Racist Comments On Shilpa Shetty..

Shilpa Shetty who was participating in a popular reality show in Britian, Celebrity BIg Brother was insulted with racial comments.Other contestants have called her a "dog" among other comments. She broke down on the stage and it has sparked off a debate in UK. There is an article by an NRI arguing " what shilpa faces today NRI's face everyday. He has argued that it is difficult for the NRI's to bear the racism on one hand and milking attitude of Indian government on other.


She was commented among other things for

Eating with hand
Using onions in her dishes.
Bleaching her facial hair--commented that she wanted to be white....

For the complete comments on shetty visit this page

http://www.redhotcurry.com/news/bigbrother2007_bullying1.htm

It seems this whole episode brings out the racist behaviour of the westerners in a new light.

Get Alerts on your mobile for free with Google Calendar...

I was trying the google calendar and was trying to find the similarities and dissimilarities with my most used calendar application - MSOutlook. I found that the differences were not in terms of functionality but it was leveraging in its online nature. There was collobaration between calendars, we can search public events. Calendars can be shared. With the help of shared calendar we can map all our telugu holidays in my calendar. It helps for better planning..All these features on one side... I was not convinced about going for google calendar..But one feature is very impressive.. In my opinion, it can make a lot of difference to our schedule and the way we work.. We can configure google calendar to alert us not on the computer screen... but on our mobile phone... Suddenly the possibilities are unlimited.. We are not at the mercy of sitting in front of our system to get an alert. Mobile phone being a ubiquitous device will help us get alerts any where in the world.. If we take enough time to plan our day..then google will do its mite to help us achieve our goals.... Long live Google...!!

Its a superb peice of software and you should surely try it.. If not for anything else... You can atleast set a reminder for your friends birthday so that you dont forget it and get gyan from him for not wishing...!!!!!!! Try it out at Google Calendar and comment about it ...

Desamuduru...Puri Jagannath...

He has done it again.. Normal story... villians kills heroines parents, occupy their house and take their money and try to marry the heroine to their son...A faithful servant helps her escape...And chance takes her to Kulu Manali and she joins a community of sanyasins and stays there....

While helping heroine escape, the servant is helped by the hero, who beats up the goons badly...They want to kill him... Hero a MAA Tv reporter is pressed by his parents to escape to somewhere.. He goes to Himalayas.. meets heroine.. makes her fall in love...and gets ready to take her back to Hyderabad.. In the meantime the villians discover the whereabouts of heroine and capture her and brings her back to hyderabad.. Hero meets the servant, knows about the whole pitiable story and rescues her...Thats the plot...A very ordinary plot...

But the taking is excellent...First half is excellent with the beautiful Himalayan surroundings, glamourous heroine...Second half is equally exciting with the fights and chases....

The comedy track of Ali is very hilarious.. His troubles start after a kidnap and how he ends up in the Himalayas is very interesting...Three songs are good... The mass song should have been more catchy.. Puri Jagannath has once again proved that he can make even a very normal story look very interesting with his taking.. A very good movie once again after Pokiri...


The sideline is that the hugely successful Pokiri was not able to generate interest in the Tamil audience.. I expected that because it was hit because of the punch dialogues and Puri's taking as the story was quite ordinary one...

Guru...

I watched guru yesterday... I was expecting it to be better than Yuva which had disappointed me with an abrupt climax...

The story is about a villager, Gurukanth Desai, who first goes to turkey, sees success there and then comes to India to start his own "biznaz" here. For sufficient capital, he marries his friends sister, Aishwarya for dowry with which he starts his business in Mumbai. Bureaucracy prevents him from setting his shop.. which gurukanth with the help of a paper run by Mithun, successfully overcome to set his shop. From there how Guru takes the business from a small company to biggest company in India is worth watching. The twists are good.

Finally Mithun and his star reporter, madhavan successfully expose his shady deals, how he bribed his way through the government, how he evaded paying taxes and excise frauds. He is put in jail and he has paralysis suddenly. Still the court scene of his trial is very well taken.

