Sunday, December 21, 2003

Delhi Metro NRS 03 results

Delhi Metro NRS 03 results

Average Issue Readership in 000s
The Times Of India 1432
Navbharat Times 1431
Hindustan Times 1327
Punjab Kesari 1119
Hindustan 894
Grihshobha 612
Dainik Jagran 552
Meri Saheli 346
India Today - Eng 340
India Today - Hindi 310

All hail the leader...

TOI is the new leader in Delhi as per the NRS 2003, beating HT

10 years of Doom

In celebration of 10 years of Doom The Doom Comic

NRS results...

The NRS results are out.


The Times of India featres as the only English paper in the top 10 daily newspapers in the country.

Coverage on
Mediaah
Exchange4media


There has been a lot of litigation on the release of the NRS.

Ego Mania?

I couldn't resist and went ego surfing yet again...

I'm the 3rd Chirag on the list. Just a week ago I was number 5. I must be doing something right...

But what?

Saturday, December 20, 2003

The Virtual world is not virtual any more...

This is a really significant precedent. First there was the intersection of commerce on the edge, with scores of E:Bay auctions selling stuff in the make beleive worlds, then it was legitimised, with the game companies selling the stuff themselves. And now a judge in the real world rules on property in a vistual world. The intersection of the virtual and real worlds is complete

http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=4022155

Online Gamer in China Sues, Wins Over Virtual Theft
Fri December 19, 2003 08:30 AM ET

BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese court has ordered an online video game company to return hard-won virtual property, including a make-believe stockpile of bio-chemical weapons, to a player whose game account was looted by a hacker.

Thursday, December 18, 2003

The many paradoxes of broadband

Did you know that the postal department can also be termed as broadband...
Blockbuster Chief asks for scrapping of Region encoded DVD's. About bloody time...

Not so fast

I thought this was a brilliant idea. Apparently the Google bar doesn't have the IE Control+Enter shortcut, and it trips up on urls like http://bloglines.com/myblogs, or part urls like download.com, which are handled by the address bar.

So if someone at google fixes this, then one can be rid of the address bar and save some screen height in the Web Browser...

Bye Bye address bar, welcome Google Bar

In search of more browser screen space, I was trying to minimise the space consumed by the toolbars, when it struck me to replace the address bar with the google bar... like so

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

God Considers Smiting Bible Pirates

Smite on...

God Considers Smiting Bible Pirates

Vatican City - God did not rule out smiting as a final measure against those who share his most famous work, the Bible, on the Internet. This marks the first time a deity has spoken on IT-related questions since Steve Jobs was temporarily Enlightened when touching the One True iMac some years ago.

Authorized Version?
Citing misuse of His word, misquotation, and putting hardworking Bible printers out of work, God said he would now start hunting Bible pirating around the globe. 'I have to defend both my world-famous brand - the Bible and its distinctive likenesses - and the livelihood of those who create and distribute legal copies of it. Sure, they live not by bread alone, but website hits - someone else's website mind you - don't pay the bills for these folks.'
Since large portions of the Bible are many centuries old, many people believe the work to be in the public domain. Not so, said God. 'Look, most copyright laws are based on something like the author's lifetime plus, let's say, 15 years. News flash: I'm still here.'
' I am a jealous God,' He said, 'but I am by no means unreasonable. If the person will stop distributing My copyrighted materials, there will be no further consequences. Like I've said before: hate pirating, love the pirate.'

Monday, December 15, 2003

The Blog is dead.. Long live the blog...

I've finally renamed the blog today... It is now no longer called "A Blog Formerly known as My Ramblings and Rants", instead it is now called Marlinspike. This is a sailors needle and can most simply explained as Knot Untangler. Though it is aso used to tie knots :D.

Why Marlinspike?

Read on...

Saturday, December 13, 2003

What is a Marlinspike?

Marlinspike is a knot untangler... it is used by sailors to... Untangle Knots and also to tie them.

Of ego surfing and rebranding...

Decided to go ego surfing today.
The term Chirag throws back this blog as the number 5 result. Not bad considering a few months ago I wouldn't even feature in the top ten.

A search for Chirag Patnaik now throws back this blog as the first one... Earlier it used to throw back one of the sites I'd done.

I also decided to have a look at who was linking to me... Pitifully few of course. And all of them from Comments I made somewhere or as part of some blog directory. I found

Recently Updated Indian Weblogs

He lists my Blog as... Chirag

This is of course because of the long and unwieldy name of my blog. I'd realised this earlier of course. This just proves that I have to rebrand the blog.

