Whats Happening?...

math - remains scary for most

2012-01-29T15:17:00.001+05:30

I hopped on the International Math Olympiad (IMO) website which lists the ranking of countries those participated in it. For the year 2011, it shows that India stands at a ranking of 23, and when I look at the ranking for the previous years, it is shocking to see how the ranking has been running down the slope.. During the year 1998 the ranking stood at 7.During the last twenty three years, the ranking with a single digit has been only twice. And today in Times of India, there is an article under Times Crescent which talks on the similar topic. At the Schools and Colleges it is the race for taking a course that would get the best paying job and during all this race what has happened is...a student is turned into a machine that accepts inputs from various sides with no self learning. The interest of learning is kept aside while the interest to get a job is kept alive since the day one of school to the end of graduation day. This reminds of the movie Three Idiots which has shown this scenario really well. What has happened through the years in the education system is - make the pupil read and retain (not learn), give them loads of books, make them appear for various entrance exams and don't allow them to think and see what they really want to do. Courses have become more of a job oriented than of a benefit to a larger mass. Like, today, there are very few takers to learn about Math or do research in Math. The papers published on Math has been decreasing, thus giving very few people who can be part of National Research for the good of the larger mass. All the while what happens is the student is not able to cope up with too many things and devote good amount of time in studying on his own. This has lead to attending tuitions outside the school/college and tuitions have become like a must have thing for a student. Spending around 1/3 of the time at school and 1/4 of the time in tuitions, the student is not left with time to learn the things on own. This leading to fear about some subjects. Math has the large number of students who fear it. Mathofabia! Math requires ample time to be sent in learning how those can be applied in real life scenarios.. Learning about theorems, equations, etc is fun if the approach and the liking is towards learning the subject and enjoying it, than just being a passenger in the Math train where the knowledge is retained for just a while...after few months of exams, hardly most of the pupil would remember how to solve a problem... "Like being best on the job or eating a meal, learning can't be enjoyed unless there is a liking..." Well to increase liking and support Math, Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh declared 22nd December to be celebrated National Mathematics Day (in remembrance of contribution from Srinavasa Ramanujan) and 2012 as a year of 'National Mathematical Year' .

the new look of the blogger...continued...

2012-01-28T23:47:00.000+05:30

The new look of the blogger makes it easy for posting and managing different blogs. The dashboard view with the page view information is great.. The section in particular..named as Stats is impressive. I always wondered if this kind of information would be available someday...and it is now... I was surprised to know the different traffic sources to my blog as well as the audience (giving information on the country, browser and the OS information including the mobile ones). One thing I need to try is to enable mobile view of the blog...and I am keen to see how the mobile version of the blog would appear on i-touch and blackberry...

the new look of the blogger...

2012-01-26T23:33:00.001+05:30

Almost four months since blogger.com changed the layout of the screens to manage the blog and posts! I am definetly late here... Zero blog posts during 2011! Thats a big change which I had never thought would happen - with me not posting at least even one post during a year.. Well its never late, and to wake my writing habit I am starting with this post... There is lot to write yet...

while i was programming….

2010-09-07T00:56:00.001+05:30

Programming was good while i did it during my college days..and sometimes when i do it now to help my blog improve.. Well I began to write this post to describe how it was..when i was completely into programming… Some of the languages i used then are not relevant now, however they did help develop the logic..logic is independent of programming language like music is… Cobol, Lisp, VB 6 and not to forget C and C++ which still rule the world… While I was completely into Computers and programming, it was a good fun… change a variable, the results are so different… developed my own Operating System while i was in graduation…may be i will work on that after retiring from my job to improve that..and some funny programs written to print everything into caps or in reverse order were fun and exciting…from the machine language programming i learnt that the pc does not multiply x * y, it actually adds x, y times…wow that was something interesting..and more interesting was LISP and PROLOG to help build systems like humans which have thinking and power to correct themselves… all in all it was a good fun writing programs that involved prime number identification to learning systems… well i say technology helps to be creative till you have the solution, after then it makes people lazy or in other words get used to convenience…and its not bad…we always try to reduce the effort and see gains in productivity, don't we? Logic is what matters in the world today, no matter how you achieve it…either by C or by C# you got to describe the logic else #include in C or C# won’t understand what you are trying to achieve…

image courtesy - http://degreedirectory.org/cimages/multimages/2/computer_programming.jpg

flying… I am not advertising thou…

2010-08-29T19:04:00.001+05:30

For the last three times while I came out of India, I took Emirates…couple of reasons for it… First, the fares are not that expensive as compared to BA..the airport tax to go via London is around 24k while to go via Dubai is 4k..a net savings of at least 20k on the fare..Second, the service in Emirates is well known for it being a world class service with a good crew to assist…

