• News Updates

    He saw the battalion of police in front of the theatre and immediately smsed his reporter friend. After the terror activities recently, there was no telling what’d happen and when. He could imagine the contempt on his friend’s face as he read the message and replied “Don’t you know there’s a Rajni movie release tomorrow?” until next time, filmi… very filmi 😐


  • Mugen

    Mugen is located on 100 ft road, Indiranagar, on the 3rd floor of the building that houses Indigo Nation and Urban Yoga. It serves Thai, Indonesian and Chinese cuisine. Parking for two wheelers is quite easy, 4 wheelers would require a bit of luck factor too, me thinks.

    We called for reservations, and after a long time, got a courteous and efficient response, and a table. I was getting sick of the ‘we don’t reserve after 7.30’ spiel. You might want to reserve, if you’re planning to go after 8 during weekends, going by the crowd we saw yesterday.

    The menu has Thai, Indonesian and Chinese, in that order. They also serve liquor, and from my limited knowledge, the bar looked fairly well stocked. The Thai part is quite a few pages, the Indonesian, only a couple of pages, and the Chinese part, somewhere in between the two. The choice of dishes in Thai made us choose that, though (even with very good descriptions) we’d require some assistance.

    We managed to order the soup by ourselves :), and then gave our requirements to the person who took our orders. He was extremely helpful, and gave us detailed explanations of what we could expect. So, we ordered a Tom Kha soup, which was described in the menu as a “refreshing coconut milk soup, with lemon grass and galangal served with chicken”, which reminds me, most of the items in the menu have a common gravy/paste/rice/noodles which lends itself to chicken, veg, seafood etc. So, for example, you can also have a Tom Kha veg soup. The soup was delicious, with so many different flavours, and for once, none of the usual stuff –  pepper, sauce, vinegar etc was needed. It was refreshing indeed.

    For the main course, we ordered a Kai Phad Bai Gapraow, which is ‘succulent chicken, marinated with thai herbs, and fresh basil leaves served with special spicy thai sauce’, a Basket Chilly Chicken, “a traditional dish from the chef, served in a crispy basket”. The latter was the only chinese dish we ordered. We also ordered a Bamee Pahd “soft noodles with bean sprout, spring onions, and crushed peanut served with chicken”. The first dish has got a bit of gravy, in fact just the right amount as far as our needs went. The Basket Chilly Chicken is dry and quite spicy, and the crispy basket was quite yummy. When we saw the noodles dish, we thought we’d have to order one more. Talk about deceiving appearances!! The quantity was more than enough for two people, especially the side dishes. All the dishes were simply awesome, and that’s an understatement. The only warning I’d like to give is to have the food before it gets cold, since a salty taste starts creeping in towards the end.

    The ambience deserves a special mention, with separate seating for smokers and non smokers, there’s even an option of being seated such that you can watch while your dishes get cooked. The seating is extremely comfortable. I think this would also be a great place for large groups, not just because of the seating options, but also because it’d give you an opportunity to sample multiple dishes, which we couldn’t because we’d only two tummies at our disposal. Another special mention for the service. No snobbish ‘Oh, you don’t know this cuisine’ smirks’, an extremely helpful attitude, and someone always discreetly giving the table attention. This place exudes confidence and efficiency. Yes,  we were floored, and that’s no mean task, as you guys would have realised:D

    All of the above cost us Rs.800. I’d loved to have tried the desserts, but we were stuffed 🙁 . This one demands a repeat visit, so there’s definitely going to be a next time here.

    Ph: 41481414, 9945300004

    Menu and photos at Zomato

  • Lose-Lose Situation

    That, I believe is what Hasbro and Scrabulous have gotten each other into. In case you guys have been tardy and not playing Scrabulous on Facebook, Scrabulous, a popular app on Facebook, modeled on Scrabble – the board game, has had to remove its application from the US and Canada, (for IP – the intellectual property kind, infringement) and Hasbro, who hold th rights for North Americsa,  has done enough successful PR to be seen as the evil corporate monster. I hope Mattel is listening, as its case is awaiting resolution, and will affect the rest of the world. This is a worthwhile read on the finer legal points in this case, in terms of the American Copyright law.

    I’ve been an avid user of Scrabulous and even joined the petition to ‘help save scrabulous’, which has about 50,000 members. I did that, then, on an emotional appeal level, without getting it into the right and wrong. The Agarwala brothers, who own the application had maintained that their intention was not to make money. Maybe it wasn’t initially. But, later too? Funny, considering that Scrabulous, at its peak had about half a million users and was generating $25000 per week from advertising. Funny also, that they didn’t just take the first payment agreement option that Hasbro had proposed. (rumoured to be around $10 million)

    All this triggered a few thoughts. The makers of Scrabulous would definitely have known that they were on slippery territory as far as IPR goes, why did they have to do it. Yes, they did the world a favour by recreating a favourite game, and if, having realised their error, they accepted the Hasbro offer, all would have ended well. But perhaps, our democracy has also left us with a legacy of disregard for the law, of forcing grays between right and wrong, and turning a blind eye.

