| Oxford Bookstore - Spammers |
[Dec. 4th, 2009|05:21 pm] |
There must be a name for establishments that add you to their mailing list and (a) provide no way for you to get out of the mailing list (b) ignore repeated protests/requests to be removed.... "Spammer" does not appear adequate.
Akila, no I am not interested in 'Magic Show by Poochi Comics & Oxford Bookstore", goddamit. May your mails be redirected to /dev/null ... and may you go out of business... |
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| Blackberry Curve / Javelin 8900 |
[Sep. 21st, 2009|07:59 am] |
So I lost my cellphone. Again. The last three phones I have bought have all been replacements for phones lost/stolen in various parts of the world. Given this track record, I guess upgrading to a BlackBerry doesn't quite come through as the most sensible thing to do. But what the hell. One has to fight one's own rationality once in a while. The world would be too dull otherwise.
The first evening with this new toy has left me significantly underwhelmed. The user experience is less than spectacular, and not quite what I was expecting from a BlackBerry.
First let's start with a phone feature that does not seem to figure too prominently in any review (of any phone) - the placement of the SIM card and ease of installing and replacing a SIM. I started playing with my shiny new toy with a family member's SIM card, and when the time came to swap that with my own, the piss poor design of the SIM holder in the Javelin hit home. There is a small slot that fits the SIM very tightly once it is slid into position. The problem is the hold is to tight, and there are no catches that release the SIM that once it lodges itself safely into place, getting it out is a herculean task as one can't grab the SIM properly. I am yet to recover fully from the brain deadedness of it all. The thought of coaxing the SIM from this baby half jetlagged and in a landing plane does not fill me with enthusiasm. It has got to be the worst design there is. The Nokia 1110 that costs INR 1500 has a SIM holder that's easier to use. The BlackBerry Bold and Javelin (also called the Curve 8900) have the same wonderfully crappy design.
Then ran into software issues. The BlackBerry desktop software failed to install properly - some DLLs were not registering. After much head scratching, I figured the problem was the installation path had a apostrophe somewhere, and Windows could not handle that. WTF. Anyway, that consumed some 2 hours of my time.
Trying to sync my Outlook contacts with the Black Berry was the next challenge - the desktop software kept crashing. Double WTF. But by early hours of the morning, by the grace of some unknown $LORD, my contacts were transferred.
This is my first non-Nokia phone, and what a crappy beginning. sure hope things will settle down, and the damn thing shows its worth :)
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| The Hindu online version comes to the 21st century |
[Sep. 3rd, 2009|09:41 am] |
Well... a first teeny weeny baby step.
Today: http://thehindu.com/
Tomorrow: http://beta.thehindu.com/
From their website:
"The redesigned website of The Hindu was launched on Saturday, August 15, in beta.As the website of a 130-year-old newspaper of record, it retains its core values of independence, authenticity, and credibility while adopting contemporary web design principles, tools, and features." The design is by Mario Garcia Jr., of Garcia Media, Tampa. Florida, USA. The workflow solution is by CCI Europe A/S, Denmark.The web publishing system is from Escenic A/S, Norway.
About time, I'd say :) |
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| Quality of proof reading on www.nytimes.com |
[Aug. 1st, 2009|09:59 pm] |
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/02/nyregion/02laguardia.html
I am sure this would be fixed quite soon, but the language and content gave me a headache just now. WTF.
" The ticket agent noticed his strange behavior and alerted officials for with the Transportation Security Administration, who soon approached the man and separated him from his bag."
"About 5:30, officials evacuated the airport, and some passengers who had already been cleared through security were transported by bus taken to gates at other terminals, Mr. Kelly said."
"The oA law enforcement official who requested anonymity because of the ongoingcontinuing investigation said Mr. McGann had a boarding pass for United Airlines Flight 667 to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport in"
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| Making a point |
[Jul. 7th, 2009|10:33 pm] |
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"In a previous life (before Akamai) I was a complier guy, and for my Master's Thesis I showed that just by adding NOPS you can improve the performance of the SPEC benchmarks by up to 9%. This was in reaction to the common practice (at the time) of publishing compiler papers presenting complicated complier techniques to achieve performance improvements of only 5-10%"
I have not checked out the guy's thesis; but that summary brought a smile to my face, alright!
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| "Browse Here and Buy Online" Book Stores |
[Jul. 6th, 2009|06:27 pm] |
One often comes across pleas like "don't go into a book store to check a product out and then come out and order from some online store - it does the physical store no good while you aim for that 5% discount."
Sadly, if 'check out a physical product and buy later online' is what consumers want, then that's what they will do; you cannot fight that. So let's imagine a store that lets people do exactly what they want. Imagine a store that has rack after rack of books - for display. Instead of a physical shopping cart you pick up a hand-held (with a bar code scanner) at the entrance. The hand held can give you complete access to the online information about a product (like amazon reviews, book website etc.). You browse (physically + info on the net) a book/item, and if you like it, you can 'add to shopping cart' electronically. Once you are done you check out - at 'internet rates', and your selections will be delivered by post to your address.
Think of this as a new retail format that market makers like Amazon can use. 'internet rates' should be possible because there is no inventory management at all in the store (expensive real estate). Perhaps a significant fraction of the cost can be recovered from the brands / companies whose products are being displayed.
Hm... anyone got Jeff Bezos' personal email address? Do you think he'll cough up some cash for some thoughts on this idea? :=) |
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| friendfeed - howto |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|10:08 pm] |
I am sure there is something here I am missing. I import rss feeds of my friends' friendfeeds into Google Reader. Is there any easy way I can choose what channels I receive in those feeds? Specifically I find twitter updates as unbearable clutter in that viewing medium. How do I control what information I get - the default set up appears to be that 'owner' decides what he/she wants to export and that's the end of it.
