Ghajini

or Bhajini... more like. Dimag ki Bhaji ban gayi...

Drag, Drag Drag

A few thousand feet above the clouds...

 

Software is marvelous, This is an untouched picture

After a little post processing...

Not bad at all...

Times of India production

This is a video that some of us produced in the Times of India three years ago.




It was shot on my old Canon S1 IS. Not bad for an amateur production I think.

Stolen...

All the streetlights on the Sector 62 road... Stolen. India shining indeed.

Blast from the Past?

Spotted this poster on my morning jog...
Blast from the past... and at yesterday's prices too...

The games finally begin...

Vodafone today fired the first shot in the upcoming iPhone race.

Vodafone today is out with an ad in The Times of India
which called for bookings from existing users by sending an sms with the word IPHONE to 56789.

Obviously there are no details on pricing and availability et al. All indications are that the phone will be available sometime in October (probably in time for Diwali).

Stay Tuned...

Update: You could also now book online at http://www.vodafone.in/
Update: More iPhone India news here

PS3

I'm looking forward to picking up PlayStation 3 80 GB Metal Gear Solid 4 Pack. I just need to figure out someone to carry it back from the states...

US places India and 8 others in Priority Watch List

I ran across this article... It is surprising that how little we know about this here.

This report is primarily driven by Private industry. This self same industry is calling for Canada's inclusion on this list of worst offenders...

A Foreign office rep told the Canadian House of Commons "In regard to the watch list, Canada does not recognize the 301 watch list process. It basically lacks reliable and objective analysis. It's driven entirely by U.S. industry."

The industry body that drives this report is IIPA.

We would be well advised to also recall a statement by William Patry, a copyright expert and Google's copyright attorney.

"the sheer arrogance and affront to the sovereignty of foreign governments by the IIPA's annual reports and effort to penalize those governments that do not toe the IIPA's line is breathtaking."

It is best to ignore such ramblings and if push comes to shove, throw the ball back by linking demands for more access to the American market for Indian services companies, removal of restrictions on outsourcing, more H1 visas et. al.

Canon Rocks

I had bought a Canon S1 IS(the first generation ultra zoom camera) way back in Mar of 2004 from Amazon. Four years later the LCD screen and EVF went on the blink. I was in denial for  a few months, when I finally handed it over to Canon India (through my cousin who works there).  She called a few days later to tell me that they can't fix the camera, but they will replace it with the latest generation Canon S5 IS. Awesome...

This is customer service, not the usual bit of thievery, most companies in India Indulge in.

I was out to lunch this sunday, so I took it out the camera to take some pics...

Bougainvillea at the Defence Colony Market. This was in the Macro mode. I feel that the focus is a bit soft. I need to get the hang of the camera.

A sign at the entrance of the garden

A forlorn looking Fountain

I plan to run the much famed CHDK custom firmware for  DIGIC II & III processors... The stuff you can add to the cameras functionality is mindboggling...

 

Also Canon seems to have standardised accesories around this series, so I might pick up a Canon TC DC58B Tele-Converterlens as well to get an approx 600 mm equiv... That is fantastically huge.

Imagine! videos for Pangea Day

This is awesome... I ran across this today at PressTalk. Very nice... Sends a tingle down your spine...




This is part of the Imagine! series of videos for Pangea Day on May 10...

The others:

Japan sings for Turkey!


France Sings for USA


Australia sings for Lebanon


Read more here...
See Pangea's YouTube channel here

Domains, Domains and more Domains...

I just bought (rented?) another domain.

marlinspike.in

This adds to the 3 I already own...

patnaiks.in

patnaik.in

chiragpatnaik.com

 

Another cost head... these four domains cost me around 3000 bucks a year... No end to spending money...

itimes.com

So... it finally launches...

Nearly, a year after I quit Indiatimes, the social networking (the specs of which was one of the things (along with Indiatimes Mail) on my plate) platform has finally gone live. It took a year of work on the PeopleAggregator platform to finally reach an acceptable state of launch, and as is fashionable these days, it is in Beta.

Is it too little too late?

In a world dominated by Facebook, Myspace and Orkut (dominating different geographies), this is the most obvious question... After all sites like Rediff Iland did not gain much traction either, and lets not forget numerous sites like yaari.com, which have fallen by the wayside... Another catch all Social Network, hohum.

