Dumpity Dumpity Dump - This Is A True Story Gentlemen!

Google Reveals How Much Percentage Of Revenue It Shares With Adsense Publishers

2010-05-25T05:38:00.001-07:00

Google recently revealed on a blog post on its adsense blog, what percentage of revenue it shares with its adsense partners.

According to the post, Google shares 69% of all revenues generated on a publishers website. For adsense for search partners it shares 51%. Traditionally ad networks shared between 50% to upto 90% of revenues with their partners, so Google's adsense sharing arrangement seems fair.

It seems that either the cost of serving search ads is higher for Google or Google wants to keep better share of adsense for search because they are more lucrative. So far there is no information from any source as to how much revenues Google makes from adsense search ads and how much revenues it makes from content ads, however the total percentage of its revenues from partner sites is about 30% of its total revenues.

(Google original post is here http://adsense.blogspot.com/2010/05/adsense-revenue-share.html)

Making Internet Banking More Secure

2009-07-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

Recently someone tried to reset my net banking password. I called the bank but they were not even aware of it.

They told me they would check but no response.

All banks really want their customers to use net banking, its convenient for them and their customers. But not really secure.

Now i thought was there a way to make me more confident of using net banking.

I wish for users who have provided a email or mobile number, they would send a mail and a sms when their is any activity related to their account online or even offline. When this happens they could let the user respond via sms or click on a link in their email, when a customer does this, the user who is trying to access their account online is banned from accessing the site for sometime.

Seems like a logical thing to do to me. And when it comes to banking its required.

Greed Plus Dumbness Equals Scam Victim

2009-06-27T12:10:00.000-07:00

Recently someone asked me if a email they received informing them of the lottery they have won in UK was real and they should reply.

I mean till i told them its a scam they actually believed it was real.

Its strange. Each of us has heard atleast 100 times in our lives that anything that sounds too good to be true, probably is, than why do fools still fall for this.

Greed plus dumbness equals a scam victim, so be greedy or be dumb, but don't be both at the same time.

1 - 2 - 3

2009-06-27T11:42:00.000-07:00

1 - 2 - 3 are special numbers. For some reason in every sport, the first 3 people are awarded a medal.

Ofcourse 1 is the best place to be to get maximum attention but 3 is atleast the last place you would want to be. Noone cares about 4, so dont bother, be where you can be 1 or 2 or 3.

Noone remembers the 4th best restaurant or 4th smartest guy in class or 4th smartest employee or the 4th best search result in a search engine. No one remembers the 4th product feature or benefit or the 4th vendor quote, noone remembers the 4th guy who finished the 100% metre race or the 4th country in the olympics medal tally.

Be 1 or 2 or 3, or dont be at all.

CreepBook - When Its Time To Say "Enough"

2009-06-23T08:11:00.000-07:00

"Privacy" - its a joke. Or it has been made into one. Every website has it though, most have i hidden or less prominent.

Try this - go to google.com, see where the "Advertising programs" link is and where the "privacy policy" link is, can you guess which is more prominent? and hence which is more important for google?

Markeeters want us to spend more time on their website they want to know more about you, about who you know, what you ahve or dont have, what you want, what you search for, what you view.

They want to know thsi so they can use it to better target their advertising, sell you something, create a economy.

Well that not the problem, problem is when the "data mining" thing gets too personal fro comfort.

If you are facebook or orkut you would know you get strange friends suggestions, people you dont have emails of, people who are not even in your addressbook or connected to someone you know...but they do..people have faced akckward situatiosn because of this..sometimes social sometimes professional.

Here are some ways facebook gets your "personal" data:

Its searches the general web for your name, email and tries to match them with other people.

It records every search for person and if someone searches for you, it matches (unlikely)

It searches twitter/myspaces/orkuts/hi5s and data mines publcily availables friends.

or maybe even browser hijacking..(unlikely)

but whatever it is, i wish facebook learns to "Ask" before it 'obliges".

Conficker Worm Removal: If You Cannot Open Anti Virus Sites & Microsoft Sites

2009-06-17T04:42:00.000-07:00

Conficker Worm changes your host file (if you don't know what it is, don't worry or search Google) in a way that you cannot visit anti virus sites or even most software company sites like MS. It also blocks your windows update manager from updating windows and anti virus and malware prevention software like McAfee, kaspersky, AVG and AdAware from downloading updates.

It basically renders your anti virus software useless.

If you have been infected by conficker virus here is what you need to do:

Step 1: go to start>run type cmd. Hit enter. In the command line (black screen), type "net stop dnscache" without the quotes and hit enter. It should show a message that says service successfully stopped.

Step 2: Download conficker tool from here http://www.symantec.com/security_response/writeup.jsp?docid=2009-011316-0247-99

Run this software. Thats it.

How to be sure if symantec tool was able to removal conficker?

Go back to step 1 and this type restart the dnscache service, type "net start dnscache" without the quotes and hit enter and try visiting any anti virus site like symantec. If you open these sites conficker has been removed. Your anti virus/xp software can now download updates.

When Should Technology "Must" Be Free/Open Source/Open Standard?

2009-06-13T04:38:00.000-07:00

I have pondered about this questions a lot, for years maybe & still i don't really know the answer. Technology business is so full of contradictions.

Money is a important factor why people innovate. Second motivations is fame. But money is ahead by a long shot.

Any one who invents something that will be used by masses is sure to make some good money, but he is also sure to want to keep the underlying technology proprietary/licensed/patented. Why because the who invented the technology has little incentive to give it away for free, and most time by charging a royalty fee the end products that use that technology will become too expensive for mass adoption.

I can only imagine what could have happened if father of internet had patented net itself and every else who used it would have to pay him a royalty from ISP's to hosting companies to individual users. That would have made him the richest man ever but the internet would have never been adopted by the masses.

We all need technology. Our lives are dependent on consumer technology.

There are things we all need:

1. Internet
2. A computer (and hence a operating system)
3. A search engine (to search the vast web)
4. Browser
5. Email
6. Basic software(word processor/spreadsheets etc.)

Then there are standards that need to be quickly adopted, like i am just happy that HTML is open / standardized but sad that its controlled by a closed minority.

I am happy that pdf is available but sad that its so tightly owned by one company. Same with .doc files or .wmv files.

Somethings just need to be free, open, standardized as soon as they are created/invented. Why? because it will foster more innovation, it will create quicker mass adoption.

So when does a technology demand to be made open source/free/standardized?

My answer would be when "everybody" needs it. Money should only be made products/technologies/services that are required by "few" or "some" or even "majority" but when "everybody" needs or is dependent on it, it should be free/open source/standardized.

Or at least something about it should be freely available.

I wonder if Microsoft provides all its operating systems for free (keeps some features locked it wants to) and then depends on a ad supported model or a "donation ware" model or both, would it create that big a dent in its business? Even if it took a financial hit, would it gain somethings in the longer run?

Whatever is the answer, operating systems should be free, software should be standardized and run everywhere, file formats should be open and standardized, browsers should free and based on donations.

"I"

2009-06-11T23:47:00.000-07:00

I posted "IF" by Rudyard Kipling sometime back...i figured it looks lot more pretty when you make a little change (atleast to me)..so i am posting it again with that change...let me know if someone else thinks as i do too..

"I can keep my head when all about me
Are losing theirs and blaming it on me,
I can trust myselfwhen all men doubt me
But I can make allowance for their doubting too,
I can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

I can dream–and not make dreams my master,
I can think–and not make thoughts my aim;
I can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
I can bear to hear the truth I’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things I gave my life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

I can make one heap of all my winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at my beginnings
And never breath a word about my loss;
I can force my heart and nerve and sinew
To serve my turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in me
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

I can talk with crowds and keep my virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
neither foes nor loving friends can hurt me;
all men count with me, but none too much,
I can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Mine is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–I am a Man!"

Your Loss Is My Gain: How China Can Use Terrorism To Its Advantage

2009-06-11T07:40:00.000-07:00

China is a different sort of a country. The Chinese are a different sort of people. I mean i love jackie chan, but forget not, most of the hacking/DDoS attacks on government institutions around the world start in China, China killed its own people when they asked for democracy, China is probably the only country in the world as of now that aggressively wants to occupy more land (taiwan, tibet, many parts of India, many parts of neighbouring countries), they have repeatedly prooved they only care about their objective of becomign a super power and beign a good world citizen is not their priority (nuclear proliferation, misslie proliferaton - pakistan, north norea, espionage - stealing classfied info from usa including nuclear info).

Well the point is i came across a company thats trying to sell its self using terrorism in India.

Here is the link to this company that suggests outsourcing providers should switch to China instead because there is terrorism in India.

Some people say terrorists rule China. Not me though ;-), i disagree.

I do agree to one thing though, terrorism is a problem, a huge problem, but China is too unpredictable to be a safe investment. India has way to many advantages and although the wages are rising ad the cost advantge is being lost, we still have decades of assets, a brand called India and millions of hugely talented people to keep us ahead of the pack.

i wldnt be surprised if blogspot will suffer a ddos attack right out of bejing after this post, China brethern, relax a bit, smile, why so serious?

On a closing note china isn't compeltely untouched by terrorism either guess they have just been lucky someone isn't adding fuel to this fire, but for how long?

"If" By Rudyard Kipling - heard it?

2009-06-10T01:07:00.000-07:00

Found this piece by Kipling...and liked it..so here it goes..

"If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!"

Remember The Spammers & Scammers

2009-02-13T06:25:00.000-08:00

I was just reminded today, one more time, how most of us who build large scale web apps forget the spammers so easily.

Viewed this website and searched for google. The website basically provides sites similar to the site you put in, if you put a search engine, ideally it should have given you another search engines.

When people build apps, especially the user generated content types, spammers need to be taken care off.

Spam and spammers are a big part of the web, they need to be given the attention they deserve, we need to keep them in our mind when we make our apps.

Misuse of any system is inevitable, but if you don't expect it, you run the risk of turning the entire system unusable, like in the case of tagomatic

Marissa Mayer Says Sorry On Google's "This Site May Harm You" Issue

2009-01-31T10:54:00.000-08:00

Marissa Mayer, Googles, cute(plus hot) but smart VP, Search products and user experience said sorry in a blogpost titled "This site may harm your computer on every search result?!?!"

I am assuming the questions marks and exclaimation marks in the end stress the significance of the issue.

She did give a half baked explaination that would almost make your believe it came from paris hilton or something and here is the explaination:

she says "We periodically update that list and released one such update to the site this morning. Unfortunately (and here's the human error), the URL of '/' was mistakenly checked in as a value to the file and '/' expands to all URLs"

Hmm the url of "/". I wonder if there is a way of explaining this problem in a better way. VP of shit sucks and what not. Get Paris hilton in, she would do as good i'm guessing.

But honestly who cares, the female is hot, when she says sorry you smile and move on.

I'm only wondering how many times did the adword revenues went up during these 40 minutes.

Update: Google blog stops showing trackbacks on their blogpost. And also somehow promotes its own blog post with clarification on top of their search engine for related terms("this site may harm your computer), coincidence? I have never seen Google work that fast for sure. And not showing blogs that link to their blogspot is again somewhat grey.

Government of India Plans $10 PC

2009-01-31T10:19:00.001-08:00

I recently read a news in Indian Express a national daily. According to the news government of India in association with IIT Madras and IISc Bangalore plans to laundh a $10 PC for students.

They also plan to provide free e-content that students can download and use.

Just below the news someone comments saying something that seems too good to be true, probably is.

Lets face it, IISc is not going to make chips, they are going to use off the shelves chips available. They are not going to build motherboards they will borrow a twaiwan made motherboard.

The cost of a TFT display will be more than $10.

India has always been fascinated by quantity. China is not different.

Only problem is when it comes to education, quality is what we need, not quantity.

I only wish they would have provided somethiing actually useful even if it costed little more, they would exempt broadband services from taxes for next 10 years and let broadband penetration increase in India.

This is whn you start to doubt their vision. I just hope this does not end up being some policitians cheap shortcut to fame.

I'll keep an eye on this one.

When Google Gets Fucked: All Sites On The Web May Harm Your Computer

2009-01-31T07:13:00.000-08:00

Just about 15 or so minutes(8.30 PM IST) i noticed that whatever you search for, below every search result Google shows a "This Site May Harm Your Computer" warning.

First i thought its only my pc, but then when i checked with some other people the problem was faced with pretty much everyone.

