How many of you know Che Guevera, kindly do not feel down if you don’t know who this man is, and also do not be affronted either if you know him like you know your brother. For those who do not know him I should spend few molecules of my ATP, describing him.  By profession he was a physician, and later due to some personal experiences followed the conduits of Marxism. He later became a Marxist revolutionary and was revered in this respect. He was the master of guerilla warfare and as he was one of the staunch Marxist crusader, which meant he was in tussles with America, for obvious reasons. His area of work was mostly latin America, you can know more by googling about him.
How many of you know Mahatma Gandhi, now don’t feel insulted if you know him, and if you do not know him then, mate, go check mirror, there you will find a #$!@. So I think every one reading this entry knows who Mr. MK Gandhi was, and also know his importance in Indian perpective. Mr. Gandhi wasn’t a staunch supporter of capitalism either. He stressed more on socialism, more on equal distribution of resources, which, by its ethos capitalism doesn’t supports.
Both Mr Guevera and Mr Gandhi are amongst the 100 most influential people of 20th century.  There is not much similarity between both of them but that both of them in their way were against the influence of capitalism. Now after reading this you must be trying hard to conjoin the heading and the substance you have read so far and might have come on conclusion that I am full of time wasting @#@$.  But now let me pour down some wonderful paradoxes. They are in fact great capitalistic icons, more than they are icons of Marxism or socialism.
Before you come up with counterviews, just see you pocket and you may find proof of what I am saying. Mr.Gandhi resides on very symbol of capitalism. Gandhi like Che has become brand. Their brand values are bigger than what they were when they lived. When US presidential candidates says that he seeks inspiration from Mohandaas Karamchand Gandhi then you can bet that if he was listed in any global stock market his stock value must have sky rocketed. Same goes with Che, not many know him (in India),  not many follow what his aims were or what he did, but would wear T’s with his iconic photo on. Che in India is comparatively a newer brand but in Latin America he has had his presence from long time. Look around and you may find few of his photos, on caps, on shirts, on sweat shirts and so on. Yes there are cigars carrying him as an icon ( due to his Cuban roots). 
Success by its nature is capitalistic, and if you are successful then you can not deny that you are there without capitalism. Capitalism isn’t just an economic term, and now holds greater social significance. Skipping capitalistic point of view, while carrying ant plan of yours aren’t going to bring you basket full of fruits of success. Humans by nature seek icons; no society has ever escaped from any kind of symbolism, or icons.  It has always gone like that and will always go like that, I wont put more views herein, and would like to reply on comments carrying counter views.
Gandhiji , Che for many still hold special value, not marred by petty capitalistic views, but as far as populist culture goes they are losing their value. They are slowly becoming irrelevant, but I bet that they will never get completely vanished; capitalism will save them for us, for future.  And as far as fashion is concerned, Che is really hot these days; fashion icons are flaunting him on their sexy bodies publicizing him more than his ideology.  Same goes with Gandhiji, political parties flaunt him, put slogans around him while showing complete Alzheimer as far as his teachings are concerned. Have I lost hope…no ways…I believe in capitalism, it wont let them die, there will be authors writing about them, churning money, they will continue as brands, and their ideology, teachings will wait for someone who is ready to follow them and not just fashion.

Before I go single word ahead I would like to tell that I am trying to understand Franz Kafka, and when I was reading a short story of his, this idea of Innovation and Immigration came across my mental screen. There must be some kind of relationship between two, to tell I havent researched about it yet, so this post may seem bit raw. Most of the emmerging economies globally are seeing great deal of migration to their cities from villages, and as it is oftenly cities are seat of innovation. And if we go by nations we can see same in case of US which I suppose sees largest number of immigrants and is one of the biggest innovator and inspite of doldrums it will come up without major problems( at least we can hope for that).
I am at present wondering what can be the relationship between two, what all can be the postulates to come on some generalised solution to my question. If we look deep into any such relationship then we will aslo have to see into the numbers and figures. See there is Japan and Germany few of the top most economies and they do not boast of high number of immigrants and still they are good on innovation list...so I have to figure it out.