Everyone has acted very well. Music is good. Barso re, Tere bina.. are superb.

People may feel that the entertainment value is less, there are very little jokes and fights..But it is a very good movie to watch..

The taking is also excellelent. The song runs in the background with the story like hollywood movie.. Excellent Class Movie.. worth watching for the actors.. Screenplay should have been better...

Apple Another Bang...IPhone..

Apple unveiled its new phone iPhone couple of days back. I had read lot of reviews about that.
I will just try to summarize the features of it.

Its most innovative thing is doing away with buttons.It has only a single button. It has good touchscreen menu. It can be used to for all functions. It comes in 4Gb and 8Gb inbuilt memory. It has wi-fi connectivity though. It has good applications

It has an IPod with it. It has a two megapixel camera.

It has a feature to listen to only the selected voice mails.

It runs on OSX and is believed to run the whole version not just a scaled down version. It has good wide screen.

It is sleek. It has audio playback time of 12 hours and calls and video for six hours.

Its cons......

It is priced high.$299 for 4GB version and $499 for 8Gb version.
It is now sold exclusively through Cingular in US whole coverage is second rate compared to Verizon.
We really dont know if it supports javascript based widgets in the phone.
Its battery life is a little low
Its copyright is owned by Cisco Systems (iPhone) which has already filed a case against Apple.

On the whole I loved it. Its pictures are worth watching.. We have to see if it can beat other established players like Nokia, Ericcson, Samsung, Motorola and LG for the market dominance.

Try this.. It is awesome.. you will surely become a google specialist..

http://www.schnuderoderchoder.ch/brain-teaser/


This is a brain teaser my friend anand asked me to try... Really it was very difficult.. Try it

Good Telugu Website www.nalamothu.net

Today I was searching for reviews of radio channels in hyderabad. I found an article in a blog which was written by a doctor. Clicking my way through this site I found a complete website in telugu with all the links like a portal. The link for review of radio stations is
http://telugu-talk.blogspot.com/2006/12/fm-radio-stations-in-hyderabad-review.html

It also had links to various blogs and websites. I was really very happy that a telugu person has a commendable web presence serving all the other telugu people. Whats more is that he even offers free services to other people.

Free Services: Search engine optimization and Adsense placement. Guidance on System and software problems. Advice on Medical and Health issues.

These are the lines directly taken from the site. visit the site at www.nalamothu.net
There are various links and the link for currently running contests on the net was interesting. visit it and enjoy..

Following New Year resolutions...CAT

I have written in my previous post about my new year resolutions. In that my first wish was to study in a reputed university. I also wished to bell the cat. When we fail doing one the first time, I gives me a special kick to try and conquer that. It is the time when " I can do anything" rings very loudly in me. I wrote CAT in my graduation year. I took coaching in TIME institute but fared very badly in the exam. I got only 75 percentile. I always wanted to do a better job next time. I had stopped preparing for CAT after I joined my present company. I will write the CAT this year and hence if it is to produce a good result, it is imperative that I start preparing from now. So I will track all the best articles on the web on helping you to prepare start and also how I am progressing in my preparation. I was already hooked on to some useful materials on the net on how to prepare for CAT. Before preparing my schedule I wanted to browse through different available strategies and information available. One very good article which I browsed and felt helpful is at
http://catiimatales.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-to-prepare-for-cat.html

This is written by a IIMA student I think it can be very helpful to all of us. He has stressed the importance of starting early, good coaching, taking tests and practice.
More on CAT preparation later..!

Predictions for 2007 -- Technology

While I was browsing through the predictions for 2007, I found an interesting poll in one of the predictions at

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/2007_web_predictions.php . The predictions were also pretty interesting and comprehensive. Particularly what attracted me most was the poll which was being conducted about technology will help any search engine overtake google.

You may like to participate in the poll. Access the pol from the above link only.

