Infinity mall

This is the state of Indian Malls now. Click on the video and check it out … there is soo much of information overload. So, of noise, visual clutter and of course the crowd. I have no qualms about the crowd as if you are in india you get used to it.

However, I felt that the sound and the visual clutter was just distracting me. I could see the same feeling in the shoppers who were getting confused which was anyway an overload with their children running here and there! Remember – its the children who get distracted easily and with them running around in the crowd … the shoppers are not going spend easily

 

Looking back it reminded me of the old indian market scene … lots of sound and and people shopping. I guess, the new malls in India are adapting that model. Though they started out emulating the US Malls, where shopping is a great experience. I feel the Indian Mall keepers have missed the point somewhere! 

taste the TV, smell the masala!

I was searching something today and managed to find my old TV Tuner card I had bought around 2 years back from the U.S. Its a USB TV tuner card – I plugged it in and had it going. Then I suddenly that I should blog on whats being should in the Indian TV nowadays. I captured some screen shots as I was surfing the channels. The range is is really diverse and dynamic. I just have screen shots of the ones I usually see, but the number of 'popular' Indian channels is three times atleast!! Great Ads, Bollyhood, News, Sports – you name it you can taste it.

blogger meet wrap up …

I reached Barista around 4:15pm. Looked for some know faces … I had been to a blogger meet in January earlier. Was going to approach the counter asking the folks at Barista about this when at one corner – I saw a face I recognized …

I raised my hand and he acknowledged. I approached him and said … "err does your name start with a 'V'?!" " No, but I am Saketh" he said. Then it sruck me and I said "Oh you write a blog called vulture something right?" … Saketh replied "hmm .. Vulturo (check out his blog, i just did its kewl)". He continued talking about himself. Then I asked him how often do bloggers in bombay meet. He said it used to be often last year – but the people who used to be enthu about it have fizzled about but they all somehow still manage to meet everymonth.

Then Yaz from Yazadjal.com came in and Saketh knew him and then there was a crowd. There were also a bunch of bloggers sitting at the other corner and our main aim was to grab some benches and chairs … and soon we all settled in and more people joined in. We all had a quick introduction and I live video – blogged it using my phone.

Amit from IndiaUncut pointed out I was supposed to ask permission before doing that … well I told them that I am well within my rights and I know it as a photographer! well, as a group they thought Amit was right and I didn't bother arguing and asked for permission before taking pics again. {but I know this … as a law its completely okay to take a picture of what you see through your eyes without straining it i.e use telephoto lens etc!} Here is the video of the round of introductions

Then the focus shift to Nitin Pai from 'The Acorn' while the blog-call was being taken.
The noise at Barista and the lack of space made it difficult to clearly hear and participate in the discussion easily. The blog-call was as follows:

The conversation started out on whether economic development and peace are related or can be dealt independently. Soon transitioned into Indo-Pak relations. Analogies being drawn on how china dealth things in the late 80s. Nitin's basis was tackle the terrorists as india is doing now and Liberalize and once we have enough economic clout the borders will sort out themselves.

A brief video:

Nitin believes what the Pakistan society thinks of India in not important as the state overrules controls the psyche of the society. Amit, Ravikaran and I were against it. I have met lots of Pakistanis and believe me there is lot of mutual respect and friendly outlook.

Anyway, at this juncture in my life I am slightly out of Politics as I feel if people look into their hearts and think even slightly sensibly all the issues can be settled. Violence is a measure for the people who are impatient or are afraid. And 'Vengeance is a lazy form of gried' (comment from a movie – the interpreter?)

There was also lot of 'literary' talk which I couldn't relate to. I did feel slightly out of place as the obvious had their community feeling having interacted for quite sometime online world. i was not really following their blogs.

People then whipped out their cameras and clicked here and there:

I saw Amit had a Rebel XT – the camera I also own. I was slightly disappointed this month on myself when I broke the lens Mistake on my part that I dropped it. The lens is good that its electronics is not functioning properly. Suman dropped in as I left (had some other appointment at 6pm. Asked her where she blogs. She said – I just blog about 'myself'! I replied even I do 40% myself! She replied " just google suman kamath" and unfortunately I can't find it! (in the top 10 links meaning)

Managed to grab a mango milkshake during that time and get to know Ravikaran well. Will definitely be adding them to my blogrolls. Its simply a great feeling when the online clouds (internet) and the grounded coffee (real life) merger. Aroma is just blissful!!

