Yet Another Year end Post

Another year passed by. This time it’s the end of the decade. I no longer love my birthdays and I hate to grow up and become older. Why do I love new years then? Not sure why do I become cynical when it comes to year end post. When I look back at 2000, that’s the beginning of my engineering. I knew nothing then and scared of everything. I was a serious guy in class during my time in B.Tech, With lots of ambitions, lots of fears, doubts and questions.  I’m the kind of person that likes order in life. The fears still remain, just that they are different now, not the same set of problems. Of course, the way of dealing with them changed a lot. The order in life no longer remains.  Who would have thought I would have fall in love, and the power of bad break up, of course I underestimated it. And then another set back with a break up of the engagement. I used to plan for everything then. Needless to say, I’m not much of a planning person anymore. 2010 has been a pretty interesting year for me. While the cynic inside my knows that this too shall not last, I tried my best to make it interesting. Coming to the resolutions I made, I didn’t succeed in at least one of them. Neither in reading the books, nor in making the trips. I am sick of making the same resolutions again year after year when I know that I never keep them. This time I am going to make some resolutions that I can actually accomplish.

 

• Read less
• Gain weight. Put on at least 4 kgs.
• Stop exercising. Waste of time.
• Watch more TV. I am actually missing some interesting stuff.
• Procrastinate more.
• Start being superstitious.
• Spend more time at work and in front of computer.
• Eat out more, Eat more sweets and junk food.
• Make a new habit. May be drinking or smoking.

 

King Kongress

The picture above is about a protestor who confronts Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a protest of election results earlier this year. Wish I could do this to the current congress government. Earlier it used to be quite shocking, if the news paper talks about a corruption scam in our country. Now it is like same old scams and a couple of news ones etc..The latest political drama in the state is about the ruling party MP’s staging protest against the govt for lifting of the cases against the students. It obliged happily so that the credit entirely goes to the ruling party. Whereas couple of months back the opposition protested for the same and it didn’t even respond. Dropping cases against students who destroy public property sends wrong signals to the whole country. Riots of any form should be punished harshly.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas Everyone. Hugs and Kisses…

 

The Namesake : Review

I was disappointed with this book- not to say that it was a "bad" book by any means -I was just disappointed. It’s a family saga from the initial immigration of a bengali wife and husband from India to US. The story goes on to talk about the life of their son Gogol who appears to be confused as to what his identity is and is conflicted over honoring tradition and the culture of a new world.Gogol, hates his name and states his hatred of his name Gogol “not only because it’s a pet name turned good name, but a last name turned first name". Even after he goes and legally changes his name from Gogol to Nikhil he continues to complain. Gogol or “Nikhil” is a shallow and self absorbed character that doesn’t do anything but ignore his family and have affairs with random women. I got bored with the second half that focused on lots of rich, young New Yorkers sitting around drinking wine. The story had a strong beginning, but I just simply began to lose interest halfway through the book...it was just getting too long for what she was trying to get across. The author failed to get the idea across with an unclear theme and structure. I have to admit that I LOVE the author's writing style with her elegant and incredibly descriptive nature while not boring whatsoever.

 

Overall I found the The Namesake to be a disappointment. Skip this one.

Chrome OS–Does it make sense?

 

The Truth About Chrome OS: It's A Waste Of Time

 

Google Will Kill Chrome OS Next Year, Predicts Gmail Creator Paul Buchheit

 

Bussiness Insider adds more speculation to this…

 

Why is Google making Chrome OS, an operating system for PCs?

In part, perhaps, to boost Google search queries or Google web apps or Google-something-else. In part, perhaps, as a novel pet project -- because Google's founders think it's cool to do a little bit of everything. In part, perhaps, to give people a more modern PC experience for less money.

But the REAL reason is that it's a big chance to disrupt Google's archrival Microsoft, and to start to destroy its core business, Windows.

Despite all the things that Microsoft is involved in -- servers, Office, gaming, MSN, Xbox, Zune, phones -- Windows is still by far its biggest profit driver. During the last eight quarters, Microsoft's Windows division represented 51% of the company's operating income, including as much as 63% in an individual quarter.

By attacking Microsoft's core business with Chrome OS, Google is taking a small risk that could have a major payoff. Because the weaker Windows is, the weaker Microsoft is, and the less it can afford to try to attack Google. (Similarly, this is why Microsoft continues to dump money into Bing; to try to destroy Google's core search business.)

