It is another gang rape, this time in Mumbai. We have been unable to wake up even after 16th December tragedy with Damini. The recent news of gang rape in Mumbai struck me like a bolt, that too in an area like Lower Parel at 6.30 PM in the evening.
The place was secluded, the property belonging to erstwhile Shakti Mills, and no one could hear her screams. Why in the world are we even trying them. At best, the rapists should be hanged and made an example for others – do it and you meet the similar fate.
I think a lot of this has been said in the news channels, papers, internet and almost everywhere and was deciding against writing one, though my heart and prayers go out to the victim and her family.
The reason I why was forced to write about was the claim made by Hindustan Times in today’s Mumbai edition. Even though the Police never said that the accused had raped many other women before, the paper went ahead and added that the accused have raped four other women (rag-pickers). (more…)
I am sure most of us have had faced this situation. At home, your dad / wife / mother / sister have all their time slots defined. At 8 it could be a serial at Colors, 8.30 at Zee, 9 at Star Plus and 10 at Life Ok (of course, for Mahadev). Do not go by the time I have mentioned, I never kept a track of these time slots anyway.
And in afternoons, there is repeat telecast of the shows and your wife / mother / sister missed because there were seeing other ones which clashed.
And I have to blame Ekta Kapoor here. She is the one who convinced Star to move Prime Time from 7.00 pm to 10.00 pm with Kyuki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi and the likes. You know, they caused a drastic change in the lifestyle of people, and their bio-clocks. (more…)
Ruffling through the news paper today, I found a rather interesting piece of news. What will be the money used by Aliens / humans in space?
Wait, what? I did not understand the need for us to think what money will we use for inter galactic transactions. Who needs them now, when we don’t have any line of sight in which year first human settlement happens in, say Mars or one of Moons of Neptune? (more…)
I came across this article at GigaOM related to BlackBerry getting down and requesting Developer not to abandon the platform, given that there is a further delay in developing phones with BlackBerry 10 OS. I read the article and it pretty much sums up the feel around BlackBerry beautifully. What I really wanted to share here is this brilliant video message BlackBerry created for its developers.
From a company that is in doldrums and facing the ire of its stakeholders for not keeping up with its competition, mounting losses each quarter and job cuts and losing their developer base to iOS and Android – this was something I never expected.
The last parts, the developers, are key to any mobile operating system in today’s app frenzy world. The above video was created by company’s employees who are putting their heart (and many man hours) out to get BlackBerry back in shape. This for me is an example of best inspiration they could provide to its developers.
Putting down an optimistic outlook for your partners, in such a musical way was probably not thought of before or that I am not aware of. The lyrics themselves are a brilliant use of technological jargons which developers are familiar with and instantly has this emotional connect.
Great work BlackBerry on this one, if not on your phones yet. Kudos!
What led me to write about it? I stumbled upon a wikipedia article on Concorde and had the time to read it through. The most interesting part is what I read afterwards. Over the coming weeks, I am planning to research a bit about these and compose them for all of us to read. I am sure this is going to be interesting for all of you here.
The Wright Brothers were the first ones to be able to commercially build an aircraft as we know today, but our history is star studded with aviators of folkfare. Leonardo DaVinci, Issac Newton and instances or references to those in Indian vedics who enabled Lord Rama and Ravan to fly across seas are just a few examples.
But that is not I am thinking right now. There are already many who have read and written about them. I am more amazed by the fact that having formally invented an aircraft for our industralized age in 1900’s from non existance, we still had pioneers who started thinking about Supersonics in early 1950’s. A Boeing 747 was planned nd the first model manufactured by late 1960’s and it still rules the roost. And dont even think that by 2025 an Airbus A380 will be grounded. And now what I read is by 2050, we will possibly see a hypersonic (breaching speeds of Mach 8) aircraft.
Can you imagine a world that has grown so fast. Consider space exploration for example where what was invented in 1970 is what we are using today. Or for that matter, this very medium. Internet. Being invented in 1990’s it has grown so fast.
Whats truly amazing about avaiation is that it has enable humas to fly, and travel at twice the speed of sound.
With news breaking out that one of Indian websites have been taken down due to the government censorship is exactly when the news started getting heating up in the western world. The two new legislations / regulation that are in the process of getting approved in the US Senate are now under fire from major US based websites.