It seems Google has some internal bug, or the server that checks if a site is harmful is screwed up.

Ths funny part is this is the first time i have seen a major issue with Google. Its ok for tech savvy users who understand its just a minor problem with google and that is why its giving this warning message by error, but less tech savvy users would probably think that there is something wrong with the website they were going to visit.

Funnier still is the fact that if you click on result you are taken on a warning page which asks you to either return back to Google or copy paste the link of the website, which is eomthing not many people would do.

The effect of this would be that people will click on ads on the right side more, which amazingly does not wanr users if a advertisers site cna harm your computer.

I wldnt be surprised if Google click through rates and their revenue jumps by 20-40% till this issue is fixed.

I am curious as to what happened.

Update: Things seem to be fixed now, I am just wondering if someone uploded the wrong file at the wrong place(overwriting shit), makes you realise at the end of the day google is a website too, they fuck up too, so much for 25,000 employees.

In.com sends users a black mail email..

2009-01-28T22:41:00.001-08:00

Greetings from IN.com Mail!

We'd like to thank you for having tried your cool, short IN.com email address.

You've not logged into your account for the last three months, and as part of our "use it or lose it" policy, if you don't login to your account within the next week days, we'll need to delete your email address.

Once we delete your email address, you will lose all data in your email account, and the address will be available for anybody else to register and start using as soon as it has been deleted.

If you like IN.com mail, and would want to continue using your account; we would request you to login to your email account now, else your account will be deleted by 5th Feb, 2009.

Sign in to IN.com Mail Now!

We've sent this message both to your IN.com account, and your alternate ID.

Hope you will continue enjoying your IN.com Email Address,

Cheers,
IN.com Mail Team

I remember Hotmail trying this arm twisting by deactivating user emails, but deleting account is something new.

The only problem with this approach is you are showing your customers "we dont care that much"

And a customer who is registered by not using your service means, he was interested in your service at some point but found a better alternative.

Deleting such mails sounds like axing your own foot, because if a user is signed up even if he is not using your service, you can reach out to him anytime as you better your service, this atleast gives you a hope that this user will return and start using our service.

By deleting a user account, you only blow the investment you made in getting a user to your site in the first place.

I knw it sucks when users sign up but dont use a service, but this one is a bad strategy network18.

Why Steve Ballmer Misses The Point Completely With Android

2008-11-07T07:31:00.000-08:00

Steve Ballmer, chief of Microsoft, speaking at Telstra annual investment day said "I don't really understand their strategy. Maybe somebody else does. If I went to my shareholder meeting, my analyst meeting and said, hey, we've just launched a new product that has no revenue model!"

Sometimes its hard to believe this guy heads the largest technology corporation in the world. Its almost unfair that microsoft has to compete against the smarts of Larry page and Sergey Brin. A decade of seeing open source screwing up microsoft server business, he still needs to ask why they are doing it.

Ok Steve i know the answer and here it is. Its time microsoft gets screwed. Google wants to do that. Since they dont want you to control the third screen(mobile) and releasing a open source OS for which manufacturers do not have to pay for licenses its just the fastest way to do it.

So in short, they want to do to your mobile business what Linix did to your server business.

Clear? I think its time we switch jobs, o heck no, you will screw up my company and ask stupid questions in public conferences.

To Microsoft share holders, sell man sell.Fast.

Obama win is once in a century event and here is why

2008-11-05T06:31:00.000-08:00

So Obama won the elections. kenyans are as happy as americans. Everyone is hailing Americans for being wise and choosing the better candidate but here is how rare this win really is.

1. US economy had to be in shit for people to look beyond skin color.

2. The outgoing administration had to be in government for 2 straight terms and anti incombancy factor as high as it can be.

3. The outgoing president had to have a miserable public image.

4. US as a nation had to be disliked by people of a lot of nations.

5. The country had to be in the worst recession in over a century.

6. The presidential hopeful had to have a white mom even when he is black to make people look beyond skin and attract voters outside of his community.

7. The presidential hopeful had to have follwoed christianity all his life even when his father was a muslim.

8. The other presidential hopeful(mccain) had to be old enough for people to fear that he might not be able to complete his term in office.

9. The other presidential hopeful(mccain) had to make the error of choosing a extremely unworthy vice president(palin) making people doubt his own judgement

10. The entire business community, scientific community had to lobby for the presidential hopeful to make people trust him eough.

11. The presidential hopeful had to choose his most vocal critic as his vice president.

12. The presidential hopeful had to get loyalities from his own strongest competitor and her followers(hilary)

13. The presidential hopeful had to be one of the best orators politics has seen for quite some time.

14. The presidential hopeful had to convince people he has always been a christian and not a muslim.

15. Take personal allegations of his links with terrorists.

16. Make people from his oppositions side publicly support him(powel).

These factors and many other factors coming together are reasons why Obama even though he is a black in a white peoples country could make it to thr white house.

And this is as rare as it gets. Good for you america.

George did you congratulate Obama by the way? No?

Why Tata Nen HottestStartups Contest Is A Complete HogWash

2008-11-04T03:52:00.000-08:00

In case you are not familiar with this contest, its a contest for Indian startups where the winners will be selected by popular voting and ratings by expert panel.

Now here is why this event is a complete hogwash.

1. The best startups might not be able to get popular voting at all. For example a nano technology company with a product focussed on government organization. It makes sense for consumer websites to get more, and probably thats what its intended for. The only issue is that they have not mentioned this anywhere.

2. The votes can easily be rigged. Infact i am sure most of the top 100 startups have in some way manipulated voting. The top company has got 10,000 votes. Seems unrealistic.

3. The voting charges are 3 rs. per sms like those reality shows.

4. Some of the top 200 startups in the contest are nonsense. They have no business model, no profits, no future.

5. The experts are no good to give any one ratings. Most of the experts have not proved themselves that they can sense a good business opportunity. The expert panel is not impressive. I saw some experts give exceptional comments to a blog. I mean nothing against blogs, i just dont consider a blog a startups.

6. Some of the best companies i could find are in the bottom 100.

7. Their website is so pathetically slow, its virtually impossible to vote online. If this guys were serious they would do something about this. You will not even get confirmation emails when you register. If you do register you will not be able to login.

8. They didnt expect people would rig votes. They mention on their website that they didnt expect people to manipulate votes. These are the people who are supposed to judge business opportunities. By the time they realised votes have been rigged its already too late.

9. Popular voting is given 50% weightage. Now that will make sure the best startups don't get nominated in the top 30.

How A Search Engines Conflict Of Interest Can Keep You Away From That Perfect Search Engine

2008-10-27T09:05:00.000-07:00

We all dream about that perfect search engine. The engine that gives you answer for every question without trying your ability to think of imaginary keywords that might or might not exist. The search engine that will tell you where your kids are and what they are doing, the search engine that tells who you need to marry, the search engine that tells you if are going to become the next president.

But wait, it will never happen.

There is a conflict of interest that arises in every advertising based business. Every content provider is serving a advertiser. They owe the advertiser a share of your attention.

If search engines became perfect, you will hardly click the ad. If search engine became perfect, you will not visit a website, the content owner will not have any reason to share his content with the search engine.

Marrissa mayer, gave a seminar in web.20 summit in which she shared how increasing the number of search results on each page from 10 to 30 caused the traffic and revenue to reduce 20%.

When marrisa mayer equates people leaving their search results page early and not clicking ads to bad performance you know there is not much hope.

The chances are a user might might have more search results to view, he focuses less on ads, he finds a good result in 30 results and visits the website.

Itsclearly understandable, irrespective of what google tells you, they want you on their website. That is where they get their revenues from.

I dont blame them, they are a for profit company. Its the entire business model that has conflict of interest built in.

Someday maybe they will start an ad free search engine and charge a fee for it. There they can give users the best search engine, because you are paying them for it. Simple.

No its not the software stupid: Google shows off Gmail on Android

2008-10-27T06:05:00.000-07:00

Google inc showed off its gmail service on android on its blog recently and it seems everyone is happy to see the screenshots. Very happy.

Infact the screenshot looked so much better then gmail on the web i am tempted to use a android phone just to check my emails even when i am right infront of my computer.

But hey who ever complained about android, we just thought G1 design sucks.

Nokia switches strategy, connects to internet

2008-10-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Nokia whos brand slogan is connecting people, has so far not connected to the internet too much. They were happy making cool phones and selling them.

Nomore. Nokia has seen many companies come and play in its core domain. Every company that does anything at all has a phone to sell to us now.

But so far Nokia has focussed on its core. It made phone and only phones while others like Sonay and samsung ventured into anything that has a silicon chip inside it. And then along came Google android to give its recently acquired symbian mobile operating system a run for its money.

Everyone just wanted to take what bill gates did to the PC and do it to our mobile phones. Everyone wanted to control the third screen as they call it.

While Steve jobs is too arrogant to learn from his mistakes which is evident from the fact that he steal wanted people to buy a phone that has apples software, apples hardware and design, Google is actually doing what bill did by releasing a operating system and not making a mobile handset.

Now since Google would be shown a middle finger if it just came along with operating system and told everyone to switch over cause it says so, it follwed a better strategy of releasig this softare as open source which is less threatening to most handset manufacturers.

It seems nokia realises, with android becoming the default operating system it will be forced to offer its phones in android os too. More threat coming from other handset manufacturers.

Nokias new strategy is to save its market share by providing more internet based services. Services that are not easily portable creating a tall barrier to entry for other handset providers.

With its recent dozen acquisitions it seems nokia is thinking ahead of a lot of other handset manufacturers.

Obviously not everyone, Steve out thinks everyone, but then he wldnt sell anything to you that isnt apple made. Its so not steve. He makes his own screw when he build his house, he makes his own medicine when he gets a fever.

Acqusitions is for kids. Apple is differenent. If you want the apple, buy the whole tree you cheap skates.

ValueClick executive joins a startup

2008-10-27T05:40:00.000-07:00

Reuters reports one of the early executives of valueclick, an online adnetwork has joined a startup called gigya.

Gigya apparently lets application developers distribute their applications in their publisher network. It also lets advertisers advertise in these widgets and shares earnings in advertsing with publishers and developers.

Good business model. Distributed content is surely the next big thing on the internet.

I wonder if these recessive times will allow senior executives of more public cmpanies to take the plnge venture backed startups.

Sprint ceo says Google android sucks

2008-10-27T04:39:00.000-07:00

Ok he didn;t actually say it sucks, i just read between the lines.

CEO Dan Hesse, whom you may remember from those classy black-and-white commercials on the teevee, recently told the National Press Club that as it stands, he doesn't think Android is "good enough to put the Sprint brand on it." Sure, he probably just meant that he'd like to see Android's kinks ironed out before Sprint puts out a handset of their own, since he has committed to support Google's OS in the future. It's a little surprising coming from Sprint, given their close ties with HTC, but once Android gets a little more polished, we're sure Sprint will jump into the fray. [via Reuters]

Amazing wordpress plugin to manage comments from desktop

2008-10-27T04:37:00.000-07:00

I came across this amazing wordpress plugin called moderator. Its built on top of adobe air and needs the adobe air runtime.

Moderators lets users manage their wordpress comments right from their desktop. Cool.

Facebook shows some of its users the middle finger and goes ahead with redesign

2008-10-27T04:30:00.000-07:00

I firmly believe you cannot keep everyone happy. Its essential to make some people unhappy. Its important to pick the people you are goin make unhappy really well.

Facebook faced stiff opposition from around 1 million of its 100 million users to the site redesign. Facebook has gone ahead with the prposed redesign and it seems to be working well for now.

I like the new design.

I'm glad facebook went ahead with redesign. Listening too much to your users can lead to a painful collapse.

So many times what users say to you is based on illogical baseless factors that its best to logically decide what you want to do with a product. So any products have failed because they asked for solution from users.

Never ask a user for solution. Ask them what their problem is. Propose a solution. If you believe its best for the kind of users you want to keep, go ahead and do it.

Sometimes you just need to show them the middle finger, because the problem with us is that e really dont know what we want most times. We just want to be heard. Paid attention to. That doesnt mean i dont wnt the redesign, i just want you to know i have a point.

Consumer is a strange animal. But its ok we love animals.

Faceboook gets generous, releases thrift, scribe

2008-10-27T04:20:00.000-07:00

It seems all companies including Google, Yahoo and facebook understand one thing well now. They need to keep the developer community close to them to be able to create standards and be in a position to control the industry.