The poll is like this

Just watch the different options for that poll. They are different search options like Artificial Intelligence,

people powered search, previews,clustering,visualization,vertical search,personalized search, social search....! Oh I never knew there were these many search technologies.. And see the companies based on these technologies, the world is trying hard to beat google.. and by the way I am going to post on general understanding of each technology and how it may affect google.




I havenot tried all the sites there but I have seen del.icio.us, Snap, Live Image Search, Technorati.. All these are powerful alternatives to google.




The Snap and Live Image search can be really helpful to view the preview of the site without going to the site in the result.




del.ici0.us is completely user submitted links and are really helpful but they are not complete, still some good information can lurk without a

ny user having submitting a link to del.icio.us. So it has to mature to be more useful to users.




Technorati uses a better way it counts the inbound and outbound links from a site, number of times it had been favor

ited in technorati and based on traffic rankings from alexa.com and lot of other criteria it ranks the pages and they are really very good results. It can even now be used as an alternative to google especially for blogs.




Are you not excited to know the result of the poll?? The poll is not yet closed but I would paste the results till know




So the world believes that personalized search(22%) can topple google with considerable proportion believing that artificial intelligence(20%) will do the trick. People who support me also are not less (19%) for people powered search. Read my previous article on thinking beyond google . I think vertical search is also notable(14%). Lets wait and see which technology will take the lead in toppling google off its seat...or we have to see whether google will make itself better by adopting any of the technologies given here..! Only time can tell that.!

Get A Free Art of the Start - Signed by Guy Kawasaki

There is this website called startup.in which is a site to profile the start-ups in India. It has news and views on the start-ups based in India. Wish it will become something like techcrunch.com to India. In order to publicize the site as well as startups in india, this site has started a unique offer. It is offering famous book by Guy Kawasaki ( Author of "Rich Dad Poor Dad" ) , "Art of the start" book signed by the guy itself. It can be obtained it two ways. One you can write articles about the startups-- You can tell how and what related to a startup. You write those essays, publish in your blogs or somewhere else but post the link in the comments below the topic and you can stand to win a book for free or else if you just write about this scheme in any blog also you can win it if you are lucky. Go to this page and check it.. http://startups.in/India/story.php?title=Get-Art--Start-free-Autographed-by-Guy-Kawasaki

You can read the review of the book at
http://www.demop.com/thetedrap/2005/05/book-review-art-of-start-guy-kawasaki.html

visit the blog of kawasaki at blog.guykawasaki.com

All the best!

Looking beyond general search engines--Dont Search and filter but Search on filtered results

I dont know how many people's first web stop is google for information they want... but I think its a massive proportion of the web users. Remembering url's is almost passe now. Just type it into to google and off we go. But the problem with the contemporary search engines is that we have to wade to lot of search results to exactly reach our point, I mean the information we wanted. But in the age of web 2.0 which is all about collaboration, there is a better way of getting the most relevant results. The answer is social bookmarking sites.

Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as Social bookmarking is a web based service to share Internet bookmarks. In this system, while surfing the net if a person comes across a highly interesting or useful topic he can submit the link to the bookmarking site with a tag or a set of tags. Other users can search this links with the set of tags users have submitted and directly going through the whole cycle of searching, reviewing and deciding its usability. In this way he can use his time better and also discover obscure but relevant posts. In this way the site can become more accessible. The next advantage is that it automatically ranks the links on the basis of the number of people submitted this link. If more people like the matter in that link more people will submit it and hence it will become more popular and its rank goes up. Thus the next advantage is that most relevant links will always come at the top and also that the relevance is measured by a human and not a machine and hence it will be more useful to the end user.

It has some disadvantages also.

It is still in infancy as people still have to know about this and submit the link to these type of sites for other people to browse.

The tags with which the pages are labelled are not standard and the user may use his own tags for a link which has been tagged with other label by other person. Hence search may not always produce the right results.

Some people may use this to manipulate the popularity of their site by submitting their url many times to such sites thereby increasing the ranking of the site, even if it doesn't contain the best information on the labelled topic.

But on the whole it is a alternative to the contemporary search engines where the ranking is decided by a non-humans. If this technology matures and good checks are in place to filter out manipulations for traffic then I think it can be more useful and may even race with contemporary search engines.!