Ok there is lot to share, few thigns are good and few things are bad. I am yet to come to the terms of all the loss I incurred as I lost all the data on my PC. Everybit of it is lost. All the photos, ebooks, softwares, data and all. And this happened just after a day I got my Mac. Though my sister bought Mac few months back when she was in US for her corporate job. But decided to give to me, in the end I had my Mac ( as I was the main force behind my sis buying a Mac). So the good news is that now I own a Mac, and now trying to know it, its hidden powers and all. The next important part was to get the required softwares for my new Macbook. So got MS Office (neccessary for compatibility with the lesser ones), Photoshop CS2, Adium(chat client) and Firefox. Thats it for now. I havent yet gone for filling my Mac with every software I can lay my hands on, trying to keep it clean. I am trying to find few good softwares utilites which can make my stay more easier in terms of comaptibility. As of speed and performance is concerned, it is far ahead than the best PC I owned. Its sexy, speedy and good.

I was not able to write post for past few weeks as my maternal grandfather is not keeping good health, and in most lineant terms is critical. He suffered a stroke and is fighting death. And over that I can not do anything about it. So there are plenty to worry about even at this moment of time.

I am still finding the ways to utilize my new Mac in best possible manner. Life is so very risky and I dont want anything to fall on wrong side of fate specially my files this time. So, soon I will also be investing in a external hard drive, which will in any case be above 250GB, as I do not see sense in buying anything less. And hey I am looking for softwares for mac, which can make my life better, though its not in any kind of mess. 

Now what are the other things which are making me happy, after having Mac the next best thing I did was to have a Wifi network established in my house. Since we at our home have two laptops, and one modem, it was not making any sense to have laptops. Now we can enjoy full connectivity at any part of my house. Its a Netgear router, supporting 54mb G wifi protocol. Now thats what I call just cool. Though this is no shrieking thing, but yes it is making me happy as I was longing for a wifi router for past half year. This is not it, I also have got a new camera, that is an entry level SLR from sony, a200k, wonderful, and I am under learning curve. With that my sister also brought me a movie camera...now thats what I call a generous sister. So at this moment I am thinking of calling my new firm as DeeDee, and over that I know nothing, as what I will be doing under this new firm.... ;)

Colleges have started and this time around schedule is truly going to be hectic. As few people suggested me and lot of people were doing, I also joined a coaching for CAT entrance examination. But for the first time in my life I am not quite sure about whether this is a right career move or not. Those who know me, know that this is not me, if I am saying I am not sure, as I tend to put my hands in anything only when I know what I want from it. But this time around, I do not know what do I want to have from a MBA course which would be the end result of my good performance in CAT. It has been never about the money for me, and at present I have too many technical dreams to follow, and if I go for CAT preparation + my normal college course, my technical dreams will be just few thing too much. And not following my technical dreams will be like some kind of disrespect for them...which out of my lovely nature is a pain for me. I dont want to do MTech from India, MS from US is one option but...but I am not just sure...will be in coming few days....or rather I should say have to...
So in coming few days i have a computer to enjoy, cameras to use, and career to think over....