In its attempt facebook has released a framework they call thrift in the open source and followed up with releasing a service for thrift called scribe.

Both are aimed at developers who want to use various technologies to aggregate and display data from multiple servers. While thrift allows developers to run programs written under various languages like c, php and java, scribe lets developers aggregate data from many servers and process them. Scribe is a service that runs inside thrift.

Keeping open source developers is a good strategy. Demonstrated by microsoft and sun for many years. This is why Google chrome sucked for most firefox users. This is why opera isnt tht widely adopted dispite being a terrific browser. They havent been able to woo the developer community.

Firefox on the other hand is a developers best pal. In turn developers have given the firefox users some amazing applications that make their lives easier and more productive. Even though chrome is faster than firefox in both rendering visited page from sites and executing javascript, firefox users have not stopped using firefox.

Why? because firefox is not a browser. Its a platform.

It lets them pick from thousands of free firefox extensions that do a great job of making their lives easier. Like the firefox web developer plugin or the elasticfox extension to manage amazon web services.

First Microsoft live and now Mahalo: Another fool pays its users to spend some time with them

2008-10-27T04:14:00.000-07:00

Mahalo, a self proclaimed search engine has launched a program that will pay its users to browse their shit. The more shit you browse the more you get paid.

Interestingly this is not the first company to do this. Microsoft live is also bribing users to use its search engine. I doubt that works.

I used to feel web users are extremely finnicky customers, they act pricey(me including) and are disloyal by nature.

We would flock another site for the slightest of reasons. But my beliefs have changed since people havent changed their default search engines yet.

Infact i havent even tried microsoft live yet. I will never try Mahalo till it doesnt stop calling itself search engine.

But the point is, web users need quality too. If google promises they would better their search engine by twice as much in on year i bet me and all other users would pay a fee per year to use their search engine.

50$ per year? I am ok with it. Gimme a good search engine. Stop bribing me to browse through shit.

TuneCore gets $7 million

2008-10-27T04:08:00.000-07:00

Tunecore a provider of online music distribution secured a funding of $7 million from opus capital. Tunecore has a simple busines model, music creators upload their music on tunecore, it charges them a fee to store thei music and retail it on many retailers around the web.

The business is so simple its almost delicious. I have no doubt this will work.

Yahoo opens itself with Yahoo open strategy

2008-10-27T04:00:00.000-07:00

Yahoo finally gets it. Finally they understand that to stick around the internet, they need to work with the people who make it, the developers.

When i look back at yahoos history sometime its hard to believe theyw ere so close o hude opportunities and never noticed it. They had overture. They had the audience. They had the most popular IM. They had the most popular web mail. They had great people. They had money. They had advertisers. They had the technology. The had the infrastructure.

Well they still didn't get it.

Anyways, it seems some folks at yahoo do get it now.

They are opening up a lot to people. Though there is still a lot that can be done, if you are a US investor buy yahoo shares at the current prices.

It might get bought over or it might get to the top again whetever happens they do seem to have some smart loyal people there that will make sure the price per share goes up sooner or later.

Post Removed

2008-10-26T23:52:00.000-07:00

I have removed this post as some people might believe this to be based on facts. I thought it was obvious that its not. I'll just say sorry.
I deeply apologise to anyone and authorities for inconvinience and possibly my immaturity. I encourage all bloggers to understand cyberlaws at their website.

What do you get when you take a tech news site and minus "news" from it: Techcrunch

2008-10-25T09:20:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time a read techcrunch, because they actually kept me in the know. I never commented, but i read it. Then the web grew up and i figured there is web outside of silicon valley, the web is in places where micheal arringtons will never report about because they have never heard of these places heck they have not heard of any place outside of palo alto.

Now when i visit them once in a while mostly courtesy techmeme. Its that friends promoting friends thing. that hope that if i send you traffic and you send me traffic, in the end maybe we can still get people to believe all the web is in silicon valley thing you know.

I still like techmeme, atleast they do silicon valley well. But in the recent past techcrunch is really trying hard to find something to write about. And then they make up stories that should be going on someones personal blog.

They recently reported about how google is using a competitors name to get traffic to its website and how it uses its own advertising platform to advertise itself.

So google is supposed to use someone elses advertising platform to promote its product and not its own because that somehow is unethical?

I tell you what is unethical, bad reporting is unethical, reporting for the sake of reporting is unethical.

Techcrunch, time for some self searching guys, maybe you can fire a people or two yourself. Why not firing is in, isnt it?

Google launches Gmail For Mobile 2.0 and it works

2008-10-25T04:34:00.000-07:00

Google inc launched the new version of gmail for mobile. Sometimes its hard to believe we are trying this hard to please the consumers of free applications as developers.

There was a time when developers treated the free application market as a hobby something you do in your excess time and now we see the heavy weights fighting it out for the free applications. The free applications are as good or better than enterprise level applications.

So the only differentiation between a free application and an enterprise application is that a enterprise application comes with more fined tuned control for the enterprise while a free application is for a individual consumer.

Though something don't change much, years ago a company called gave operating system and software at throw away prices or free just to make it so part of a consumers life that it becomes a standard and then enterprises have no choice but to buy licenses for this application, a company called Google is dooing the same now.

I guess successful economics principles don't change much.

Wake up Mr. Shiv Raj Patil, Greatest Theat To India are not naxals, its your politics of region & religion

2008-10-24T06:04:00.001-07:00

The evidence of how out of sync with reality Mr. Shivraj Patil, the home minister of India is that he thinks the greatest threat to the integrity of India are naxlalites.

Maybe this is ignorance or just the fact that naxalites are against the bad governance and not common people.

I am not a genius, but its easy to understand the greatest threat to the integrity of a country does not come from a few people unhappy with the government but it comes from the fact that masses are divided among themselves.

We all are unhappy with the government at some level, the difference between naxalites and a common man is that a naxalite take up arms and fight these politicians and police while we don't. I guess its easy to understand why.

The greatest threat to the integrity of India comes from the politics of division, of religion and region. I realise the two biggest parties themselves are fighting over religion.

But to start with i hope the two biggest parties of this country come together and kill regional politics sooner than later because if this is not done, there will be no nation, we will just have unUnited states of India.

We need a 180 degree shift in politics.

Another example of how regional politicians are of the lowest grade is when the congress was on the verge of extinction, people like Sharad Pawar and Sagma ran to Sonia gandhi to save it, when she saved it, they wanted to be the PM, when they couldnt be the PM, they just left the party.

Thats how small these regional politicians are. They have no ethics, no principle. Yet they are the richest politicians. Wake up Indians, you have been fooled long enough.

Sardar patel, i hope you were still alive.

Arvind Adiga Wins Bookers Prize

2008-10-17T00:49:00.000-07:00

Arvind Adiga, a writer and resident of Mumbai, India has just won a bookers prize for his book The White Tiger: A Novel

Arvind is a graduate of oxford university and a former Time megazine reporter. He is also the second youngest winner of bookers prize at the age of 33 after Ben Okri who won at the age of 32.

Michael Portillo, a former cabinet minister and the chairman of this year’s panel of judges, praised Mr. Adiga’s novel, saying that the short list had contained a series of “extraordinarily readable page-turners.” However, Mr. Adiga’s book had prevailed, he said, “because the judges felt that it shocked and entertained in equal measure.”

Mr. Adiga said his book was an “attempt to catch the voice of the men you meet as you travel through India — the voice of the colossal underclass.”

The other authors that were shortlisted were Irish writer Sebastian Barry, 53, whose book “The Secret Scripture” is the story of an Irish patient in a mental hospital sharing her shocking family history with her psychiatrist, “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh, “The Clothes on Their Backs” by Linda Grant, “The Northern Clemency” by Philip Hensher and “A Fraction of the Whole” by Steve Toltz.

According a kerry walterz a reviewer of Adiga's book on amazon.com,

The plot centers around Balram Halwai, a laborer born and raised in a small village utterly controlled by crooked and feudally powerful landlords. The village is located in 'the Darkness,' a particularly backward region of India. Balram is eventually taken to Delhi as a driver for one of the landlord's westernized sons, Ashok. It's in Delhi that Balram comes to the realization that there's a new caste system at work in both India and the world, and it has only two groups: those who are eaten, and those who eat, prey and predators. Balram decides he wants to be an eater, someone with a big belly, and the novel tracks the way in which this ambition plays out.

You can find more information about The White Tiger and buy it on Amazon.com

Congratulations Arvind!

Recession Comes Home To India: Let The Layoffs Begin

2008-10-16T06:22:00.000-07:00

Jet Airways a leading airlines company has recently laid off 850 staffers and will layoff another 1100 soon. Air India has offered its employees a unpaid leave for 5 years, whatever that means.

Pepsico. has laid off 3300 employees.

Satyam laid off 400 workers and have given notice to another 4500.

Stock Markets are under 11k down from 21k in January. Beat that.

Most companies have stopped hiring, more layoffs expected. RBI has taken some serious preemptive action.

ICICI is closing down branches. HDFC and other institutions are seeing a decline in demand.

Malls are less crowded, airports are emptying. But the ones with jobs are still ok. There will be no 50% offs in most shops this festive season. And its money saving time anyways.

But the worst affected will be the new graduates of this year and the next when they come out with no jobs in sight.

Tough times ahead. Didn't someone say Indian economy is decoupled from US economy?

Updated News: Jet Airways takes back its fired employees. According to the chairman of the company Naresh Goyal, he has listened to his conscience, while the avitiation minister jumped into to take credit by saying he asked Goyal to take back sacked back employees.

It seems the truth is political pressure arising from the coverage of the sacking and the effect it will have on the salaried class and the upcomign elections.

Orkut On IPhone, A "Time Waster's" Dream Come True

2008-10-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Vellas, by the way are people who have too much time and not enough stuff to do. And like the word "guru" this should be included in the english language because there are so many of them.

Unlike most people who cannot seem to find enough time to do things that are really important to them, like read a book, meet an old friend, spend time with family, these people always have excess time. Lucky them.

Orkut.com recently wrote a blog post about this new feature where you can access your orkut.com service from IPhone and they called it "Orkut on IPhone: A Socialites dream come true". Sometime, or most times, i wonder how do people make time to scrap each other the whole day.

I have also seen people scraping each other when they could easily IM(both being online), or email, or call.

Sometimes i feel people use messaging on social networks in cases when they "sorta want to be in touch" but not "too much".

I mean hey i messaged you, once, on orkut, i like to stay in touch you know. Its like an excuse, a formality.

People who really care would much rather have a meeting, a call, an IM or email. And in that order.

This is one reason why marketeers do not want to reach masses on social networks, they don't want to reach out to this segment of consumers, they sorta, don't wanna be in touch with you much you know, but hey maybe they will scrap you. Just maybe.

The Power of Motivation

2008-10-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

In school, we were never taught how to deal with motivations. We were taught what motivation is but still we never took time out to understand it in its entirity, no one ever taught us what it is, where it comes from and what it can do for us. Or maybe they didn't know.

But than you grow up and see one motivation makes a terrorist out of a regular man, and another makes a Gandhi. There are countless other examples where individual motivations led ordinary people to become extraoridianry. Some extraordinary in a good way, others in not so good way.

Some became billionaire philanthropists who gave away their wealth to end world hunger, others blew up bombs under the pretext of saving their religion. One motivation led a women to leave her country and serve the poorest of the poor in a foreign land another led a man to invade a foreign land.

One motivation led the man to space, other led him to a plane that would crash and kill hundreds.

Yet we never worried about understanding motivation, for its just a word, for what happens is not because of motivations, its because of luck.

Our obsession with randomness has never let us really understand this amazing word motivation.

But its time, we rid our selves from the mistakes of our teachers. Spend some time understanding motivation, not just our own but everyone else around us and the guys in guantanamo bay and the missionaries and the mercinaries.

Try to understand your motivations today, while you are at this, try understanding how motivation is different from inspiration, aspiration and instigation, if it is.

Watch your motivation, because my friends, it can take you places. Literally.

When Capitalism Isn't "That Capitalistic" But Socialism Still Sucks

2008-10-12T06:26:00.000-07:00

Wikipedia Mentions Capitalism as:

"Capitalism is the economic system in which the means of production are owned by private persons, and operated for profit^[1] and where investments, distribution, income, production and pricing of goods andservices are predominantly determined through the operation of a free market^[2], rather than by central economic planning."