Famous social book marking sites are delicious and digg. I have placed links for them after the post. If you find this article useful and informative you can submit it to respective sites.

I have also added the feed options on the site. You can subscribe it via a reader or directly subscribe via e-mail.

Public Sector -- Hahh!

The the decision of AP government to shut down non performing APSRTC depots has come as a shock to all the APSRTC employees. Their arguments for closing down the depots are RTC is already in loss. In order to bring it into profits they have decided to close loss making depots. But the people are realising that it has closed only depots in those areas where the elected members are not of the ruling party. They have pointed out that eventhough geeta reddy's constituency buggaram is also a loss making depot but it is not closed whereas dubbaka where there is no ruling party leader has to face the music.

Eventhough the government has made it clear that only the depot will be closed but the services will not be affected, it cannot be trusted fully. If the buses are not starting from the depot then inevitably they have to come from other depots which are atleast 60kms far from present depot which means timings of the buses will surely change. It would affect the students most who go to the nearest towns to study. If the bus timings change or the buses are completely stopped in the route because only few people are travelling, then obviously students cant go to schools and colleges on time and government will have to take the blame. Again all the depots which are being closed are in rural areas where there is not much traffic and if suddenly the depot is closed and buses in all loss making routes are withdrawn then surely for lot of tribal villages in Adilabad ( in proximity of Utnur depot which is closed) and Khammam( in proximity of Madhira) will suddenly have no means of transport available to them. The effect will not only be on the passengers but also on the people who have indirectly depended on the bus depot for their survival( traders).

But finally the main argument is RTC being a public sector operation, its main aim being providing bus facility to people should not only think about profitability but should also consider the social aspects before closing the depots. It is argued that it should even take the profits from other sources to provide the bus facility to all the people like electricity ( which the govt provides free of cost to farmers). The RTC has to make a study to know the routes in these depots which are profitable. It should run the buses in these routes. It should also get to know the loss making routes and the reasons for that ( whether it is excessive private competion or less travel) and take the decision accordingly( to give an ultimatum to the people to increase the occupancy or to close buses on the route). There was a study of RTC by IIMB last year which was not used. It is high time the government used the reports it prepared for the development of RTC and not take sudden decisions like this without necessary debate

As I write this article I came to know that due to the publicity in teh media and the timely action of the the opppsition parties and the strikes and dharnas done yesterday, the government has gone back on its decision and has stopped closing down of the depots.The silver lining is that it has planned to start new bus depots.!!

Movie Experience

I was very bored by yesterday evening after talking wishing everyone a happy new year and catching up on the phone. I wanted to go to a movie. But there were very few telugu movies which were declared hit which I would have directly gone. Missing them I had to decide which movie to go. My brother said he was not interested in coming to a movie I thought I had to go without a movie when suddenly a friend of my cousin came to our house and asked us to come to a movie. I had the jagapathi babu starrer "Pellaina Kottalo" in my mind. But as people were more interested in going to Annavaram and due to lack of company I also accepted to come to annavaram. I expected that I will get tickets easily because the movie was not a very big hit and people were calling it average at the best. But yesterday being The New Year day, everyone came to a movie and hence it was the black ticketers day out. The were hoarding the tickets very badly. But then the movie was released in four theateres in close proximity and I hoped to get tickets in atleast one of the four. So we drove to theater after theater in hope of tickets only to be disappointed after not getting tickets there. Finally they all agreed to watch Pellaina Kottalo which I initially had in mind. Eventhough I had to wait for my cousins friend outside the theater for first twenty minutes of the movie, I felt my money was well spent after seeing the movie.