Now, before I write any further, I would like to inform you that I am not sure with time line of events regarding proposal of 3G services in India. All I know is that Army is yet to vacate 3G band and telecom companies are fighting hard for geting the piece of pie. Indian telecom sector even with present 1.5 G protocol is far from looking stagnant, but still there is crab-war among telecom players for band allocation. I know 3G would be great for wireless communication, much more data transfer and higher speed would be able to take place with 3G, but I do not think that larger part of consumer would be ready for. Telecom sector is very cost sensitive sector in India, and since it includes lot of technology so there is also a facotr of technology addiction. When you get addicted to a new technology then you will even go a step further to buy that piece of technolgy, spending more bucks. All in all, is Indian market ready to get addicted to 3G?
3G network will demand 3G handsets, which will then require more paisas, and then service providers will make you shelve out even more paisas for 3G services, and what not. But at the root of all this paisa chain lies one very simple fact, there are not more than 10 cities in India which will have substantial ammount user base ready to shelve out that extra paisa. One more thing which I do not like about Indian user base is that they do not find need to staty connected, they are happy with normal telephone but when it comes to internet they still shy away, it does not come natural to them. Check this out, how many blackberry users do you see around you? Or how many people do you know who uses their GPRS service for emailing and web accessing on regular basis. I have found few....very few.
All I want to convey is that Indians as an over all tribe are not plug-o-maniacs, there are not many who wants to remain plugged every time. And if they arent so then service providers will need to put considerable effort in changing this usage pattern, becuase only information hungry tribe can increase bank balance od telecom companies. Till know companies have played on the quantity, but when they will jump on 3G then they would be facing tougher situation, as they wont be getting considerable user base for high profitability and companies will also be not in position to play down the cost sensitivities of Indian user.
I would love to jump to 3G any day, but using services based on it will depend on how much money would I be ready to pay for that month. It would be really interesting to see, how companies do their balancing act.

I am sitting on my bean bag and typing this post in utmost discomfort. But, this mini post is about a book which I am currently reading. The Gecko's Foot by Peter Forbes, this book epitomizes the very fact that when we want a sustainable technology then we ought to look towards the most sustainable thing around, nature. Book hovers around the topic of bio-inspiration. And guess what this book doesnt feel like a scientific read, but is quite easy on your brain as every thing is explained with quite decent expressions. I am still on 3 chapter, so I am in no position to write a full review but am at least in position to suggest this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Geckos-Foot-Peter-Forbes/dp/0007179901/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214986324&sr=8-2 

If you do get a chance to get your hands on a copy of this book then to tell me about what do you feel about it.

I read a news item in Times of India that M$ is starting to phase out XP, as it wont be selling it to PC manufacturers anymore, though it would be available to small manufacturers and for cheap PCs but not for ones like Dell and brethren. Which in simple language means, that soon there wont be any XP for retailers and manufacturers. Microsoft is trying to push its Vista down the throat of consumer by not allowing manufacturers to have XP which did gave them cost advantage to play with. And in a price sensitive market like India such a thing or step will have a wider impact.
Vista in iteself though beautiful than XP is a hardware hungry operating system and is one of the reason why I do not run Vista myself and dont suggest it to my friends. Invariably its hunger increses the overall price of computer.
If we look whole picture with Indian filter, we can say that there is still large ammount of untapped market for computers which can be made addicted to computers only by cheaper versions to start with. Microsoft operating systems being the most prominent ones are in ways a necessity, whether it be a first time buyer or an organization. I can, on this Holy land still find computers running Windows 98 running on few computers, so forget tthe prospect of not seeing xp in 2014 (slated year when Microsoft will stop providing any kind of support for xp).
Microsoft this time is trying hard to come up with the next version of Windows pretty soon which will I suppose Windows 7. And to have proper impact of windows 7 microsoft must do away with xp. Scenario is as simple as that.
Microsft is going to provide full support to xp which means we might have sp.4 update for xp only till 2009. I dont know how many people will be able to utilise these updates as updaes will seek genuine copy of xp. So for most of the people the best solution for most of the trickiest problems will be reformating of hard drive, and reinstalling the wonderfull pirated copy of xp.
On harware front I do not thing you need to worry if you own a legitimate copy of xp, as till 2009 ram prices will be further down amd the hardware requirement for Vista which now seems costlier wont seem so in 2009 or 2010. While the meant time the intelligent brethren of hackers will come up with better cracks of Vista (there is no dearth of them now either) for easy running of illegitimate copy of your Vista. And there will be good number of third party softwares for Vista too. So if I would be made to change to Vista in 2009 or 2010, I dont think I would be having any problem, only one being so, that I would have to search for a better use for my old laptops and computers. Where can you throw them...I mean electronic waste.
So my suggestion to you is dont worry, let xp go and hope for one thing that Windows slashes price for Vista in 2009, so that you can buy a genuine copy.