The answer. Depends. Depends on whether, the product will remain a social network in the mould of Facebook or will evolve to something more. The potential exists to do much more, ofcourse... The direction it will take totally depends on the team handling the product. No one from the original team is now (or will not be in the next few weeks) on the project, so I don't know, if the initial objectives and thought processes are even captured anywhere.

A Bit about the Domain...

The domain itimes.com was held by a company in the States. No amount of searching the web, gives me a hint as to what was it before... Though there is a mention of this domain on the University of California Irvine's Anthropology course...

The domain acquisition saga is a content for another post altogether. The internal contradictions and desires that were the initial motivation for makingthe purchase were completely different from what it was used for eventually.

Read this story on NYMag. We (atleast I) had quite a laugh... (Though we pocketed the domain a little after this story came out)

Will Apple co-opt itimes, like they did the iphone, they seem to claim everything i... Only time will tell.

And the cost...

It would suffice to say, it was expensive...

 

Commentary on itimes.com

ContentSutra

WATBlog

Pluggd.in

Social Networking for Grown-Ups...

So much is said about social networks and how catch all social networks are all the rage right now. But look back a few years and you see all a landscape littered with yesterday's stars.
Friendster
Hi5
and to some extent
Orkut (Some may argue that Orkut is alive and kicking in India, but I beg to differ. Orkut isn't hip any mre, which means that over time it will slide into nothingness. After all which woman, wants 100 friend requests from absolute strangers)

And not to mention that the hundreds of new social networks that pop up every other day. Clearly a gold rush is on. The acquisition of Desimartini by HT 's Firefly eVenture is a symptom of this gold rush.
With the reported difficulties of Google & MS to monetise their respective ad properties of MySpace and Facebook, it is clear that we have seen all the hypergrowth we had to see, It will grow, there are after all several billion people on this planet but not necessarily to the point, where it will justify billions in valuations in the near future.Maybe Facebook will grow into something else. A Personal newspaper (or perhaps twitter will have that honour).

Other stories of fatigue (which are related to the relative difficulty in moetising) would be worrying people in this and affiliated industries

All social networks suffer from the what can only be termed as the nightclub effect. i.e. like in a nightclub, when the place is new and the hip people move in, it is the happening place in town, when they move on, the venue collapses. By, all means, it may still be around. But like the fashion trends, easy come, easy go... and like in fashion, there will be a few timeless classics...

So, what is the alternative?

Social networks that are targeted at niches, rather than at masses, The internet is a medium of niches. You go to amazon.com for books (amongst other things), expedia for airtickets etc.
Flixster seeks to be based around your interest in movies, but relies on the same base community of friends. Something around travel is eminently workable.
One such alternative look at social networks is geni.com. It is a social network for families. You seed it with yourself as the starting point and then build a tree. Son of, brother of etc. and repeat that with your parents, and your parents' parents. The good part is that the person invited has the ability to populate his own branch of the tree, which is relevant to him and only him.
It allows the usual smorgasboard of services like Birthday/ anniversary alerts, photo albums, newsfeeds et al. and auto generates calendars. So, it becomes pretty much a family bulletin board. This is one place, where I've seen my Parents, uncles, aunts, cousins, nieces and nephews active on it. A first for any social network I've been on for the past five years.

The absolute best part, is that, if you don't belong to the family, you can't get in.
If MS or Google want to make an acquisition for the future, this is it. Imagine photo sharing apps, imagine family blogs, opportunity to refer gifts, air-tickets...

Anyhow, this is only one example. And perhaps more useful than most.
Another example is LinkedIn. Very effective. I get a lot done through linkedin. recommendations, contacts etc. I often accept random requests, thinking, they may be useful to me at some point in the future and therein lies the danger of it being rendered irrelevant, I may end up with a giant contact list which I neither care for nor use...

Google may have a better chance to refashion orkut into something more than what it is right now. Yahoo 360 is a nonstarter, otherwise they too had a good chance of making something of it... Imagine building a music recommendation engine basis your friend group rather than everyone in the list (which may include family and other people). I'm yet to see a social network that is slicing and dicing to that level of minutiae.
I'd love to see Amazon enter into this arena. Their recommendation engine is getting better and better over the years.

The bottom line, is that a catch all social network is unlikely to live on in the long term except as part of a larger bouquet of services. Till someone builds a social network for grown ups, well have to live with this  madness.

Gadget Blogs

Since I'm planning to buy a PS3 and some other stuff, I've been frequenting a lot of gadget blogs.

