turning to visual data from textual. I'd much prefer seeing friend's vlog (video blog) rather than reading it. This not limited to video search, and also applies to Image Search. If I had to know how a cello looks, I will google-image-search the word, instead of reading a paragraph of cello. Not only is this faster, it also makes it easier for any lazy brain :) Of course internet penetration and broadband are two important factors that decide the fate of video on internet. But with sites like YouTube who cater to both high speed and low speed internet connections (with their high quality and low quality video options), users now have the freedom to choose to watch a video over reading about something. A Thought: what if someone made videos of everything on Wikipedia, you could look them all up on a video? Of course a challenge is: Is updating as easy? (Originally written on Sunday, March 09, 2008)

Posting a blog thorough Flock - the "social browser"

2008-04-21T15:35:00.001+05:30

First post that is going off-blogger, after yt of course. testing image insert also

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Universal Mccann International Social Media Research Wave 3

2008-04-21T14:45:00.000+05:30

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2008-04-08T17:49:00.001+05:30

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Dont Copy That Floppy!

2006-07-25T19:29:00.000+05:30


Some early 90's anti-piracy film.

Mozilla add-ons are ALWAYS fun!!!

2006-07-15T01:10:00.000+05:30

So you are a major Orkuteer.You know thee person who basically chats, greets and passes time on Orkut... all under the pretence... ahem.... excuse...ahem... reason to stay in touch with friends. Well, this is a realy cool tool for you then. I've used this and man is this a timesaviour. If someone scraps me I dont actually have to go down to that person's profile, open up his/her Scrapbook and then write(or wonder what I wante to write) inhis scrapbook. But with Orkut ScrapHelper.... you have a box right next to the scrap someone wrote in your scrapbook.All you gotta do is scrap in the little box and hit submit..... and voila the nextpage you see is your scrap in the destination scrapbook. That's like a cool two less steps to write a scrap. Download! Creator: Ajay Martin (aassuming he's an Indian)

Blogmapper

2006-05-16T00:07:00.000+05:30

So I happened to visit this site an Indian kid had created on tripod. It maps your blogs and stuff - Blog Mapper I'm not so sure if it's limited to Blogger though. It was... well.. extremely slow at my home PC... well you know my home PC (if you didn't... it's archaic!!!) so I wont blame the site :D moral of the story (at least for me) do not try to 'Make your own Marker'... it never loads anyway! I could not mark my blog on this. I hope atleast you guys can. About the originality of the idea...I wouldn't go too much into it, 'cos I've seen something else like this - Blogmapper - map your blog and blog your map.

2006-05-13T13:55:00.000+05:30

Umm... yeah so I am a quasi geek! you know one of those wanna bes!!