To start with this weekend post, I like to tell you about my sharing house. We, four of us (from same college) stay here in Bangalore. We usually clean the house once in a while. If the period of cleaning stands a month, we all be surprised and keep guessing why so soon? Next day, a satisfaction of keeping the house clean would be drawn on all our faces. For a while couple of us went for client assignment. As usual, the remaining of us never bothered of how clean the house is. Naturally, the house was open to all kinds of dust, dirt, road side sediments - thanks to Bangalore Corporation, Thar roads are yet to be laid in our area! - and the worst affected is our bathroom. I don't want to describe it. Its open to your imagination. So after all these description, what I want to tell is I feel completely satisfied today, meaning Our House is completely cleaned up with help of a maid! Happy faces all around :)
PJs (or attempt to crack them or mokkai in Tamil slang) apart. Now, some serious stuff. I am following a Indian web based product company for a while but not keenly though. It is Zoho - a web based office suite app. It doesn't stop with word, spreadsheet, presentation etc., it goes one (more) step ahead and provides enterprise software products like CRM to its customers. It's target is small and medium scale companies. Its services (to be precise, Software as a Service) comes with dirt cheap prices (comparing to its competitors). Guess who are its competitors. None other that Google!. Yes, Google docs and the leader in web based Enterprise office suite, Salesforce. Zoho's founder and CEO Sridhar Vembu is an exemplary person with great vision and character, maintains very low profile and at the same time sends a million dollar a month to his company's kitty. Most of the networking guys would easily relate him if I say he is the creator of a wonderful product called Adventnet. Read more about him here and also Robert Scoble has a say. I am very much impressed. So whats up with him here. I read one of his blog posts few days back. He talks about how Salesforce tried to acquire in non-open fashion and how he rejected them outright. It was very good post. It drives the point like a nail hitting its target. Top CEO can communicate and dissipate information to everyone - its employees, investors, competitors, public - through his/her blog more effectively. Now you need not conduct big meetings, give number crunchig figures and explain your comapny's vision and plans. Just a web blog with backed up story, people will listen and take notice. I certainly second Kiruba's thoughts here.
And yesterday, a sudden interest on Indian podcasts sprung on me. So was searching for some good podcasts that deals with Indian tech and business stuff. I don't know if I found a good one, but surely an interesting one. IndiCast is the one I am talking about. If I am not wrong, they do three podcasts in tech, business and some interview kind of show. I was listening to their business podcast. It is a conversation between a guy and a girl (both of them MBA grads). They speak about business in India and the related stuff in dialogue-cum-informal chat like fashion (think, they are just out of school). They want information to reach common people. That's how they define their shows. What amazes me these people know lot of stuff and speak amazingly simple manner which make you wonder about how many hours they spend doing their home work. I downloaded all of their audio casts. Will be listening to them in coming days.
I will end this post here with some info that I am planning to write about my experiences, bargainings, questionings, telephone bills & "starrings" from my co-workers, when I dealt (still dealing) with a personal loan.
Update: This one from Indicast is too good. Harsha Bhogle speaks his heart. Do check it out.
Update: About Sridhar Vembu in Forbes site.
Quoting from here:
This is ridiculous. I blame their innocence. Imagine, she is grown up, put yourself in her shoes and think how her life would be. Will she lead a normal life? Certainly no. Though she is healthy now, she might develop medical complications as she grows. So it is always better do the required medical assistance at the young age. Even she grows up healthily, mostly, she will grow up with skewed understanding of life and people. Are we not obstructing her right to live as a normal person? Who will be responsible for her? Her parents? I think they might not, given their innocence level. Perhaps, Goddess Durga herself?
We should somehow put a full stop, to our irrational superstitious ideas on religion and start looking for a very healthy, inquiring, tolerant spiritual society.
Write your thoughts in comments section.
This scene at 80 feet road in Koramangala, Bangalore (near Sony World). This lorry occupied most of the road space leaving small gap for other vehicles. 
The traffic in Bangalore is getting worse everyday. For a 7km ride from my home to office often takes me 45 mins in a two wheeler! This is ridiculous. The one thing I hate here is the traffic. I appreciate the initiative ToI has taken - UnlockBangalore. This will create awareness and as well as effective solutions by the people who ultimately suffer. Government should be ashamed of these infrastructure woes. The new Airport story will make the lives of travellers even more pathetic.
In one of the campaign ads of ToI, it is given that almost 1000 vehicles are being added to this city of narrow roads, everyday! If this rate continues, I think, there will be a time, where one should walk on vehicles rather than on roads to go to any place. Fantasy!
Even today morning, while crossing very small junction in a non-crucial service road, I waited for 15 mins! My eight month experience of traffic here, I observed that everyone wants to turn on every possible side and get out of sight as soon as possible causing chaos. Due to some bunch of idiotic guys, the whole area gets jammed for long time making more victims of trafficophobia!
What is my contribution? here it is - by increasing the rate. Rate of what? The Rate of addition of vehicles to the Bangalore roads. Increasing it to 1001 vehicles/day. How? this is how.