Friday, December 12, 2003

poor loser strikes again...

As much as I dislike indulging in a flame war, but this poor loser seems to have a fan following...

Further the poor loser claims
I admire and respect people who can argue logically, without getting petty or personal. I also admire people who can admit defeat graciously when they lose an argument fair and square. I admire people who hear out other arguments before stating their own, instead of blindly sticking to a stand. I hope to be such a person myself.


HAH! He doesn't like the fact he can be google bombed too :D

In retrospect, the term poor loser seems to have been very apt since he is most definitely a poor loser.

Okay Okay, I'm repeating myself...

Frozen in it's tracks

New Scientist reports the Freezing of Light

I want a Private Island

I want a Private Island

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Movabletype in Hindi

Hindi Movabletype

Name a Blog

Suggestions are welcome for a new name for this blog... use the comment link to leave a suggestion.

Branding

I'm considering a change of name...

Not my name.. the name of this blog...

Why?

It's a long story...

It goes back to my training as a marketeer... The Name "A Blog Formerly Known as My Ramblings and Rants" is far too long and from a branding perspectiv too complicated for anyone to refer. Not that anyone is refering to me... But, if someone were to refer to me, then that would be a real problem... A Branding nightmare... In fact I can hardly think of any popular blog which has such a long name.

So one needs a snappy one or two words for the blog...

360 degrees

Sony has announced a 360 degree camera lens.

This has to be the most cool thing in photography since photography itself... :D

The Helloworld Project

This is so awesome...
The Helloworld Project

Poor Loser

I commented on an item on this poor loser's blog:


How juvenile...

It's like spitting on a Mercedees Benz whizzing by, while sitting in a bus...


To figure out the context visit this Poor Loser's Blog

55 miles to the gallon...

The Toyota Prius claims a fuel efficiency of 55 miles to the gallon...

Friday, December 05, 2003

Indian Railways

Economist.com has this analysis on the Indian Railways. If it were privatised. God only knows how it would run. If it were not there. God only knows how this country would run...

MidDay Stocks

This is a curious article on Mid-Day. It talks of a meteoric rise of the MiDay Stock in response to speculative trading. This is all the more curoius because other media stocks are flat.

Of Course rumours of buyout of MidDay means that speculators are at play. and some talk of my company as being one of the suitors. That seems to be unlikely as there is some internal movement my company launching an Afternoon paper in Mumbai.

Cry Baby...

Roland Piquepaille in Can You Pay U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries?

While cMarket has solved its immediate challenge, the implications of Jon's approach are potentially mind-bending. What if other companies begin taking the same approach -- offering Indian-style wages to American workers? On the positive side, we could begin to solve our job-creation problems. But on the negative side, America's standard of living would inevitably decline. There's only one way to find out for sure how it all might shake out, and that is for other executives to replicate Jon's experiment. The results could be quite interesting.


What is irritating about this is that America waves the flag of globalisation and when globalisation hits it, it goes screaming like a baby...

This is similar to the Visa regimes instituted by the West post World War II, trying to stop the influx of immigrants to maintain a better standard of living. When people world over figured that manufacturring in poorer countries is cheaper and businesses started moving manufacturing... America started screaming like a baby again about labor standards et al.

Conclusion of this Rant: If you want globalisation, allow free flo of labour. oops, you can't do that... otherwise Indians will take over your tech jobs... :D

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

For God, Country, and Coca-Cola

Last night I started reading For God, Country, and Coca-Cola by Mark Pendergrast...

It traces the history of Coca-Cola from the early days of being a patent (quack) medicine as a rip off by pemberton, of something that was then sold as Vin Marini... the buying out my Asa candler, the early blanket marketing by Robinson... The rumours of Cocaine content, and the subsequent removal fo Cocaine from the formula. Earlly advertising, the journey from being a medicine, to a Cocaine laced soft drink to a Simply refreshing Cold Drink. The book reads like a thriller. I've reached a point where Robert Woodruff has just taken over the company...

The mystery of the missing posts

First I lost the posts then I got them back... what gives?

Hee hee!

BBC reports No volunteers for orgasm implant... ;)
Wired has some cool must buys... The Sony DSC-F828 and the Skrail suspension are my favorites...

Monday, December 01, 2003

Election Day

Today was election day in Delhi, and the streets were empty. I rocketed through on the way to work...