Other people who summarised yesterday's meet: (will add later)

1. ShriRam Karra
2. Amit-Verma

Amit mailed me pointing out that I have to take permission for all the snaps and videos I take and mentioned that if I removed them from the post he will link me. I did come back and remove his photo. I still see he has linked me. Anyway, what are you thoughts folks on this? I feel you are free to blo, take a photo and video of what all you see! …

Bloggers meet 2 – 4pm Regal Barista, 29 April

Folks in Bombay – do try to make it to this bloggers’ meet. I just came to know about it thanks to Suhasini (my officemate) and Vijay. More details also here India Uncut.

The venue is:
Barista Near Regal,
Colaba,
Mumbai.

Time: 4pm

I am going to try my best to make it – lets see its just too short notice.

Lots of cool people are expected!

Tomato and creativity

I got up on morning, mostly a sunday, I think and I found this on the dining table. I later figured, my sister was giving company to my mom when she was cooking.And I guess, decided to make a creative, adapted face out of it!Looking nice to me atleast ;-D

The beauty and challenge of design and creativity lies at this integration of doing what you have and making something cool out of it within a certain time. Contrained resources from my experiences have the best output/ design , according to me. Otherwise, you either have not done anything great or not had fun!!

Pantry

Priyesh got some kewl snacks and shared it with us – Jalebi, Chutney and Mixture yumm!! Was refreshing especially at 12pm in the afternoon. Videoblogged it from my cellphone. I am still experimenting it.

Driving

Was Driving to Office and suddenly thought … you know I should take a video and blog it while driving! And there you have it – me video blogging while meadering through the morning traffic of bombay. I am editing this post after coming back home late in the night. But the post made it faster than I did to the Office . Look at the traffic, speed and music – folks that the taste of India and Bombay in particular. Welcome to the heat and spice of life here!

 

Posts with Shozu

I am summarizing all the individual posts together I plan to in futre – blog and then come back and addit on the Web.

Video – Dad Enters Home

Video – Driving past VT / CST (Chattrapathi Shivaji Station)

Leena – getting moblogged. Showing her that its really easy to do it.

Authority and responsibility

David Sifry of Technorati in his interview at Venture voice:

You can’t just delegate responsibility. That’s only half the battle. You have to delegate authority as well…If you can’t say ‘no’ then what’s the point of saying ‘yes’?

Testing video from phone !

Now lets see he this works.

PS: Now, this is simply awesome and great!!Even the video works. It would have been great they showed the first still of the video here rather than 'SHOZU'!! aargh.

Shozu

Now if this works them these guys have done a great job.

PS: I uploaded and blogged using my mobile phone! now thats mobile blogging to the real extent!!

life is a data grid!

Well, I came across my friend – balla's blog and I read his blog mantra and I thought it was really really profound. Makes more sense in the web 2.0 and participatory media world!. The quote is:

life's like a datagrid.. what u get out of it, depends on which columns u choose to sort by

formatting blues!

I just formatted my laptop with WinXp yet again! this is the second time in 4 months … and guess what I am buzy downloading apps to get productive again,

But i just realized, I forgot to back up my 'address book' … yikes! Folks any other list you need for to do before formatting your laptop?
I didn't have to worry about these things:
Mail – as it was IMAP
Bookmarks – thanks to delicious 
Pics – due to Flickr
Audio – due to my iPod 

I also am looking what options there are 'mobile-phone' – the contacts, J2ME programs and web-bookmarks on the mobile.

wisdom hierarchy and creativity

Kathy has yet another great post .. man i wonder how she keeps coming up with great content. Do go to 'moving up the wisdom hiearchy' to read the full content.

