Monthly Archives: June 2007

vinu + simpson = vimpson

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Do you love avatars? Are you in love with the Simpsons – if the answer is yes then goto the Simpsons Movie website and get yours :-) I made mine – check this out. I have taken a printout and put it on my office DESK ;P

A lovely cool way to spread the movie – get the customer invovled! I am totally hooked and I plan to watch the movie now.

vinu + simpson => simpson ;-)

BTW – want to know how I found out – through flickr. Lots of my friends got their’s and it appeared when I logged in :-) Check this one from Shakti and Coda

Maaan – I wanna to see some simpsons episodes now – times for sometime Bit Torrent ;-)

the Himalayan Trek : Har Ki Dun

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Apurv and I enjoyed our 10 day trip to Har Ki Dun (North Uttrakand) and back. As the trek schedule was not fixed … our trip kind of sprawled out in the following way: (estimated deg C)

My Flickr Set (255 pics)

Month: June, 2007

15th night – 28 deg C
Home to Bangalore Airport ( Two Wheeler, Auto)
Bangalore to Delhi (Flight)
Delhi Airport to ISBT Terminus (Taxi)
Delhi to Dehradun (a/c bus)

16th – 18 deg C
Dehradun to Sankari via Mohri (Rickety Local Bus)

17th – 15 deg C
Sankari to Taluka (Walk)

18th – 12 deg C
Taluka to Seema (Osla) (Walk)

19th – 8 deg C
Seema to Har Ki Dun (Walk)

20th – 6 deg C
Stay at Har Ki Dun

Har ki Dun
(pic from Apurv’s Flickrstream)

21st – 18 deg C
Har ki Dun to Sankari (Walk and Mules)

22nd – 25 deg C
Sankari to Dehradun (Car – Ambassador)
Dehradun to Rishikesh (Bus)

23rd – 25 deg C
Rishikesh to Delhi (Bus)
ISBT, Delhi to Guest House, East of Kailash (Auto)

24th – 32 deg C
Visit to South Extension, Delhi (Auto)

25th – 36 deg C
Visit to Delhi University (Metro and Tri Cycle)
Visit to Tibetan Refugee Camp in Delhi (Auto)
Return to Bangalore (Flight)

I just have to highlight the diversity in landscape and modes of transpost taken during the trip! It had alsmost everthing right from walking, Mules, tri-cycles, two wheelers, autos, cars and flight … ;-)

rishikesh 003.jpg

Best ride was walking on the Mules on the edge of landslides ;-) Letting your life depend on the steps of hybrid of a Donkey + Horse :-) – I think nothing comes close … ha ha That does say a bit about me right!!!

MORE PICS HERE. (its a guest pass for myset!)

Returning to civilization

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Seated on a rickety bus from Rishikesh to Delhi, I want to put pen to paper. Heart desires to be analog still … But writing seems impossible on the spiky terrain!

Suddenly I realized, Apurv my trekmate has a nokia e62 with GPRS & voila i can write (its easy to type even when the bus moves) and blog!!!!

Will write more soon but here I am just yelling: I am BACK.

And it feels good to be connected. Will write more shorter posts on the way if I can …

Community is the Bank

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Well I am in love with this metaphor:

Community is the Bank

I have been talking with a bunch of friends for 2 weeks on that in regards to Facebook opening its platform and its really nice to see loads of stuff coming on the web. Just came across this report titled Social Personal Finance from OFI – Online Financial Innovations (onlinebankingreport.com)

I want to read it! If anyone can help me get the report – that would be cool!

Facebook and Orkut have the potential to be the next biggest BANKS … now will that not be cool?

A bit from the abstract

The rise of social networking could have a profound effect on banking and personal finance. As companies combine massive databases of financial transactions with the “collective intelligence” of a networked customer base, interesting things can happen.  What might those networks look like?

This report looks at how social finance networks may evolve and how they compare to typical financial institutions today. We also have recommendations on the more pressing need: how to incorporate social finance features into your own Web-based delivery. Finally, we analyze the key startups in the space: Wesabe, Buxfer, and several others.

