• The Axe effect

    It happened exactly a week back. D got to know about it first. I was surprised, especially since I was the one really affected and should’ve known first. I had to share this since you shouldn’t wonder if this site should disappear suddenly at some point. You should know that it could happen to anyone.

    It was a rude shock, especially having worked hard for over six years. Forget the long stint, it’s as though all that you’ve done has suddenly been reduced to nothing. I wondered if it was because of my recent online activity splurge, but got to know that it wasn’t personal, other people were affected too.

    And it’s thanks to those friends that the nightmare didn’t last long. Help started pouring in. After a few checks, I realised that though the site had been hacked, it was a relatively simple hack, and thanks to some help and some great virtual hand holding, I got the site back on in an hour.

    until next time, the great escape 🙂

  • Wave Content

    And just when Microsoft seemed to get moving on Google, with Bing, its new search engine (in case you haven’t heard) with a $80-100 million ad budget, and bundling the real time social search engine OneRiot with IE8, Google comes right back with what could potentially be a game changer for a whole set of services, including Facebook and Twitter, in addition to the obvious mail, and search services. Last week, most of the web world were giving raves for Google Wave. In many ways it took the zing out of MS’s announcements.

    Look no further than Mashable’s Google Wave guide for details. To summarise, Google Wave combines email, chat, IM, wikis, social networking and many other potential uses. A ‘wave’ is a conversation thread that can feature one or more friends and even bots (that can source and modify information, communicate with users etc) and have documents, videos, images, maps etc, there’s drag and drop file sharing too. It can be modified by any participant, who can also add other participants and all this and can even be taken outside to say, a blog. And all this is real time, and really real time, where I can even see the other participant/s typing.  There are also gadgets (like Facebook apps) built on the OpenSocial platform. (so if someone develops a Scrabble gadget, we can play a multi user game live, and maybe add photos of our playing while at it). And there’s an API for developers to build more and more applications. To really understand what the fuss is all about, check out the video. Its way more than an email+real time communication and collaboration  tool on steroids. But with all this content, Google really needs to have a lot of storage space.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_UyVmITiYQ

    Wave seems to be aiming at turning the entire concept of social networking on its head. Instead of a single service (Facebook/Twitter), a conversation could be started on anyone’s Wave interface, participants dragged in, and new content created and collaborated upon, and then taken outside. Take a few Google products, for starters – Blogger, Google News, Picasa, YouTube and imagine what one could do with real time collaboration on these. Create a post, have live comments, and then post it. Wait, maybe I won’t even bother to post it!! I am wondering what sort of privacy settings would happen here, would we able to create groups (like say, FB) and set different criteria for different sets?

    Now, look outside Google, say Twave – Twitter + wave, that uses a Tweety Google bot to display your entire Twitter feed on Wave, where you can archive it, thread conversations and so on. Imagine what this could do to say, news reporting. Live wikis, with witnesses collaborating to create authentic news stories, and the crowd being the check and balance.

    Gmail is addictive, and many users usually neglect their other ids after they become used to the functionality of GMail. If Wave does deliver all the above, then the season’s favourites – Facebook and Twitter really need to look over their shoulder, more so, because the new stream creator is not just another player, its Google. There’s another aspect I am thinking about. Mashable’s testing report states that “Central to Google Wave’s interface is search – you create specific searches based on not only keywords, but activity, history, person, and more.”  Unlike FB and Twitter, GMail users are used to ads, if Google Wave starts off with ads, the resistance to it might not be a lot, especially if they’re of the useful contextual+semantic kind. Twitter was called a protocol (Seth Godin, I think), perhaps the protocol standards have been upped.

    Meanwhile, though i think that Google Wave is a great piece of work, as always, I am also worried about Google being the beginning and end of my web experience. There’s just too much power there. 🙂

    until next time, surf the wave

  • Liberation.. deliberation

    PD*28939360

    It’s been a couple of weeks since this image was THE news item on all forms of media. It’s stale news now. Like most people, yet unlike them because of the descriptions, Velupillai Prabhakaran was a different person to different people – many people here associate him with the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, to most Sri Lankan Tamils he was a messiah, to the Sinhalese, he was a ruthless killer, and so on.

    A day before this photograph was released, Rediff had a very interesting slideshow on him, with a set of photos that showed a completely different side. A married guy with children, who would’ve celebrated his 25th wedding anniversary later this year. Within a day of the above photo being released, the bodies of the family members (except Charles Anthony, who was killed a few days earlier) were also found, within 600 metres from where Prabhakaran’s body was found, all with gunshot wounds on their head.

    I couldn’t help but spare a thought for the man. The person that existed, perhaps forgotten, beneath the persona. If this article is to be believed, a persona that was created by India. In his last moments, if the cliched ‘whole life flashing before the eyes’ happened, what would’ve been his thoughts? Was it that of the persona – the crushing sadness that a collective dream, of which he was the keeper, had been left unfulfilled? Or was it that of the person – the despairing helplessness of someone who suddenly realised that it was all over, and wondered whether dedicating a lifetime to a cause was worth the life he had taken a long time ago – his own.

    until next time, the purpose of it all….

    image courtesy: The Telegraph

  • Inside Intel

    A video that was shared yeterday on Facebook by a friend got me to check out Intel’s latest global campaign – Sponsors of Tomorrow. I then remembered that a few days back I’d seen a half jacket (a page takeover on pages 1, 2) in TOI, which talked about the same thing though it seemed a cobranded effort with TOI called Innovators of tomorrow. [Disclosure: I work for the Times Group.]