It is a romantic movie about the first few months in the life a newly married couple. Jagapathi babu and priyamani have done a very good job. It is a very good break for priyamani. She is cute, modest in sarees very attractive. Madan's style of taking is also very good. He has put all the ingredients to attract the newly married couple and youth to the movie. The movie is about how a newly married couple who are misled by their elders go to the verge of being seperated, how they realise the mistake and enjoy their life together. The comedy track of sunil and venu madhav is good. The music should have been better. The photography is good. On the whole was a good movie to watch.
The best point is that today one of my friends who comes with me in my bus to office recollected his experience of watching annavaram. He said that it was old wine ( he didn't mean old is gold.. what he really meant was stale) in an old bottle. He said he came out of the movie half an hour before it completed. I chuckled saying I missed the movie ticket for good and enjoyed Pellaina kottalo.

A New Year Dawns

Twenty years have passed from the time I was born. From my days of tenth standard, I have made new year resolutions only to break them. But still I make them just to orient my thoughts as to where they are going. There have been lot of thoughts brewing in my mind now I am unable to make up my mind on what to write in the blog. I love solitude and staying alone and whenever I am alone, I day dream of all things I want to be in my life. I have decided to chronicle the thoughts which I get the most so that I can get closer to my purpose in life.

I wish to study in a very reputed university-- I got this thought after reading the novels of Jeffrey Archer, Sidney Sheldon and John Grisham about university life and how great it is. So I want to crack CAT this time so that I can be part of a great institution.

I wish to contribute to the society. I want to make people realise the importance of education and how our perspective develops after good education. I want to make people question atleast the most blatant frauds and deceptions in the society. I still haven't thought out a way of doing this.

Again blame it on the novels I read I want to be very very rich only to roam around the world to desired places as and when I think of them. For this I want to be financially independent and to have other means of income than the regular salary I get monthly.

Next thought is to be more understanding of people and be truthful to the maxim - "A friend in need is friend indeed". To be frank, I love being alone. I dont know why but I have never completely opened up to people except to a very few. Hence I want to be more open and more helpful to people in my daily life. On the whole in the end what matters is

" You are rich or poor in life by

Smiles around you..
People you are with..
Friends you make..
Ideas you have..
Dreams you chase...
And the love you spread.."

I have been dreaming about these things from my childhood. I want to make better progress on each of these spheres this year and this is the place where I observe my progress.

"Every morning as we wake up we have two choices:
1. To go back to sleep and dream
2. To get up and chase the dreams."

I have slept for long .. Now its time for me to wake up and chase my dreams.. Wish you all a very happy 2007.

My most visited sites in 2006.

http://google.co.in

As for most of the people this is my the default page on the internet. What is new this year is that I have customized my home page to include the rss feeds from the blogs that I frequent,a crossword puzzle, gmail and some photos which keep scrolling. This is the first thing I visit daily.
http://news.google.com

This is the place I visit for the latest breaking national and international news. I used to visit it more frequently but now the news is not getting updated in realtime.Now I mostly use rediff for news
http://mail.yahoo.com

Even after lot of mail services launched, none has made me leave yahoo mail completely. This year it launched a new outlook type reading pane interface which made me hook to it completely.
http://orkut.com

I joined this in febrauary 2006. This is a place where I keep in touch with my friends without really chatting or talking but just by reading their scraps. I fell in love with the orkut communities which have given me access to lot of lovely books which I would have never read otherwise.
http://in.rediff.com

This is the best news site for indian news in my opinion. I always spend atleast 15 minutes whenever I visit this site. Cricket is covered well. There are lot of news comments and also inspiring stories. Its rediff bol messenger allows us to send sms to any mobile in india free of cost.
http://news.cnet.com

This has opened my eyes to the world outside and the various blogs that regularly discuss the issues of software and the internet. This is my best find for the year.
http://esnips.com

This is a site I learnt through orkut and I am using it for uploading and downloading various files. I have downloaded all the best sellers from this site. My favourite find of 2006

http://meebo.com

This IM has made possible IM conversations even when lot of companies including mine blocked the IM communication through firewalls. It has also allowed simultaneous communication over two different service provided and hence attracted me very much.
http://wikipedia.org

This is also one site which never loses its popularity. It is the best online encyclopedia in the world and I have used it for numerous searches and sometimes to finish my never ending books by reading the plot from that site