And finally look at companies they have mentioned in the report – I can already kind of guess what the report says but anyway would be a nice read:

Companies mentioned: Bank of America, Buxfer, Circle Lending (Virgin USA), Compete Inc., Co-operative Bank (UK), Digital Insight (Intuit), Facebook, First American Credit Union, Geezeo, Lending Club, Linked:In, Loanio, Mint, MySpace, National Australia Bank, Piedmont Credit Union, Prosper, Schwab, Twitter, Verity Credit Union, Wells Fargo Bank, Wesabe, Yodlee, Zecco

A glimpse about the report can be found here at the author’s blog post – MySpace Meets Quicken and the most important point in the post is this I feel:

 In the future, social networks may become so trusted that they can function as a virtual credit union, bringing together members to provide each other with financial services (e.g., P2P lending) or using their clout to negotiate deep discounts with financial providers (e.g., affinity credit cards).

sms gupshup

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Well Webaroo folks have launched sms groups {sms gupshup}. My first reaction is they seem to be lacking some real tech talent or innovation! Having pioneered offline mobile storage thought – they well ahead on the curve (and in the right direction) in terms or vision and technology. But their recent sms forays in terms of following twittr and textmarks and MyToday stuff – I am wondering if they have started gettting their priorities mixed up!

What I can see new here is just some lovely eye-candy regular web2.0 CSS stuff. Nothing new. Given the fact that SMS is here to stay and that they have got venture funded – can we see some more india relevant technology thats new and useful??!

May be its possible as I realized – they will be able to implement it properly and take it to market sooner/properly than MyToday folks. Reminsd me back in September when we started the SMS Groups at MyToday we were genuinely interested and really enthused. Though the service has taken sometime to build up (all virally! I estimate there will be close to half a million customers as of now), I wonder whether they have started making money with Ads. Rajesh needs to be more aggressive. Its was initially a Blue Ocean Space and its becoming bloody really really fast! There is definitely money to be made – but I guess its going to be a wait and watch game!!

PS: Don’t get me wrong if I was critical, I am just genuinely concerned of the mobile / tech scenario in India. Yes, its true I have personally worked at Netcore (MyToday) and have interacted with Webaroo when I was in MyToday and also checked them out when they called me for interview. We need innovation, hard core indian ones. Common the american mobile market is less mature and competitive than the Indian market and all we can do is ape the Americans in this matter too! wtf!!

This reminds me of my twttr comment a week back when I read about google gears – I had said:

Google gears + MOBILE! Webaroo better start thinking fast. Imagine possiblities of offline ajax apps on mobile – thats like being on ecstacy
7 days ago from web

and then this the next day

yesterday it was me, now ajit talks about google gears on mobile – http://tinyurl.com/28lrjl note: google checkout mobile is out!
6 days ago from web

Mobile Bill

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Well, last month was a Bomb in terms of personal mobile bill :-) I usually used to call from my home land line and Dad used to pay the bill :P so in a way it was not factored.

Bill Duration: 26 Apr 07 to 25 May 07
Bill Amount: Rs 1450 (wow thats close to $35!) (90% was personal)

I am on Airtel India Roam Plan – as I expected to roam around and call more to my folks and friends in Bombay initially. Well the percentage distribution was like that!! Also I didn’t have GPRS – yet to buy a good phone and hence so savings there :P

Call Type %
Local Outgoing 26% (200mins!)
STD Outgoing 48%
SMS 6%
Roaming Outgoing 9.5%
Roaming Incoming 10.5%

All this analysis thanks to online airtel bill. Though I don’t like the UI much but I like the facility atleast!

In short – I had spoken 9hrs 53mins and 1 sec :-) i.e 600 mins of outgoing not caring about roaming and incoming/outgoing and local or STD. Now by US standard in terms of bucket plans its around $45 for 600 mins (in + out) (nights and weekends free!) – so India is cheaper but not cheap.

I am sure I would have spoken in total 1200 mins last month! – talk about me a vociferous social animal ;-) BTW that largest amount of minutes for me was 2 years back in the US – 3021 mins in March 05! and I paid $55 for that!

chanelling energy

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I wish I had come across the following quote by Warren Buffet a long long ago but perhaps I really appreciate it now :-)

Should you find yourself in a chronically leaking boat, energy
devoted to changing vessels is likely to be more productive than
energy devoted to patching leaks.

May 2nd half links

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Some new websites to poke around:

And then some interesting posts:

On MSFT’s realignment =>Jeff Raikes is now operating an organization that stacks up against IBM (and Red Hat, Sun and Apache). Robbie Bach’s group was already squared off against Apple and Sony.Now, Kevin Johnson’s group is tailored for the fight with Google — over search, advertising, consumer online services and control of the personal computing experience. It also has room for Yahoo!