Random Ramblings

I got two books to read this week. While I got ‘The Orange Hangover’ from a friend, the second one, was a sporadic purchase at midnight from Flipkart. Now I’m not going to delve into the circumstances and my emotions at the time of purchase, so, I’ll just cut the crap and go straight to my review.

The Orange Hangover is a novel by Rahul Saini, who also wrote ‘the bestselling book called Those small lil things’ (as per the back cover). It is about Rishabh Suri, an architect who is forced to quit his job and return to his village. The book talks about his transition from a city lad to a guy without a job living with his mother and how he deals with this. And just when I thought that this book was a semi-intellectual work on self discovery, it brings forth a twist that suddenly transitions this book to a crime thriller sort. While I did enjoy, the first portion of the book, I thought the crime thriller portion of the story was not that great. Also, at times, the author intently bollywoodized certain portions, which was also a case with the other book. I’m not sure whether this is the current trend or something. But overall, it was an interesting read (which also shows some social issues such as child labor) and I would recommend it as a good weekend read.

The second book that I read was How I Braved Anu Aunty and Co-Founded a Million Dollar Company by Varun Agarwal. It is his own story as he evaded the ‘deathly traps of 9 to 5 jobs’ enforced upon him by his family (and Anu aunty of course) and went ahead and created a startup. The writing style is pretty much like how a twenty something guy would speak and it somehow reminded me of Delhi Belly (not that the book is even slightly related to that movie), maybe because of the language used. Anyhow, it was quite a fun read and I finished the book within a day. I’m sure that aspiring entrepreneurs would be inspired by reading this book, and the author gives certain tips as well at times on starting your own company. All in all, it is definitely worth a read for those who are looking for some light reading.

Shit happens. You can’t really help it. It just happens.

Well, what are you supposed to do during those difficult circumstances? I have heard a lot of people saying “you gotta move on,dude!”. That’s easier said than done. From my little experiences, you really can’t ‘just move on’. You need an escape plan.

That’s my little secret of doing it. I just focus on some other stuff so that I don’t have enough time to think about the past. It could be learning new stuff, painting, writing and at times, even watching different TV series like Friends or Dexter. And, I just hope that when am done, I stop worrying anymore. Just like that. 

It is absolutely right that time is a great healer. You just have to find something to do in the meantime. 

AsRalph Waldo Emerson said, Little minds have little worries, big minds have no time for worries.

How does one try to obtain or access the content they need from the web? They follow blogs that’s are on their interested topics, follow people on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks who have common interests or even do a search on Google about that topic.

Ensemba is a web 2.0 service that tries to bring forward the content that you might like towards you. All you have to do after signing up is selecting your interests and Ensemba will automatically display articles related to your interests from across the web. You can share articles, vote an article up or down and the service will intelligently change the content displayed according to your likes (and dislikes).

The signup is pretty straight forward and you can also choose to login using either Facebook or Twitter. Right after signup, you will be asked to select your interests and that’s pretty much it.

The interface is fine and is not cluttered. The focus on the content is evident. After signup, Ensemba will display a few ‘peers’ in the sidebar which are basically fellow users with similar interests. You can choose to follow them and their shares will be shown under ‘peer picks’. You can also integrate your social networks (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn at the moment, more promised to be added) and as you share an article on Ensemba, it will be shared across these social networks as well.

Concluding, the overall experience was nice, although there was nothing new in their service. I felt that it was an aggregation of services like Twitter and Reddit albeit a good one.   If you are looking for a simple site that brings a refined amount of content on your favorite topics without having to go through a lot of effort, Ensemba is for you. The service is at private beta at the moment. You can visit their site at beta.ensemba.com.

Now where on earth does we have a truly democratic government? We just elect people who can act as Emperors or Dictators for next five years and that’s all. I don’t know what’s the difference in political landscape of China and India. 

Let’s take the recent FDI fiasco for example. When did we get to have our say during the process? I actually supported the move and was disappointed when the government had to roll back their decision. Not only did they scrap a good decision, it showed India as gutless internationally. And the funniest part about that was the fuckin opposition had no fuckin clue about all of this. They were just blackmailing the government by disrupting the parliament and wasting the tax payer’s money just for political gains. Now will they give back the money lost for all these days from their party fund ? Absolutely no. Here also we are helpless. 

Not only are we not getting a say in the decision making process, they are fuckin wasting our money too..

Before commenting on other’s cheap talk, it would be better if Communist Party members of Kerala especially Mr. E.P Jayarajan of course the great Achu maman could do a little bit of introspection on their own reckless and cheap talking.

Just my two cents paise.

Before commenting on other’s cheap talk, it would be better if Communist Party members of Kerala especially Mr. E.P Jayarajan of course the great Achu maman could do a little bit of introspection on their own reckless and cheap talking.

Just my two cents paise.

parislemon:

A comprehensive list. I can only think of two other obvious things that always seem to hit Techmeme.

1) Contrarian views. Sometimes these are great as a counterpoint to an article already on Techmeme. Other times these are god-awful nonsense simply written to drive pageviews and get Techmeme headlines.

2) Write a post that mentions Techmeme. The more often you mention Techmeme, the better. And make all the mentions hyperlinked.

parislemon:

Aside from a few tweets, I’ve mainly stayed out of the latest TechCrunch brouhaha. These things tend to flare up every few months, and they ultimately end up meaning nothing. But I would like to address one thing in particular, because The New York Times’ David Carr names me specifically in his article on the matter today.