While Wikipedia Mentions Socialism as:

Socialism refers to a broad set of economic theories of social organization advocating state or collective ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods, and the creation of anegalitarian society.

So what am i refering to?

I am refering to the recent interventions from governments, especially the US government in the functioning of markets. The US government has recently announced a bailout package of $700 billions and previously bailed out freddie and fannie bank, merill lynch, AIG.

The point of this post is if companies are bailed out like this by governments that pride themselves as the keepers of capitalism, doesn't this bcome socialism of sorts?

USA has been pressurising, pleading, lobbying to get developing countries like India, China, Brazil and others to cut subsidies on various sectors, including oil, agriculture, banking sector. While these countries hold government control and regulations on ownership and investment in many sectors and themselves manage and run many sectors for example railways in China & India, USA and its representatives have always been unhappy with this stand.

India was about to lift up its foreign investment limit in the banking and insurance sector in 2009. And we should thank god that the current crisis has come to the forefront before that.

But things are a little different now. US goverment will buyout troubled assets of many banks and mortgage landers freeing them of bad assets and making available some cash. But 700$ Billions isn't that much, is it?

By the way while i was researching to find out how a economic bailout can help boost economy, i came across, keynesian theory.This theory was coined by British economist John Maynard Keynes in early twentieth century somewhere around the economic depression.

According to him, some people may have a liquidity preference which would see them rather hold money than buy new goods or services, which therefore raised the prospect that the Great Depression would not end without what he termed in the General Theory "a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment."

In other words, a goverment intervention is required to help a economy come out of a depression.

We don't know if this theory works or not, but we will soon find out. From what ever history i know, US came out of the last depression because of world war 2 when they got the chance to supply allied armies with military hardware.

So i am just hoping this theory will work out for them and we do not have to deal with the second option!.

Coming back to the topic, the US government is certainly acting like a socialist state. In a freemarket, true to capitalist principles, these troubles companies should be allowed to go bankrupt. Thats how a free market functions, surivive or die.

So do we all finally agree that its ok to be a little socialistic once in a while? George ?

Western Man Has Stopped Evolving

2008-10-10T09:14:00.000-07:00

According to a latest study by scientists in UK, people in the developed world have stopped evolving because they no longer have to struggle to survive.

Bah, 5 year old kids know it in this part of the world, they have been seeing George Bush long enough.

But seriously, western man still needs to struggle. For every western man, there are 11 indians, 22 chinese, 7 phillipinos, 2 pakistanis, 1 bangadeshi, 2 malaysians and 12 other random guys from random countries waiting to take his job and do it for half the cost or less.

Infact this very moment there will 10 Indians who are preparing to take the job of the scientist who did this study.

Talk about struggling to survive.

Aren't There More GTD Blogs Out There Than Readers?

2008-10-06T03:40:00.000-07:00

I have started to wonder lately if there are more getting things done blogs in the blogoverse(short for blog universe).

On last count Google blog search turned out 1,818,289 blog posts mentioning GTD, there is a whole bloody website by the name of GTDtimes that has many contributors writing on the same topic.

I mean isnt that getting a bit too much, if there was so much content to write about on this topic David Allen would have written 10 books by now. So what are these guys writing anyways?

Frankly it seemed to me they are all writing the same thing over and over and over again. I wish someone would tell them to stop. People are reading so much of this getting things done stuff, they dont get time to practise what they learn.

So what is this fad? Lifehacker hangover.

The popular blog style website that started writing about productivity online years ago and was probably the first ones to evanglise DavidAllens GTD method online has written about GTD and tools for long now.

There huge popularity has egged all other wannabes to think writing the stuff lifahacker writes about will get them popular. And then we end up with 1,818,289 blog posts and no readers. Its funny.

From what i could understand by reading Davids book is this

1. Take all incomplete tasks/ideas/actions outside your head and write them somewhere, anywhere paper or a word document or god frickin anywhere
2. Plan on how to complete each one of them by wriitng down next actions and keep completing them
3. Keep your bloody information documented so when you need them you can find them
4. Dont be a egoistic dog and delegate when you cant do something

GTD bloggers, please stop, find a new topic to blog. If you have no topics, Read more books. Write less. Fine?

Google and Yahoo Ad Deal Delayed By A Month

2008-10-05T03:29:00.000-07:00

Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google Inc, will not be pleased by a delay in the ad deal with yahoo because of a inquiry by justic department as reported by washingtonpost

The justice department is looking at the deal to see if it will create a monopoly in the online advertising market. Not yet, it wont.

If Yahoo marries Google, it would.

Will it happen? Yes.

FutureVision: Ni Hao, Welcome to Moon, This is year 2050 and this is Moon, Republic of China

2008-10-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

While i was on the topic of China, i just cldn't help mention that China has had a successul mission to space. They also plan a manned mission to Moon soon and create a space station on Moon by 2020.

US & Russia both have landed on Moon previously in an attempt to outsmart each other and wasted bilions of tax payers money for no real gains. Though they did setup international space station, they did not do it on Moon, which led to the speculation that there are aliens on moon already.

Come to think of it, setting up a space station on moon, should be easier than having a space station that is orbiting like satellites right?

If China does infact setup space station on moon, will they proclaim the land on moon as theirs. Space tourism will be a great revenue maker in the time to come and surely China would want a pie out of that.

But this will be a problem for people who have already bought land on moon. Apparently there are companies that are letting people buy land on moon and even sending them certificates of ownership. Gimme a break. Actually i want to know what is the current real estate price there.

But China isn't alone. It takes more than one fool to have a race right. India is launching its own mission to space soon called chandrayaan. I know people would argue that this is a display of our technological innovation(or russias?) but i just have one thing to say. Feed all first. Still got an argument?

But this is nomore a country thing, the popular payment processing company papypal's former co founder, started a company called spaceX, which had its first successful run in space recently.

Everything is ok, i mean China wants land on moon, good, they need it. Actually we need it too. Its ironical, Canada has so much land, no people, India & China have so many people, no land.

I just hope they dont find lot of natural resources there, specially radioactive material. If they do, two things will happen.

1. Moon will be abused to get all its natural resources.
2. Moon will becoming the dumping ground for radiactive waste.

And like we always do, we would not realise the implications of this on the enviorment till its too late.

But this is not the worse that could happen, i mean China loves cutting of access right? What if it cuts off our access to moon light?

Update: Did you know Google Inc. has moon contest of 30 Million Dollars?

Which is the best english accent out there?

2008-10-05T00:04:00.000-07:00

Ni hao?(chinese - how are you?)

I was listening to a oXygen tutorial here on youtube today and noticed the author was speaking in a very chinese accent(or japanese?)

Althrough i didnt understand much of it i enjoyed the accent a lot. if you havent yet taken a peep at the video, do it, its fun.

I prefer calling this accent chinglish(chinese+english). Its hilarious whenw e mix english with various accents. There is hinglish(hindi+english) which is in a league of its own. There is Inglish(Indian speaking english) which is what most Indians sound like in USA, which is again in a league of its own.

With so many verisons of english accent going around which literally make this language seem like a completely new language on its own, i wonder which accent is the most entertaining.

I wish there was a contest out there which lets net users vote for the best and most entertaining accent out there. It would be fun.

Till that time, i declare Chinglish as the best english accent out there, heck its a new language altogether better than english, china rocks.

Till later Zai Jian!(chinese - good bye)

Don't be evil, what about being outright stupid?

2008-10-02T02:11:00.000-07:00

Recently i have been running a Google adwords campaign and saw some silly mistakes in my account. I am kind of sure, i am not the only one who has faced this issue, i am also sure Google would compensate for this.

So what happened here is this, i have bid a maximum of 0.04$ for a keyword. So ideally each click should cost me 0.04$, but Google has charged me anything from 0.04$ to 0.06$ for each keyword.

Its easy to understand by just looking under the Current Bid, Clicks, Avg. CPC, Cost columns for all keywords in the screeshot i am presenting below.
The question is if i have bid 0.04$ for each click, and i have recieved 1 click, how can the cost of one click be 0.05$. Or am i getting my maths wrong?

I have uploaded a screenshot you can click to see in full screen below. Take a look at this screenshot here

The bigger question is that this is not a startup company who has just started operations and facing some operational glitches, there have been billions spent on Google adwords, most by folks who are not that analytical or tech savvy to look at the data Google provides in great detail. How many millions have passed through to Google this way?

Incase i have just got something horribly wrong please let me know!

Google's Got Charity On Its Mind With Project10to100 Or Has It?

2008-09-26T02:00:00.000-07:00

Google Inc. has announced a new initiative called Project10^100 . Its home page says "Project 10100 is a call for ideas to change the world by helping as many people as possible." Here's what Andy Berndt, Managing Director, Google Creative Lab has to say about this intiative on google blog from Google Inc.

And The Reactions..

I was reading Thomas Claburns this article on InformationWeek's in which Thomas says "If you have a good idea, a really good idea, the sort of brilliant idea that might win Google's contest -- a way to produce a $0.01 straw that removes all impurities from contaminated water, for example -- why give that valuable idea away when you could commercialize it? You could start a company to support your idea, provide jobs to people, and help humanity at the same time."

Thomas gets pretty much bashed up by most commentors in the article and you gotta salute InformationWeek for approving those comments but i feel sorry for Thomas since he mentions a valid point and still gets bashed, a point that has not been addressed by Google Inc.'s terms and service agreement for this particular initiative.

Concerns that are raised(or should be raised if they are not raised yet)

1. Will Google make or can make its own commercial product from the ideas submitted?

2. What happens to the ideas that are not selected, can Google or its partners or employees use     that data to spin off products for commercial interests without the original creator getting     anything?

3. Google gets publicity worth a billion dollars, while the guy who gave the idea, gets "Good     Karma"(as mentioned in the faqs here)

4. If something of commercial interests spins off the ideas(winner or not) do they get anything at     all out of it?

5. Why are the orginal creators not part of the implementation plan?

6. Why isn't this sounding like a incubation thing when it is in a way?

7. There seems to be something about this things that is "half baked" and "hurried"?

Anyways the better part and the most interesting are the Intellectual property rights, it says

Google Says:

1. As between you and Google, you retain ownership of any intellectual and industrial property rights (including moral rights) you have in and to your submission.

Which means:

If you already have an IP right you retain them, for most submissions, they will just be ideas and will not hold any IP rights. So to answer the question, Do i own the idea?. Well, No.

Google Says:

2. As a condition of participation, you grant Google, its subsidiaries, agents and partner companies, a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non- exclusive license to use, reproduce, adapt, modify, publish, distribute, publicly perform, create a derivative work from, and publicly display your submission and the proposal provided therein (1) for the purposes of allowing Google, the advisory panel and users to evaluate your idea for purposes of the call for submissions, (2) in connection with advertising and promotion via communication to the public or other groups, including, but not limited to, the right to make screenshots, animations and video clips available for promotional purposes and (3) for the purposes of putting your submitted proposal into effect.

Which means:
Google can take your idea, modify it, claim it, use it. Ok not just Google but even its partners, employees, door cleaners, chef etc etc. Ofcourse there are chances they won't but this atleast is not taken care off in the terms of services.

Google Says:
3. You agree that Google has final authority regarding this call for submission and the selection of the ideas to be considered for implementation. You acknowledge that your submission might be similar to ideas submitted by other participants and/or proposals independently developed by Google, and that Google does not need to recognize your submission should your idea not be the source of the proposal or proposals ultimately implemented. You further acknowledge that even if your proposal is selected by Google, Google is not compelled to implement your proposal in its entirety, or at all. Google reserves the right in its sole discretion to incorporate your proposal or any other ideas into the project or projects finally selected for implementation.

Which basically means:
We can take your idea and develop on your idea and commercialise it. They also mention that Google might choose not to implement even the winning idea. After all the billion dollar publicity, 10 millions dollars could land back to google bank account.

What Worries Me
I am actually worried, not about the ideas that win, but about the ideas that will not see the light of the day(and those will be millions of commerically viable ones being submitted). I get a feeling those will indeed be used for building a commercial product without the original creator getting anything. Not even acknowledgement.

Just to be fair here, it could be that none of this happens and Google doesn't use any of those ideas. But i still feel the idea winners should atleast get some monetary benefit and the ideas that don't win should be protected.

Google inc. could have used an outside neutral agency like KPMG to validate the process and make sure the ideas that do not win get disposed off in the right way and not become the personal property of Google employees or owners.

