Incredible India

So the other day I was in a cafe with some french friends (watching BBC news) and this ad showed up. After about 30 seconds I said (pr)loudly INDIA, and few of them were ready to bet some serious money that it was some "world tour" ad.



Really, really a wonderful ad. The directors cut below is even more better:



Jai Hind!

Thought of the day

Nothing comes for free, and in case if it does either it'll be too late.. or too lame :)

Cheers!

PS: just said it to a friend, so some rights reserved :)

You Know You're Old When...

Inspired by Guy Kawasaki's post on his 53rd birthday. Remember Guy, you're still 50, you're just looking at it from a different angle ...


From: RowanManahan, SlideShare

Orkut: The Road Ahead

The new look-and-feel of Orkut is not at all appealing, not just to me but to everyone I talked to about this since the change. When all their competitors are coming up with new features everyday, all they could do was to put more colors wherever possible (and brighten the already used colors making it even worse). On this occasion I thought of writing what all I miss on Orkut:

1) Search in scrapbook: There is no doubt that the highest % of time spent on Orkut is spent on scrapping friends and other "wanna be friends". This is clearly led to exchange of information over scraps and where there is information, it needs a search tool. Though I think allowing searching through others scrapbook will be a security threat but searching on own scrapbook will be a real treat.

2) More number of Photos: Why in the world have they limited the no. of photos to 12? With Googles resources in place, there can't be a problem in terms of digital space available to them. When facebook is recording huge no. of images to be uploaded and MySpace buying photo sharing platform Photobucket, this is surely a big drawback. Also, I see a lot of "New pics uploaded" screen names, clearly indicating how much time we spend on checking others snaps. For me, this is the second highest activity I spend my time on (first is of course, scrapping).

3) Fan: Its too much trouble to become someones fan. Suppose I'm visiting a friends profile and I want to become his fan. The only way I can do this, go back to my profile, go to manage friends and then search him and then become his fan. (And with people changing their display names its tough to find, on a no. of occasions I couldn't :( )

Why can't there be a marking area in each of my friends profile? Simple? Isn't it?

Since past three years, when I joined Orkut, I haven't seen many big feature additions. A small poll app, or a blog or a change in their news section won't will make the road ahead tough and tough.

4) Messages: The most important of all the messaging in Orkut is almost useless due to the unlimited SPAM. I've seen a number of other sites where messaging is the strongest means of communication and I hardly read my messages on Orkut. This seriously needs to be revamped. Everything about it sucks as of now.

5) Communities: Many surveys have shown in past than most of the users (including me) have joined communities just show their interests/attributes and very few are actually active on them. Tagging would have done this for me. They seriously need to think some way to make it more useful.

India Aha...

Interesting pics.

Cheers!

Living room of the Future from the 1970s

The one thing which really caught my eye was:
Television is changing from a box to stare at into a two-way tool.



(Un)Surprisingly, this was predicted in the 70s. Image source.

This post is a part of an experiment.

How Projects Really Truly Work

The truth of most of our lives :)

Cheers!

Google Vs Facebook

Facebook: These guys know everything you are okay with telling your closest friends.

Google: These guys know your dirtiest secrets.

By Sam.

See You Soon, may be.

Not long ago, during the college placements, while interviewing for a company one of my friends cleared all the tough initial rounds and was just left with a HR interview.

When we came out after the HR interview, he couldn't believe he didn't get the job. On asking, he explained to us what happened. (He actually didn't know why he didn't get the job). The "relevant" part of the interview:


HR: Why do you want to work for Sybase and not Googles/Yahoos/Microsofts?
Friend (Being completely honest): Actually sir I tried, but couldn't clear their interviews.
HR: OK, fair enough. But why not Oracle?
Friend: Actually sir, I don't want to work for a database company.

HR started laughing and I suspect he must have told him: See you soon, may be.

Those of you, who still don't know why he didn't get a job: Sybase is "actually" a Database company.

Best Wishes :)

Beauty + Brains = Constant

Watching the following video made me realize how much I've missed being in a institute with YouTube banned. Sigh!

Q: Recent polls have shown a fifth of Americans can’t locate the United States on a world map. Who do you think this is?

A: I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don’t have maps and, uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as in, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future for our children.