Now the question is whether Chrome OS will last, or whether it's a huge waste of time -- and that Google's attack on Windows would be stronger via a unified push behind Android.

Is it really the question of Windows 7 Vs Chrome OS now? Comparing a complete full fledged OS i.e. Win7 and browser based OS like Chrome OS doesn’t make sense! I feel Chrome is the next generation tablet which is trying to keep everything on web and access from anywhere. Its more of light weight Client OS targeting Ipad/Tablet PC rather than a full fledged OS. Boot time in Chrome OS is claimed to be few seconds which I don’t think will make any difference from the business perspective. Chrome OS quality, usability, public response could be questionable once it is released. It certainly has opened a new market segment and a new way of managing data and OS. I would certainly think of buying it if it offers features like touch-screen panel hanging on the wall, showing photos from Picasa, on touch, showing calendars for family members, weather, map, etc and costs less than 400$. As far as the competition with Win 7 & Microsoft is concerned, Google main objective is to compete with Microsoft Office as they are finding it difficult to penetrate the market using their Google Apps.Its main strategy is to get the user to put documents in Google servers and then create an ecosystem for their Apps.

Google Books

 

http://books.google.com/help/ebooks/overview.html

 

Google announced new mobile editions of 1.5 million public domain books. Kindle is not supported ofcourse. iPhone and Android users now have access to five times the number of titles currently available on Kindle. Is this the beginning of end for Amazon. The major challenge is getting the content itself. This is a struggle for Amazon too. Gadget fans will clearly swoon over Kindle 2 but the real story is the growing competition between Google and Amazon in the digital book arena. Google want their data suppliers (publishers, writers, developers, news syndicates) in their long tail environment to make very little money to nothing at all. Amazon has a very strong proven track record establishing solid models for its business partners. Amazon has an embedded install base for the last couple of years.  Most passionate (the ones who spend the most money) e-reading users have jumped in. Amazon’s environment and their incentives demonstrated to the big name publishers and business owners how to make a solid consistent income year after year without being squeezed. Let’s see who wins the race.

Bing New Features on IPhone

This video demonstrates bing’s new features Panorama maker, Streetside, Visual Search for their mobile app for iPhone. These cool features are pretty awesome. Many could ask, why these features are on iphone and not on WP7. WP7 is fairly new and there isn’t much user base and even the Wp7 sdk hasn’t much penetrated into the right developer hands.

 

WikiLeaks: Rahul warned US about Hindu terror

 

Wikileaks finally released something that is relevant to India, which makes it to the world stage. Congress spokesman actually confirmed this statement by trying to provide interpretation of what actually meant.

 

"Responding to the Ambassador's query about Lashkar-e-Taiba's activities in the region and immediate threat to India, Gandhi said there was evidence of some support for the group among certain elements in India's indigenous Muslim community," "However, Gandhi warned, the bigger threat may be the growth of radicalised Hindu groups, which create religious tensions and political confrontations with the Muslim community,"

I am ashamed of this congress party politicians who can go to any extent for Muslim votes. It is a fallacy to state that Hindu terror is equivalent to Islamic terror in India. How can he just play down our war against terror and compare it with Hindu groups. It isn’t,  at least not yet and most likely it will never be. It is surely something incorrect and immature on his part. He should realize that there is nothing like Islamic terror or saffron terror. Its either Internal terror in the form of naxalism and communism or external terror in the form of pak militancy.

 

The comment should be torn apart over the Congress year end meeting but nothing happened on this front. Instead Sonia just talks about its stance on corruption and how to avoid it. Shame on them that even after 60yrs of independence these guys in the form of secular party have perfectly ensured that they keep ppl divided on religious basis.

Back from vacation

I am back from the exhausting marriage vacation to Hyderabad. It was a fabulous journey so far and I’m inclined to say it even beat the bachelor experience. I’m juggling work with bringing up the travelogue and marriage photographs to the blog. Meanwhile the health is gone for a toss and I am struggling hard to get back into perfect condition. Winter has started and hyd weather is at its peak currently. I realize I haven’t updated my blog since long. I haven’t forgotten about it, The new journey has just began. All excited currently, hope this stays for long. Wish me luck. The blogging will continue..