Third, the stop over at Dubai is worth…The duty free and the airport itself is worth visiting. In the recent times, Dubai has been challenging the norms of buildings..the mega structures it has built in the last few years are amazing..be it the airport or the burj al arab hotel..the structures are a great view..and the city often features in the Nat Geo’s Mega Structures… the city from the air looks to be well planned with wide roads and fast moving traffic…Well the temperature is always around 40 degree Celsius during day, while you are surrounded by ac, it does not make a difference. Lastly, the huge airport does not make it crowded while there are so many flights landing and taking off especially during the local morning hours…However I still hate the long flights…it takes 18 hours flight to travel from Bangalore to New York, science should advance a little more and have the flights fly at a speed of double than what they currently fly to make the flights less lengthy!

once upon a time…

2010-08-29T18:37:00.001+05:30

Wondering that I am saying a story that would begin like ‘once upon a time..long long ago…’ na…its not a story time..a time to write the Once Upon Time in Mumbai..movie review.. The songs of this movie are different and reminds of old bollywood songs…and yes, after a long time, there have been some nice songs from bollywood that I liked.. Peeloon…and Tum Jo Aaye are the two songs that make me listen to them often… Movie is nice with good screenplay and story line.. background music adds more to the movie..Movie is about two smugglers who struggle to remain on top and want control over the underworld of mumbai. Based on true stories of two gangsters of mumbai – Haji Mastan and Dawood Ibrahim, the movie is a result of good research done by the writer and director to put it on the screen. The way the movie is made reminds the old hindi movies with those old cars and old streets of mumbai..the attire of the cast makes it more look like the old movies. Ajay Devgan (Sultan Mirza) is the top underworld gangster who has the policy not to make enemies when something can be achieved by offering friendship. He does illegal activities however is good to the poor and needy. Emraan Hashmi (Shoaib Khan) son of a inspector in Mumbai like to be rich in short span of time however his path to being rich and powerful is different than of Sultan Mirza. And yes Emraan Hashmi has a decent role in this movie unlike his other movies where… you know what I mean to write! The fight between two which starts in the second half of the movie leaves Sultan Mirza killed by Shoaib. Kanaga Ranaut (Rehana) plays a role of famous bollywood actress in the movie and is close to Sultan Mirza. She has come quite well in this movie and finally she gets a role where you dont find her drinking or being addicted to drugs and being betrayed by someone. Prachi Desai (Mumtaz) plays a role of sales girl in a jewellery shop and is in love with Shoaib. After Rock On, she has come good in this movie. The movie is a narration from an inspector who is on a mission to free Mumbai from the hands of underworld. The story telling and the screenplay with a old style background score and punch lines make the movie nice and it does deserver a four star (****) and a post on my blog..

imbd link
official website
movie trailer

driving my car…

2010-08-10T01:17:00.001+05:30

Ah… Driving my car, it is a wonderful experience when it is post 11 pm (most of the times, unless you have the opposite vehicle coming with high beam in city limits! Damn when will people learn)… While I drive during day, it is painful…traffic and more than traffic it is the unorganized traffic. Bikes, autos and sometimes even cars try to overtake you from the wrong side. Minute the traffic light goes green, the vehicle behind you starts the painful to listen horns… Dude, I don't have any intensions to set up my office or leaving room in the traffic signal..give me a second till the vehicle ahead me moves or the auto tries to sneak into the little very little space between my car and the vehicle ahead me…just chill..The roads have lanes, why don’t you follow, if you want to take a right, be on the right lane..there is neither nobody trying to judge your driving skills nor anybody trying to take you in the next fast and furious by seeing your driving skills that take a right turn by being on the extreme left of the lane…ah well if you can drive in Bangalore, I think you can drive anywhere…i mean anywhere, be it nyc, or be it the airport runway of Dubai..you will know when to apply breaks and when to accelerate and make your way! Jokes apart..you will be a driver with patience if you manage to drive in Bangalore traffic without loosing your patience…

when you are in the US or Philippines…

2010-07-21T23:36:00.001+05:30

While I travelled to NYC, Boston and Manila during the last few months..one of the things I notice in these two countries is..don’t make Starbucks as your landmark..for sure you will never get to the place where you wanted :)