Google Doodle Blackout
Wikipedia announced that their English website (which contains close to 4 million pages) would be blacked out for entire 24 hours. Two new regulations, SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT IP Act) have stirred the hornet’s nest. Major companies including Google, Facebook, Yahoo, Twitter, eBay, AOL have already protested against the bills, while online communities like Wikipedia, Reddit, Boing Boing and several others have announced their plans to back out access to their websites for 24 hours.
SOPA is being proposed to protect interests of the entertainment industry in general, which face a huge loss of revenue due to piracy. I would say, if they would start earning more money because of this bill, a poor artist could finally buy his third Ferrari and fifth Lamborghini. After all, it is what they are worth for. Sarcasm apart, yes artist do need to own rights to their creations and no one should infringe upon the same.
Wikipedia Black out page
The striking thing is, however, enabling this law will give governments more control over the content that a person access from his home. If government feels that a particular site violates a certain rule, it can easily be stopped from being accessed. Since there are no clearly defined limitations, it would be very easy for anyone to request a takedown of a website. And that website’s fault could just be that its content irked some government official or a political party.
Advantage No.1: Statistics: It tells you how much your blog is visited and from where. This is in particular useful to guage two things. One the amount of revenue your site can get, two to see viability of the website. By viability, I mean, to see how much are you getting in return for your investment (here time) which helps you to prioritize your activites on the website.
No.2: Targetting: Analytics helps you to esitmate your efforts in one goal your have set for yourself. It may be your reach in a particular region (geographicaly or by subject) or your returns from a region. It tells you what you have achieved for that period.
No.3: Search & Keywords preformance: It helps us to learn how our keywords are performing on search and how search is helping you reach to your end user. You can find out the keywords that are relevant and start using them more often knowing that you are getting good hits via those keywords. Also, it helps us analyze which keywords are not performing optimal to your expectations and work towards it.
No.4: Platform, Connectivity: For most bloggers, it wont make a big impact but other wise for a website it does. For example, if you want to check what % of users use Flash on their browsers. This helps you decide whether you want to create a flash based intro or a flash based application for creating a dynamic application. The same stands true for Operating systems, but it is not that important these days as most advance browsers behave almost same in terms of delivering your content. However, your Operating systes are important to know when you want to check Mobile OS. Which helps you to categorize and calculate your visitors from Mobile Browsers. Opera on PC/Mac can be confused with Opera on mobile and hence this parameter helps.
Also, it helps in deciding your target audience. For example, lets take the latest technology on web is HTML5 with Javascript. If you wanna start redesigning your website on HTML5, you might as well check what your users are using. If 90% of your users are using th latest browsers, it makes sense to go ahead. If lesss than 10% of your visitors are usign latest browsers, it wont help as others wont be able to use the website functionality you intend to develop.
Knowing Connectivity is important as well, to gauge what size of webpage your users will be able to download fast. If you have more thna 50% of users on dailup with 28KBPS speed, it wont help having a website that is heavily loaded with graphics.
All in all, analytics is used to target your website to a sect of users with importance to multiple aspects and you working towards achieving your targets.
Think of Google as your one stop shop for almost everything. Well, almost… While there are so many tools we use today, there is little in the way we think that Google does. No one thinks what Google does. Lets learn to think out of the box.
Enter the Google.com/Wedding portal
Screen Grab of Google Wedding
With the help of multiple Google products, it’s a platform that helps you organize your wedding needs and share it with your circle (read Google+) of friends. With a range of online applications like Google Sites, Picnik, Google Docs, Picasa Web Albums, you can create your wedding website and share it with your friends.
Share your wedding story on Google by easily creating a website. With readymade templates available, all you have to do is edit / add your story and viola, it’s all set up. Since Google is a platform for sharing, many web designers share their templates over this shared, open source platform.
Plan your nut and bolts to Start your Engine…
Your Google site (website) will not be complete without beautiful and artistic pictures and millions of poses of the lucky couple. Enter Google Picnik, which helps you do just that. Create your wedding invite, announcements et al in graphical and artistic way. Beats the charges you pay a web designer (unlucky me :P) as everything is for FREE! And no one stops you from being creative your way… (not even me 😛 :P)
You will need a spread sheet to list down your expenses, addresses and email ids for invites, Guest hotel bookings, schedules for Bridal make up / Tuxedo or Safari suit delivery, to do list, reception menu, and everything else in between using Google Docs. With customized tools like Wedding Planner, Address Book, Guest List, Budget Planner, To – Do list, Seating Chart (not really used in India), Music List, Reception Menu, you get a everything you looking for in your marriage to be as flaw less as possible.