Engadget
Gizmodo
Crave

More Comics

I refuse to call Comics as Graphic Novels. It's just trying to be snooty. Thus said, I'm thinking of adding a few more comics to my collection...
Absolute Sandman Vol I
Absolute Sandman Vol II
Absolute Sandman Vol III
Absolute Kingdom Come
Bone

Sigh! another huge credit card bill...

And I'm not the first one to think that calling comics as graphics novels is snooty...

Some in the comics community have objected to the term "graphic novel" on the grounds that it is unnecessary, or that its usage has been corrupted bycommercial interests. Writer Alan Moore believes:

“
It's a marketing term. I mean, it was one that I never had any sympathy with. The term 'comic' does just as well for me. ... The problem is that 'graphic novel' just came to mean 'expensive comic book' and so what you'd get is people like DC Comics or Marvel comics — because 'graphic novels' were getting some attention, they'd stick six issues of whatever worthless piece of crap they happened to be publishing lately under a glossy cover and call it The She-Hulk Graphic Novel, you know?"
”

Author Daniel Raeburn wrote "I snicker at the neologism first for its insecure pretension — the literary equivalent of calling a garbage man a 'sanitation engineer' — and second because a 'graphic novel' is in fact the very thing it is ashamed to admit: a comic book, rather than a comic pamphlet or comic magazine."

Writer Neil Gaiman is quoted, in response to a claim that he doesn't write comics, but graphic novels:

“
He meant it as a compliment, I suppose. But all of a sudden I felt like someone who'd been informed that she wasn't actually a hooker; that in fact she was a lady of the evening.
”

As a result of this dissatisfaction, some alternative cartoonists have coined their own terms to describe extended comics narratives. For example, the cover of Daniel Clowes' book Ice Haven describes the book as "a comic-strip novel", with Clowes having noted that he "never saw anything wrong with the comic book". When The Comics Journal asked the cartoonist Seth why he added the subtitle "A Picture Novella" to his comic It's a Good Life, If You Don't Weaken, he responded, "I could have just put 'a comic book'... It goes without saying that I didn't want to use the term graphic novel. I just don't like that term".

So, who makes the money?

Just this morning , for no particular reason, I typed in www.orissa.in and this is what I see...


For a regular internet user, there is nothing strange here. Another squatter, who got in early in the game and is now raking in the cash, by putting up a parking page with ads on one of the many millions of URL's (Ain't Google Adsense wonderful).

Since in the overall scheme of things Orissa figures pretty much at the bottom of the heap, I wonder if it is only Orissa or are the other domains also being squatted on...

www.uttarpradesh.in


Yup.

So A quick lookup on who, what, where and we get the registrant as (drumroll...) the Government of India.

Registrant Name:Government of India
Registrant Organization:RESERVED NAME
Registrant Street1:ERNET India, 6 CGO Complex, Lodi Road
Registrant Street2:New Delhi
Registrant City:New Delhi
Registrant Postal Code:110003
Registrant Country:IN
Registrant Phone:+91.1124361895
Registrant FAX:+91.1124362924
Registrant Email:

So far so good. Wisely or otherwise, Government has reserved these domains. That set my mind ticking once more.

This could potentially be millions of dollars. ok ok, a few thousand dollars at the very least.

So, now back to the title of the post and issue at hand...

Who is making the money?

1) Government of India,
2) Government of Orissa,
3) Amardeep Chawla (he is the person listed as the contact) or
4) Someone else altogether.

Do the various state Governments have a right on the money that is being made?

And, I wonder, if Mr. Chidambaram knows of this alternate source of revenue?

Misc Reads: Do read a fascinating study by Mcafee on The State of Typo Squatting. Though technically this particular instance is not a case of Typo Squatting.

Cisco globalisation officer: telepresence is the future.

Why commute to compute? Is the question he is asking. Solve
telepresence and you save time, money and even save the environment.

--
Sent from Google Mail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Sunil Mittal to create a Facebook account

Sunil Mittal feels he needs to create a Facebook account, because his
children are using Facebook to keep in touch with their friends.

Who is going to tell him about when it will become uncool to be there.
Like in orkut or Friendster before it. Social networks are built on
exclusivity. You take away the exclusivity and it becomes quite not
the place to hang out.

Sunil Mittal: more transistors than grains of rice are produced in the world.

He doesn't know that Iraqi's speak Arabic. :)

He mentioned in his speech, that using voice translation an Iraqi speaking Iraqi can communicate with a Chinese speaking Chinese... :o

and he plans to launch mobile remittance services. Good idea.