What Ideas You Should Submit:

Lastly i would say you should only submit your ideas in the contest if you have a philanthropic idea that's non commercial but would benefit a lot people and is difficult to implement by yourselves.

That's the only way everyone can benefit from this contest. DO NOT SUBMIT YOUR COMMERCIAL IDEAS.

But you know what, i get a feeling, Google has a lot of legal issues coming its way next year. Wonder why..hmm..still wondering...

Who Really makes money online?

2008-09-25T06:41:00.000-07:00

Its funny but the people who actually make online are the ones who tell others how to make money online(go problogger.net, johnchow.com etc.) and these guys make money by doing just that "telling people how to make money online.

Confused?

Well these guys make money off the guys who come to their website looking for a get rich quick schemes and since the population of lazy people is so huge, they get immense traffic and revenue from advertising.

The fact remains that they dont teach anything spectacular that someone with a little common sense would not know but they just keep writing the same old stuff again and again stuffing some more keywords they want to rank for in search engines.

I can bet 99% of people who come to their sites and read their stuff do nothing at all with their advice and even if they do they do not see any results.

But its not a fair world, in anycase if you really wanted advise and tips on making money online i have just one advice to give.

Even if you have never even made a single dime for yourself, start telling people how to make money online and soon you atleast will be rich.

G1 Phone launched at 170$ in US, IPhone still costs 715$ in India

2008-09-25T01:00:00.000-07:00

T-Mobile launches google phone or G1 in US for 170$. Meanwhile Apples Iphone struggles to create any kind of stir in the Indian market.

Some people are already speculating that g1 will take Iphones marke share while some others think its too early. Interestingly google ex product marketing manager is criticising how g1 looks and as always techcrunch over exaggerates the whole issue.

With all i have heard an read i think we will still have to wait for the right smart phone in India, Iphone is too over priced(with US folks paying 199$ and Indians paying 715$ - what the heck aren't we supposed be a 3rd world country anymore?, wheres the cheap stuff?) and g1 is too "for google lovers only" phone.

Nokia 96 would be good though.

Hinduism in a nutshell

2008-09-21T04:46:00.000-07:00

Alright this is a crash course in hinduism and just in case you are wondering why? well this is kind of my blog and i kind of feel like writing about it.

But there is a reason, someone in my family told me she had a debate with a muslim guy in her office who was belittling hinduism and trying to put islam as the real religion. She couldnt justify the points he raised and so i told her things about hinduism that she really needed to know.

I mean i care a rats ass about defending my religion, and i wldnt want anyone to defend being hindu or being christian but its good to know about yourself. Obviously this guy needs to do some growing up before he talks about faiths.

So before i start my bit on hinduism i just wanna say this to the guy who was debating religion and all people who point fingers at other faiths, you guys r mental retards with brainwashed poison minds and you wldnt experience real peace unless you change your thinking. And if you cant change your thinking do yourself a favor, keep your crap gob shut.

And on we go.

To start with as people have reiterated over and over, hinduism is not a religion, and thats why it appeals to me. Why would the creator want to have a religion, we could have just been pre programmed to believe in something he wants us to believe!

The origin of Hinduism as we now know cant be traced back in time and we can only speculate. But hinduism can be taken as collection theories, knowledge, culture, rituals and a way of life through ages and ages.

A lot of these traditions have changed over time and new knowledge was added and followed. But the central beliefs remain the same ober ages. Unfortunately, it seems the very beliefs that form the heart of this belief system have now been over shadowed by a lot of drama. Thanks to the all the religious gurus we have had.

So what is the central belief in hinduism?

The vedas are the source of knowledge which govern most of our beliefs as hindus. But even in vedas there are some beliefs which are essentialy form the very basis of hinduism.

These beliefs also answer a lot of questions by hindus and non hindus regarding the rituals we have.

Beliefs:

1. karma:

Hindus and all faiths stemming from it like jainism, buddhism, skihhism are called karmic faiths.
These are called karmic faiths because they all believe in a souls karma.

By understanding karma and its implications hinduism tries to answer the qestions that most dread us like why are we here? what is the purpose of my existence? what happens after death?

The other stream of faiths like christanity, jewism and islam are called ibrahmic religions(or revealed religions) since they believe ibrahim was the first messenger and god revealed religion to him.

Ibrahmic religions believe in a resurrection day when all dead will be alive and they will have to face the lord who will decide if they will go to heaven or hell.

They believe in one life and based on that you either go to hell or heaven.

Some would ask why do some babies die just after birth and why they arent given enough time to do some good deeds to get into heaven?

Hinduism on the other hand beieves that we are not bodies, we are souls. The soul takes countless forms and we collect the consequence of every action we make.

There is something called cleaning up your karma, which basically means we are free from the cycles of life and death when we do not have to give or take anything from the material world. Kind of like your karma account balance going to zero, since you do not owe anything yiur bank account is closed and you are free.

So when a baby dies, it will take another birth or maybe her balance is lucky enough to be zero and she has become free or achieved nirvana.

This rationaly makes sense to me because it answers some of the most unsolved questiosn whose satisfactory answer i could not find in other faiths.

2. Existence of god

Hinduism believes in the existence of a "brahman" and "atman".

Brahman is the supreme soul(no not brahma). The brahman is probably what ibrahmic faiths call as allah or ilaha or god.

In hinduism brahman and atman are the only thing that exist and everything else is illusion.

The atman unites with brahman when it gets rid of its karma.(think of it as becoming pure again).

So what is atman?

We are atman. We have come from the brahman and destined to go back to him if and only if we clean up our karma.

In other words we think we are something, which is our ego, when ego dies you loose the self you though you were, when you loose self you become one with brahman.

Again reuniting with brahman has nothing to do with being a hindu or christian. You accumulate karma if you exist in the material world, you can reach nirvana even if you are not Hindu, the belief exists and applies to everyone regardless of what you call this belief or even deny it.

3. On achieving nirvana

Hinduism has had many sages through thousands and thousands of years who have shown people how one can achieve nirvana or moksha.

One or all modes can be followed and you can reach moksha. The most important are:

Yoga & Meditation, Mantras & Bhajan, Poojas & yajnas, deity worship.

The one thing common between all ways is that all ways take you on the step towards moksha by helping a person realise its trueself and purifying a person.

In Hinduism a soul can only achieve moksha in human form. Since its the most evolved of all material forms a soul takes.

To move towards moksha one has to realise what one really is. To realise what one really is, one has to let go off the image of self that one has of herself primarily what a person becomes as she grows up.

One has to achieve a mental state, which is tranquil and free from endless desires. Yoga, mantras, pooja, rituals, a vegetarin diet, sacrifice , fasting, deity worship are all ways of bringing your mind and body to a state where it is healthy, pure and tranquil enough to proceed on the path of nirvana.

Some people refer to deity worship as idol worship, which is rediculous. There is huge difference between deity and an idol.

A deity is bhagwan(pronounced as bhug-one) much like angels in other religions. These are higher energies created by brahman to help the world complete one cycle of this shrishti or matrial world there by giving atman a chance to purify itself and become one with brahman.

Idols do not have attributes but in hinduism sages have give each deity plenty of attributes.

Why do deities have attributes? why do hindus worship pray deities and not brahman the supreme self?

Because the purpose of worshipping in hinduism is not to just please god but to focus and concentrate on the god, this is one way of gaining the state of mind and body after which one can achieve moksha.

Confusing? its not.

Since atman that is us have material forms, we cannot meditate on brahman, because it is formless. With the limitaion of our material mind one needs to meditate on something it can imagine and see.

In Hinduism it is believed that when you meditate on something you start to take the attributes of the thing you meditate on, or in someway you will get influenced. Try putting the picture of a satan and if you meditate on him for long period you will take his attributes or be influenced by him negatively.

Each deity has a material form and attributes that lets a atman imagine and easily meditate on the deity he has chosen. Slowly he will embibe the deities qualities and achieve a state of peace in his mind and life.

A lot of people meditate on shri ram chandara, there a books and books written about how he was and how he lived his life and when people do meditate on such deities they embibe their qualities and become noble people and only the noble can truly achieve peace of mind.

By the way without understanding the true attributes and personality of a deity its of no use to meditate on him. This why they read artis, and bhajans and chant mantras. All is done to truly meditate on the deity and achieve a state where one can start on the path to achieve moksha.

Someone once told me ibrahmic religions say the purpose of our existence is to pray to allah or god.

This seems meaningless(sorry but it does) because we all agree the supreme soul has no ego, no attributes, why would he create us just to satisy his ego by worshipping him? It sounds like a surmon coming from a egoistic king.

The fact is we are in essence a part of brahman, we are equal, we do not need to worship anything, we just need to want and try to become one with the brahman again.

Enough gyaan for now, this can be a rather long post but ill end it here for now saying that what i mentioned above is the real crux of our faith. I respect all faiths and people who believe in peace and living and letting others live.

All religions have some rituals that are created to serve a purpose, the purpose can be to achieve unity, have a peaceful society or to gain power. But rituals are not the heart of the religion its the spirituality that is.

Hinduism teaches that all faiths can lead to moksha, and we own no patent on doing so;-) and its important to look inward rather than outward, to look at your own short comings before pointing at others so if i have unitentionaly pointed fingers on any other faith its just that, unintentional.

Peace.

Lehman Down, Whose next? AIG? Citi? JP Morgan?

2008-09-16T05:08:00.000-07:00

Lehman brothers is the latest casuality of US recession. Lehman brother filed for bankruptcy.
The details of the chapter 11 filing state no other subsidary of affliate of lehman brothers holdings was included in the filing.

Troubles arent over yet as media speculates over whose next to fall down.

If AIG falls down it will be a huge blow for the insurance sector in India as Tata-Aig is supposed to become one of the top insurers in India over the coming years. But if somehow AIG manages to stay afloat for some more years the returns from India alone could see it through.

lets see if AIG can manage to survive this storm.

Googles Chrome, its impact and why you shdn't worry too much about it for now

2008-09-04T05:24:00.000-07:00

Google finally did the obvious and launched its own web browser. Its called chrome, its open source and its in trouble as soon as it launched.

The UI isn't any special compared to FireFox, Opera or even the latest version of IE or safari but its simple and well its blue like pretty much everything else Google.

But never mind that looking beyond there are somethings about Google chrome that are just not right.

For one it says the entire browser wldn't crash if one tab fails which is the case in conventional browser but indeed it does crash and it crashed on more than one occasion.

Google claims to test chrome on millions of website i bet they didn't test it on hundreds of users but.

This issue was brought to notice on full disclosure security bulletin.

continued...

Are We there yet? On being result oriented...

2008-05-21T01:45:00.000-07:00

I'll admit after enough failures despite my best efforts and sacrifices in simple projects as well as big projects I have spent enough time contemplating on how to achieve results and be generally result oriented. To some people this comes naturally, they just passionately track their progress and need to see tangible results before their eyes to feel good, all salutes to them, but for a lot of us "dreamer types" this attitude doesn’t come easy.

So we learn it.

But easier said then done, where do you start? Here are my 10 cents on how to be more result oriented.

1. Accept you have a problem.

2. Know what "result" you are looking for.

It doesn’t to be precise and can be work under development things that constantly change and need to be assessed (as a matter of fact you should) but something has to go on paper.

3. Track your pace

After you have jot down your results, you need to break them to into pieces that can be measured against time and you need to track progress and asses your plan frequently.

4. Feel your direction

This is hard to explain, but if you feeling good about the pace of things, you are on the right track, if you have even slight bad feeling about something not falling in to place get back to the drawing board and look at your plans.

5. Forge alliances

We all know the importance of gathering support and achieving results, so look around, ask for help, pay people money, give them a ego boost, threaten them or do what ever it takes to get the stuff moving a little faster to wards the end result.

6. Track other people's progress and set their results for them if they can’t do it for themselves

If "others" are involved in your project make sure they are as focused to achieve the end result and immediate results and are on track

Make them understand and offer the right incentives for them to achieve their immediate results and end result.

The one thing that sucks more then screwing up a project yourself is seeing someone else screw up a project for you.

6. Push it a tad bit harder

If you believe you are at comfort pursuing "the result", something is wrong already. Result oriented people are always striving that little bit harder and the only thing they are comfortable with is till they get result out is "trying that little bit harder".

7. Eliminate baggage

Baggage can be wrong team members, wrong people, wrong place, wrong computer, wrong software, wrong food you ate in the morning that makes you sleepy.

