Have you ever wondered, being a resident Bangalorean, as to how many tech startups are present in Bangalore? Have you wanted to view what technologies or products these people work on? Have you ever felt the need to understand what drives these people?

The Annual version of Silicion India's Startup City, is scheduled for this weekend; the 6th of June. Come and peek into the dreams of these passionate individuals; take their products for a ride, or simply watch these young geeks at work. Quite a few Venture Capitals will be present, and if you have a sweep-off-your-feet idea in mind; well then, who knows? Get ready to be funded!

To top it all, there are quite a few keynote sessions from well-know companies and CEOs. One can only hope to gain from this experience! Hope to see some of you folks there!

June 1! It has remained my long-standing most hated day of the year, ever since school days. The first day of school! After two months of playing without a care about books to read, or homework to complete; it was back to the grind again. However, there were a many a things in school that still remain etched in memory. I was always fascinated by science, as were my other esteemed classmates. The distillation experiment in our science lab was met with oohs' and ahs' from everyone alike. We also celebrated Science Day annually in school, in which some built tape-recorders (yeah! it did actually play!), some insect zoos, and there were some others. My participations in these, were usually limited to admiring my classmates intelligence and gadgets. I marveled at their knowledge and their ability to put that knowledge to use.

Science, as I said, always made me wonder! And so, I was extremely glad when I came to know the efforts of Udaya and Adithya. Udaya is a wonderful mild and well-mannered guy, and was my colleague in Tally. Both of them, armed with their rocket experiment, go to schools and then demonstrate the beauty of science. Their aim is to inculcate a scientific temperament into young minds, and make them understand that science can actually be fun! The fact that children reciprocate by attending the presentations even during summer vacations is testimony of how well their efforts are received.

My congratulations to them, and hope they go a long way forward. Feel free to tweet, share, fb, ff, ping about them; and their efforts. They have already been featured in The Bangalore Mirror, The Better India, and the TOI.

The 13th of May was voting day in Tamil Nadu... It is the middle of the week.. Who would go to Chennai and be back the next day to office? Not anyone I know... Well.. Except, maybe, Anoop!

What's wrong with this generation, I say?!?















More elections.

Sachit was my class-mate in first year of enginnering.

The only similarity that Sac and I shared was that he was also a regular back-bencher; just like Shailu & I. Other than that, it were the dissimilarities that were more glaring. Hindi music was unheard by him, while I liked; he used to pass smart comments in English class, while I used to score more; he metamorphosed and started growing lengthy hair, while I never used to comb; Sac was portly, while I was a 28-incher!

Now, Sac has gone ahead and added one more to that list. He now has a movie to boot against his name, while all I do is post silly blog entries.



The movie is officially released and is available on youtube here.

There is also a facebook group, so you can go and shoot your heart out all you want. The movie, is a true reflection of how Sac is. Dark, satiric, and bland humor. But I liked the ending nevertheless! Do check it out too.

When I first heard of the island reef job in early Jan, my first thought was that this was a marketing gimmick; and nothing more. The website reported that the responsibilities included feeding fish in the Great Barrier Reef; trying out the luxuries of a spa; snorkeling and diving; and writing a weekly report on the findings of interest along the Reef.

I mean.. WoW!

And then when I was lazing through the newspaper while having coffee this morning, I read a news item that the job is now closed. I also come to know that a Bangalore RJ was among the finalists; but an ostrich-rider from England beat him to it!

Congratulations to Ben! He has been appointed for The Best job in the World!

My greasemonkey script for Google Reader has 54 subscribers already. Not bad! Eh? :-P

Kids; can never resist temptation. This Calvin cartoon exemplifies it so well! :-D


Courtesy : http://ucomics.com

The 16th of April was election day in AP... It was the middle of the week... My colleague, Srinivas, working in Bangalore, went to Hyderabad, voted, and came back the next day... He effectively, forfeited a day's paid leave...

How cool is that?

IMO, definitely cool! :-)

It's my birthday today... I get to have a wish then; don't I? What's that you say? You know me well enough to say NO; eh? :-P

In contrast to my usual selfish nature; this time round, I ask you to do something for the world.