I dont know, why? I cant say that I lost my interest in blogging about technology, or webosphere but I was not able to blog regularly to an extent that for past 7 months i just didnt posted a single post on this blog. I changed the theme last time and I didnt posted a single post after that, though there are three in draft stage from the intermidiate time period. Lot of things happened and large ammount of water went into the drain from my bath, but I just didnt blogged. I will re imphasize that it was not lack in interest but just some kind of writer block which I could not over come. I have changed the theme once more, and I am not posting that theme, though in the previous post I have the link of that template. Since i posted not a single post under that template, i wont feel any kind of love towards that.
But this time, I just wish that I keep updating this blog with some thing or other about technology...less centric on web technology and more on overall...this will buy me more topics and more concrete commenting platform. So it would be for all the technology lovers...

Gmail of late is giving me few problems when I try to send attachments. And this problem surfaces every time when I try to attach image file in any of format. My Dad who was new to Gmail admired it for its mail management capabilities, but was really bugged when he tried to send attachments. Same happened to me, when I did it, and it is not a computer specific problem as I faced same problem when I tried to mail from my college or my Dad tried to do it from his office. I am here posting the image of problem if any one of you encountered same problem then, and later found solution to it then feel free to post it in comments.

I have in my last post have already mentioned why was I not able to post for nearly two weeks. But what is stopping me to write post now...nothing but I think some times...just like phase of moon my hands deny to obey my desires and watching them my brain start feeling lazy. Somehow amount of ideas that can be materialized are not satisfyingly high, which is one reason I am not feeling to write. By the most of my time is spent in reading books, and that is one thing which I am enjoying during these days. And one more thing which is occupying my brain cells is the design of my book shelf. I am planning to change my previous book shelf is quite dull and uninspiring. So this time I want a inspiring book rack, but to get that one have to get few people ready to shelve money out for your revolutionary design...and in this case its my parents whom I have to convince for the mega change. I am watching latest design, scrolling pages after pages and sometimes start feeling like a great designer myself, but that does not change one thing, that I am still short of getting one heavenly book shelf, which even the best designer can envy. But never say never, and then never say never to a thought because you never know that it might not return ever.

As soon as I finished with my examination, and having nothing big to do, moved outside. The bird flew away. To put in neat words....I went to Andaman and Nicobar islands. To be precise I went to Port Blair, capital of Andaman group of islands. And what was it like... it was very much like heaven on earth which was last year torn by Tsunami...but still holding its beauty close to its chest. There are few things which can not be put in words, and it is one of them. Before Andaman, for which there is no direct flight from Bhopal, I had to move to Kolkata( Calcutta) and from there on I flew to Port Blair.
First few photos of slide show are from Pondycherry which is from my last outing. And after that, from where there is a marble building...its Victoria Memorical in Kolkata.

After watching these pics you will surely pardon me, of not being here. By the way, after returning from Port Blair, I had to urgently go to Pune...and the Reliance wire less internet which my sister left me with at her home was suckingly slow. So no posting from there either. And then I met with a virus which hugged me and I had to take few medicines just to get it off my back.

This is one thing which is on my mind for past few weeks. I recently covered Orkut and Facebook and also compared them on the lighter notes. I recently covered few changes done in Orkut. But none the less, I am doing it once again. This time my source of information is Google Trends. It is really quite interesting. Though it is not something which we didn't expected, but yes it is interesting enough to be here.
First of all, a note on Google trends...
They should make those charts more sharable. I have to follow print screen method which is really cumbersome, and if you know any refined and a free of cost method then feel free to tell me in comments.
Coming back on the topic...
Before any thing else, I would once again make clear that why this topic interest me so much. Orkut is highly popular and have the same cult like following which Facebook enjoys in US varsities. And after the recent news gain by facebook makes it an interesting competitor to orkut. Otherwise I dont have any kind of stake in any company...
Lets first look the trends for the search and news items which are the overall criteria of the Google trends, blue one is for Facebook and red one is for Orkut.
This one is for 2007, and will bring more focuses results for this year.