Does Reader have user-configurable filtering capability?
Update: I've been trying to get Reader to work with FeedRinse. The results have been far from satisfactory, but I guess I need to invest more time exploring the service. I mean, is there *any* RSS reader with built-in filtering capability comparable to FeedRinse? It is very surprising that the situation has not changed nearly 3 years after Cory Doctrow first wrote about it! :) |
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| The Unbearable Lightness of Being - copy for sale |
[Feb. 28th, 2009|09:06 am] |
I thought i found a good deal on amazon.co.uk when I bought Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being for GBP 5.4 as against the list price of GBP 9. Unfortunately I clicked the darned 'add to shopping cart' button twice I now have two copies of this fine book. I will be in Madras / Bangalore in a month's time. If any of you want to buy a brand new copy of this from me, drop me a note :)
Maybe Bezos had something going with OneClick...
Update: Traded for a couple of well thumbed books of comparable quality :) |
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| Plug-in ideas for the Kindle 2 |
[Feb. 25th, 2009|11:37 pm] |
I am surprised how excited I got when I saw the first pics of the Kindle 2. I cannot help but feel the ebook is a concept whose time has come; the Kindle 2 is one way to do it. I wonder what features Amazon will have to build to merely stay in the game (ignoring the marketing required to fight off Apple, who I am sure will be interested in the market sooner or later).
Amazon will have to deal wtih the pulls and pushes of convergence sooner or later (depending on its success of course). I am most attracted to the form factor of this piece of electronics - it is smaller and lighter than your netbook, and about five to six times the size of your cell phone. Do you really want to carry 3 devices on you in the 21st century? How cool do you think it would be if the Kindle 3 had an 'iphone dock' that would let you plug in your iphone to the bottom and control the phone settings through the main display? Or better still, maintain the overall dimensions as they are today, except that the iphone dimensions are "included" in the current size - the generous allocation of real estate to the liberally spaced out key board makes one believe that this is, perhaps, outside the realm of fantasy. Hm, Kindle 3, or any version of Kindle for that matter, is, perhaps, unlikely to get such a feature because of interace issues. And therein, perhaps, lies yet another opportunity for Apple to showcase its engineering and design excellence and leverage its closed architecture for the iphone.
What does the Kindle mean to a collector of autographed books? Well, it sounds depressing at first. But it cannot be that hard to fix it, really. I am sure Amazon has in its release pipeline for Kindle 7, a stylus based input area where authors can sign and leave messages on a page of their choice :) Or one can wish that that be the case :) |
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| 'Discovering' pics that you never knew existed.. via Picasa |
[Feb. 9th, 2009|12:00 am] |
Every once in a while I am surprised to find some old photo in Picasa, bringing back into the realm of consciousness, memories long lost. But increasingly Picasa also turns up photos that I had no bloody idea I had on my hard disk(s). Take a look at the photo below. Even after ten minutes of intense effort I could not figure out what I had to do with this pic... Ah, the wonders of technology :)
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| Headline synthesis |
[Jan. 25th, 2009|05:05 pm] |
A few short days after I blogged (briefly) about content synthesis being the next frontier, I noticed something bizzare on the Google News website. I captured screen shots at that time but did not get around to blogging about it. I was clearly not the only one to notice it. I am not sure if Google came out with an explanation for this weird incident, but I wonder if this is the result of some 'headline matching/synthesis' that goes on behind the scenes.
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| International Appeal of Obama, and languauge. |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|11:39 pm] |
Replace 'America' with Country of Choice in any stirring speech aimed at the masses that Obama has delivered, and you have what would be the best speech in the wettest dreams of any optimist in any country in the world living through these trying times. There is little in his inspiring speeches that cannot be carried without loss to other democracies, at the very least. So, why is it that a Rahul Gandhi, or a Badruddin Sachdev, not manged this unification.
Languauge... language....language. It is my thesis that no Indian leader can mobilize the masses in India like Obama has managed in so short a period.
God bless him. To be precise, God bless his oratorical powers. For now, till he proves his worth through his actions. |
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| toast to Obama |
[Jan. 20th, 2009|11:27 pm] |
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... to his mystical powers of oratory. For now. God bless him. |
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| Satyam's Independent Directors |
[Jan. 11th, 2009|10:15 pm] |
This article in the Business Standard inspired me to do some digging into the profiles of these fine Gentlemen. In the 10 minute research, the profile of Prof. Krishna Palepu , Ross Graham Walker Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for International Development, at the Harvard Business School, stood out because of the following:
[...]Prior to assuming his current administrative position, Professor Palepu held other positions at the School, including Senior Associate Dean, Director of Research, and Chair, Accounting and Control Unit.
[...]
In the area of corporate governance, Professor Palepu's work focuses on how to make corporate boards more effective, and on improving corporate disclosure. Professor Palepu teaches these topics in several HBS executive educationprograms aimed at members of corporate boards: "Making Corporate Boards More Effective," "Audit Committees in a New Era of Governance," and "Compensation Committees: New Challenges, New Solutions." He also co-led Harvard Business School's Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Values initiative, launched in response to the recent wave of corporate scandals and governance failures.
Ah, the irony.
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| What would you do if ... |
[Jan. 2nd, 2009|04:46 pm] |
Poignant.
WARSAW (Reuters) - A Polish man got the shock of his life when he visited a brothel and spotted his wife among the establishment's employees. Polish tabloid Super Express said the woman had been making some extra money on the side while telling her husband she worked at a store in a nearby town. "I was dumfounded. I thought I was dreaming," the husband told the newspaper on Wednesday. The couple, married for 14 years, are now divorcing, the newspaper reported. (Writing by Chris Borowski, Editing by Matthew Jones) |
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