Tonight, switch off your lights for an hour between 8:30 PM to 9:30 PM to celebrate Earth Hour. Sadly though, I won't be around to stand by your side; as I would be fast asleep and travelling. But not to worry! Aamir Khan and people from 800 cities across 85 countries will be with you during this hour. :-)

More information on this can be found at http://earthhour.in/

Conversations with my brother are most definitely humorous! :-D

I stay seated behind closed doors and barricaded windows that don't even allow light and wind to seep in without permission... Is it raining outside... How do I know... Who will tell me...


Thanks Gmail!

Truth to say, I thoroughly enjoyed Prabhakar Raghavan's talk at the Leela. The talk started off with some facts about what and how users search on the web; delved into the complexities of understanding and deducing the users' needs; and few details on how the monetisation engine has proceeded over the years. The insights offered were quite delightful. The videos of the talk are available on the BigThinkers events page.

And, oh yeah! The video of the QA session is also available. :-)

This year's Yahoo's Bigthinkers India Series kicks off today. The talk is on hard science problems at the core of web search, by Prabhakar Raghavan, Head of Yahoo! Labs. The event is going to be held at the Leela Palace.

An abstract -

Web search is undergoing an evolution from high-precision document retrieval for keyword queries, to fulfilling the task implicit in a user's search. We review examples of this in major search engines, then survey the underlying hard science problems both in computer science and in the social sciences.

More info on the event can be found here. I attended Andrei Broder's talk on Computational Advertising last year; and I sincerely hope this time round it turns out to be better than that. I mean, the talk was good and enriching. But it was the hour-long Q&A session that actually killed me. Some of the questions were so unwarranted that Andrei must have wanted to catch a flight back to Silicon Valley right that moment. Am keeping my fingers crossed this time.

If any of you are attending too, then give me a hoot. We will catch up at the coffee bar while the juveniles fire their questions!

Abhishek pointed me to an interesting link. It was for driving directions on google maps from Seattle to Honalulu; right across the Pacific ocean. The amount of data they have; and the ways they find to crunch it. These guys never cease to amaze me.

Other than that, what I really liked is this (click on the image for a bigger picture) -


Apart turning left on this road and turning right on that; google recommends you to kayak 4000 odd kms across the Pacific. Given that it estimates about 14 days and 6 hours for you to reach your destination; I would like to believe the 14 days are for kayaking itself, even for a guy in supreme fitness like me.

If the image appears blurred, then you can catch the action here. Maybe you could brave yourself to walk. You can't escape the kayaking though even then. :o)

[quote]
A lot of people I followed seemed to be obsessed with having as many followers as possible. In fact, there seems to be a strategy (I credit Leigh Duncan-Durst - @livepath for this word) called "Twitchers" – people who follow you, so you would follow them, and they would unfollow you – all in an effort to beef up their follower numbers. This reminds me of creepy people from high school who were devoting their lives to a popularity contest.
[/quote]

Alan Weiss is right in a way. Most of the people on social networks are there for the fame quotient. In the case of orkut, how many fans and testimonials do you have? How do you rank in the cool and trust meter? How many scraps do you get? Do you feature frequently in your friends' feed?

Having said that, it is indeed phenomenal about the amount of time that people spend on social networks, and live by them. I had setup my birthday on orkut two years back; and received tons of wishes. I had it removed last year; and only received a handful. :-D

My good friend Vinod had some choice things to say about his first experience with orkut. I will do a favor on your heart by not narrating it here. My good friend Nithin has this thing about bloggers. I will do your heart a favor there too. Or maybe not.

In the meantime, if you would like to follow my blogs be informed when there's a new post, you can do so by registering here and there.

Never.. Never have I seen a vegetable share equal (or) more screen space with the heroine of the movie. Never.. Never has my logic been taken for such a toss. Never.. Never have I heard of a Chinese speak Hindi with such fluency.

Never.. Never will I be able to comprehend how a potato can come to the rescue of a man being thrown around like a frisbee.

YaY!! alu-man to the rescue..

And No!! No prizes for guessing the name of the movie. 'cos ha! I am going to name it right here.. Right now..

Chandni Chowk to China is a must-watch. For otherwise, how will you know to appreciate when a good movie is made.

akka Mahadevi avru helalilva 

hai ye waqt ka ishaara

Not that my contemplations *ahem* are that interesting to warrant people's interest in them; but I neither write any record-breaking stuff or apocalyptic information in my tech blog for people to be visiting from far-and-wide. For the pizza delivery boy's sake, I've only 4 posts there.