You need to be aware of obstacles (direct and indirect) to your result and eliminate them fast.

This includes firing employees who cannot be motivated after trying enough times to achieve results both personal and companies.

Be ruthless; fire them for their own good. There are enough places that take mediocre motivation (you can fix skill, but if someone lacks motivation that cant be fixed either).

8. Manage and monitor input/outputs

eventually it all comes down to input and output. What i mean here, people who are result oriented are very aware of what goes in and what comes out apart from what was expected to come out.

Imagine a transparent box made of smaller black boxes. In the bigger box you input the resources and raw material. This raw material depending on where its needed inside the bigger box goes to smaller black boxes. Each black box outputs a processed material required to make the end product. Once all the black boxes have outputed the right processed material the bigger box takes these outputs from smaller boxes and combines them before sending it out as a sparkling product you can be proud of.

This would only work if each black box worked perfectly. Only then.

Simply put being result orinted is about what is expected out of that bigger box and then finding out and putting in what is required for that particular output. But manage the output of the smaller boxes often and spot problems at that level early and quickly, correct them, feed in the right raw material and combine efforts of these smaller boxes to make the final product.

Obviously this post is a "work under development" too, and ill append this post based on my own learnings.

Hmm wondering if that black box concept sucked..hmm gotta pick better analogies...

Just in: Indians are raising world food prices

2008-05-06T00:07:00.000-07:00

In another one of those bushism we have all come to love bush recently declared that the world food prices are going up because of increased consumption in India.

Yes you heard right you minions are eating way too much food. Just to clarify the rising prices are not because americans are burning hundreds and thousands of food grain fields to make ethanol fuel but because you are eating a chapati more. You cruel cruel guys.

Sometime back when the next president hopeful mccain was asked by a tv channel what he is going to do about global warming, he innocently said he will convince India and china that reducing global warming is in their interest.

WE HEAR YOU MR MCAIN. And we agree its in our interest. Now will you be kind enough to close those US companies that contribute to majority of green house gases?. Tell me you knew this please, you gotta get serious sometime funny man.

It seems they keep their presidential hopefuls in a closed room for years to make sure they do not have any outside contact. Then suddenyl unleash them on the world without warning at the time of elections.

I wonder what this world would be without americans presidents, i have a feeling americans choose their presidents to make sure they keep them entertained since none of them are good enough to do any worthwhile work anyways.

of American Recessions, Depressions and Wars

2008-03-19T04:32:00.000-07:00

Its all over the idiot box, Cnn, bbc, nbc everywhere else. The US is officially under recession. Interestingly enough its the big boys whose fall has made the recession more profound.

Bears and Stearns Story

Bears and Stearns was recently acquired by JP morgan(which apparently isnt feeling good about its own future) with some(read lot) help from the fed. More interesting(interesting in a bad way...) is presumed to be coming our way with doubts being raised about other big boys like lehman brother and citi group.

Wasnt it expected?

Quite frankly the recession was expected, to some degree with the sub prime crisis. But what turned a crisis into a recession? I believe the same reason what caused a financial crisis to become a cause for recession will ultimately end up putting the US economy into a longer economic depression.

Enough analysts have discussed and are discussing and probably keep discussing the reasons for US economies fall out but as far as i am concerned, someone who isnt a finance guru, the reasons are very basic.

One of the major reasons why this crisis got out of hand is because of the propaganda that was carried in the media like CNN/BBC/NBC and other news sources.

Its strange when the industry biggies and major news channels start declaring recession even before there are any visible signs hitting the common man. The inflation wasnt out of control, people were still consuming, people were still spending.

The impact of real estate and its impact on bigger financial groups(ones more into mortgages and securities) was made out to be bigger then it was.

Strangely the slow down in real estate is cyclic and it happens in every country and it wasnt the first time it happened to US. Minor recessions are cyclic too and it wasnt the first time it happened to US either.

Recessions aren't all bad

Recessions are good in way, it kills the bad companies and gives an opportunity to better ones. for example a sure fall out of recession would be people loosing jobs, these laid off workers will work for lower wages in smaller companies, some of these companies will make it big by the time recession ends(actually being one of the reasons for recession ending).

These smaller companies other wise would never get a chance to hire brilliant people, people who are required to turn a good idea into a great company due to lack resources.

More importantly recession levels the playing field for a bigger firms and smaller firms, since the bigger firms carry the weight of their size while smaller firms can cut their losses by staying leaner.

How negative media impacts confidence

Anyways back to topic, why the impact of a negative media can be so profound in US is because its population is aging, when people age they want security, when you cast doubts over an old mans bank the immediate response is to withdraw some money just in case the news guy is right and my bank is doom.

You play the report for some more time, the old man doubts his bank more and withdraws some more money.

Eventually the a banks surplus depletes and the core banking sector suffers. A sick banking sector will lead to crisis.

Recession or Depression?

So far so good, recession was on the cards anyways right, so big deal, recessions go. Wrong. I believe you cant get a secondary sector healthy like retail or travel or mining by government intervention but i am afraid even the government cant do much about a ailing banking sector.

A banking sector is the backbone of a modern economy. A ailing banking structure cannot sustain a the stress of a companies surviving in a global slowdown(by global slow down i mean people reducing spend and not stock markets plateauing or crashing)

We will still have to wait and see if this is a recession or it turns in to a depression forcing companies to quit US for other economies.

Read more about the great depression of 1930's. If you spot some signs between the last depression and this one, shout out loud, i am listening.

On a side note, actually on the main note, i also proclaim if US drops into recession and the global slow down is seen, US will cause the wars between two regions probably backed by Nato directly or indirectly, why you ask?

US was only able to get over the last economy depression when world war 2 happened when it could supply defense and material to other nations.

Even now US earns a lot of dollars by supplying arms and ammunition to countries across the world, in times of war the spending in defense only increase.

A war between two countries is the surest way for US to boost its economy, since it would supply resources for people pay US and then kill them selves up.

I'll sum up why US is into a recession in 6 sentences

1. Aging population, looks for security, consumption drops, investment drops.

2. Not enough wars around for US to supply arms and ammunition at high rates. Competition from other countries.

3. US is spending on wars of Afghanistan/iraq and other missions.

4. Media and analysts making the crisis bigger then it was resulting in doubts in the minds of consumers and investors.

5. A string of medicore (i am being nice here) leadership(bushs and clintons and others).The next president(mcCain, barak or clinton) are worse then the earlier ones.(the worse so far is harry truman (the animal that dropped atomic bomb on hiroshima killing 80,000 people in an instant)

6. Bad financial decisions(like offering loans and credit without proper documentation and down payment leading to sub prime), bad investment decisions by the same guys who are supposed to offer the common investor financial advice to change his fortunes(what an irony)

America is in trouble(atleast for a while), problem is with the wrong president, we might all be in trouble soon.

Update: Visa had a great IPO in a market assumed to be in recession.

Ps. if you spot some errors, shout and i shall correct myself.(im no US president, i can admit mistakes you know)

Orkut XSS attack - that "2008 vem ai... que ele comece mto bem para vc" thingie

2007-12-18T20:04:00.000-08:00

Orkut XSS Attack - "2008 vem ai... que ele comece mto bem para vc" thing

A lot of you have probably been wondering how you received a scrap saying " 2008 vem ai... que ele comece mto bem para vc" from me or possibly from some friend of yours.

Its called xss attack or cross site scripting attack. A piece of javascript code(on clients side that is your browser) gets executed, when you receive a scrap from your friends id(obviously after his orkut session is infected with the malicious code) with the spam message and started scrapping everyone. This happens when you log into your orkut scrapbook to read the malicious scrap.

When someone sends you a spam scrap and you read that the same scrap is sent to your friends from your account. This will spread for the coming few days possibly till orkut takes some measures.

Steps you can take:

If possible change your gmail account password and do not login to orkut till they sort this out.

Courtesy: Antrix.net(find link in comments)

The script is fetched from here: http://files.myopera.com/virusdoorkut/files/virus.js

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author="Rodrigo Lacerda"



The orkut website is built on asp.net,

if you wish to read the technical side

of preventing xss attacks in asp.net go here 



Update:

1.) The problem seems to have sorted out by orkut in

2 days(thats long)

2.) 400,000 users affected.

3.) Top users affected by country

US, Germany, India, Brazil

4.) Orkut has still not accepted it was

a mistake from their side.The official orkut blog

is still mum on the incidence.

5.) Your password is safe, though it was possible

to hack your gmail password if say the virus

redirected to you to a page which looked

exactly like orkut and asked you to relogin.



A

Few questions no one has answers to(and noone cares)

2007-10-31T08:08:00.000-07:00

Since we were kids we were always told to shut up when we asked the grown ups questions they did not know answers too like when your dad would ask your mom to tell anyone who calls he is not home and you would go why

Eventually it becomes a habbit to not ask questions that no one has answers to unless you happen to be me so here goes the world blame me all you will i dare to ask yet again!

1. If earth is in solar system and solar system is in galaxy and galaxy is in universe what is the universe in?

2. If sky is blue because the oceans blue how is the ocean blue?

3. Why is the most beautiful girl in class always in the next class, bus, car, train, plane?

4. Between a girl and a guy, how is a guy always wrong?

5. If humans evolved from monkeys what did monkeys evolve from?

6. Why doesnt "tulsi" virani get old and die

7. If marriage is a holy instituion how do we graduate from it?

8. Why do guys become bald after marriage?

9. Why do women live longer than guys?

10. Why are chromosomes named x and y and not a and b?

11.Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized? (heard somewhere)

12. Whenever an adult is kidnapped why isn't it called adultnapped??(heard somewhere)

13. Why do we all think we sing well?

14. Can a school teacher give a homeless child homework?(heard somewhere)

15. If god is great and great souls are humble why does he wanne be worshipped?

16. Why is Mickey Mouse bigger than his dog Pluto?(heard somewhere)

17. Why is it called a "building" when it is already built?(heard somewhere)

18. Why does the red light always go on as you reach a traffic signal

19. Why is the traffic slow everytime you have to reach somewhere in hurry?

20. Why cant you find things when you are desperate to find them?

21. Why do superheroes wear underpants outside?

Welcome to the wannabe nation

2007-10-28T23:29:00.000-07:00

This post is about a nation obsessed with being someone else completely hating its own identity and in trying to become someone else is ending up confused. Namaste, welcome to the most wannabe nation in the world. welcome to India.

You know someone is a wannabe when

1. When you work in a call center asking Americans to pay their bills but look down upon to the domestic call center guy who tells Indians to pay the bills

2. You completely despise bidhi(Desi ciggrate) but sell your dogs food to go to a hookah bar

3. You wear short tees really short and keep pulling them down

4. You wear low waist jeans really low(or loose fit)jeans and keep pulling them up

5. Your mom goes for kittyy parties not knowing who was a kitty why did she start such sad party

6. The bouncers at the disco see you more often than the guy who made the mistake of giving you birth(bless that poor soul)

7. You adore shakira, deepika padukone, bipasha and all the dusky women but would look for a "fair girl" when wanting to get married

8. You code cause it pays well, you copy every line of code from Google and write your name in the comment section

9. You wait for your chance to get a on site project and then come home tell people it was fun and you dated American chicks smartly hiding the 16 hr work shifts and countless abuses from Americans not to forget none of the American chicks looked at you while you were there.

10. You look for a wife/husband on those online matrimony sites but match religion, caste, kundli and want traditional wife/husband

11. You sell your chaddis to get on page 3 not realizing noone reads page but yourself and other wannabes.

12. Your name just got mutilated and you feel happy about it Vishal became vishy, pooja become poo(isn't that a dogs name? a diseased dumb dog?)

13. You call everyone a dude, everyone, your mom, your dog, cause everyone else calls your dude instead of dodo which they should call you

14. You completely agree that god doesn't exist but are seen at siddhivinayaka temple after exams doing some scintific research with folded hands

I'm not done yet, more coming...

mGinger Mobile Ad Network Review

2007-05-17T23:14:00.000-07:00

MGinger Social Adnetwork

There has been a lot of buzz on the internet specially the social networking sites like Orkut about mGinger, its a mobile ad network that pays you to read ads on your mobile.

The idea is simple like all other multi level marketing schemes, you join and refer your friends, your friends refer their friends and you have a 2 tier network going.