Inference:
Recently after F8 there is a sudden rise in the news references which Facebook got. Since this is not up to date trend, so we can not tell that what effect F8 caused to the graph . One thing which people can say that Orkut being an old network wont be the hot enough to discuss, and thus this graph does not make any sense. My answer to them is, when you are in social web space and you are not being talked about then there is something wrong, by wrong I meant that you are not innovating enough, and if you are not innovating then you are giving other networks a chance to gain more people. They might not take away your existing members but yes they may reduce the future numbers.
This point is much more solidified by the upper graph. People are not searching about Orkut. Why this must be saddening to Orkut, (beyond ego surfing for Mr. Orkut)? One word answer, NEW USERS. Old users are not going to search much for the network on which they are, but the users which are new will be inquisitive enough to search about the new network. One more probable reason for the searches can be, hacks for the network, but here again since Orkuts api is not open, then umber of mods and hacks are not there in market.
US was never a forte for Orkut. But US certainly have maximum internet users, so a trend analysis of US region makes sense.



Here...aha it was obvious...as previously mentioned...
US cetizens are neither interested nor using writing about it. This analysis as like previous is from history...so we can not tell about the latest hype effect, but I dont think that will be any way in favour of Orkut.

Now comes the other one...which is just the way round...and this time its all Orkut. Orkut in India, is making news and is being used. Though news are not for good reasons, but as it is said that any publicity is good publicity, so it is true for Orkut. In India Orkut is all up, and Facebook fares much poorer than Orkut in US.



People are not at all searching about Facebook, which may be taken as that it is not creating enough buzz. And buzz is all that matter , when it comes to such kind of products.

Below are the international top 10 ratings with Facebook and Orkut as reference respectively.



This is really interensting Facebook is attracting more buzz in Canada than in US...Oh this one is surprising...
Now lets see the Orkut international card, BRAZIL...BRAZIL...yup thats the topper...




One can not tell very much from these trends for the simple reason that they are not up to date. But this certainly can be extrapolated, to get the latest figures. One more thing, Google trends need to improve themselves or else they should buy some other service doing trends, becasue presently they are nothing but healthy Buzz index, which can be used to tell how much buzz one is creating. But none the less it provides some pieces of useful information. And for conclusion...Mr. Orkut...I have only one suggestion for you...think out of the box and innovate.

P Please consider the environment before printing this mail.

This is an interesting thing which I got with a forward. I liked it very much...There are lot of things going on the environment front and about the problems caused by global warming....what say bloggers...what should we do about it.

I think its blogging time for Google. Orkut is up with its very own blog. Because the services which didn't had blog till now are now up with their own blogs. Latest in this series is Orkut. Orkut is the only successful social network under the umbrella of google. There was once the latest news thing in the header of Orkut, and which was never updated and had news dating back to 2005 which was hilarious.

This new strategy of having more and more interaction points might just prove fruitful for orkut, the other interaction vents included a Google group, and a help center. Even Orkut feels that it is late to come up with blog now, but that said they also feel it is better late than never.
To mention one more thing, as it is with every other Google blog, it does not have a comments section, so you can not interact, butthere is a link else where which is aksing you to write down what you expect from the blog. I think that latest Facebook lava has touched them in some good way, (hope s0).
I was having problems to update my photo in the new orkut format which was recently changed. It has turned up more advanced, and web2istic. It was solved only the last night. Here is an example of the change made in orkut.
Quite azaxified....

Recently Blogger is also giving me troubles with adding photo, and is quite bugging.

Could not hold my self to write about it. Lech Johansen aka DVD John have created a hack to free iPhone for iTunes activation and freedom from AT&T. So now if you wish to have one then you can.

If you are reading news papers or remain connected to web then you must be knowing that Mr. Bill Gates is not the richest person now. Its now tagged to Carlos Slim Helu of Mexico. So does this inspired me to write this post...no..it is series of events which have inspired me to do so:

• Launch and all the positive hype which iPhone got, and respect which apple does.
• Though people have respect for the software behemoth, but still it does not command love, or create fear in its competitors.
• Rise of Google, and other web based services which are trying to eat into MS territory.
  

