Pimp my Laptop!!

First it was Dell, and now Asus!!

Its great to see the era of designer hardware in India. Where users get to sport their identity by the very laptop decoration they use. Gone are the days where executives would sit tinkering on their ugly, grey/black boxes looking so busy and mighty. Nowadays, you see young bachhas in faded jeans and t-shirts carrying lappies of all shapes and sizes, but very few of them would be actually working while waiting at the flight terminal.

Soon, we will see more customer centric models where the customer can completely customize the look of his/her laptop. I can hardly wait for that day!!

Server and Vastu: Technology and Spirituality

Throughout my life, I have been a Mulder and sometimes a Scully (for those who have not seen X-Files, a believer and sometimes a skeptic), but mostly a believer. But whenever there would be a rite performed which seemed a bit on the inane side, I would question the entire objective behind the same.

Some days back, we procured a server for our hosting needs. After a decently elongated procurement cycle, we realized that we would also need a separate server room for the same. Thus, a server room was built and the server was appropriately installed in there. Then, most of the management suggested that we do a vastu study on this. Fair enough, a vastu feasibility study was conducted, and it was decided that the server be shifted to the corner of the room. The power supply could not be put in the corner, and the table had to be shuffled across in that small space. Finally, my server room was vastu compliant. A post-installation pooja was done for the server, the coconut was broken, arati done and sweets distributed.

Funny no? That we have reached such a decent level of technology, albeit we stick to our religious practises and beliefs, to ensure that the gods are appeased.

Who would the god of hosting and server space be? Suggestions welcome.

Server-goda-swahaa!!

Corporate Pujari!

At eYantra Ind Ltd, we have a very nice culture of weekly pooja. Every Friday evening, the employees assemble in front of the office's devghar and the pooja begins. This rite is performed by our Accounts manager (I do not think its just a coincidence!), Mr. Koteswara Rao. Personally speaking, I like this weekly rite being a god fearing person myself.

Today, while I was talking to one colleague on this, he informed me that many Indian corporates are into this, a lot of SMEs, and some big ones like Satyam as well. He then went on to inform me that his friend does this for a living!! He goes to Satyam every week, and they have set up this employee pooja fund, which is given to the pujari as dakshina! And a pretty decent amount at that. So true, how many of us do take the time to do a small pooja every day? Its not surprising then that many of us dont even know how to proceed when its needed. My daily ritual consists of a simple incense stick and a small prayer, but for formal occassions, I would definitely want one Corporate Pujari for myself!!

Interesting business no? In fact a friend of a friend has launched a business of his own just on this theme. Its known as Sacred Moments, wherein he supplies to individuals and businesses with kits for occassions like these. Looks like some people are into Corporate Karma after all.

The Caddy

Decided to watch one of the oldies today. Managed to find this on the torrents, and downloaded it. Classic Jerry Lewis stuff with a dash of Dean Martin thrown in. 

The story is about a fisherman and the prodigal son of a professional golfer who team up to be a golfer and caddy team. They end up ultimately as a winning combination but in a totally different field altogether. The entire story is just that. Simple and full of antics and funny scenes. The slapstick Jerry is so back in this ... Dean Martin has the girls swooning with Amore.

Connoisseurs should love this one. Seemed unfair when I saw that this movie got only a 6.0.

Process Orientation

The Spiderwick Chronicles

Do you think life is real enough? Do you think What you see is real or are there forces acting behind the scenes that make shit happen on those entirely bothersome days?

Spiderwick Chronicles opens a world of ogres, fairies, goblins and talking hogs. I think its a story based upon a book of a similar name. Cute little story of three kids and their mom stuck in a small house once inhabited by an eccentric scientist in possession of a book of such strong knowledge; that a strong ogre Mulgarath is after that book.

Studious ogre!!

Worth a watch ... suggest you download it through a torrent and not on an IMAX screen!!

Y! Open

Imagine a platform or a web application that can make sense out of your mail, your other affiliated activities and even track where your friends are all in one go!! It can make schedules for a dinner meet up in one part of the town with your selected friends and suggest other viable venues. That is precisely what Yahoo! is set out to do.

God Speed fellas!

Facebook a matrimony site?

Read this here. How many of you lot have hit on/flirted with the opposite sex on some social networking site or the other? Oh ... c'mon be honest, I know a lot of us have done it. In fact, there was is a social networking site dedicated solely for that purpose. So do not tell me that you haven't, I know that you did (smug smile).

Trust us desis to find a unique usage for the likes of orkut, facebook, myspace, et al!! As they say - Majboori ka naam hain Mahatma Gandhi!!

Pipes, Twits and Feeds

No people I am not referring to a new plumbing assignment or for that matter a new categorization of idiots!

Recently, I wrote a small post on Twitter, and how its micro-blogging utility is taking India by rage. The rabbit hole goes deeper as Alice (by analogy, that's me!!) decides to plunge and find out where this world leads to. After Twitter, I came across a new web service + social networking utility that helps you keep in touch with what your friends are doing ... a small friend feed of sorts. FriendFeed helps you keep track of your friends online digital imprints. A social engineer's dream come true :-)

But what really got my goose (or is it gander?) is that Friendfeed managed to coalesce a lot of my activities in one feed (Last.fm, LinkedIn, Picasa, GTalk, Blogger, Twitter, StumbleUpon, Del.icio.us, et al). Thats one mouthful to say the least.

The coup de grâce is delivered in the form of Yahoo! Pipes ... its a web platform where you can fetch content in the form of feeds, RSS, et al and manipulate it. I have yet to come to terms with how to go about setting up a pipe, the moment I do that, youll be the first to know!