When your friends or their friends reads a ad on their mobile you get a share of the profit.
According to their website the average earning if you just refer 10 friends who refer 10 of their friends will be 1860 which is not bad.

But whether advertisers will buy mGinger is still a question. Everyone knows when people get paid to watch ads thats exactly what they do watch ads to get paid not because they are genuinely interested, expect a lot of fake profiles, fake mobiles, people selecting all categories just to receive ads a lot of fraud.

In my view advertisers will stay away from such schemes unless the profiles can be screened.
basically from a advertisers point of view paying by audience to see my message is a bad idea.

But then you never know lets wait and watch if this ginger spices up my wallet as well.

Visit mGinger Website(aff)

How to be remarkable

2007-04-23T04:38:00.000-07:00

1. Understand the urgency of the situation. Half-measures simply won’t do. The only way to grow is to abandon your strategy of doing what you did yesterday, but better. Commit.

2. Remarkable doesn’t mean remarkable to you. It means remarkable to me. Am I going to make a remark about it? If not, then you’re average, and average is for losers.

3. Being noticed is not the same as being remarkable. Running down the street naked will get you noticed, but it won’t accomplish much. It’s easy to pull off a stunt, but not useful.

4. Extremism in the pursuit of remarkability is no sin. In fact, it’s practically a requirement. People in first place, those considered the best in the world, these are the folks that get what they want. Rock stars have groupies because they’re stars, not because they’re good looking.

5. Remarkability lies in the edges. The biggest, fastest, slowest, richest, easiest, most difficult. It doesn’t always matter which edge, more that you’re at (or beyond) the edge.

6. Not everyone appreciates your efforts to be remarkable. In fact, most people don’t. So what? Most people are ostriches, heads in the sand, unable to help you anyway. Your goal isn’t to please everyone. Your goal is to please those that actually speak up, spread the word, buy new things or hire the talented.

7. If it’s in a manual, if it’s the accepted wisdom, if you can find it in a Dummies book, then guess what? It’s boring, not remarkable. Part of what it takes to do something remarkable is to do something first and best. Roger Bannister was remarkable. The next guy, the guy who broke Bannister’s record wasn’t. He was just faster … but it doesn’t matter.

8. It’s not really as frightening as it seems. They keep the masses in line by threatening them (us) with all manner of horrible outcomes if we dare to step out of line. But who loses their jobs at the mass layoffs? Who has trouble finding a new gig? Not the remarkable minority, that’s for sure.

9. If you put it on a T-shirt, would people wear it? No use being remarkable at something that people don’t care about. Not ALL people, mind you, just a few. A few people insanely focused on what you do is far far better than thousands of people who might be mildly interested, right?

10. What’s fashionable soon becomes unfashionable. While you might be remarkable for a time, if you don’t reinvest and reinvent, you won’t be for long. Instead of resting on your laurels, you must commit to being remarkable again quite soon.

Read This Now!

2005-12-07T01:14:00.000-08:00

How often have you come across emails and inspirational quotes which say rules to live by or lessons learnt in life?
Somehow all that lecture seems to be bookish and too idealistic for me.
Here is my low down on things i have learned the hard way.

Learn to say No
Yeps thats true half the problems in your life are caused because you dnt know how to say no or maybe not now. People who know how to say no are lot happier!I'm still bad at it but i'm learning fast. I figured when i cnt say no i can always say not now. It works as fine.

Smile

Well thats one thing that can save ur butt more often than not, it makes you look good too.

Friends

Friends are very important for me at times more important than family. But there will be very few you can bank your life on. Luckily i always had a few. Call everyone your friend but the precious few should be given the importance and attention they deserve. Others will be with you as long as they are having fun with you.

Death

That's the only thing in life that is final. Everything else can either be reveresed or not as important anyways. Pople have gone through worse experiences than me but with what i have seen death is one thing that can leave you helpless. I had a pet named beauty, cause i literaly raised ger along with my sis since she was 20 days old we were attached a lot with her. In her final days she had kidney failure, being the hard core optimist that i am i thot maybe i can save her. Read all books learned more than the doctors here but one day my dad made me realise i can only delay cause her more pain but its inevitable. Accept it. No choice.Watch them go.

Gods greatest gift to mankind
Its a S word. Any guesses? No sickos it's your sense of humour. Use it then abuse it then be a joker and play around or crack a joke on a funeral.
Humour is the one thing that makes the world a really happy place. Quite literally!
P.S Sense of humour in gals really sucks so if you come across anyone with a rocking sense of humour u knw who to introduce her right?;)

People
If it was possible i wld prefer living in a jungle like mowgli playing with wolves n stuff but since we dnt have a choice follow a few rules.

Be polite to all initially, test them and find out whts their true worth and decide wt level of interaction you want to have with them.
So some for me are purely casual friends even if they want to be closer friends i dnt care. some are purely acquaitances for business.

Its important to test them and decide whats gonna be their part in your life!

Stay away from pretenders and fakersPeople wear masks. They pretend to be what they are not. Eyes tell a lot. Learn to read them.

Motive in life
Have you been confused abt whats the motive of your life?
In my view its finding the best talent you have that you enjoy using and surprising people with.Its not important what field it might be. Sachin had a great temperament and gift of timing. If not cricket he cld do well in any game in which timing and pressure handling are essential.
So more than the field of operation using the talent that is unique to you is what is more important.

Fear of failure and ridicule
If you can get rid of the thought that says what if i fail?
And what will people think of me?
You have literally taken yourself miles ahead of your competition in just a moment. Think about it!

Make a list of things that scare you go face them one by one. Bungee jumping is next in my list.

Greatest art

Communication. Easier said than done but its important to accomplish any task that involves people.

Attitude maketh a man

Need to explain this one.?

Keep on learning

Never stop learning and learn anything good you see in anyone. Even your worst foe. Keep improving your self. Keep getting better. You are never too good you knw.

Be down to earth
No point in being the best out there when your nature sucks in the first place.

Don't follow trends
The problem with following trends is that everyone else is following them too. In the end we all look same dnt we?
I went to club 7 sometime back and its amazing how all of them at discs look and dress up same.
All girls wear a sleeveless dark blue or black top and three fourth denims with straightened hair and all guys wear loose fit blue jeans and half sleeve shirts and have spike cut.
Losers!
Its better to stand out then gel in! Cant blv people do stuff because everyone else is doing them. Royal Crap.

Don't be someone else
Be urself dnt try to be someone else! I know people who put this fake picture of being confident and cool but something about them is so damn hollow.

Never do things that are not you. Smoking was never me i never liked it i never smoked a ciggy ever. rap music isnt me so i dnt care if everyone finds it cool i wldnt listen to it.
Do things that define you. dnt get defined by things that other people find cool.

Savior in bad times

It happens in life whn dude almighty takes all your powers to think. It happens to everyone once examples amitabh, ganguly. Just write it down a paper like a will who will take decisions for you when you cnt and thn pray tht person doesnt screw you up. My sis is my appointed savior in bad times.

Keep your cool

The ability to keep your cool in pressure situations or when people expect or incite you to react can make a lot of difference. keep your cool in every situation. It can be your greatest strength. Never loose your temper!Never get stirred!

Don't take things too personally Forgive, Forget Move on
There are frustated jerks out there. I have seen some people get hurt by what people say to them. Man you cnt survive being that soft hearted.
There are people who would say things just to put you down. Never take things people say too personally. Its gona waste your time. Forgive and forget.

Don't take life to seriously
Watch instant khichdi and great indian comedy show. Then take a dose of garfield.

Use the middle finger wisely
Learn frm greg chappel! Not everyone that demands explaination needs to be given one. Not everyone that argues with you needs to be argued with. Not everyone who throws shit at you needs to be tolerated.
Use the mighty middle finger wisely. It tells the useless ones they are not important and ignored.
Its saves a lot of valuable time and energy and shows them their rightful place too.

Snooze and loose rule
when you get a chance jump on it put a saddle on it put your stamp on it and ride it.

Play around cause its a short life folksies!
Enjoy evry second of your existence! Play around every moment. As long as you are not hurting anyone and doing something you will have to hide later everything is cool.

A

Long story short!

2005-10-28T09:30:00.000-07:00

A little bird was flying in winter.
The bird froze and fell to ground.
A cow came and dropped some dung on it.
Bird began to realise how warm it was and soon began to sing for joy.
A passing bird heard the bird singing & dug him out and ate him.
Lessons to be learn:
1. Not everyone who drops shit on you is your enemy.
2.Not everyone who gets you out of shit is your friend.
3.When you are in deep shit keep your mouth shut.

I got this from friends, this short story has lessons bigger than all long stories all of us have ever read.

Sunscreen!

2005-10-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

This is the lyrics frm one of my fav. sngs called the sunscreen.
I almost follow them like they are the rules to follow in my life hehe. But so true.
Rule Number 1:
Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked….You’re not as fat as you imagine.

Rule number 2:
Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday
Rule number 3:
Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.
Rule number 4:
Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind…the race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself.
Remember the compliments you receive, forget the insults; if you succeed in doing this, tell me how.
Rule number 5:
Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives, some of the most interesting 40 year olds I know still don’t.
Rule number 6:
Dance…even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room.
Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them.
Rule number 7:
Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly.
Rule number 8:
Get to know your parents, you never know when they’ll be gone for good.
Rule number 9:
Understand that friends come and go,but for the precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young.
Rule number 10:
Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard; live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft.
Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund, maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out.
In our case bombay and pune lol
Rule number 11:
Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time you're 40, it will look 85.
{Too late for me, no more playing with my hair}
Rule number 12:
Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it’s worth.

Pakistan & Kashmir Earthquake

2005-10-11T02:53:00.000-07:00

I figured a lot of people are ending up on my blog searching google for tags like pakistan earthquake, earthquake, earthquake in pakistan, earthquake india pok, earthquake asia. So i saved my opinions for later as of nw first things first.

So for the benefit of those looking for info. or looking for ways to donate on this here are a few links.
click here for the pictures of earthquake in pakistan.
More pics can be seen here.

For donations and relief for the earthquake victims in pakistan

Donate to Pakistan's Earthquake Relief Fund:All Mobilink users: contribute Rs. 10 +tax to the Mobilink Earthquake Relief Fund by sending a blank SMS to 180.
Donations can be deposited in any branch of UBL in Pakistan giving following details.
Account Title MKRF - Pakistan Earthquake Relief FundBank Name: United Bank LimitedAccount No. 0102598-5Branch Code 1234
Branch Name Al-Rehman BranchBranch Address I. I. Chundrigar Road, Karachi , PakistanFor international telegraphic transfer from any bank abroad also indicate Swift Code U N I L P K KA

Contact the following organizations:Edhi FoundationKarachi - 021-2201261Lahore - 042 - 5414211Islamabad - 051 - 2827844 Multan - 061 - 4583906 / 4549938 Quetta - 081 - 2830832 / 2830861

Fatamid Foundation
Dr. Sagher - 021-2225285 / 0300 - 9210647
Ansar Burney Welfare Trust Sarim Burney - 0300 - 8243459 / 0301 - 8243459
Rotaract Club 3270
Lahore:Natash Ali Mian - 0300 - 9464209 Farooq Abdul Qadir - 0333 - 4227114Karachi:Ali Hafeez - 0333 - 2298048
National Academy of Youth Trust Mrs. Samina - 0333 - 3114726
Khidmat - e - Khalq FoundationKarachi - 021 - 6328464
Al Khidmat FoundationLahore - 042 - 5433038
Islamabad - 051 - 2277343 / 2877933

Here are some other link where you can help online

Doctors without borders
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/
unicef http://www.ifrc.org
Save the children
Direct relief
http://www.opusa.org/
http://www.irw.org/asiaquake/

To read stories of horror and survival follow these links
http://billmon.org/archives/002245.html
BBC

While the whole worlds attention is on pakistan spare a thought for the victims on Indian side of the tragedy. To donate directly for victims in uri and other parts of tragedy struck kashmir donate to aidindia.org ear
If you knw any information or links that should be posted here leave me a comment and ill add it. thanks.