US and Philippines have Starbucks at every corner everywhere…And in Philippines, Ministop and 7-11 are not a good idea to make those as a landmark..they are many stores and like Starbucks, they are everywhere…

some movies…

2010-05-31T20:13:00.001+05:30

Over the last few weeks, Some nice movies that I watched... To start with ‘Up in the Air’.

The opening scenes of the movie with pictures of cities from the airplane…very nice…George Clooney (as Ryan) is again at his best. Ryan is a person who likes flying, accumulate flying miles and is a motivational speaker. The Backpack scene was nice stating life full of possessions is not easy… ‘Make no mistakes, moving is living… The slower you move, the faster you die’..

He works for a company which takes on the outsourced activities related to people management at organizations. Ryan has an ugly job of telling people ‘You are fired’, however he tells it very nicely like, ‘you can do now what you always wanted to do’… ‘A new start to meet your aspirations, etc..’ Its always hard to tell someone if they do a crap job and telling ‘you are fired’, i think is the hardest one… Well, no one is going to be happy hearing that he or she is fired.. the reactions, the anger, the trauma on the face of those who hear that is not a scene someone would like to see in their real life. The movie sequence, the acting and the opening scenes does not stop me from giving it a four star..

Movie Trailer - Up in the Air

The sound track ‘This Land is your Land’ is nice to listen…originally written by Woody Guthrie

Paranormal Activity…

Continuing from one of my previous posts on fb where I mentioned about this movie… This is one of the best made horror movie. Does not use high graphics, animations or sound effects, yet it does manage to scare you…scare you like you have never before… It does leaves you scared after watching the movie! The movie uses simple scenes to leave you scared… The opening sound of the door, the light in another room…the scariest part is the one where the male lead character (Micah) sleeps and for hours the female lady character (Katie) is standing next to him. Don't watch it alone and if you stay alone or if you occasionally get scared sometimes in the night, this is not the movie for you!

Katie feels that there is something in the house, while Micah does not seem to believe. He decides to capture the movements of that somebody using the video camera. They keep the camera ‘on’ during the night while asleep. The sequence of doors closing, the shadow, and abnormal activities like Katie waking up and standing still for hours and hours does not scare you while you watch the movie. However, if you remember those sequences later on, I am sure most of you will be scared. Imagine while your asleep, and you sense that someone is standing next to you for hours in the dark night! I give this one a four and a half star for leaving me scared for quite some time…

Movie Trailer – Paranormal Activity…

Sherlock Holmes…

Reading Sherlock Holmes stories was fun… and have liked watching those on TV.. While on the movie, in 130 minutes not many Sherlock Holmes adventures can be fit. One of the best scenes from the movie was the way Holmes calculates the arithmetic to surprise his opponent in wrestling, disarm him and beat him senseless. Movie has shown the reasoning and calculative approach of Holmes in a very nice way. Another scene where Holmes looking at the lady who arrives with Doctor Watsons at the restaurant, tells her about her past…the superb way of deduction looking at the clues like the sign of the ring on the finger, the necklace, etc… The disguise, the deductions and the movie sequence leaves you to think and the arrive at a conclusion the same way as Holmes did! Four star for this movie as I did not get bored watching it again! The story of evil aristocrat executed for series of murders and black magic, returns from dead does not sound that interesting…however, the visuals and the backgrounds in the movies well made…

Movie Trailer – Sherlock Holmes

truely a random thought...

2010-04-28T02:08:00.002+05:30

We all know the speed of light is 300,000 kms per second (or 186,000 miles per second) and it travels faster than any thing. However, I may not be wrong to correct the first line…Light is second to mind in reaching the destination. To reach google.com server located in mumbai from bangalore, it takes .0000053 seconds..well for the mind to think of the location and imagine any of the roads or shops it hardly takes anytime…Mind need not go through routers or switches, well the message travelling through the internet has to! and it is accompanied by several milliseconds or more of delays at those routers and switches... Imagine how much of data transfer do those cables under the oceans handle..while the brain is hardwired with so many neurons that it can easily let you think of any thing which is thousands of miles away!

interesting perceptions…

2010-04-27T02:48:00.001+05:30

Well I think I can write a book on this now…I am not kidding…The way we perceive things can be really different the way it actually exists. It is all based on the pattern recognition that we follow through out. I tried few examples with my good friends and the results were not surprising. Those proved to be showing that we do follow a lot of pattern recognition in almost everything we do. Be it at work or in personal life, the use of pattern recognition exists. Pattern recognition is associated to the the way we think. The hard wired neurons do not want to waste a lot of energy on trying to think for everything in a different way, unless you consciously want to think different. The example I tried with few of friends had three lines I narrated to them and asked three questions about those lines.. Here are those-

1. Jane heard the jingling sound of the ice-cream van, and she went to first floor.

2. She looked for the piggy bank till she found it.

3. She tilted the piggy bank till she had some money out of it.

Now the three questions…

1. What is the age of Jane?

2. Why did she go to first floor?

3. Till when she tilted the piggy bank?

And the answers were..

1. One of the response was 8 years old, other was 8 to 9 years old and another was 6 years old…

2. She went to the first floor to find the piggy bank as she needed some money to buy the ice-cream.

3. She tilted the piggy bank till some coins fell with which she can buy some ice-creams…

There is absolutely nothing wrong with these answers. As Tim Hurson states in his book - ‘Think Better’, we all are conditioned to use the patterns to act. While these questions were being narrated or read by you, there was a picture of little girl Jane in a frock running to the first floor after she heard the sound of ice-cream van. We all visualize that scene. The way she would have run to the first floor, the way the stairs were arranged, even to the extent of the color on the walls, the piggy bank and also the sound of some coins falling from piggy bank. The pattern recognition is so common and so powerful because it is how we all are conditioned since we were kids. While walking in the dark and a lonely road, a fallen rope may sometime seem to be a snake, or a person fallen unconscious on the footpath of a road may be perceived to be a drunk guy, however it may not be case always!

Why did I choose to blog about this? In the last few years, I have been working and interacting with people at different levels in their jobs, coming with different cultures, educational qualifications and experiences. In every one with so many differences, yet one thing that remains common is the pattern recognition which influences the way things are perceived in the same way yet by different individuals. There is nothing wrong in coming to conclusions using pattern recognition and this is what that makes us superior to other creatures. However, the use of pattern recognition needs to be applied carefully when trying to think different!

damn…could not blog for quite a long time

2010-04-27T02:03:00.001+05:30

Last few months just flew by…and I could not find time to blog.. I was looking forward to blog on lot of things…the heat in Bangalore, my visit to NYC and Boston and few new things that came my way as learnings. Last three months have been excellent with lot of new things and developments. My favorites of all, the new learnings with people perceptions, technology and how it impacts most of us and trying food at different places..esp this time out of India. Well there is lots to write about and I will distribute it over the next few days and let my blog talk about these wonderful experiences…

from the last post to this one...

2010-01-26T00:17:00.004+05:30

Its been a long time I posted an entry to the blog...Since Dec 6th, the weekends have been busy travelling and meeting friends and relatives...

Virajpet..
It began with a trip to Coorg with a bunch of friends from office... It was a good trip (of course it had to be as it was to Coorg with a good group of friends..) Some nice falls, rafting in the cool and calm river ;) Also not to forget the elephant ride...

Home...
Then travel to my home town Belgaum for a week... Well nothing can beat the stay at home.. Home is always the sweet homes! Met quite a few friends after a long time...as long as after 3+ years.. It was good being at home then... Highway restaurent, Nath's vada pav, Tax canteen's mysore bhaji..alls good and price-less...

Goa...
Ride to Goa on a bullet with one of my best friend was a good one..(except for the bag that I was carrying on my back)... While on the way to Goa, the sight of Tillari sunset point was amazing... Being in Belgaum for so many and many years, I hardly visited this place... Probably because I was busying writing programs during my graduation, while my other pals bunked the class to enjoy the nature and run away from classes... While back from Goa, the sights at Amboli were awesome.. the falls, the ghat section, and the bullet ride...
Goa is a good place to visit esp to relax...however I felt, it is not the place to be during the new years eve..It is crowded and you hardly find a place on the beach or even hotels... Our objective of going to Goa was taking a long ride on the bullet...

Coorg..
Its not repetation of the previous para :) I did visit Coorg with group of my close friends again during the first second week of Jan... We wanted a calm place where we can talk about the college days..etc..and there is nothing like the home stay I always visit with friends. It is around 7 kms from the town with no mobile coverage...and when the mobiles dont have access to the network, you are free :) nothing to bother you and you have all the time for yourself to enjoy the company of friends and good good good food!

Shimoga...
Last week it was a visit to Shimoga...I thought Shimoga is a small town... well..its not.. Most of the CMs who have ruled Karnataka come from this place or a place near by Shimoga... Hotel rates are not expensive..you get a good room at a very nice price.. Travel by train to Shimoga is anytime better than travel by bus... Well there is lots to update about the Shimoga trip, I guess it will be in the fullness of time, and at the right time :) May be on some other day a blog entry on the visit would come up...

my take on roads, education and power situation…

2009-12-06T17:28:00.001+05:30

Heard about India Shining? I did some time ago…The growth story of India has been good especially during the times of global recession…When some countries are facing huge financial crisis, India managed to live with the recession with a good GDP (Indian economy grew by 7.9% during the last quarter, real good number). The BSE 500 Index grew from a low of 3500 in Jan 2009 to 6000+ by November…a remarkable growth.. Better national highways, good number of jobs, etc… All said so far about India Shining, but not everywhere. Recently visited Bailhongal (about 40 kms from Belgaum, Karnataka).. once upon a time, the town had good roads…and the condition of the roads now is real bad, actually, one cannot say with confidence that there existed a road! Similar experiences across some towns in Maharashtra. While on the other hand there are excellent roads, the National Highway Golden Quadrilateral and Bangalore-Mysore Highway for example… Power cuts for almost of 4 – 5 hours in a day in towns and smaller cities just show that Govt babus’ and the elected leaders must really work hard in improving the roads, power situation, and also the quality of education. Last year I met a few MBA grads from colleges from different parts of the state. I appreciate few grads who were exceptionally brilliant while a lot of them were not aware of basics. Some unaware of the current affairs and the market trends, while some not aware of what needs to be looked into when predicting stock markets, and some not aware of the basic balance sheet equation..that was a terrible experience…Quality of education at the primary and secondary levels is great. A few books from NCERT I read in the last few weeks are good, the syllabus is up to date. In my opinion, the college education needs to improve. Even though the syllabus at the graduate levels and post graduate levels are up to date, the examinations need to be made stringent. Exams need to check the ability of students understanding of the subject and they just should not act as a easy gate to pass by. Question Paper pattern look easy for a person to study during previous few days and pass the exams. More objective type questions and only a few essay type questions may be a good one. Lot of essay type questions will just welcome lot of paper wastage with no good answers. People may just end up writing stories or write the same sentence first in active voice and next in passive! While some leaders have said, youth are the future of a country, therefore the youth need to be made intelligent enough to drive the country in future!

google wave - review

2009-12-02T16:08:00.001+05:30

Initial look at the google wave since I started using looks great.. The best way a technology is been used to make conversations real-time. More to follow…Still it needs fixes in terms of some issues. One – While you try to resize the window(s) in the wave, its little slow. Have not tried it on Chrome, guess it would better perform on Chrome than Mozilla as Chrome is from Googles basket of offerings…

More to come on gw review..

got to write…

2009-12-02T16:03:00.001+05:30

Searching for the best methods available for an article to be written on the stock performance. Statistics, Trend Analysis, Fundamental approach, Technical Analysis…etc. All these methods give a good insight on the performance of companies… While I believe in Fundamental approach which is the one I would prefer anytime..however given the herd mentality in stock markets..one needs to look at technicals. Well technical analysis is for those investors who act like a passenger in the shareholding pattern of a company while fundamentals is for the long term and investors… Market anomaly! still needs exploration…

re-designed blog…

2009-11-30T11:24:00.001+05:30

Last few weekends, I have been spending some time on re-designing my blog site. I try to do it occasionally so that the blog site looks fresh and I am also a little selfish here! I try to be in touch with the web designing that I studied during my graduation.