    For me, it also brought to light a not-so-great facet of the crowd driven, transparency seeking, web 2.0.  The founder of the group I’d mentioned earlier, a 15 year old, has collected a list of 1000 people who have promised never to buy a Scrabble board if Hasbro forced Scrabulous to close down. A guy who tried to start a discussion within the group on how Hasbro was right, got booed out of the place, with an allegation that he worked for Hasbro in some capacity. There was a scare that Hasbro’s official app on Facebook had been hacked. Hasbro might have acted in the most stupid manner possible on this issue, but they were in the right. So, the question is, in the ‘crowd controlled world’ we keep forecasting, if there’s enough of a crowd that believes in a certain thing, irrespective of whether its wrong, unethical, does it still get done?  Mob Justice, isn’t that the term? It reminds me of India’s democracy, where technically the people rule, but we all know how that’s working. So, if the crowd controls the world, who controls the crowd?

    As for me, I’m out of the group help ‘save scrabulous’, and have already started a game with a friend on this new application, Wordscraper, from the makers of Scrabulous. It looks considerably different from Scrabble, but is as enjoyable as the original.

    until next time,”with great power comes great responsibility”

    PS: Pacman has been there before 🙂

  • I do?

    “I am getting married”, she said. He wasn’t ready for dealing with this, their relationship wasn’t that defined yet. ”If that’s what you want.”, he managed. “..to you” she continued, “if that’s okay with you”. He wasn’t ready for dealing with this, their relationship wasn’t that defined yet. ”If that’s what you want.”, he managed.

    until next time, decision makers

    PS. Inspired by this

  • Mark Up Pricing?

    It’s been just over a month since Facebook wrested the #1 position from MySpace in terms of unique visitors to the site. That’s in spite of being only about half of MySpace in terms of traffic and having to deal with Orkut in India, Brazil etc. This, plus the fact that Facebook’s international strategy of providing the same networking tool in other countries (the only occassional concession being language) is working better than MySpace’s game of ‘communities based on local culture’ in each country – check this out in  (in India’s case), made me do a double take when I read an article recently on how Facebook should seriously consider selling out now.

    While there have been debates about MS valuing it at $15 billion, and I’d side with those who say that its a tag on the higher side, I really couldn’t agree on the selling off idea. The basic premise of the argument is that once the high school and college kids (the audience driving Facebook’s exponential growth) grow up, they’ll find better toys and shiny objects to play with, and will forget Facebook.

    I’d have agreed with that, but or a few factors. For starters, the way Facebook is adapting. I’d written about the new design earlier, and how Facebook had kind of ditched the old social networking premise, and quickly changed to a Friendfeed/Twitter premise of conversations. That kind of flexibility, combined with the kind of apps that keep me engaged, should help Facebook remain relevant. What, for example, prevents them from doing a ‘Second Life’ twist if virtual worlds suddenly became an even bigger rage? The traffic and the apps, I’d think have a strong correlation which benefits Facebook. The more people use the site, the more developers would want to build apps there…

    Another factor is that it still has miles to grow. It’s only #2 in the US, and in markets like India, where the internet itself hasn’t reached its potential, the kind of activity we’re seeing now is not even the tip of the the berg. And what’s the investment? Unlike MySpace, which has an office for India ops, Facebook just invests in Mark Zuckerberg’s flight tickets for his rare visits. (Its an interesting read..lol)

    The third factor is Facebook Connect, which will allow the portability of our social identity on it. A ‘crude’ indicator of its impact would be how you can comment on this post and it would link to your Facebook profile. It means that Facebook knows and can keep track of the real you even outside the walled garden it used to be. And that, IMHO, combined with the MS association which keeps getting deeper, will really enable it to challenge Google and its plans for world domination.

    And though I was mildly irritated by their inclination towards the BOSS (Build Operate Sell Stake) way, I remain a huge Facebook fan, as the tags on your right would prove, and still believe that Facebook’s biggest success is that, at a basic level, it allows me to connect with people, on the multiple interest points that i share with them, from Bollywood to F1 and quite a few others, and after they’re done with sending me virtual beers and throwing sheep at me, we can really sit down and have some great interactions on things we are interested in.

    until next time, break the walls down