I am not a fan of the surreality( sic ) shows that dot the Indian TV programme guide. So when my friend Arijit offered that he had passes to the Voice of India - Grand Finale - I wasn't much enthused. But when he told me that Madhuri Dixit and Lata Mangeshkar will also grace the occasion - well .. that was interesting. And it was an experience - not only to see the Empresses of Bollywood and Music, but also to witness how a Television Show is produced. The camera's hovering over my head and the bright lights that made it impossible to gaze skywards. Andheri Sports complex looked magnificent on the live feed installed near the stage, it wasn't bad in reality also, but much quieter on the ground. For us, there was a man two rows before us who had a reflex to stand up at every cue - he was a real pain. As a compensation, some TV stars were sitting in the row before us - and some of them were quite pretty ;-) The show had most of the quirks and histrionics of surreality - Ma...

Josh Catone wrote on RWW a few days ago in favour of Facebook having groupware tools built in ... The reason I gave in Monday's piece was convenience. Right now, I have Basecamp projects open with four different groups, meaning I have to remember passwords to four different Basecamps. That is in addition to the hundreds of sites I already have to remember passwords for for other things I do online. The more you can get the things you do under a single umbrella, the less work you have to do get to work. I think he is asking for apples from an orange tree ;-). Isn't he asking for a single sign on to all his online tools, rather than ask for making the social network (facebook / orkut etc) as his virtual operating system for the web? Well Josh - there are things like the OpenID or Windows Live ID to embrace rather than ask for everything to be embedded into facebook or orkut. Just because teenagers use social networks whole day, we shouldn't misplace our faith in them!!

From: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_essential_mobile_web_apps.php This app is a Java-based version of Gmail for mobile, which features IMAP sync, attachment viewing. Phrases that were associated with Gmail for mobile by our readers included: "just works", "simplicity", "functional", "useful", "a joy to use". Commenter "mr white" said of the Gmail java app: "This *is* clearly the path of the future. All your e-mails, all the time, everywhere. No more tedious synching with this outlook / that outlook and the webmailer. Now bring on calendar and contacts." Nathan commented: "A very nice frontend onto a very nice service, and it does a rather nice job of reformatting files for the tiny screen. That's the sort of feature you don't actually appreciate until you're out in the countryside with nary a hardline in sight and need an address that was wrapped up in a .doc in your inbox that you ...

Start with the story of Karz, mix Do Anjaane's revenge plot into it and create a collage of Bollywood spoofs starting from a fake filmfare ceremony to a star-studded birthday party - that's what is Om Shanti Om for you. OSO is not a movie for the serious critics out there - it is as frivolous as the fake 'star party' and the array of nominations in the filmfare awards function. While so many people were upset at the portrayal of Abhishek Bacchan and Akshay Kumar as loosers, we must acknowledge, SRK made fun of himself and Karan Johar in Om Kapoor's nominations ('Rahul - नाम तो सुना होगा' - repeated twice for two different movies). The opening scene of the movie where SRK and Farah are in the audience of the song 'Om Shanti Om' is innovative, so is the linkage of the scenes involving Sooraj Barjatya and Govinda (when SRK and Shreyas Talpade advise him to drop the 'Ahuja' from his name), and of course the songs where Deepika dances around Su...

I have been travelling by train a lot lately and as most people will agree that railways have improved quite a lot in the past few days. The cleanliness has improved, and trains run more timely than earlier. Railway stations are also improving - better facilities are in place (Kiosks, Cyber Cafes, vending machines etc.) and the staff is more 'friendly'. At the same time, the price of railway travel has gone up - even though nominally. In addition to increase in fares, new overheads are been added. For example, now if you book a ticket for a different destination than the location from where you are booking your ticket - you have to pay a surcharge. (Internet booking always had a surcharge). The question is - is the price rise justified in wake of the fact that Railways are the primary mode of transport for the weaker economic sections of the society as well? I think yes. Take the case of railways introducing better toilets - each toilet will cost Rs 60K ($1500) - this appo...

I got a nice forward today from Sabya ... the essence is something like this Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you let them, they’ll dump it on you. When someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You’ll be happy you did. I guarantee it. If you want to read it in full, you can read it here.

Arbit Choudhury – First B School Comic Character of the world, created by the duo of Shubham Choudhury & Hemant Kumar Jain has bagged this year’s Manthan Award for India’s successful e-Content for Development 2007 on. [To know more on how I am related to Arbit read this ] Sabyasachi Ghosh a friend of ours accepted the award on our behalf ... The award was given in the e-Entertainment category giving a major boost towards the need to develop a comical sense even when engrossed in our beloved work related pursuits. The award giving ceremony was held on September 22, 2007 at IICC, New Delhi and is given annually to promote usage of ICT at the grassroots level for innovation and ultimately e-Content development in the country. “Arbit Choudhury” is a comic character which came into minds of two people while studying in a B-School. Fed up with the same routine for two long years, they saw the funny side of it and created a comic character on their lives at campus itself. With the corpor...

Angry boss: तुमने कभी उल्लू देखा है? Executive (सर झुकाते हुए): नहीं sir. Boss: नीचे क्या देख रहे हो ? मेरी तरफ देखो !!

My GMail Inbox suddenly seems to have received a lottery in storage space - my Inbox size has suddenly jumped to 3681 MB which till yesterday was hovering around 2900 MB. I tried to figure out as to what happened but all I could Google was a blog post written way back in March which predicted that it would take 5 years for Gmail to reach 3.5 GB ... Anyway, so like a kid who gets a 100 bucks ' bakshish ' from his grandpa - I should start planning as to how I am going to spend the 1/2 GB extra space that I now have (not that I have exhausted my current space, but still). For starters, I will no more bother to delete 'heavy forwards'; then I could restart receiving a lot of email from mailing list where I have set up 'no email' option. To avoid email overload because of this, I will simply filter these emails, make them skip the inbox and have them marked as read. I know what you are asking me now - why the hell receive those emails if you aren't going to read...

We will surely miss the stink in the railways :-) With the successful completion of a pilot project on a "green toilet" and its certification and endorsement by railway minister Lalu Prasad a few days back, the railways have decided to replace all old toilets with "green toilets in all trains, an official in Rail Bhavan said on Wednesday. Read the original story for more.