--
Sent from Google Mail for mobile | mobile.google.com

Live from the India Today Conclave

Mukesh Ambani says, the world is NOT Flat. It's not black and white,
but shades of grey.

So True.

--
Sent from Google Mail for mobile | mobile.google.com

New updates to my comic library

Over the past few years, I have been building up a collection of Comic Strips. I am through with Calvin and Hobbes and Farside by Gary Larson

I am now collecting Peanuts from this new Complete Peanuts series. I'm already have the first sixteen years of Peanuts. right from 1950 onwards.

I got 1963-66, 1959-62, 1955-58, 1950-54 so far... these are twin volume boxed sets and there are single volumes also available for e.g. 1967-68 and 1969-70

I expect it will take me another 10 years to finish with this.

Another collection that I recently started on is Complete Dennis the Menace I got the first 8 years so far... 1955-58 and 1951-54. Again these are double volume boxed sets. Single volumes are also available like 1957-58.

Apart from these the above that I'm already collecting I have some more on the anvil.
Dick Tracy, Terry and the Pirates and Popeye

Last week, I also picked up The Completely Mad Don Martin. Its really quite good and MAD. :)

Reliance Money indulges in Petty larceny and other tales of customer woe

For an area (NCR) in this country which is the back office Capital of the world. Where is customer service headed these days.? This morning I was trying to resolve three very old cases getting some service in this country. Two of these companies are supposed to be stars of the Indian Industry and the third is a dealer of Bharat Petroleoum who someone has forgotten to tell about the new India. Read on for some short stories.

Reliance Money indulges in petty larceny.

Having had my fill of another great customer service organisation called HDFC Bank, I thought Reliance may be a breath of fresh air (and not to mention cheaper).

Sometime late last year, Reliance Money came out with this offer for share holders (I own some Adlabs and RelComm) where you got 20% off on the trading fees. This offer normally allows you to trade to the tune of Rs. 5 lakhs for Rs. 500 as fees. so 20% off that means Rs. 375.

So I fill up the application (with 21 signatures no less) and I'm assured by the smiling salesman, that he'll get it processed in no time. This was in the second week of December. Sometime towards the end of December, the check is encashed. So I assume all is well. A bit late, but I suppose these were the heady days of of the Reliance Power IPO and they had their hands full with applications.

Anyway. A month goes by and nothing happens. And then I'm in the middle of switching jobs, surely something more important than chasing cheap Demat and trading accounts. That brings us to the middle of February. So I call Reliance Money. Dude what happened to my application? Guess what? You can't reach the damned company. You are on the IVR and then you get disconnected. You call the trading line, they put you on the IVR and then you get disconnected. Well maybe call volumes were high. I worked for a BPO once. Such things happen. So I call later in the evening. uhh... Customer service which is unreachable during working hours is NOT available after working hours.

How nice!

Where did they learn customer service from? a Government Department? (Though IRCTC has an excellent ticketing service and a very responsive customer care team)

So I go to the website and write an email. Well, our country does host the second silicon valley after all (Yeah right!). and Amazon, has its most amazing customer service based right here in NCR. Email response should be a snap! uhh... think again.

A month goes by and there is no response. and today I get a mail which says.

This is with reference to your email to customer support regarding application status.

This is to inform you that your application form got rejected and sent back to Gurgaon branch on March 01-2008 as odd amount cheque is given

You may quote your reference number – 633573 in relation to this query.

For any further assistance please call us on 3988 6000 or write to us at customer.support@reliancemoney.co.in

Huh! you are telling me this two and a half months after you took my money? If it was an odd amount, why did you take my money? I want my money back, you thief. With interest. Thank you very much.

The number... you guessed it. is not reachable and I can expect a response on email a month from now...

Caveat Emptor: You get what you pay for. Shoddy customer service (and I wasn't even a customer yet)

I suppose nothing better can be expected from a group that almost got away with the farce that was the IPO for the Power Project.

Update: It seems I'm not alone. Have a look at this URL. http://www.complaintsboard.com/search/reliance_money/page/1


Where's the phone dude?
Airtel charges for a phone, never asked for, never delivered. Or was it for activation?

So, I got a new job. Congratulations to me I suppose :). New job is in Noida, I'll be damned, If I will commute 100 KMs everyday. So the logical thing for me to do is switch residences to Noida., with a commute time 10 mins.