Share Happiness…
Share your happiness by uploading pictures of your wedding, editing it in Picnik and then later, uploading the same to your Picasa Web Albums.
Learning…
What does this level of collaboration teach us? Within our work area, there are so many things that we can mash up together for increased productivity. Access to these tools is important and so is flaw less connectivity. Imagine things to create, visualize things to develop and even we can think out of the box!
I found very interesting information via Google Analytics. For one, I am surprised that this blog is being searched on Google for Lovers place in Mumbai and less of others. 😛
Very funny it may sound, but the top searched post on my blog is A Place for Lovers in Mumbai. The following Statistics of Top Keywords that were searched and landed on my blog.
Ever wondered how do you make your website address simpler for people to remember? Bookmarks and Visiting Cards are a thing of past. URL Shortners are sure active. There were other technologies that were developed but went hiding. The .tel domain TLD for example, was supposed to only store your vCard and Telephonic Information and domain names are very costly. But we now have a technology that will last at least for more han a decade before we have something new coming up. For lazy people like me who think twice before typing out an URL on my mobile phone, this certainly comes handy 😛
2D Bar codes
With the advent of Mobile Internet Technology, we are moving on to the next level of sharing our contacts. 2D Bar codes are already being used in Retail stores and on products, but with Barcode scanners / readers available on mobile phones now, it has become simpler for every one to use it. The first advertisement on Paper was that I saw using the 2D Barcode was that of Tata Manza.
After I saw that, I really made me go to the url they gave, download the custom Barcode reader and after scanning the Bar code printed on the Advert, it downloaded the Video Advertisement. If they had to give, they could have easily made a bit.ly url or used any other URL Shortening service. But what it made me do was to explore this new phenomenon.
I believe this will help you create a new avenue till this technology is just nascent. There are many free tools available online that help create a Bar code for your URL, VCF card, on your physical Visiting Cards etc. or for that matter, sending a secret message to your Girlfriend 😉
2D Barcodes, as they are popularly called, can store various type of information. But they themselves come in different types and QR (Quick Response) Code, as of now, the popular one. Others include: Aztec Code, Data Matrix etc. The future as many believe is in the High Capacity Color Barcode, however its still some years before it comes alive.
My Visiting Card with the Barcode
How to create your own barcode?
Best way to start off is to use Nokia’s website for creation of a Bar code (link). Thats how I started using it. 🙂
I liked this ad so much. The new Airtel ad where the boy or the girl tells goodbye to each other but keep meeting each other within a fraction of a second. What I really like about this is to show the importance of relationships that are hard to part with. If there are any fans of this ad, post a comment on how you feel about this ad. Two television commercials are created by the agency JWT, the brand’s creative partner, are currently on-air. (more…)
Bharti Airtel, India’s leading telcom provider has changed its Logo and the Signature tune following its intention to launch 3G services in India. Airtel won 3G licences in 13 telecom circles of India: Delhi, Mumbai, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh (West), Rajasthan, West Bengal, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Assam, North East, Jammu & Kashmir. Bharti is expecting to launch its 3G service by December 2010
New Logo of Airtel v/s Old Logo
Coupled with the re-branding of Zain’s assets in Africa, Bharti Airtel will also re-brand in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, with no clarity of how it will re-brand its operations in Channel Islands where it is known as Airtel – Vodafone. The Branding in Channel Islands is largely following the Vodafone ideology and hence, only a Logo Change is expected. (more…)
The IndiBlogger meet is finally happening in Mumbai. Its been ages since I had proposed this meet to Renie but due to some reasons it never saw the light of the day. But now we have!
The IndiBlogger meet is for bloggers who are part of IndiBlogger, or otherwise to come together and collaborate, find new information, socialize and much more. Its the event where you get to meet the team behind IndiBlogger and your other fellow bloggers from Mumbai whom you might not meet regularly.