I personally feel this is one of the key differentiating aspects of Web 2.0 and Web 1.0 is that we have goen up one level. More than the information and Data level upto the knowledge level. We are still atleast half a decade away from the wisdom level. But atleasta clear illustration of wisdom levels are wikis and blogs.
Quoting final tips:

One of the easiest ways to bump something up a level is to simply include a few things like:When NOT to use something
Consequences
How to recognize when it was NOT a good idea to use or apply this [whatever]
Lessons learned from others, real case studies good AND bad
Links/referrals to communities of practice
Simulations (best of all–provide the tools and scenarios that let them discover what the long-term consequences could be)

The pics associated taken from the post for personal reference:

browsershots.org

check Browsershots your site in multiple browsers! the time I tried – it was slow due to huge traffice!

clash of spheres

Rajan, you have hit upon a topic - that has been on the back of my mind for sometime. Its what I call 'Clash of spheres'. I would love to either take it offline i.e email or have series of blogpost (which can be digested!). I am still having difficulty understanding what you have written as I think there are some things you think is obvious or is related to older posts / personal conversations.

The three types of clashes of spheres I have in mind are:
1. real vs virtual of the same person (ur blog and real life)
2. clashes of sphere of people (real world e.g – parents and kids on channels in the living room, virtual – flaming blogs posts and emails)
3. clashes of people who have access to the virtual world and those who don't but are getting affected (digital the haves and have nots). Sadly just flipping off your modem no longer insulates from the internet in your life! Its a situation where people the haves benefit and the have nots are just left behind!
In total we see 2*2+1 = 5 combinations. Whether they become catalyst for:

• better world for solving problems
• increasing or decreasing stress
• relieving tension and frustrations

is entirely in the hands of the community, the government and of course 'the individual'. Clear examples are China vs Google and the Bangalore incident.

<>

what are your thoughts?? Rajan and others …

movie rampage

movies I saw last week! Guess I am destressing out – from out? I think its time I listen to my body and mind … its trying to say somethin!

Derailed – 3.5 / 5

Walk the Line – 3.5 / 5

The Skeleton key – 4 / 5

Skycaptain and the World of Tomorrow – 3.75 / 5

My Brother Nikhil – 3.75 / 5

The Interpreter – 4 / 5

15 Park Avenue – 4 / 5

Pyare Mohan – 1 / 5

Barcamp burnouts !?

Barcamps in India started out first at Delhi, after that its been at roll! Here are the dates and wikis:

March 4: Delhi
April 8, 9: Chennai , Hyderabad
April 22: Bangalore
tentatively-
May 13: Mumbai
mostly last week May – Pune

Basically three months and all the venues where Barcamps can be held are done! I was there at barcamp Delhi and Chennai – loved them. More than the content it was meeting the people that I liked. Didn't go to Bangalore as I was slightly tired. Read the blogs. and caught up. Made a Bangalore daily as compared to Delhi Daily using MyToday. I followed it up on my mobile as I using the mobile MyToday.

Couple of great posts on how to co-ordinate it:

Dummy's guide
Nuts and Bolts

<>Satish Rounds up Barcamp Bangalore in a nice way – contrasting BC chennai, delhi. More thoughts later … Rajan and his thoughts on BC Bangalore.

communities on mobile

Have you heard of Myspace? Will I came across two posts on that:

1. By the CEO of Newsvine on how Myspace can be improved – Hacking a more tasteful MySpace
2. Myspace moving to mobile vs Mocospace

Justin from JNJmobile gives a nice reply and logically explains why MySpace will have difficult moving their brand and product to the mobile space. I like his argument. But I don't buy. Because in the end the success of communities is getting a 'critical mass' and Myspace is up there – the effort in asking all your friends to move to another place is just too much! You are either in or not in a community. This is where the first mover advantage is … To wrap up Justin's comments:

First let me tell you a little bit about why I think MySpace will run into some significant issues going to mobile. First off, I think much of their brand and appeal is tied to three things that won’t work on mobile anytime soon: 1. adult oriented stuff will not fly with US operators and so much of MySpace is that. 2. the highly customizable sites that crash even the best web browsers will not run on many if any handsets 3. the music and video experience their users expect will be very scaled down. A long way of saying that I don’t think their brand will translate smoothly into mobile. All that said, they are MySpace and they will get thousands if not millions of their users to try different aspects of their mobile launch. But as a mobile games guy, I am going to guess that they underestimated the difficulty of handset support, consumer reach, etc., and overestimated the mobile savviness of their userbase.

ho ho ho!

I am sure will laugh at the end of this

And now comes the explanation for … BLACK goat  

and AIDS!