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Story of a death accompanied with an advertising for Insurance. Contextual advertising? I thought you don’t advertise next to death and destruction? Did someone forget to tell ICICI that?

Amazon has release two new Kindles, one with 3G and WiFi (3G is free for use everywhere in the world) for $189 and one model with only WiFi for $139. 3G + WiFi model is available in Graphite and White and the Wifi Model is available only in White Graphite. The landed cost of 3G+Wifi version is ~$284 which is approximately Rs. 13,300 The landed cost of just the Wifi version is ~$216 which is approximately Rs. 10,100 The New Kindle  has better contrast (50% better than the previous models) 21% smaller size (while keeping the same size screen) 15% lighter 20% faster page turns Storage has doubled one MONTH battery life As always the Kindle DX model is available in Graphite for $379, (landed cost $540 which is approximately Rs. 25,200)

Please Note: Prices have fallen further and new variants are not available. Please see this post. http://chirag.patnaiks.in/2010/07/prices-in-india-of-new-kindles-3gwifi.html See below for links to some other posts on how to buy the Kindle in India Original Post: Just eight months after the launch of Kindle International version, the price of the regular sized Kindle has been dropped by a whopping $70 (Primarily because of the drop in price of the Nook reader). The total cost of importing the Kindle is now down to $283. Which is approximately Rs. 13,000 including shipping and taxes. This is about $100 less than before. Quite cool. Makes the device much more attractive than before. If you have been waiting on the sidelines, this is a great time to buy it. Go here and get it. PS: You may get a 2-3K customs deposit refund. In which case the price drops to a range of Rs. 10,000, bang in the price range of the Infibeam Pi. See other posts on the subject below http://chirag.patna...

So Mr. Modi claims " I am still chairman of IPL. Just suspended. Wait - we have just begun. " He is Chairman because he is a member of the BCCI. He is a member of the BCCI because he is representing Rajasthan Cricket Association. He got to be a member of the Rajasthan Cricket Association allegedly through some skullduggery (but let's let that pass for now). His eiligibility was established under THE RAJASTHAN SPORTS (REGISTRATION, RECOGNITION AND REGULATION OF ASSOCIATIONS) ORDINANCE, 2004. This ordinance was later passed by the state assembly in 2005. Now if you look up the text of the ordinance here: http://www.rajasthan.gov.in/rajgovresources/others/RajSports2004Eng.pdf Chapter III of the ordinance talks about elections and clause 15 specifies Schedule C as the eligibility criteria. Schedule C Point 3 states as part of qualifications "He/She has not been convicted in any criminal case." Which brings us back to Lalit Modi's indiscretions of his y...

Folks, some of you may remember an article that ran in TOI some days ago at the height of the Twiteroor fiasco. It was titled "When Modi was booked for robbery" filed on 16th April. It was available on the TOI website at this url http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/When-Modi-was-booked-for-robbery/articleshow/5814316.cms . The article talked about how Modi was indicted for trafficking more than 400 grams of cocaine, second degree kidnapping, assault and conspiracy to kidnap. (In fact there is a Daily Telegraph article that says that Lalit Modi was convicted of these charges). (See related item: Is Lalit Modi even eligible to be IPL Commissioner? ) Guess what? the article is not available anymore at the above URL on the TOI website. If you search for the article on TOI you get a Google search result pointing to the article. When you reach this URL it says "Page not found".This is the error that shows up when you delete a page from the TOI system. Well...

In an unnoticed announcement and what will probably be his last executive decision before being asked to leave IPL over the Twitteroor controversy, Lalit Modi has decreed that anyone watching IPL matches at home on a TV screen size of more than 21” or with a crowd of 4 or more will have to pay “Domestic Display Tax” aka DDT. Modeled after Music industry’s similar fees for playing music in public, this seeks to boost the revenues for IPL and the franchisees. This move came after IPL Franchise owners complained of declining attendance at stadiums and consequently reduced incomes from ticket and allied sales. A Liquor baron who owns a team complained “I have spent crores of rupees and hundreds of hours to personally select cheerleaders, so that I can draw in more people to the stadium and fleece them with overpriced lousy seats, lousier food and fizzless fizzy drinks”. Sick of this fleecing, some people have decided to take matters in to their own hands and throw IPL parties at home. Re...

Just came back from the E4M Quiz competition just now. I won a MP3 player and a t-shirt. The question was what are DVB-H, OneSeg etc. The answer. They are all Mobile TV protocols. Anyway, that's not the last of it. I didn't actually get an MP3 player. I got a letter which says I can collect the MP3 player from Rohini (imagine driving from Noida to Rohini) and after I pay the applicable taxes. So will the cost of travel + the taxes be less than the cheapo MP3 player they are going to give?

Do you see it? Also, no more no-smoking signs. (Though there was an announcement to the effect)

The Amazon Kindle currently does not support Hindi and other Indian languages. So I was experimenting and messing around with the Kindle, till I discovered that we can actually display Devanagari (and Bengali) text as well. Here are a couple of samples. More instructions coming soon.

At my workplace are doing some work with Infibeam for their new ereader Pi. A quick rundown on the specs (from the Infibeam site) Height     188 mm Width     118 mm Thickness     9.5 mm Weight     180 gm Screen / Display     * 6" E Ink® Vizplex     * 600x800 pixels     * No backlight. Daylight readable. Battery Life     7 days File Formats Supported Books / Text     PDF, EPUB, HTML, TXT, MOBI, DOC Images     JPG, BMP, PNG Audio     MP3 Control & Connectors     * 3 mm Audio Earphone Connector     * SD Card Slot     * Mini USB Slot     * Button for 4-Way Navigation & Selection.     * Buttons back, home, plus / minus for size changes etc. Internal Memory     512 MB SD Card Slot upto 4GB   ...

