I absolutely absoluely love these!







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

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 :)

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!

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

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...

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.

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

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.

think again :D

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 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. 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! :)

You have eons to go before you get it right.

Thanks,
A customer.

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 :)

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.

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

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

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

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?

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 :\

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: