An ideal beginning

Waking up on a Sunday morning, sipping a hot cup of tea, reading an O'Henry tale with occasional glances to see flowering trees, industrious bees and wading ducks (destination nowhere) is as fresh as opening your eyes to see children playing and getting lost between long lustrous green blades of grass on a hilltop where morning dew hangs onto the leaves as the sun coyly tries to make conversation with the trees.

O'Henry's tales are true to life and are just pure and full of emotion. His characters are pure in thought and almost seem to be sitting there with you on your couch and talking about their delightful experiences in life. They take you to a politics-free, technology free world where anything and everything is in the form of unadulterated basic human emotion. Very vividly described, I can almost see the seasons roll by my very eyes as I become a spectator to a world beyond mine...
And the ending...always the best with a twist! O'Henry stories always leave you with a dilemma...you want to reach the end because it is special but on the other hand, the story is so well written that you just want to read on and on and see no end!

Let me get back to my other world now...I could have relished a few more O'Henrian moments if I had not written this, but just couldn't stop myself today...Everything seemed so perfect :)

Is stardom infectious?

Surely seems so whenever I watch Indian Idol and whenever I think about it..Or is it grooming? Can't say which one or whether it is both!

Indian Idol 3 is the only I watch regularly (Well, Everybody Loves Raymond and Family Guy are creeping into that space) and I must say watching it itself has been a growing learning experience for me. I see every participant grow as a singer, performer(hate that word...overused) and as an individual..Maturity they say grows with responsibility and being responsible for winning 1 crore is no easy deal and that really shows. Every participant has been singing better(Amit with his choice of Aamir songs excels himself every time) and they seem to enjoy what they are doing which actually reminds me of Peter Collins book "Good to Great"..he talks about companies that were good, but shot up to be great beating market and competitor averages by huge margins. It is definitely an interesting read, so lay your hands on it! One note in it says that great companies

1) Do what they are passionate about
2) Do what they are good at
3) Do what is beneficial to their bottomline

The above three criteria are not a "OR" thing...they are an "AND" thing! He calls this the hedgehog priniciple...no reason why we have to attach this principle to only a company...Every individual is a company within himself striving for his mission in life! Taking this principle to Indian Idol, I feel the contestants meet all the criteria...so no matter who takes the money and the car, if they keep pursuing their passion with discipline, they will all be very successful!! I wish them all the best!

Sunrocket speechless

A meteoric rise and a meteoric exit! That's how I would sum up Sunrocket as a company..Out of blue, out of nowhere, it came out there to challenge Vonage and it's likes and ended up coming second in the VOIP with an impressive customer base and forced other VOIP providers to cut the cost of their plans...Impressive, marketing genius or just another foolhardy endeavour?

Yesterday came a loud thud and a sudden demise. SunRocket was no more...founders decided to pull the plug (or atleast that is what it seems)..no notifications to customers, no hints anywhere...almost like it died in a freak accident. Surprised, shocked and enlightened...maybe this is how corporate America is like!

SunRocket's website is still alive, but they no longer answer their helplines, their service works in spurts now. My wife had this clever idea of using up our remaining Sunrocket funds to make calls in India, but well for that our phone should work :). Anyways, competitors are poaching SunRocket's huge customer base..i have fallen prey to JoiPhone, another VOIP company (am still optimistic on VOIP)..As long as SunRocket was alive, their service was good. I just feel their exit could have been more graceful.

Curiosity gives me the cat?

We will see!
I was doing my daily ritual of browsing aimlessly in search of that something that can catapult me high in my friendly circles...(atleast for a day...ok, maybe an hour...come on 10 min atleast!!) and I chanced upon this thing called "Pownce" which people seem to be going gaga over..Pownce is a new Social Networking site (yes, one more)...something like twitter and better and has this "limited invitation" concept meaning you can only be invited to Pownce by members of Pownce...This makes perfect from a company and a users perspective...

Company can see traffic grow gradually and can accommodate for the hardware/software growth required in a planned manner...very difficult if the user base sky rockets in one day...in fact dangerous too, because if the interest shoots in one day and your product cannot handle it, you end up with the potential of annoying that many prospective customers...very difficult because you be confused with mixed feelings :P..Seems good from a users perspective because in this age where social networking sites seem to be going up and down like mushrooms, something that comes in via an invitation from somebody trusted makes sense..
1) Because it is from somebody you trust.
2) Wouldn't have come to you in the first place if the people above you in the chain hadn't liked it, you wouldn't get this invit. Basically, they kinda did your homework for ya..

nYwayz, coming back to Pownce, I read that invitations are on sale on eBay! I won't pay for a cat, never! People are crazy..in fact, that craziness has sparked some curiosity in me and now I want my invitation and so have been meandering around blogs advertising Pownce and have begged for that one Pownce invitation that can give me my 10 min of stardom. Hope I can get it :). I promiz, I will give away my invits for free if I get clawed.

Herez a blurb on Pownce just in case you are interested...

"Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast."

Pownce is the brainchild of the founder of Digg, so this interest :)

Fold your T-shirts

Every problem has more than one solution...Well, all solutions need not be right :D :D

Folding my t-shirts and putting them cleanly in my racks has always been a big problem for me and I always end up spending more time scheduling this event than actually doing it :). Somebody else thought otherwise and just did it...looking at how fast they did it, I think it is time for my scheduling algorithm to see the recycle bin.

Fold your T-Shirt

You probably will have more fun if you understand Chinese....

Didn't that look easy? Go, try it out!!! It works!

Aamir Khan's blog

Aamir is a great guy! Not just for the kind of films he chooses, but also for the way he plays his part to "perfection". You never get too tired of Aamir except for a few movies like Fanaa....interesting, I can't think of anything beyond that except for a couple of movies that he did before reaching prime time.

Fanaa was a bad movie by Aamir standards..just like Raja Hindustani (one more name comes out :)), but they were both big Blockbuster hits in Bollywood, re-writing records that were in place at that time (this whole records thing is a sham...we can probably have a record for not having a record :))...anyways, looking at the success of these movies and my pathetic views about them, I should probably re-phrase what I said in Aamir's words..these movies "didn't work for me". Apparently the movie "Memento didn't work" for Aamir, but he doesn't consider it a bad movie because everybody is entitled to his/her perspective. I sincerely agree, my opinion is mine and your opinion is yours and so the movies didn't work for me :)...And where do I know this from (given the fact that Aamir is "media shy")...welll, his own personal blog that seems quite recent! I was doing my daily morning routine of checking on updates from Movieland and chanced upon this :)

No matter whether you are a ardent, die-hard fan of Aamir or not, this is going to be an interesting read. Aamir's Blog. Interesting to see him read all comments and even reply to them :). Aamir Khan is just too perfect!