I was brought upon with this Newspaper for almost all of my childhood. Once my father's friend advised me to read this paper, daily from top to bottom irrespective whether I understand it or not. This advice I got when I was 12 year old. He gave me that advice for whatever reasons he had in his mind. Following the advice, my father subscribed to "The Hindu" for the first time. From then, till I completed my college, this newspaper was the interface through which I saw the world and learned things which were not told in schools.
My mornings always starts with this newspaper. I eagerly wait for those supplementary pages: Thursday's Science & Technology - which kindled my interests in science, Saturday's "Young World", Tuesday's "Open Page" (only I look for "Know your English" column), the "Folio" magazine that comes along with paper. I still have one edition of Folio in my racks. To me, the worst thing this newspaper did is to discontinue this magazine.
I grew up till my high school with all these weekly special sections. When I was in junior college, first thing my English teacher advised to read the center pages (editorial) of "The Hindu", which was never for me that time, as it looked some Greek and Latin. I used to find facts and interesting info and paste them in an album like book, which I constantly updated. This I treasure even now. When I look those books, nostalgia strikes me, bringing me the memories of hours spent in reading, cutting and pasting. One article I remember often when I think about those works (even now, while writing), is an article about 'Asteroid hitting earth in October 2028' in 'Science & Technology' supplementary. In that article, NASA predicted an Asteroid might hit earth at precise date & time and their plans to overcome the event, which otherwise, if happens, it might bring significant impact on earth. This shocked me and I used to continually share this info with all my friends and relatives. They patted me as if I myself predicted the event!! Nostalgia!!
When at college, I used to read editorial regularly and I spent first few hard weeks, to get the hang of it and I then started to appreciate it. Then, editorial page became the first page of the day. I appreciated the language and style of writing. It was excellent and some times I get dumbstruck with awe. Those were the days, I used to proud myself of having understood the editorial completely with help of a dictionary. Now I guess, those moments will never return.
Slowly, I started to see the decline in the quality of editorial, but still continued to read and at one point of time, after I started to go to work, I stopped to titles of editorials because of its lame topics and deteriorating quality in the write-ups. I heard people praise about this newspaper for its minimal advertisements but, slowly the Ads took most of the spaces and the content went back ground.
There was nothing worth to remember anything in the paper. All the sections which I assiduously followed were gone. Poor quality of content and old styled reporting invited wrath of its readers like me. There is no freshness and it is lagging a decade back, I think. All my friends who I know, grew up with this paper like me, shared my views. I once thought, because of strong market hold, this newspaper has in Chennai, it is surviving. Some one will surely see the decline of this 130 year old and take the lead. In the process, this would create intense competition among the dailies to give the best to their audience. This is what is happening now. Times of India is entering the monopolistic waters.
There are lot of noise in blogging circles about the bias coverage of Tibetan protests in this newspaper. You can find them here, here and here. I don't have an idea on this news. But, once I went through the blog posts, I realized the awareness of decline of quality of this news paper is spreading fast. This is good news for ToI and other dailies, but not certainly for this "Chennai people lover".
Update: The Hindu does it again via Desi Pundit
I got my first mobile phone at the end of my 3rd year of engineering. It was Nokia 2600. It was a basic phone (not even Radio in that set), which cost me around 5k. Though I had chance of buying a better model that time, I was satisfied with the lower end model for a simple reason I held - "Let me buy a better and higher end mobile when I start earning".
My first mobile was good and I had it for 3 years. When I was into work for almost a year, I proposed an idea of buying a mobile worth 15 k to my dad. He was shocked to hear and yelled at me saying that it was equivalent to his monthly income! But I was adamant. I bought a cool Sony Ericsson w610i. This phone was not that popular, thought it is sleek, faster than its cousin w810i, good web browser, auto-focus, RSS reader.... but it has its own glitches, for example photos taken are not proper under poor light ambiance. When I started to look for online reviews of w610i , I can see one comment that pervaded everywhere - the unconventional keys. In fact, I went for this phone for its keys. 'Be unique' is my policy!
After seeing the Apple iPhone, man, that phone I want to possess like my wife. My genetic math tells me to continue with the current one, until the current investment worth stretching and till sufficient surplus have been accrued to possess the beauty.
I think, Apple changed the way phones would be looked by people in the future. Now, people will start to look more & more for data & video apps & services than just voice calls. And the recent developments from Apple iPhone to Google's Android OS to LiMo, excites me like anything. Why Google suddenly jumping and investing hugely in mobile space ( read Robert Cringley write-ups), simply made me awe-struck. Now, I am starting to digest vaguely the whole idea that our lives in future will revolve in & around Mobile phone. The newly introduced smart phones by LG, Sony Ericsson et all in the recently concluded GSMA World Mobile Congress, Barcelona, are just mind blowing. I love SE phones and I already picked my upgrade (specs here) before changing to the coolest one - Apple's iPhone.
click on pic to enlarge the image Now-a-days the advertisements by the Telecom companies are getting creative and better. Airtel's ad (Barriers break..) is bit touchy, but Vodafone's ads are simply superb. It either makes you chuckle or amuse about the thought process of making the ad or make you run towards the nearest stores!
And this Airtel ad in today's The Times of India, I love it!