Microsoft is every where, the place you think, they are there. But still you can not bet on every thing they will do. They did few things which were nice, but they are not successful, by that I mean Zune. Vista is wonderful but it does not make you sit and say, 'Hey I want this any how' the way iPhone did, or Leopard may do. I like search interface of Live search but I am not using it, I dont know why but there is some thing stopping me to do that. Might be they need to work on the Feng Shui or Vaastu of their websites. Amount of research which goes behind the doors must be impeccable, though we don't know when it is going to show up.
Beyond the tech stuff I think it is the time when they put some money in intelligent advertising not people ready advertising.
One example of intelligent advertising which I would like to share with you readers will be one from advertisements archives. The Humara Bajaj campaign by Bajaj Auto. To the readers who dont know about it; Bajaj is two wheeler manufacturer from India. Initially when India was a nation without motorized vehicle, a nation with rising middle class without personal mode of transportation. During that time, Baja came up with Vespa type scooters, from technological transfer from Vespa. But they could not match the its competitors, and was in dearth need of some magic. And that magic was provided by this advertisement...




Humara Bajaj : Our BAJAJ
I wont go on literal translation of this ad and the song, because this ad cuts down the need of translation. You can see that Bajaj scooter is being used by every one, for nearly every thing and then it tells 'New image of new India, our Bajaj.' Youth, aged, women, men, everyone is shown using it. Its not about path breaking technology its about touching users emotionally, and with the right note. And the rest was history, Bajaj became biggest two wheeler manufacturer of nation and remain on the top spot for years. It became a nation success. There is not substitute to technology, no substitute to innovation, there is none. But one thing which a company should strive is to make that technology more digestible. Microsoft presently needs some thing similar to cut across the masses. Be there is everyones mind.

This can be one of the least important post if you are already reading these blogs, but should be very important if havent. They are among few of the top notch blogs. I love to read them because amount of brain matter spent on writing those post is purely fantastic. Another reason why I am posting this post is that I am in no position to write something big, because my body is paining terribly after getting wet in rain for two consecutive days and I have some real large books to study for my exam on coming Wednesday. So when you dont have time and you feel like blogging then blog about blogs.

Read/Write web: Very solid approach when comparing two services, and nice way of writing which really makes the post a very interesting read.

Mashable: I wouldnt have wrote this name few months back because back then it was not that extensive in comparing but recently they are doing a great job. And the number of post from the Queens land is making new records daily, this sometimes do irritates me, as whenever I go to my reader I see new posts, and if I miss it for even a day there are posts in 2 digits. But still I go there to read them all.

Now have a view of the books which are not letting me post extensively.
One more thing while posting this image I could not do it using the inbuilt photograph adder, and neither I was able to upload it directly to my Picasaweb account...some times services from Google irritates a lot. And there is also some problem going on with Orkut, I am not being able to edit my profile, the screen just go blank after taking lots of time.

I am putting it straight and simple. There are few things which I hate to do when I am on some blog...

• Click on to read full entry. An idiotic thing to do, why should I click to read full article, cant you just make it easier for me. Lesser the clicks more easy the interface will become.
• Wait for my comments to appear. I know you can shout SPAM, but hey I am not here to spend my time spamming. And it is a killjoy practice.