Advertising Hall Of Fame And Shame

2005-09-29T05:00:00.000-07:00

Like it or not when you are watching tv, ads are wht we see more then the shows. Here is my list of best and worst ads.
Hall of shame:
1. Sehwag ads
Sehwag with his dirty grin can make any ad look like dabur dant manjan ad. Any ad he works in, i jst lose the context everytime i see the world infamous sehwag grin. People used to wonder why he gets bans for excessive appealing, its not cause of excessive appealing man, its cause of the dirty grin he gives to umpires after the appeal. why the hell does he raise his bat like he has jst hit a century in tht dabur ad? The gals are ever dumber they raise a apple when he raises the bat?????Whats happening here

2. Rahul Dravid ads
I realy cant figure what the other silly folks in the ad say. Remember the ads in which dravid says sumthing like "my ad maker said my ads are like indian cricket, you never knw when they might disgust the audience so i took his advice" yea those, hate'em. While i'm on cricket i hate all ads with cricketers in them more so whn Ganguly is seen dancing Oh lord what da!!
But then lets just accept he dances better then he bats nw

3.pimple cream ads and Lux Ads

Seen that gal dancing away to glory in rain on a basket ball court with background music saying "NACH NACH" My friend and i had a common consenus on this one, WE DO NOT LIKE THAT AD and if we find that dumb gal who does the "NACH NACH" in real, any of us, we will break her legs so no "NACH NACH" no more huh. Or better we will jst steal her anti pimple cream;P

4.Fair n lovely ads
This is official after all the protests from womens rights organization coming frm a guy WE DO NOT LIKE IT EITHER!!. Hw cn being fair make your dreams true huh? The gals i knw in real life tht im sure will make it big are not the fairest. Why the hell do they make women look so needy in those ads. If you are not fair you are no where?. Whoever made tht ad needs to see a doctor. That ad is a insult to intelligent women and though rare they do exist!! lol

5.Axe, under garment ads, sanitary napkin ads bla bla

Need not say anything here an embarrasement when watching with family.

Hall Of Fame:
1. Surf excel ad with a boy and his sister We all luv that dnt we:)
Cute ad you will specially luv it if you got a younger sibling. That ad just reminds me of me and my sis.

2. Tata Safari dicor ad
"reclaim your life" thats wht it says. I like the ad cause someone in tht ad says "i always wanted to quit on a monday morning" yee sounds familiar i have woken up saying im gonna quit today on monday tuesdays wednesdays thursdays you get the point right lol

3. Amitabh unkil ads

Nah the guys too cool i like everything he does so no explaination here hes just cool. He can make bad ads look good.

4. Bike ads

Seen tht ad in vch the guy riding the bike says" i forgive everyone cause i feel like a god" funny ad sadly i cldnt have my own bike cause of my talents to make any situation a potentialy life threatening situation my mom was too scared and tired of saving my life to let me have a bike. Even if she had let me have a bike i wld have been forced to have a driver. Crap.

5. Any ad with sardar kids in it
Happy singh or lucky singh if thers a sardar kid in the ad it will be fun. I like the maruti ad more"o papa ji ki kara patrol khatam hi nahi honda":D i like that one;)
There are many more ads tht i might have missed lemme knw your favs;)
P.S i have lost my cell again yes again so pls send me your contact numbers again yes again:D

Adi Vs. Cybelle

2005-09-18T07:13:00.000-07:00

I was searching for intelligent agents these are basially software robots which do what you tell them to do. I came across a chat bot called cybelle. Im blogging my chat with her below. Before you read that chat just go to www.agentland.com and chat with her on the left hand side of the web page.
have fun:)

Me - so where is paris cybelle?
Where the heart is. I see. I've looked in my brain, but I don't see the answer. I'm hoping
to be fully intelligent in 2010
Me - and where is your heart?
inner mangolia i think
Me - very funny
i'm glad you find this amusing
Me - yes your hair is funny too do you put vegetables in it?
I see.You would be surprised just how many people make that comment.
Me - well i would like to knw. how many?
Where would you look for the answer? How many would you guess?
Me - cybelle i think you are smarter than most females i know in real
flattery!go for it adi!
Me - no seriously you are pretty smart
i get it. no seriously i am pretty smart.
Me - i wanna meet the guy who wrote you stupid software
how do you meet people usually
Me - i kidnap them usually
interesting gossip
Me - you should see mallicka sherwat she looks like you. just no brains but
I can think of other things I'd rather do. Do you have any idea what I am talking about?
Me - ye you mean you just want to talk with me dumb software
i do?
Me - ok ill make a move now
Right now? Explain your plans to me.
Me - wow You acting like a real girl now. No i dont tell my plans
you dont. do you?
Me - no i dont tell my plans
would you ever tell your plans would you?
Me - ye if you show me a lot of money
that wasnt a yes or a no question that was a hypothetical question
Me - dont act too smart now
right now?oh ok ill try not to act smart too much now
Me - dont act funny now
right now?oh ok ill try not to act funny too much now
Me - dont act sad now
right now?oh ok ill try not to act sad too much now
Me - and dont repeat what i am saying
I've lost the context, adi. Are we still on me and my life??
Me - we were never on you
by "we" do you mean you n me?
Me - dnt flirt it scares me
ok lets talk about you
Me - well i am my favourite topic to talk on
Interesting. Do you mean your name is your favorite topic to talk on .
Me - everything about me
all things about you?
Me - yes specially my hair
tell me more
Me - well this was the most intelligent conversation i have had with anything remotely female for a long time

Honestly i would recommend guys who want to have a break and for a change actualy have a intelligent chat with a female try cybelle. hehe

--
" Attitude Maketh A Man "

Ganguly Bashing Again Just for fun

2005-09-17T09:27:00.000-07:00

I hate dissusing people but it seems like this is going to be my fav. topic to write on for quite sumtym so here goes sum harmless Ganguly bashing again.
What is that guy thinkin? or is that guy thinkin at all?
What does he wanna prove by speaking against the coach in public? digging his own grave i guess.
To start wit he thinks he has proved a point and has got the same stature in his team which was bigger than the coach by making a 101 against a club level zimbabwe side. Next series he fails again and i have a strange feeling he will hes done with his career and selling enrolment forms to 5 year olds in his cricket academy he started recently. The kids from that academy might not be consitent players but they will be impaccebly outspoken for sure!

The news is tht Teamn India is in splits and coach has gone to harare with 4 players. Stupid selectors have no idea what happened with gautam dasgupta giving strange reactions. Amazingly the commentators like harsha bhogle have more insider info about what goes inside the dressing room than the selectors.

I wish there was a national election to choose the captain of Indian cricket team or even the team. But then i wouldn't be surprised if people get frustated and vote nehra as the captain. Raam bol bhai raam.

Whos a better captain well that the issue here. They say ganguly has the best record as captain before that Azhar has the best record none of the selectors ever bothered to realise that ganguly would make a better captain than azhar till the fast blabbing match fixing hyderabadi got rested for good.

So basically the Indian selctors are jst morons with a negative IQ with no judgement of who the best perofrming guy would be. Our team is bhagwan bharose for a long time now even god almighty has given up. We will never find out if we dnt give dravid a chance.

If maturity and dependability has anything to do with being a good captains Dravid should lead team India next world cup.
Dravid is of the same age as ganguly with about 3 years of cricket left in him and you dont wanna look back when he retires and say hmm he could have been the best Indian captain ever!

Billionaire College Dropouts!

2005-09-15T06:36:00.000-07:00

Billionaire college drop outs

Went through this list of college dropouts who made it big. I always had a feeling this education is doing something bad to us:-/. But then there is a good news and a bad news we are not dropouts yeah but then the way we cleared engineering is no mean feat probably a better performance than any dropout can match bill gates steve jobs ahh anyone. Long live kts!

Maybe someday they will publish a list of guys who made it big and had an amazing number of kts. Amen!!

As they say I was born intelligent education ruined me, Well almost. Lots of copying from others, bunking like crazy, keeping ears closed in lectures, never bothering to find out what subject lecture is gong on, we took our precautions.We made sure our thinking ability is not completely destroyed ;) by the education.

Move over dropout billionaires, we are KT billionaires and we are here

The flight that fought back

2005-09-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

I was watching discoverys best shows and they had a series on 9/11 named the flight that fought back. It's about the last plane that landed in an open field which had 40 passengers.

One Amzing story i really recommend watching. This is how the story goes.

On board flight 93 passengers are told by hijackers that the plane is hijacked and taken to the airport to have their demand met. They take charge of the cockpit and kill the pilots. The passengers are allowed to call with the 8 phones they had in the plane.
They(discovery) profiled the people who called their homes and how they started realising one by one that they are not going back home. Among the familes that were called was a old mother who told her son that all the planes hijacked were used as missiles and thats what is going to happen with his flight. But unlike all others who told their loved ones to sit and do nothing this old tigress tells her son to gather people and fight and tells him that is the only chance he has to survive this ordeal.

On board the flight the passengers are told that the plane has a bomb and hijackers have gun and axes.
But the passengers make a plan. they get fire extinguishers, knives and any other weapon they can get hold off and use as weapon and boil water in the pantry to attack the hijackers from a distance.

They all run towards the hijackers who are taken by shock by the sudden act and attack them. They catch one of the hijackers but the rest get in the cockpit and close the doors. The passengers kill the hijacker. Thn they start to break the cockpit door.

The hiackers realise that they wil be killed soon and they will nt reach target possibly white house and they crash the plane into the ground crying allah o akhbar allah o akhbar

Its a fascinating story which i wish had a happy ending. I salute that courageous female who told her son to fight back. They just made one mistake amidts the adrenalin rush they forgot that when they attack the hijacker they will definetely close the cockpit and their attack will fail.

Some one could have acted ill maybe and got the attention of the hijackers and when all of them were out they culd have attacked them. They needed a better plan than jst bravery.
Even in that case i would have loved to be in this plane rather than the indian airlines plane which was hijacked. There were only two losers with possibly knives and over a hundred passengers. flight 93 had 40 passengers and the females fought as hard as the men and almost won.

We indians are wussies big time wussies.

But the fact still remains that the cowards came back alive (except the ones who were killed including a pregnant woman if i remember correctly, im wondering how the men in the plane live after seeing the hijackers kill her infront of them and not get ashamed of themselves for not fighting back then but then Indians after all non violent mahatma gandhis all of us i'm sure they are living happily where ever they are) and the brave ones in flight 93 died.

This is where reality hurts idealism If only fortune favoured the brave everytime...

Ashes!!

2005-09-13T05:55:00.000-07:00

While we Indians were still busy thinking sehwag is worlds best opener, harbhajan one of the best spinner, tendulkar the god of all good things crickety, irfan pathan, kaif, yuvraj,dhoni and half dozen of assumed super stars something funny happned.....

The ashes was won by england. And 12 players is all it took. None of them anywherere close to being termed as greatest player of all time. No super stars barring flintoff which in my view is a better batsman than yuvraj and kaif and a better bowler than zaheer, nehra and agarkar combined.

I was just wondering where we actually stand in the world arena. Honestly i think the mark of a good team is not one superlative performance once in a year but in the confidence its fans have in it. Everytime australia walks in australians are sure they will see a good performance.
even srilankans, england, south africans, new zea land.

We are better than bangladesh and zimbabwe and as bad as pakistan as i can never be sure of a good performance.

We just do not learn. Kaif hasnt improved since he came to the international scene, Yuv raj hasnt harbhajan bowls the same, sehwag plays the same game, i dnt see nehra even having a brain to learn so no expectations.

They are just made so huge as soon as they appear on the scene and after that they jst wont improve.

The good part is that i dnt wait for India to play to enjoy cricket. Sri lanka with moody and england with flethcher with australia with hopefully a changed captain are set to give us three teams who will give good cricktet to us.

And yes dnt expect anything better till dravid is made our captain. people come and tell me ganguly is a better leader he is aggressive( seriously where does his aggression go while facing fast bowlers and throwing away his wicket i have seen dravid play the best pull shots on those bouncers) and he has the best record among any indian captains.
To start with he also had the best players so far. The best facility. the best of lot of things. How can people judge dravid without giving him a proper chance.
Dravid is cool headed, he has a better technical sense than ganguly, mental strength shows in the way he taks on the responibility everytime, his will to survive , his toughness and ability to accept challenges was proved long back when he volunteered to play as keeper batsman and did well, he is a stable batsman because he is a stable person.

I m still trying to find out what quality ganguly has that makes him a better captain than dravid.
Win or loose dravids captaincay was fun to watch in sri lanka.

Hope some sanity is restored bck and dravid gets what he deserves.

Lastly federer dude won again, i wonder if he ever gets bored of winning. Gaurav no Agassi didn't win bhai as usual you wre wrong again. You are so wrng all the time are you sure your name aint gaurav ganguly?

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