• Zerodha

    Zerodha offers a low cost and highly-efficient online trading platform. In conversation with founder Nithin Kamath.

    [scribd id=118221532 key=key-1wuitdrd6edh5tent47m mode=scroll]

  • Broadcast 2.0 then?

    Facebook is planning a new video-ad product that will offer video advertisers the chance to target video ads to large numbers of Facebook users in their news feeds across devices. It is also becoming more public about its Publishing Garage, that aims to put into place a set of measurements to demonstrate how well campaigns are working. Twitter has partnered with Nielsen for the the “Nielsen Twitter TV Rating” – an industry standard metric for measuring the conversation that TV shows spur on Twitter.

    The commonality I see is the shift from social to media, though to be fair, the Twitter-Nielsen partnership also talks of sentiment being measured in the future, in addition to tracking the volumes generated. I am using the term ‘social’ for two of the biggest platforms around now – FB and Twitter, but considering they have been the trendsetters, it is likely that the others will follow suit. Yes, there would be exceptions, I’m sure, but let me generalise a bit. While time will dictate whether this shift is smart or not, I’d think this shift is massively underplaying the true potential that social has thus displayed as a disruptive force. Social is now walking the measurement rules laid for a thoroughly different kind of media. (I liked this post at GigaOm because it throws light on, and questions why every social network is trying to turn into a broadcast platform) Doesn’t this put them on the same path of vulnerability that traditional media is facing now? Is this inevitable or is this sheer laziness and/or conforming? Also, from a user perspective, isn’t this a fundamentally different direction from the original premise/reason for existence of these platforms?

    Meanwhile, it is interesting to note that this is happening at the same time as users (increasingly) are treating social as broadcast – from the shoot-from-the-hip opinions on everything to the careful posturing. Not so suddenly, it’s more about numbers than actual conversations. Now what does that remind me of? 🙂 I don’t know how much of it is unconscious and how much of it is subtle nudging (read) by the networks and their features. But whatever the reasons, imagine a future where everyone behaves the way media behaves today – loud, pompous, full of themselves, ignorant to their own faults, violent towards any criticism, and generally abhorred. What happens then?

    So in the current direction I see the networks (and users) taking, the future media mashup will show more characteristics of traditional broadcast platforms than the social traits displayed by the social networks in the early days. My concern in such a scenario is because of what Godin has stated in another context – “Media doesn’t just change what we focus on, it changes the culture it is part of.” That’s when I wish social/we would be more ridiculous.

    until next time, growing pains

  • Posture child

    I guess that’s the reason why Calvin & Hobbes is so utterly loved by so many folks. Profound, timeless, universal truths expressed in such a unique way!

    I had never seen this one until recently. Why blame Instagram for filters? They existed long before anyway 🙂 I thought this strip found great application in all kinds of posturing from time immemorial, and especially so now – in the social media context, when everyone is a publisher. Over a period of time, I wonder how fast we would forget who we really are (if ever we come to know it or knew it) It would probably be irrelevant in the real-time era. We would be the statuses and photos and everything else we like and share every minute. After all, I’m no longer the person who wrote it anyway, and who’s to say the non posturing self is the real deal?

    until next time, impostor 🙂

  • Hunan

    Thanks to Chinese stalwarts around, and home delivery doses of Delicacy, Hunan has always been ignored. But a casual glance at the menu on Zomato and the spotting of some Thai fare meant that it was quickly chosen for dinner.

    Hunan is above Costa Coffee on 1st A Cross, the road that goes to Jyoti Nivas from 100 feet Road, Koramangala. (map) This is the area that has the maximum number of eating options per square km in Bangalore. Yes, not even Church Street can beat it. 2 wheeler parking is relatively simple, if you have a 4 wheeler, you should probably use the parking lot next to Empire unless you want to try your luck with basement parking.

    2 flights of stairs (there is a lift I read about but didn’t bother to find – probably from the basement) leads you to a cosy, well utilised space that does have the mandatory dose of red and the television, but also plays soothing music and has 3 tables that give you a street view. Yay! Two were already taken, but we were just in time for the third. The place is neat, exudes a charm and generally gives a feeling of being well run.

    We went in quite sure that we would start with the Tom Kha but got a googly in the form of a special menu that featured a Thai Chicken Coconut soup. It had all the usual suspects – galangal, lemon grass, chillies, and so we switched allegiance for the night. The addition was glass noodles. Fantastic soup, with rich coconut milk flavours. Slightly sweet, but a few chillies helped restore the balance. We didn’t miss the Tom Kha at all. Since we were satisfied with the Thai, we agreed to go ahead with the main course we had planned, but it was a combo dish – with rice – and we weren’t sure of the quantity. So we asked for a starter –  Chicken Red Dragon dumplings. Orange -red in colour, we got 10 momos with a good tomato-chilli sauce. The momos were excellent, mildly spicy and cooked really well.

     

    For the main course, we ordered the Kang Pet Gai – Thai red curry chicken. (comes with steamed rice) I must say that given the culinary strangeness in that part of the world, the word ‘Pet’ is not very reassuring. 😉 We also ordered a Roast Pork with Red and Green Chillies. The rice was sticky but that worked well with the curry. Again, the chicken curry was sweet, but we were saved by the spicy pork! All of this was exactly the right fit for our appetite, so we didn’t have space for desserts!

     

    Quite a good experience, and we’ll be sure to drop in again, because the menu does have much more. All of the above cost us just over Rs.1400.

    Hunan, 123, 1st Floor, 1st Main, JNC Road, 5th Block, Koramangala Ph: 9739130000

    PS: Happened to notice that Adaa has shut down! 🙁

  • Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

    William Dalrymple

    In his introduction to the book, William Dalrymple explains how he has tried to invert the travel writing style of the eighties, highlighting the subject and relegating the narrator and his journey to the shadows. And that’s how this book manages to be a set of nine mini-biographies that are linked by the book’s tagline – ‘In Search of the Sacred in Modern India’. Each ‘story’ not only manages to show the protagonist, his/her belief systems, trade/artform in the context of a region that’s rapidly changing the way it looks at religion, spirituality and the world in general, but also manages to trace its (artform/trade) evolution across the centuries of its existence, and the inividual’s outlook towards his own journey. In that sense, it is also my favourite kind of travel writing – across time.

    From Kerala to Dharmasala and Tarapith to Sehwan, the characters flow, and though all of them are interesting in their own way, my favourites were the ‘The Singer of Epics’ – the story of a bhopa in Rajasthan, and “The Monk’s Tale”, the story of a Buddhist monk who takes up arms against the Chinese, is then forced to fight for the Bangladeshis against Pakistan and finally spends his last years in Dharmasala atoning for his acts by hand printing prayer flags.

    The narrative and the prose make the book very accessible, and the only concern I had was whether the author had let romanticism affect the truth of the stories a tiny bit. A great read.