More generally, it occurs to me that a lot of these posts are based around a fundamental misunderstanding of how TechCrunch actually works. Journalists seem to think they can write about TechCrunch as if they’re looking in a mirror. That is to say, they think our operation runs in a similar manner to theirs and they use that as a jumping off point for misguided (but predictable) outrage. In reality, what they’re looking at when they look at TechCrunch is a crystal ball.

So gather ‘round everyone, to learn how TechCrunch actually works.

Read More

parislemon:

Aside from a few tweets, I’ve mainly stayed out of the latest TechCrunch brouhaha. These things tend to flare up every few months, and they ultimately end up meaning nothing. But I would like to address one thing in particular, because The New York Times’ David Carr names me specifically in his article on the matter today.

More generally, it occurs to me that a lot of these posts are based around a fundamental misunderstanding of how TechCrunch actually works. Journalists seem to think they can write about TechCrunch as if they’re looking in a mirror. That is to say, they think our operation runs in a similar manner to theirs and they use that as a jumping off point for misguided (but predictable) outrage. In reality, what they’re looking at when they look at TechCrunch is a crystal ball.

So gather ‘round everyone, to learn how TechCrunch actually works.

Read More

allenpaltrow:

Growing up I was a huge apple fan-boy (fine, still am.) The first NY apple store in Soho opening was probably the coolest thing that happened to me between the ages 6 and 12. For a while I would spend almost every weekend there. Every year for halloween I was a mac, and I made a habit of shaving…

When Google+ was launched, I was kind of skeptical about it. Well it was after all coming from the company who gave us Buzz, Wave and of course Orkut. But after watching the initial reviews, my opinion quickly changed. I wanted to get into the plus bandwagon as soon as possible. And I did get my invitation after about  two days, thanks to my blogger friends.

The experience was refreshing and soothing. By the end  of that week, most of my friends were already on Google Plus and I was socializing - better than Facebook. Why? Because until now it doesn’t have the problem that is haunting Facebook. The problem with Facebook  is the one that is created by Facebook itself. Its trying to be much more than a social network. Its getting converted to a gaming and application platform that is clouding its networking values.

But what is the problem with that? Just look into your Facebook wall. More than 50% of my Facebook screen is taken up by some non important updates such as  X is friends with Y or X was tagged in an album of Y. Among them the biggest nuisance is the ones posted by Apps and games such as X started using **** or X grew a potato in his/her farm. The actual “whats on my friend’s mind” posts gets lost in this butt load of  crap. I know that the first two (befriending and tagging) notifications can be quite useful as they can help me find people I know and pictures of people I know (although 90% of them are of no use to me). But that along with the absolutely crappy posts made by applications are not giving me a good social networking experience.These apps may be the ones generating revenue for Facebook but they are hindering in socializing - the only thing that I intend to use Facebook for.

But Google Plus  doesn’t have that problem, at least for now. My Google Plus home page consists of posts from my friends and those whom I follow than some silly automated posts. Although most of the posts are from Robert Scoble, I don’t have a problem unless its posted by himself and not some app (BTW most of posts are quite informative in my opinion).

The rumor is that Google will be adding social gaming support to Google Plus soon.  If it is going to be just like Facebook, I will probably delete my Google Plus account as there is no point in having two similar services.

So my suggestion to Google is to leave Google Plus just like it is now - as a place to share my thoughts/media with my friends and family. Add functionality that will improve socializing and not something that will hinder in socializing like Facebook did. Even if Google ends up adding apps and games support, make sure that it doesn’t lower my social networking experience (for starters don’t allow them to post updates on my wall or whatever they’re calling it).

After all, all I want to do is just socializing.

Today if you searched  the internet using Google and found this, then its time to take some serious steps to protect your computer.

After collaborating with security engineers at several companies that were sending this modified traffic, we determined that the computers exhibiting this behavior were infected with a particular strain of malicious software, or “malware.” As a result of this discovery, today some people will see a prominent notification at the top of their Google web search results
This particular malware causes infected computers to send traffic to Google through a small number of intermediary servers called “proxies.” We hope that by taking steps to notify users whose traffic is coming through these proxies, we can help them update their antivirus software and remove the infections.

The 6th one looks familiar!!

Botnet basically is a network on computers that is being controlled by crackers. A botnet is used for performing malicious tasks and for spreading malware. Below is an infographic from McAfee that explains what is a botnet in an easy to understand way.

justinhalpern:

I wrote this a couple years ago, when I was at a bar and noticed every buff, fake tanned guy was basically orbiting around this one really attractive girl, and that around each one of these buff, fake tanned guys, were smaller, less buff guys orbiting around them.  I decided to try and map it out.  Not sure if I was successful, but anytime I can try to explain axe body spray using something from a Stephen Hawking book, I’m in. Co-written by Thee Jesse Thompson.

justinhalpern:

I wrote this a couple years ago, when I was at a bar and noticed every buff, fake tanned guy was basically orbiting around this one really attractive girl, and that around each one of these buff, fake tanned guys, were smaller, less buff guys orbiting around them.  I decided to try and map it out.  Not sure if I was successful, but anytime I can try to explain axe body spray using something from a Stephen Hawking book, I’m in. Co-written by Thee Jesse Thompson.

A few months ago, I had posted some tips on securing your Wordpress website. Most of the tips were basic and easy to implement. But still, everyone out there might not be comfortable meddling with the innards of your website setup to make it more secure. For them, there is CloudFlare.

CloudFlare can be considered as an online security solution for your website. But it has got a few other advantages as well which I will talk about.

Steve Jobs And Bill Gates

[youtube=

iPhone 4 finally in India! Two full sized ads from today’s Hindu paper.

[youtube=

[youtube=

mooshoo:

A classy farewell to a classy individual.