Its rainy season here, and iPhone season in US. But if you are anywhere in Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Jaipur, Bangalore, Chandigarh, Ahemdabad, Hyderabad then you will be able to lay your hands on a touch phone with commendable technology from HTC on Airtel. HTC is a Tiwanese corp, making smart phone. This phone priced at ~Rs20,ooo/- is boasting of a revolutionary Touch FLO technology which will be able to identify between stylus and finger. I dont think it would be multi touch, but would be running on Windows Mobile 6. This handset/PDA would be having one touch clicks for SMS, Email, Call, Callendar, E-Mail.
Specs are as follows

• Dimensions: 99.9mm (L) x 58mm (W) x 13.9mm (T)
• Weight: 112g with battery
• 1GB microSD storage card included / 64MB RAM, 128MB ROM
• 2.8" LCD touch screen with backlight, 240 x 320 dots resolution with 65,536 colours
• Battery Life: Rechargeable Li-Ion battery with a capacity of 1100 mAh
• Standby time: Up to 200 / Talk time: Up to 5 hours
• Camera: 2.0 mega-pixel CMOS colour camera
• Windows Mobile 6® Professional with Direct Push Email and HTML email support
• Wireless Connectivity: GSM/GPRS/EDGE Tri-band: 900, 1800,1900, Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth® 2.0
• Choice of two colors at launch - elegant soft black or alluring wasabi green
  

If you are taking it specs by specs and compare it with iPhone then you would be pretty happy to have this.
But as rumor mill(via: Engadget) is saying that Apple would be declaring a launch date of a 3G iPhone for European market, and that too on various carriers, I would suggest you to wait for an Asian release and then invest into high end mobile, though tentatively people are hoping for an early 2008 release, but I think Christmas or Diwali release can be on cards.

Source: Airtel official release. here.

Amount of hype(for good reasons) is already bringing Facebook some new members. I now have 9 friends in Facebook and 8 are new. Pretty interestingly Facebook is also showing a revved up performance in India all over. Globally also Facebook is seeing a rise in daily traffic. Which is pretty much clear from this graph.


One very interesting thing which can be seen is that Facebook's graph is showing an increasing trend where as other two are quite static. Though F8 can not be pointed as a specific turn around point but indeed it caught my attention. What Facebook did in F8, is now being sought by MySpace, that is, they want to open up themselves.
Hey, enlighten me, didnt we had third party apps, finely integrated in Myspace profiles, adding up lots of clutter and feeding a big parallel tertiary market. MySpace is already quite open, and its openness have already been utilized by few intelligent miscreants. To mention Facebook is like orkut a closed network, where you have to login before watching any kind of profile, they are not available as web pages.
So all in all as it seems from thousand of miles away from the place where few people are burning fuel to make MySpace more open is nothing but surfing. Surfing? yes they too want to ride on the wave of openness, want to gain some media mileage by telling every one that they are more open. Though there is high scope for opening up, but as history tells me, Myspace gets irritated when there is some high traffic gainer app on the profile page of various MySpace users. Bye the way, MySpace is being thrashed all over the park, just like Sachin did yesterday in Ireland, after they created a Youtube clone.
Orkut presently enjoys 2nd position in India as most visited website and facebook is on 29th. So there is lot of catching up required for Facebooks where Indians only constitute 0.8% of visitors. and this percentage is as high as 15% on Orkut.
At present Orkut is boring me a great deal, and the social networks which needs some opening up or some major overhaul is Orkut. And till then I will be resending invites to my friends so as I get more friends on Facebook.

PS: All the data is from Alexa.com

I also feed on feeds and and Google Reader acts as my dinner table. And let me tell you that feeds are addictive, though I dont have any scientific or medical proof for it, but yes I can say that from my very own experience. And anybody else who is using some kind of reader must be feeling same. I use firefox as my browser, and there are three things which I open as soon as I get online.

• Orkut
• Google Reader
• Blogger/Wordpress

One can easily understand that there is one thing common in all the three items, and that is social connectivity. The crux is that any thing which connects you with others, and with connection if that thing provides you with infotainment then that thing is going to be addictive. And history is full of examples. And a feed reader does all these things quite handsomely.
One thing which bugs me about the reader, and in particular with google reader is that it does not have any kind of interaction facility. Often there are posts, on which I would love to comment, but I wont, as I have to click and then wait for next page to upload. By the time I decide, I am already on next post.

By the way this is an echo post, and the post which inspired me to write this is here.


And below is an interesting video of Robert Scoble telling about his reading and filtering skills.