The new design came to my mind on a weekend and I thought it was the best way to describe my blog.. The home page has information scattered and does not follow a sequence, reflecting the nature of the blog… “the random thoughts”…

Initially I thought, Flash should be used to make it interactive and flashy! however, I thought to keep it simple this time..while it still allows for a lot of interaction. Every image on the home page is a link for more information. My college, what I wanted to be as a kid, places where I stayed and places where I want to visit at least once…and so on…

My blog site continues to have pages related to – Photos, Links and Blog Roll.

Navigate the blog site by clicking here or clicking on the ‘take me home’ button on top of this page and it would be great to hear back from you on the design of the site. Happy blogging!

pagerank..of some sites…

2009-11-25T03:46:00.001+05:30

PageRank is an algorithm developed by Larry Page (co-founder of Google) to set importance to a web page on the internet. Page Rank is used in displaying search results and the PageRank algorithm helps in faster and accurate search. On a scale of 1 to 10, higher the PageRank, higher is the importance of the page. I tried looking for the PageRank for few sites (okay the last one one is no where closer in competition with the rest..it was just for curiosity)-

reuters.com has a page rank of 8 out of 10…

bloomberg.com has a page rank of 8 out of 10…

fb has a page rank of 9 out of 10…

twitter with a page rank of 9 out of 10..

Times of India with a page rank of 5 out 10..

The Hindu (beta site) with a page rank of 4 out of 10 and the old site with a page rank of 5 out of 10..

while I did try to find the page rank of my blog, not bad…it stands at 3 out of 10…

some snapshots for those who like proofs :)

More about PageRank is here

friends, food and a good time!

2009-11-24T12:02:00.001+05:30

It was a great weekend this time… had been to college to judge an event, meet old pals with whom i studied, accompanied by great food.

I was trying to make it to Christ College where I did my MBA, however due to busy schedules on the weekdays I could not manage to wake up early on Saturdays :( to make it to the college.. Well this Saturday was an exceptional one…I did manage to wake up early! It was good being in college after a long time, walking the path which I used some four/five years ago… One thing that has grown significantly is the intake of MBA students. While I was studying, we were 60 students in MBA of which 14 had taken finance. Currently, there are 260 students who have taken finance in their MBA..wow almost 20x increase… Was there in college to judge an event where eight groups made a presentation and played the role of lead managers in a book building process of an IPO. There were colleges which participated in this event from across Bangalore.. I appreciate their effort in collecting data and making a presentation, however a few groups were not able to justify the price band they came with. While there were two groups which impressed me..they were very close in justifying the price band they came with.. Its quite challenging for those young minds to take the appropriate growth rate, compute fcf and using dcf valuation arrive at a price target…I do appreciate their effort in getting closer to it… I enjoyed being there and it was an honor to be sharing the judging panel with Prof Ramachandran who taught me finance while I was in college and played a vital role in helping me understand how markets work…

It was a packed weekend for me…Post attending the college met a few friends from my native at their residence in JP Nagar. It was a good time spending over the weekend. We managed to get up early on a Sunday morning to enjoy tasty and mouth watering breakfast in Basavanagudi. It is a small place in Basavanagudi, however the breakfast is worth mentioning on my blog. This place is known as Sri Guru Kottureshwara Davangere Benne Dosa Hotel…and as the name goes, they specialize in making awesome benne dosa and phad (locally known as..which is made of the same ingredients used for dosa, while it is round in shape and has same slices of onion and mirchi). There are very few such places in Bangalore which serve you these kind of dishes. Mostly these are located in Jayanagar, Rajajinagar, Malleshwaram and Basavanagudi…

The weekend did not end yet…It was now time to catch up with the old pals with whom I studied my graduation. We had plans to meet at Barista, however we ended up meeting in CCD on MG Road where we spent few minutes and after being irritated by the hopeless songs played there, we moved to Cafe Hardrock where there were few more friends whom we had to meet. Cafe Hardrock plays nice songs, old rock songs…just too good…

Coming weekends are gona be a little packed as this one was..Have to catch up with a lot of friends!

for your eyes… a little more about facebook

2009-11-18T18:29:00.001+05:30

whoa… the site and the outstanding statistics! Since last year fb has been growing and growing with a lightning speed leaving orkut and other social networking sites in the audience pool… some interesting facts about fb for your eyes…

Founded by Mark Zuckerberg, Chris Hughes, Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin in February 2004… has a good number of users with great apps… some interesting stats…

