2007 January | mere funde

Lord of the Ring: Ali

17-01-2007

I am not a great fan of Rediff but this headline today is just brilliant.

It is the birthday of the great Muhammad Ali today. Though many would say the Lennox Lewis was a better fighter, the fact remains that Ali could not fight at the peak of his career due to the ban, and he still is regarded as one of the best boxers of all times if not necessarily the best. Also his uncanny knack to remain in news for reasons other than boxing won him many followers.

I have listed a few from his many famous quips below.

“float like a butterfly and sting like a bee”

“Your hands can’t hit what your eyes can’t see”

“I ain’t got no quarrel with those Vietcong”

and “no Vietcong ever called me nigger.”

Here’s to King Ali.

Web2.0 and Manifestos

By: Goyal

15-01-2007

Humor, Philosophy, Tech

Check out the Devil’s Dictionary and it’s definition of Web2.0. Pretty hilarious stuff out there. Particularly liked the definition of e-mail.

A method of electronic communication, primarily used to inform you that your penis is too small.

Also came across this collection of manifestos and other writings on entrepreneurship on the web at ChangeThis. This is what they say about themselves.

ChangeThis is creating a new kind of media. A form of media that uses existing tools (like PDFs, blogs and the web) to challenge the way ideas are created and spread.

Stuff by people like Hugh MacLeod, of Gaping Void fame, marketing guru Seth Godin, and Guy Kawasaki, a former Apple evangelist and entrepreneur par excellence. Damn nice stuff to read up there. I suggest you sure pay a visit.

Blood Diamond: A review

By: Goyal

13-01-2007

Movies, Review

Almost a month back I had written about 5 movies I wanted to watch over the next few months. I have so far watched both the movies out of the five that have been released in India so far. Babel last week and Blood Diamond today. Babel was brilliant with one very memorable scene in a pub, but that is an old story now.

Blood Diamond, however, is a different sort of a movie. A movie that shakes you to your core and at parts you definitely feel depressed. However, as the movie progresses a sense of something good coming out of the whole thing starts building up in you. The movie is based on illegal African diamond trade that was used to finance Civil Wars in Angola and Sierra Leone. The diamond trade caused so much killings and blood shed that these were actually called blood diamonds.

The movie has so much blood shed that it is easy for everyone to digest it. You realise that such things did happen in the past and despite several UN resolutions things might not have totally stopped. There is a scene where Solomon (Djimon Honsou) says that he understands the greed of white men, but what he does not understand is how his own people can do all that to themselves. I think that he is bang on. The other scene is where Danny (Leonardo DiCaprio) tries to explain why he is what he is to Maddy (Jennifer Connelly).

DiCaprio is absolutely brilliant and I think he has improved with leaps and bounds with each movie as an actor. If he was good in Departed, he is awesome here. Djimon also plays the part of Solomon Vandy to perfection. However, Jennifer is under utilised in the movie and her part under developed.

All said and done Blood Diamond is a fabulous movie and highly recommended by me. The quote of the movie, and the only scene where you can manage a smile:

I hope they do not find oil here. Things can get really bad then.

Nature abhors purity

By: Goyal

12-01-2007

Philosophy

From Waiter Rant, a blog I love reading:

Outside my window it’s raining a hard cold rain. I feel sorry for the garbage men. I remember reading somewhere that rain droplets condense around particles of dust high in the atmosphere. No dust, no rain. No rain, no nothing.

I smile to myself. Sometimes you need a little dirt in order to live.

Two lines I like here. First, “…you need a little dirt in order to live” and second about the rain, “Outside my window it’s raining a hard cold rain“. I have always wondered how rain is soothing at times and at times harsh. Wierd, how words modify the same thing to represent two totally opposite emotions.

Cisco blogs about iPhone!!

By: Goyal

11-01-2007

Blogging, Business, Tech

Cisco has gone public with details of the iPhone deal with Apple Inc and seems to have made a good point for itself. This information comes directly from Mark Chandler, Cisco’s SVP and General Counsel. Also this comes on a coporate blog of Cisco which goes a long way to show the power blogging has in today’s world and how companies use it to manage its public relations. The post has excited a lot of bloggers and has won Cisco brownie points with them. Also if you read the post, it does blame Apple, but very subtly and in a corporate fashion, not a big deal coming from a senior counsel.

Also during negotiations with a certain vendor a few days ago the sales personnel there directed me to their corporate website for more information on their product. Way to go!! How I wish some people would listen.

I did some searching on this tussel myself this morning and summarised below are my findings.

The interesting thing here is that whereas Cisco (through acquisition of InfoGear) holds the trademark for “computer hardware and software for providing integrated telephone communication with computerized global information networks” (S.No. 75076573), Apple (through Ocean Telecom Services) holds the trademark for “handheld and mobile digital electronic devices…” and “hand-held unit for playing electronic games” (S.No. 77007808).

If you actually check out the description the Apple trademark is more specific to hand held mobile devices and it is not difficult to see why Apple is not too concerned about trademark infringement.

