Who? Me??

There have been sci-fi movies and there have been sci-fi movies; But none like this one. In any sci-fi movie, you expect the human civilization to be so ultra advanced and modern, that it is set to baffle the viewer of today. It’s always shone as a rosy picture that technology being at a zenith with everyone striving to do more. Well maybe I went overboard with the striving bit, but I am sure you get the picture, right?

Idiocracy is different in this regards, it paints the real picture and drives home a point, that if the world continues as it is currently, then this scenario might just come out to be true. Especially in the developed countries (I wonder why they call them developed countries?) – See the major nations for a change, all of them have skilled labor problems. People do not have an incentive to do more … to become what they could have aspired for. What countries like India now need to do is learn from this and ensure that our people do not make the same follies.

Don’t worry, if you do not wish to think over this so much, then just watch the movie and laugh it out. Worth a watch, better still if you can think.

On this occasion of Ram Navmi, my family and I ended up discussing Lord Ram. My sister made this funny remark about Ram being the perfect politician, and then proceeded to compare him to Hillary Clinton.

I won’t explain further, what are your thoughts on this?

With GMail being launched on 1st of April, it has been a precedent with Google to come out with one gag or the other on each of these days. This year its no different.

Out comes GMail Autopilot by CADIE!! It is supposed to automatically send responses customized to your writing style. Further clicking shows us that they are going to come out with Google Chrome 3D … what a riot.

Kind of beats the Google Gulp and Google Romance gags by a mile here.

The Indian Media Revolution has brought forth this host of reality shows on different television channels. Life is stranger and more interesting than fiction. MTV Roadies is just one more of these shows … my wife watches it regularly. In fact, so regularly that even I have started watching that damn show.

For people who already know about the show, the first show was a big hit with the youth … bikers especially. Somehow the attitude expressed by the show has transmogrified into something else now.

What I see nowadays on the show can be summarized in one word – immaturity. I didn’t realize that teens can be so stupid and immature. The participants scheme, plot, make idiotic plans … think that they are oh!so powerful and determined to prove themselves. But for what for Chris sakes? They only end up proving idiots of themselves. I sometimes feel sad for the first Roadie, Ranvijay that he has to put up with this.

Then again, I haven’t seen the first season.

How true is this, wish I could be that honest!

I think I have an overdose of George Lucas here. Watched the complete series. Then installed SW-Knights of the Old Republic: The Sith Lords. Saw lightsabers in my dreams last night.

May the farce be with you!! (Chennai style!!)

Funny, I had not talked about Google Chrome uptil now. I still won’t rave about it, since I prefer Firefox over Chrome. Tried it, uninstalled it. End of story. But with the recent launch of this browser, people are now forced to relook at their choice of browser. I hope this helps informed users take a decision and switch to Opera or Firefox, which are way better browsers than the rest available in the market. The last one of which is the market leader, Internet Explorer. Phycuk!! Just talking about it makes me want to spit, and clean my tongue. I hate it. Not because it is a Microsoft product, but because it actually is a pretty crappy browser. The fact that you cannot take it out of your Windows Operating System just goes to show how smart the MS IE Product management team is, full marks to them!!

So, I took it upon myself to remove this insult to a browser once and for all from my WinXP machine. I went to Add/Remove programs, and removed it. The icon on my desktop went away … yaay!! Then when I went to Start -> Run and typed iexplore.exe, back again it rears its ugly head. Grrr!! You can’t remove it, that’s that. So finally I did what I should have done when I installed WinXp, delete the folder Internet Explorer in my Program Files. And life was good.

I forgot one teensy weensy thing, I work in a web retailing firm, which has a propensity of churning out portals. These portals need to be tested. Since my marketing guys feel that a major portion of their customer base would be on IE, they expect me to make the portal IE-Compatible (read compatible javascripts, reduced effects, workaround on ajax), nothing that we can’t do, of course not. Just I ask my readers, why?

Why bother to make things compatible with IE? Why not force those ignoramuses to switch to a better browser. You are not only doing yourself a favour but improving the world. Impacting your customers positively. Being the change not just trying to make it. Yes, “customer-centric” people would say that you need to sell what your customer wants, I say, tell that to an artist and see his reaction. So if you agree with me, go delete your iexplore.exe and make the world a better place.

I have posted earlier on Twitter as well, but this time, its for a more practical purpose. It is on how to use this web tool to market your site online, to get those readers/customers to your portal. Social media is a powerful thing, and using it to promote your product/service online at minimal cost is even better

So here are a few ways you can use twitter to tweet your way to more hits.

1. Have an RSS Feed on your site, if it is content based, eg. Crazy Engineers, put that RSS in Twitterfeed, and push out regular updates through twitter! Similar updates can then be sent to your twitter of your blog/corporate blog as well.
2. Once you have your twitter account setup and your tweets are flowing a-go-go, then you can have your social networking accounts like Facebook, to display the same tweet.
3. Take care not to over do the feeds, since your followers can get bugged with you. I know a few friends who have complained of me tweeting of what songs I am listening to and all that jazz, so keep a filter on those feeds.
4. It also helps if you are tweeting every once in a while by yourself, so you get a more human face. For eg. Zappos’ CEO, Tony Hsieh is there on twitter, and he actively tweets about his daily routine. How cool is that, direct access to a firms CEO, can you be more customer-centric?
5. Use twitter for simple market surveys, qualitative and quantitative as well. For eg. You can tweet, “What do you think is going to happen to the Indian economy?”, the answers would be more than enough to put forth a blog post. Later, you can tweet that post url, and there is a likely chance that people who participated in your twitisurvey would also read your post
6. This latest in: Use twitter to resign!!

Try it out, give twitter a twhirl!!

Movie night at my place in Hyderabad, always sees us roomies get together in my room, and watch one of the movies. Yesterday was one such day, we were determined to watch a movie, but could not decide on which. Diptesh wanted to see Hancock, I wanted to see AVP2, Jay was pretty much okay with anything that had a lot of action and sex thrown in. Finally we decided on Harold and Kumar … and what an awesome choice it was.

The movie is about two american friends who are of Indian (Kumar) and Korean (Harold) origin, and their zany adventures. I cannot stress more on the word zany, trust me. You also have the antics of Neil Patrick Harris (of Doogie Howser MD and of recent, How I met your Mother fame) playing himself. Go watch it if you want to laugh and not think for 2 hours on the trot.

There is also a beautiful piece of poetry in the movie … its the coup de grace

The Square Root of Three – by David Feinberg

I’m sure that I will always be
A lonely number like root three

The three is all that’s good and right,
Why must my three keep out of sight
Beneath the vicious square root sign,
I wish instead I were a nine

For nine could thwart this evil trick,
with just some quick arithmetic

I know I’ll never see the sun, as 1.7321
Such is my reality, a sad irrationality

When hark! What is this I see,
Another square root of a three

As quietly co-waltzing by,
Together now we multiply
To form a number we prefer,
Rejoicing as an integer

We break free from our mortal bonds
With the wave of magic wands

Our square root signs become unglued
Your love for me has been renewed