Category Archives: Review

Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH

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logo BIMTECH Blogging Workshop at BIMTECHNever ever did i expect that something that i follow as a passion would get me a chance to conduct a session at one of the best business schools in north India.

Last week-end, i flew to Delhi and on Saturday i was at BIMTECH, Greater Noida, for a session on blogging and the monetary benefits of blogging. The E-Cell of BIMTECH had contacted Mutiny for help and i took the offer.

The session was planned at 6p.m.. You really have to appreciate the guys who study at b-schools, a session at 6p.m. was nothing for them. Other colleges too were invited for the workshop and there were indeed people present at that time of the evening on a Saturday evening.

The session kicked off after a brief intro about the speaker, ahhmmmm that’s me icon smile Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH , and about Mutiny and of collage 300x187 Blogging Workshop at BIMTECHcourse about my friend Mayank (yes its the StudioWordpress guy!!! – http://mayankgupta.com or http://mayank.info ). Mayank was supposed to be on time and help me out with the session, but he was caught up with an emergency Snooker game-session. Well he did turn up to save me for the last 30min icon smile Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH .

I started off at the same grounds from where i started the blogging session at Wipro. Telling them everything that i knew about blogging, etiquette, etc etc. But there was a flaw. Most of the people who were there didn’t know how to start a blog. By ‘start a blog’ i mean they didn’t know even how to get a blog at blogger. The lesson – get to know the people and the requirements before we start.

So STOP!!! Get back to the basics. Took them through the live demo of setting up a blog in Blogger. So when all was set, and everyone was on the same page, we were back to where we stopped.

Mayank was just in time as i was getting warmed up with the business side of blogging. Talked about some of the ways that i knew about making money out of blogging. Though i have to mention that i’m too lazy for a blogger that i don’t earn as much as others do, out of blogging.

The idea of a community blog was something new to them. The facts on how Mutiny has grown and maintains itself interested them.

After that it was Mayank’s turn to help everyone with the things that he knows. The way he earns his living was interesting to listen to and i’m quite sure that it would have opened up some idea for those who were listening.

The fact that interested me a lot was the volume of idea that people had for blogging. They all wanted to blog for so many reasons and they just wanted to know how.

Put together the session was one that’s one of the most memorable. I’m taking back some very valuable learnings and some ideas with me.

More pics here

BloggingWordshopAtBIMTECH Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH
Blogging Wordshop at BIMTECH

If any BIMTECH guys are reading this, i would like you to give me you feedbacks and comments too .. icon smile Blogging Workshop at BIMTECH

(Cross-posted here)

The Dark Knight – Review

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dark knight joker The Dark Knight Review “An unstoppable force hitting an immovable object !!! ”

Yes its a Batman movie and Christian Bale delivers another laudable performance. But still, the ‘hero’ of the movie is Heath Ledger, playing The Joker. Its one of those performances that will make you give a standing ovation at the end of the movie.

If Iron Man was entertaining, then this movie is way beyond that. This is no ordinary superhero movie. Its not for kids and way beyond the league of an average movie goer, expecting an action flick Hollywood movie. If Batman Begins captured the emotional turmoil of a superhero cursed to live a normal life and caught within the mask, The Dark Knight takes you on a stroll through the dark allies of a ruthless and demonic villain. Heath Ledger delivers a character that is going to be the scale with which future villains will be measured. The perfect villain. Striking fear, each time The Joker makes an appearance on screen.

There is noting much that i can comment on the movie. Just go enjoy the movie…

It deserves a 10/10

Should You Download on June 17th?

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180x150 02 Should You Download on June 17th?

Bruce Almighty, the movie starts of with Bruce, a TV Reporter, asking an old woman, who owns a Patisserie -

“So tell us mama, why make Buffalo’s biggest cookie?”

“Well, man from the health department say he find rat pellet in store. I say no is big chocolate chip. So we close store down, clean up, and make big cookie for to bring back customers”

I see no difference in that and this -

Come June 17th and there is going to be this multitude of people from around the world, who are just going to download Mozilla Firefox v 3.0. Why? Just because they are attempting to set a world record on the maximum downloads of a single software in 24hrs. What a creative reason to set a record?

So what is so great about this download spree that the guys at Mozilla are hyping about? Does the people who download it get a free mug every day for the rest of their life? Or is it something like the spam mail, ‘If you dont download Fx in the next 24 hours, your system will be infected by a deadly strain of I love Fx virus!!!‘.Its all for the sake of a record and damn publicity!!!

I use Fx and its not that i wont be using 3.0. Its a great browser and i’m sure just like the way it has changed my browsing experience, it has done for millions. The plugin support is amazing. To download it on that particular day is a personal choice. I agree. But just because you like a piece of software doesnt mean that you need to join a drive just to download it.

The way i see it, is as a smart marketing strategy. If they are really as good at the cookie that they sold, then why do they need such a drive. If a product is good, people who use it becomes the biggest marketers for it. They spread the word and the number of people who are using it expands. Why does Fx3.0 need such a drive? Fx2.0 was brought in with a big bang. But it suffered as it began to eat up memory. A normal session of Fx2.0 with 3-4 tabs open is enough to consume 10s of MB of RAM.

Memory is cheap, i agree. But that doesn’t mean that an application can take up as much memory as it desires. I’m not too good at judging as to what is wrong. But can say that the memory management was poor in Fx2.0. At the time when Fx2.0 was released people with normal browsing habits found that the systems slogged badly, Windows and Linux alike. They opted to move out. Intermittent releases didn’t solve the version either. How annoying is it when you get a new version to download every couple of weeks?

Fx3.0 is hailed to be faster and secure. The Release Candidates a.k.a Beta are better than Fx2.0.

… As several of the linked posts below accurately reported, we’ve decided to add one more beta in order to make further improvements in the areas of polish, performance, memory, and overall quality … [from Mozilla: For the Record]

The question remains, are they still the same old Patisserie reopen by making a big cookie, after the Health Dpt. shut’em down?

Micro to Nano Blogging With Adocu

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If normal blogging was too much for you and thought that Twitter solved it with Micro-blogging… AND if you thought that 140 characters was too long to type and Twitter was too much to handle. You are in big problem.
Micro to Nano Blogging With Adocu
logo Micro to Nano Blogging With AdocuFriends might tell you that you are being lazy and you need to see a doc. Hell NO!! we have Adocu for one-word Nano-blogging. Now all you need is a word or rather words with no spaces in them.

Just one word, one word to tell the world what you are up to..

adocu 300x196 Micro to Nano Blogging With Adocu

So far only text and numbers allowed. Spaces are a Strict NO!! You can alwaysbe innovative. Joining words without spaces is already happening there. The interface looks simple and you just can keep on going.

Adocu is still in beta and is lacking a good Puclic time line, friends updates, search etc. So when its finished by Jonathan (adocu.com/Jonathan), who is busy getting feedbacks at the blog (http://blog.adocu.com/) and fixing issues that are reported, its really going to rock.

Adocu is not a Twitter clone, rather its Twitter compressed … icon smile Micro to Nano Blogging With Adocu

Time to coin new terms like – Adocuers (populace in Adocu), Adocus (updates in Adocu), Adocing (the act of updating Adocu).

Windows 7 – First Thoughts

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I will try not to be too much biased against Windows. But will like to point out what is wrong.

Hearing the news of the Demo/Preview/Debut of Windows 7 at D6 conference by Microsoft VP Julie Larson-Green, my first reaction was, Oh NO not again!!!

fp fp fp vista2bp81 Windows 7 First ThoughtsI had my concerns. Microsoft has been stealing the show with its sleeky looks and publicity. If there is somebody at the market that can sell a rickety old-bus just by repainting it, its Microsoft.

Though all the other OS-es has evolved with age, windows simply refuses to budge more or less. The system requirements just to run a basic version of their latest OS takes more than twice the power that is required to run the latest Open Source OS. The fact remains that will less overhead the Open Source counterpart gives the looks and the WOW-ness.

How far can they drive along by just adding the new features without correcting the basic problems.

XP came and by the time people got adjusted to the response time, reaction time and usability, Vista was born. Now why the hell do i have to go for double the configuration for a new OS. Then again i will be doing the same things but that is going to add another transition phase in my life. From my own personal experience, the very simple task of setting an IP which took 4-5 clicks in XP, took me 5-10min in Vista just to figure out how to get the Properties window. Though basic functionality of an OS that the user looks for needs to be kept the same across versions, Microsoft fails to comply.

If the new version is going to be more user friendly than its previous one, why do you still need to pack the age old Win-98 looks with XP? They need to realize what the other OS-es in the market are doing different to keep things abreast with feature improvements, usability and performance.

At this point they just need to stop stuffing in features into an OS. It more or less looks like a huge american burger. A bite at one end will have half of the things falling out of the other end. By the time you get used to the new tasty burger in comes a new version double the size.