    The campaign videos on YouTube were quite interesting. In addition to the ‘Rock star’ and ‘Oops’ TVCs, there are also videos of real employees at intel (is that the same Ajay Bhatt referred to in the Rock star video?) and an interactive ‘In the future i want..‘ which featured random people interviewed at the Times Square, and billboards which displayed these ‘ideas’. I was a bit intrigued by the campaign, and a Google search took me to the press kit and the official site.

    While the tagline is ‘Sponsors of tomorrow’, the campaign’s communication strategy seems to be two pronged – one, to expand on the line, and show what happens behind the scenes and how through innovation, they aim to be the ‘sponsors of tomorrow’, and two, to promote the people behind the technology. What got me intrigued was the execution.

    The single line take outs from the videos were – “Our big ideas aren’t like your big ideas”, “Our rock stars aren’t like your rock stars”. While the videos are indeed funny and convey the perspective clearly,  I wonder if those are the kind of statements, that will really inspire people to send in ideas. From the Innovators of Tomorrow effort and the website, there seems to be an agenda of interactivity, since it calls for ideas.

    On innovation and technology. Somewhere, hidden in the press release, I saw a sentence that amounted to “Its not technology, its what technology can do for them that’s important to people”. It’d have been great to see Intel expand on this and show consumers what Intel technology has made possible and what it is attempting to make possible. The global site wasn’t very impressive. “You on tomorrow” is the interactivity effort there and I promptly filled up “in the future I want__________” with “websites that load faster” and that wasn’t being frivolous. Maybe I’m reading too much science fiction, but even the 2128 Delhi video wasn’t very futuristic – holography and body scan after 19 years isn’t exactly the kind of advancement a bleeding edge  technology giant like Intel should limit its imagination to, IMHO.

    People behind the technology. Funny videos and self deprecating humour is great, the point is made. But if they wanted to showcase the people behind the efforts, this seems to be a better thing to have promoted – employee blogs. (the first comment is worth a read) And better ways using different platforms to get the people working on the technology to share how the technology they work on helps improve consumer experiences, lifestyles etc. That might generate a little more involvement than ads showing how Intel’s rock stars are different, and interactive games that deal with suiting up an engineer!! As a consumer this just made Intel geekier for me. What happens inside Intel is  definitely important, however, what it does to life outside could’ve been a more effective communication from an interactivity perspective. What do you think?

    until next time, I don’t think Intel will sponsor tomorrow’s posts 😉

    The views expressed here are solely mine, that really should go without saying. But we live in an evil world. 🙂

  • Wild Spice

    Relax. Its the name of a restaurant. 🙂

    We heard about the place sometime back from Balu, and since it was just past the swine flu season, thought it a good time to check out some Coorgi stuff (read pork). The restaurant is located on Residency Road right after the Museum Road junction. (map) There isn’t any parking facility for four wheelers, maybe you can use the paid parking on the Brigade Road extension, 2 wheelers can park in front of Imperial. Its quite  a little hole-in-the-wall and you’re likely to miss it if you aren’t looking for it.

    The ambience just about passes muster and the place obviously caters to a regular crowd that really doesn’t mind the peeling wall paint and broken tiles. Its quite dimly lit and there is no air conditioning. But hey, we came for the pork, so let’s get to that fast.

    The single page menu begins with a quote attributed to Conficius (sic) ” A family that dines together grows sideways together”. We were obviously in the mood to be living examples. You could choose from roti/chapati, rice – hot snow balls/ rice noodles (though they didn’t have the latter when we asked for it), veg dishes  – dal, beans, rajma, sprouts, pumpkin and even a rasam, ghee rice and its combos (veg/ pork/ mutton/ chicken) whose costs range from Rs.45-85, or the plain rice versions of the same, or even chapati meal combos (Rs.50-75). The menu ends with a few juice options and another quote “For a healthy life, choose your restaurant like you would choose your spouse”.

    We ordered a couple of rice rotis, a ghee rice – mutton curry combo, a Coorgi pepper chicken dry and a Coorgi pork dry. I would’ve liked to try a fried fish too, but wasn’t sure if it’d be too much. Hot fluffy rotis, though they took a while, and such awesome pork that D, who isn’t a erm, natural pork eater like me, ended up eating the pig, like a ….. you get the idea. In fact, though the chicken was quite good, it was completely eclipsed by the pork. The ghee rice was the other highlight, reminded me of the stuff I used to hog during college days. Excellent. I didn’t fancy the mutton curry much, though it was coconut based, but D liked it. we had to order a couple of chapatis more and again, it took a while.

    All of that, including a mineral water – Rs.15 :D, cost us just over Rs.250. If you’re looking for a fine dining experience, stay away, but when in the mood for some good pork, in a college/PG hangout ambience, complete with ABBA music in the background, do check it out.

    Wild Spice, #1, Cariappa Bhavan, Field Marshall Cariappa Road (thats Residency Road for those who didn’t know), Ph: 09880381009