There are 300 million active users on fb and the fastest growing demographic is more than 35 year old or older.. well I thought it would be 25 years old or older! this one was surprising to me…

Average user has 130 friends… now..if you have less or more not to worry.. this is just an average which I guess does not exclude the outliers like some one having 3 or 4 friends compared to someone who has 2k friends… More about having less and more friends will follow on my blog shortly…

There are 2 billion photos uploaded to the site each month and 14 million videos…

Fb allows you more than 70 transactions that can occupy your time…

There are 350,000 apps on fb… I tried creating one..its still in progress :(

65 million users using fb from mobile devices.. technology has advanced so much that lot of information is on the finger tips and connectivity is not an issue any more… mobile phones now come with excellent browsers that support accessing social networking sites… Adding on.. fb has a feature that allows user to subscribe to sms option…which allows the user to get notifications on the mobile phone whenever there is a new friend request, mail, update on the wall/photos etc… brining information wherever whenever…

Where did the money come from for fb? Well it was in three rounds… First 500,000 USD from Peter Thiel in 2004, Second 12.7 mn USD from Accel Partners in 2005 and lastly 27.5 mn USD from Greylock Partners leading the round, Meritech Capital Partners participating, and Accel Partners and Peter Thiel… I guess fb can look at going public, should raise a lot of money and the company has a great future with 300 million active users and still counting…

fb has been a nice site which is user-friendly and fast…the appearance and the apps that it provides are simply best and easy to use allowing you to spend hours and hours on the site… twitter does compete with fb in the area of status updates… however fb allows lot and lot more than 140 char text updates and do lot of other stuff… events are getting more participation, friends who once studied together long ago are able to reconnect with ease… well it also bring the philosopher in you through your status updates! I get to read at least two/three status updates that are philosophical in nature – something about life, work, challenges, change, etc…

you can read a lot more about fb on this link

Ajab prem ki ghazab kahani…

2009-11-15T21:47:00.002+05:30

This was not a bad watch… well there is no firm story in the film, however it is a good entertainer… 150 minutes packed with comedy and lovely scenes from Ooty make this movie a good one… In the movie, Ranbir playes the role as Prem and Katrina as Jenny. Ranbir is a President of Happy club…a club that he started along with this friends…which has a moto to be happy and keep everyone happy! (a challenging objective for the club!!!) Prem (initially a vegetarian) does everything to impress Jenny…from eating non-veg to taking her gifts… making her member of the ‘happy club’…like any other hindi movie does… However, like any other hindi movie… a twist in the story… where Jenny likes some one else, and Prem like a good hindi movie hero still does everything to keep Jenny happy… from convincing Jenny’s boy friend to fighting with a don (this don has five bullets and no money to buy more… ha ha..what a don!)

Few dialogues from the movie are good fun to watch.. ‘i like you..tum mujhe bahut ache lagte ho!’, ‘Happy Club ladki uthane main to mahir hai’, ‘Prem Chopra nam hai mera…’. This one is one of the good entertainer this year barring the scene where Prem and Jenny both stammer when they are upset (why both… that too when they are upset… any logic? well, i think sometimes in movies searching for the logic will land you no where… anything is possible in movies like its in cartoons!)

Chocolate – yeh dil mange more!

2009-10-29T11:02:00.002+05:30

I was buying grocery during the weekend…Along with the grocery I bought quite a few chocolates from the section of the shop where they had variety of chocolates… well they also had chocolates for sale at the billing section…a good marketing idea! but a bad…very bad thing for me..I was looking at those chocolates near the billing section and was saying to myself - ‘Look, I already have bought a good number of chocolates…and I should not be buying any more of these…’ Kept on saying this in my mind for sometime, till my turn came to pay the bill… I ended up buying those chocolates and adding that to the bill! Something's you just cant come over eh…

Opera Mini 5 beta – a review…

2009-10-29T10:47:00.002+05:30

Java powered mobile phones gave the users an ability to stay connected to the internet on the go! Well, with apps like Opera Mini…it became better and easy. I have been using Opera Mini browser on my Sony Ericsson mobile for the past two years, and with every update Opera Mini just got better. Their new version of mobile browser is Opera Mini 5 beta…and its still in the testing stage. I have been trying the new browser for last few days, and a lot features have improved…and as its still in the testing stage…I guess the missing features will be a part of the full release…

Tabbed Browsing – The best thing in the new browser is tabbed browsing..I always used to think why cant mobile browsers give the user an option to have multiple websites open at the same time.. Well that's been taken care in the version 5. Now, one can open multiple browsers and switch from one website to another without any difficulty. The browser also allows to save the bookmarks in the thumbnail format giving a nice look to the browser…

Password Manager – This in another good feature that accompanies the version 5. Similar functionality that Firefox supports where a user gets an option to save the login information. It was tedious earlier to always enter the login credentials with the mobile key pad. This feature allows to start browsing without having to enter login details every time.