APPLE vs RIM vs Palm

By: Goyal

10-01-2007

Tech

The graph below from Google Finance actually does say it all about the impact (just the announcement of) iPhone has had on the traditional players in the domain!! I can’t want to see how these players bounce back and how hard Apple comes after them.

Also interesting to see will be how Apple will name the product iPhone, which has been trademarked by CISCO.

One thing is for sure, the customer is gonna be the king in the end with prices tumbling and improved services.

I need a holiday

By: Goyal

10-01-2007

Music

Ojas made me listen to this song today. All I can think of now is

I may take a holiday in Spain
Leave my wings behind me
Drink my worries down the drain
And fly away to somewhere new

I suggest you get hold of the song and listen to it. Meanwhile, check out this piece at Dextrous Doings, and the quote that follows. Nice one. More here.

No iPod for me!

By: Goyal

10-01-2007

Tech

I have given up all ideas of buying an iPod or a funky new phone. No Sir. Steve Jobs has done it again and with style. Apple stocks went north and RIM (Blackberry) and Palm (Treo) went south.

The biggest vaporware of recent years has come to life at MacWorld 2007 yesterday and I am all over it. I am gonna wait for the swanky new iPhone, now that they have finally launched it.

The specs are as follows:

3.5-inch touch-screen
11.6mm thick
2MP camera
Proximity Sensor
Accelerometer
Ambient light sensors
Quad-band GSM/EDGE + WiFi
Bluetooth 2.0
Battery life of 16 hours for audio and 5 hours for actual phone use.

So all you tech lovers brace on and wait for the next revolution. Though I will have to sadly wait for the thing to be launched in India and to be supported by some carrier (which I hope is Airtel), I am gonna wait. It is being launched in the US in June ’07. I hope it comes to India by June ’08. Till then my Nokia phone should work.

CSS: The Definitive Guide

By: Goyal

07-01-2007

Books, Review, Tech

CSS is the de-facto standard of web styling and is used to enhance the presentation of markup languages. Web designers everywhere use it to improve accessibility and maintain consistency amongst pages.

CSS: The Definitive Guide – Eric A. Meyer is an excellent place to begin learning about CSS. All you require to have is a beginner’s knowledge of HTML and you are ready to go. Meyer is a well known web design consultant, author and an expert on CSS.

Meyer starts from the basics of cascade and inheritance and drills into details of not only how but also why of almost all topics. You would find details of how and why even on oft ignored topics as font and colour units used. The reader is not bored with details of obsolete or proprietary CSS properties. Instead, Meyer focuses only on properties (CSS2 and standard CSS2.1) which are supported by most web browsers and are actually in use today.

The related properties are grouped together into separate chapters and they are well organized. For example, the chapter on font properties is followed by one on text properties and one visual formatting by a chapter on padding and borders. This makes it easy for the reader to find what he is looking for.

A couple of interesting chapters on UI styles and non-screen media complete an exhaustive and informative book. This is followed by an appendix of various CSS properties references that you will find yourself going back to again and again.

The book lacks only two things. Colour pages and problem solving. The book tells you about floating and positioning but does not tell how to use it to create a two column layout. Nevertheless, it is a very informative and useful book. Though not “definitive” it is certainly a great book for anyone, right from experienced users to complete novices.

Disclaimer: I was provided the book for review by O’Reilly Media.

Google Docs Rocks!

By: Goyal

07-01-2007

Review, Tech

Introduction

First trial of the Google Docs . Seems to be working perfectly. Only if they allowed a document to be edited in the print layout format. That would allow more control over the formatting and see exactly what the final print would look like, right when you are working on the document.

Points I like about it:

Clean and neat interface, no cluttered tool bar
Ability to export as PDF
All MS Word short cuts work as they should
Collaboration option
Inserting comments, symbols and tables
Of course, the Google tag

Points I dislike about it:

Cannot be used on a slow Internet connection (like the one I have at home)
No print layout
No options of inserting tables

Overall I think that the product is a sure shot winner. I am very pleased with the final product. Google, keep rocking guys!! Oh, by the way, this post was composed directly from within Google Docs and from my home. One oddity however, when I posted it from Google Docs (Writely) it was posted on my blog with a time stamp of tomorrow (Jan 08) and after 4 hours of posting it.

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Comments

Vijit Jain: My thoughts exactly – they should have automatically created/suggested a circle of people already...
Ojas Sabnis: I agree with most points Goyal and I am also mighty pissed with the loss of sharing feature. I hardly...
Sumit: We have developed the habit of being “politically correct”. Everybody accuses Modi for Godhra...
Ojas: Anything that has story telling in it must have a mention of the greatest (or worst) storyteller of the...
Teanju: Thanks, All awesome

— mere funde

Lord of the Ring: Ali

Web2.0 and Manifestos

Blood Diamond: A review

Nature abhors purity

Cisco blogs about iPhone!!

APPLE vs RIM vs Palm

I need a holiday

No iPod for me!

CSS: The Definitive Guide

Google Docs Rocks!

Introduction

Points I like about it:

Points I dislike about it:

Twitter

Interesting!!

Comments