My Grand Central

Grand Idea! Atleast for small businesses! Enroll into Google's grand central from blogger.com/home and have the liberty of people calling you from a web page without exposing your number! You can have all calls forwarded to a voicemail if you would like, block callers, listen to voicemail as it is being recorded and more! A real boon for businesses on the web and a lot of flexibility for people on the run (you can have a fixed number that can forward calls to home, cell, work or any other number ;P)...and all this from the Google stable!! that's why they say "paisa talks"...(Google acquired GrandCentral for a decent sum :P)

The 54 million dollar lawsuit

$54 million is what Raelyn Campbell wants out of Best Buy for her missing laptop, personal data, and her time. The Washington, DC, resident filed a lawsuit against the company after Best Buy allegedly lied to her for months at a time about the status of her machine, then offered her an insultingly low compensation once it acknowledged the loss.

As ridiculous as it seems (you can make many laptops in gold for that price :P), it still makes sense to me! Sometimes corporate America just needs a caffeine jolt. Not treating your customers well is just unpardonable. I have been going through a few rough spots myself with Citibank (credit cards, checking account, interest payments, bill payments...everything!). Screw up and then don't even own upto it and after that treat your customers like shit...truly despicable. If any of you have/want NRI, NRE accounts, savings/credit cards etc, please look elsewhere..Citi is only for people with a lot of money and a lot of time!

As far as Campbell is concerned, she says that she knows $54 million is outrageous, but it's apparently the only way to get media attention and put enough pressure on Best Buy to do the right thing. I really sympathize with her and truly hope she is paid her due!

Invisible Cloak?

Saw Jodhaa Akbar today...quite good, dragged a bit and at times made me feel that they should have just called it "Akbar" and introduced Jodhaa as an aspect...haan aspects..have been deep into AOP lately...

Anyways, in the midst of watching the "magnum epic", there was a particular shot that made me ponder for a little while...it felt weird too...Akbar, to understand his people better seeps into the mainstream as a plainclothesman...no disguise, nothing, just a cloak (not a Harry Potter one) and some normal clothes. He goes into the markets, talks to people, learns their concerns, all this by being one of them and the best part is "NOBODY RECOGNIZES HIM!"...it didn't make sense for a second, but later it did..no cameras, no pictures, no TV, no Internet..what else do you expect! not everybody is allowed into a palace...there might have been paintings but Artists normally "glorify" kings in their paintings...they cannot afford to do otherwise :)

So, what would Akbar do if he had to do all that around 500 years later? Being a king, he would have a lot of media coverage, picture splashed in every newspaper almost daily, publicly private life, love-hate groups in Orkut, Facebook, MySpace...so basically even with a very good disguise, people would RECOGNIZE him! What would you do if you were Akbar? Wear an invisible cloak and go around? How would you talk then? Even Harry Potter had problems with the cloak...good like with that :)...what would YOU do??? food for some thought ----???

Obama's challenge

Battle for the next democratic Presidential candidate is hot, sometimes even overshadowing SuperBowl XLII (What the hell does "XL" mean)..just figured out that L means 50 in Roman Numerals and XL = 50-10 = 40. Man, have to wrap your mind around to read a number...don't like it!

Back to the political battle, the underdogs (no longer) Obama's are doing great, in fact they seem to lead the pack now and all this attributed to Charisma and ofcourse the "Black" factor...Hillary plays the "woman" card...reminds me of India ... politics everywhere seem to focus on dividing people into favorable sectors to pander to whereas it should actually be focusing on a unifying theme... I guess it is very difficult to win that way :(

Coming back to the Obama's, although the race factor might be helping them a little, a big part of their showing is their charisma. Both Barack Obama and Michelle Obama are great talkers and they just seem to be talking common sense with a vision and are very committed towards it. They really want the job. A combination like this has every chance of winning the race. I listened to Michelle Obama today and was just left with a sense of awe! What a speech that was! Never a single moment of dullness and never a second wherein you felt there was pretense. She was speaking her heart out...Barrack is lucky to have her on his side! All the very best to this couple.