Speed – One of the things I noticed was the speed…Now the pages open faster than they would have opened in the previous version 4.2… And guess Opera Mini added a lot of compression techniques to compress the web pages to make it suitable for mobile display, and guess that's why the installation file size of Opera Mini doubled from 130 kb to 240 kb…

Right Click – Its so much like a pc… Web pages can be opened in different tabs using the functionality similar to what a PC offers…press the key 1 for a little while and a menu appears asking to copy, open in new tab, etc… Also, it allows to copy a part of the web page by selecting the text…

Inline editing – This is a feature for touch screen mobiles…however this can be turned off by going to the advanced settings in the browser. Using the inline editing option, the browser allows to enter values in the text field directly..while in the previous versions it required to input the values using the mobile phones default text editor…

RSS feed – One thing I found missing was the RSS feed section in the new version…The previous version allowed me to subscribe to various news feeds, while the newer version is missing this option…

Its in the testing stage, and it crashed once while I was browsing…well, the full version would ensure it wont crash… A couple of things I want the full version to incorporate is – 1. When the user selects to exit, it should not ask ‘are you sure?’.. given the scenario that the user selects the menu and traverses all the way to exit section to exit the browser, would mean that the user is certain about exiting and one would not traverse all the way to exit and then choose not to exit! 2. More shortcut keys can be added to allow faster browsing experience. 3. And of course the RSS feeds… 4. Playing videos within the browser…

Overall, I think it is a better browser, user-friendly and fast compared to its predecessors…

I miss you tommy :(

2009-10-16T00:58:00.002+05:30

Its not a long time ago, it was some 12 years ago… I had a cat named tom, well I like Tom and Jerry..may be that's why I named it as tom… It was there with me for almost 2 years…what a wonderful cat…I used to call tom or Tommy and he used to run towards me as and when he heard me calling… Early morning he used to come to me, bang his head to my feet to wake me up…if I did not respond, he used to bang his head to my head and wake me…he was hungry early morning hours I guess… it was a lazy bugger thou.. give him chicken meal, then you are done…for next 24 hours he will be asleep…however a small sound would wake him up, and after realizing that it was not a rat or something that he could eat, tom used to go to sleep again… If my mom opened the refrigerator, don't know how he would sense that…he would come running and stand in front of the refrigerator… Tom was a cat like the one in Tom and Jerry…once the neighbors bought some hens and everyday some hens went missing till we caught Tom eating those! Well that's the law of nature and the food chain… Overall Tom was nice cat… once a snake came into the house and it was Tom who had a nice meal by swallowing the snake and for next two days it was just sleeping… Keep the vessel of milk in front of him, he never drank it unless it was poured in his dish, a gentle-cat!!!… hmmm if it were to be chicken, within few minutes there wont be any sign of chicken left, even the bones would disappear… We shifted to the newly built house and after few days Tom went missing… Tried searching him around the neighborhood calling ‘Tom..Tommy…tom..’ however could not find him..neighbors might have thought that I have gone crazy and yelling some names in the midnight… I miss tom even today…

Google Me

2009-10-14T09:10:00.000+05:30

A fantastic documentary by Jim Killen..starring 7 Jim Killens…which started when Jim googled his own name and found few more Jim Killens! The direction, the story and flow is good… You should not be missing this one… Watch it…

just for fun - I did google my name and the results I get are from… my blog, my name in my friends blogs, names database, facebook, google profile, linkedin, newsvine, networked blogs, moneycontrol.com, etc etc etc…

BTW..I should study the google offering in a little more detail to understand what made ‘Google’ to be a verb..to be the first search engine when it comes to find any information…to be the worlds fastest and more accurate search engine…and above all, to be a product that demonstrates simplicity, creativity and user-friendly…