This is a stop motion video of a Jigsaw puzzle my mother and brother put together. I took 300 time delayed photos with my Canon PowerShot Series S5 IS slaved to my laptop and knitted everything together in Windows Movie Maker and this is the end result.

About 10 days ago, a journo from HT Brunch followed the ever popular Kindle in India post and left a comment saying he would like to speak to me regarding my experience using the Kindle. So he called up and asked his questions. He then called back asking if they could photograph the Kindle (amusingly HT, which publishes a Kindle edition did not have a Kindle handy to shoot) which he did against the backdrop of my wife's Agatha Christie collection. (in case you are curious, the book open in the Kindle is one from the Star Wars series). I was quoted some. You can read the story here .

We recently got a bookshelf made for our house and all the books that had been jammed into clothes cupboards and  were lying around the house came together into it. I found (re-discovered) a a book titled The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary , a book I bought almost a couple of years ago at a BN store in Baltimore . Anyway so I finally decided to start reading it. A few dozen pages into the book I was wishing to myself. Does it have a Kindle edition? ( It does .) In a few short weeks I have become addicted to reading on the Kindle. I don’t think I will ever be comfortable reading long form text on a computer screen as it exists today. Even reading physical books  seems to be a bit old fashioned. I will admit that there is there are lots of merits in a physical book. No battery. You can toss it anywhere with almost anything without anything happening to it. You can stamp on it etc. etc. But still. The only reason one would want books is for be...

A big part of the cost of the Kindle was the Import fee deposit $98 or so. This along with shipping costs brings the total landed cost of the Kindle in India to $378. If you have read about my experience ordering the Kindle in India , I mentioned there that the Customs officer said that consignment carried a duty of around Rs. 3000. I wondered then as to what happened to the remaining Rs. 2000 or so. This morning I was in for a pleasant surprise. Over the weekend I got a  mail from Amazon.com telling me that I was entitled a refund of $37.35.  This immediately brings down the cost of the Kindle in India to $341 or so. Which is about Rs. 16,000. My Kindle purchase is looking more and more attractive. :). If there ever was an example of great customer service. This is it. The only catch is that I got this money back after nearly two months.  What are you waiting  for? Get your Kindle from Amazon .

Amazon.com sold more Kindle books than physical books not quite the tipping point, but a significant milestone has been reached. Keep in mind that Amazon already sells more books than any other retailer. Good to know that I am on the leading edge of a trend.

I have been fascinated with Jigsaw puzzles, but I had never tried one with 1000 pieces. My sister-in-law's husband was coming back from Cambridge this past weekend, so I ordered London Looking North - 1,000 Piece Jigsaw , so that he could carry it back for me. It is really tough. I am just about figuring out the outer edge (simpler because of the straight edge) with some bits towards the center. This is what it looks in the product shot. Hopefully i should be done with it in a week or so... Lets see how it goes.

Please note: Amazon has released new versions of the Kindle. For prices and features, please go to Prices in India of New Kindles 3G+WiFi and WiFi editions Original Post: My wife decided that she needed to gift me a Kindle for our anniversary. I asked a colleague, if her husband (who was traveling to the US) could carry back one. He couldn't, because of an erratic travel schedule. So we decided to order one right here directly since Amazon was kind enough to open up direct shipping to India. So we ordered on a Tuesday evening (India Time) and Amazon being Amazon shipped the device straight away on the same day itself. I very eagerly tracked the package using the DHL sites (yes, I used three different DHL sites, US, UK and India. They give different info when the package is in that respective country) and in three days flat it was here across the seven seas at Delhi airport. Only I was in Noida which is an interstate delivery for DHL. Which meant that I had to fill out an ar...

My father over the several decades of service had accumulated boxes upon boxes of slides from his many postings all over the country. He retired recently and was cleaning out the attic (so to speak) and he promptly dumped a trunk full of slides. I had an immediate thought. I should scan them and keep them digitally. Good Thought! only, I have several hundred slides. Who has the time. Next thought. Can I pay someone to do it for me. Sure enough, a quick internet search later, I found a slide scanning service called Slide Scanning Pros. prices are not too expensive at 26 cents a slide. There is a cheaper option at 18 cents, if you are willing to make corrections yourself. Which is a good idea, if you want to handle a specific set yourself.

I have been reading up on healthy living the past few days and running through the health sections of the big name news brands like New York Times , The Australian , Washington Post , and several others. While the coverage is pretty comprehensive. It always seems to be missing a personal touch. That’s when I ran across this health blog . The first post currently is on Insomnia remedy, something my brother and I desperately  need help with. The tips seem to be helpful, remains to be seen if they work. Health as a topic has a lot of coverage, but for some reason most dedicated websites try to be all and end all of health content and as a result mess up the whole affair.

I have had a fascination with cooking for quite a while. Even though I have never cooked on a day to day basis (that's handled by the maid). I still cook on the weekends. I was looking for new recipes to try and lucked across this health forum called Natural Medicine Talk. user contributed recipes for sure. But some interesting stuff. for e.g. Tomato/Dill Soup or Chickpea Salad . Otherwise an interesting forum to go through. Good tips by users on healthy eating and living. Some really knowledgeable people talking about things like advisability of taking vitamin supplements etc. Other sections on the site include Men’s Health, Women’s Health and several more.