So what do I do with the phone line that I have in Gurgaon? disconnect obviously. So I call Airtel, Please disconnect my phone. I don't need it as I'm shifting towns. So he says, it will take one month for disconnection. Wha? it takes a day for you to give me a connection, but a month to take it away? Why? you think taking a months rental for disconnection is a fair practice? Another cheap money making tactic by Airtel.

I suppose they do have to make money for the shareholders etc. so what if it is my cheating the user? eh?

Anyway, thats not the half of it. So I argue to high heaven and I'm put in touch with the disconnection department. The rep says, listen, since you are moving to Noida, we'll transfer the connection for free. Hmm...

Wow! someone in that organisation has a customer service mindset. So I say ok. Why not.

The next day in Noida. I have a new number. Not Bad! This is the end of January. so a bill comes the next cycle. Which has an activation charge of Rs. 300. Huh! where did that come from? So I call up customer support. They say, this is for the phone you took? I said I didn't take a phone from you. rep says, oh we are very sorry, we'll fix it. We'll call you in 48 hours.

Ok they didn't call back in 2 weeks let alone 2 days as promised. So I call again, this time, this guys says you took a phone from us. I said I didn't. So he says, hang on, let me check. He forgets to mute his phone so i can hear the conversation with his colleague.

First Guy: He's (i.e. me) transfered a connection and been billed for a phone, but he says he never got the phone. yada yada.
Second Guy: Never mind, tell him it's for activation.

First Guy comes back on the phone and says this is for activation. What does he think I am dumb? So I told him as much. He says, then there was an incorrect commitment from the salesman. We will resolve it in 48 hours.

Another two weeks go by and no response. So I call up again. The rep says can I help you. So I give him the whole story again. he says have you paid the bill? I said, Yes I paid the bill. He says hang on and disconnects me. What the F@#$?

I call up again and this time I just give just the reference number and guess what? he says you took a phone from us. I said I didn't. he says I'll check. We're sorry you didn't take a phone, I'll arrange for a call back in 48 hours.

This time, I'm not paying the bill. Their legal department can threaten me to high heaven. Let me see what the F can they do. I wonder if they'll send thugs. Another gang of thieves.

This is not the eighties. Gas Connection shortages were over 5 years ago.

So I moved to Noida and I got a phone connection. After years of shamming and bribing the gas delivery guy (Since I don't use much anyway). I thought, may as well get a connection.

I call up Chitra Gas, who is the agency for the area I live in. The lady's says connections are closed. huh! I called up my uncle who owns a gas agency back home. He said Gas connections are available freely for the past five years.

So I call up the regional office and for a change for a government owned company, I get a pleasant shock. A very polite and helpful gentleman informs me that there is no shortage whatsoever and the agency may be facing temporary issues. Hmmm...

So I call back after a couple of weeks. and the agency says. no connections. I was pissed. So in frustration i write into Bharat Gas customer support online. And lo! and behold! someone actually calls me after a few days saying, please go to the agency and meet so and so for the connection.

Not Bad at all.

Anyway. So 20 minutes later, i'm at the agency and I say I'm here for a gas connection. he says connections are closed. WTF? So I tell him, someone from Bharat gas has asked me to come here and get the connection. So very reluctantly he takes my papers and says we'll get back to you in a couple of days. It's been a week.

I think its time to call the friendly man in the regional office again.

Too bad these tales can't be published in my employer's publication. Sure would have had a lot more impact than here. Web 2.0 may be here (That's another farce, but that is a story for another post), but nothing beats the impact of print in India.

Negotiation Tips for Yahoo!

Banking sites and their infinite hoops...

When you try and access a banking site in India, do you ever get the feeling that you are being made to jump through hoops before you are allowed to reach a screen, where you can finally log in?

It's almost as if they don't want you to login to their site but watch ads...

For eg.

HDFC Bank - 3 Steps to get to the login Page...









ICICI Bank - 3 Steps...








Bah! what a waste of time... Anyway, I didn't realise this till I went to my parents place for a vacation. My usual shortcuts weren't available on their computer, so I was jumping through hoops...

So is there a solution? Yes! use the following links to jump to the login page directly. (Unless you have a morbid fascination to see some atrocious ads on the various pages they force you to see)

HDFC Bank
https://netbanking.hdfcbank.com/netbanking/

ICICI Bank
https://infinity.icicibank.co.in/Login.jsp

Deutsche Bank
https://login.deutschebank.co.in/

HDFC Securities
https://trade.hdfcsec.com/

Citibank
https://www.citibank.co.in/ibank/login/guesthpin1.jsp