06.27.09
Indie film festival in Bangalore today
BRTFF
Indie film festival in Bangalore today – coverage in ‘Downtown’ edition of ‘Bangalore Times’ today.
More details at – http://tr.im/brtff
06.25.09
Seminar on “Future of e-Access” by Google India and Rediff.com heads
I attended a seminar on “Future of e-Access” organized by ISIM
(International School of Information Management) as a part of their InfoQuiz ’07 last year. What attracted me to the seminar was eminent speakers from the industry like Dr.Prasad Ram (Centre Head, Google India), Ajit Balakrishnan (Founder & CEO, Rediff.com) and Deependra Moitra (Capital Analyst). I was a little disappointed that this was not like a discussion conclave where they could field our questions and there could be interesting arguments and counter-arguments. But it was interesting to get viewpoints of these 3 industry speakers on the e-Access phenomenon.
First to go was Dr.Prasad Ram, center Head, Google India. He was also center head for Yahoo India R&D before. He talked about democratizing the web where users are publishers, information access is frictionless and internet is like a computing platform available to all. He talked about how global economy and culture is evolving by creating a confluence of information, providing universal access and demanding new emphasis on information management. What was very interesting apart from the gyaan he gave on Web 2.0 platforms that Google owns (like YouTube, Blogger) is that he shared few of the challenges that Google has with regard to e-Access. Some of the challenges according to him were – Stemming (Google trying to guess the correct combination/spelling of words in case you search a typo), Google News (clustering and presenting the best news items from different sources), Google Scholar (Citation Analysis, Identification of duplicates) and Google Print (OCR Search). Overall it was an interesting session.
Next was Deependra Moitra, who is a Capital Analyst and was till recently with Infosys R&D. He said he viewed the future of e-Access as having two components: Democratization or co-creation and Consumerization of Information. He also said that important themes of e-Access are Information Architecture and Pervasive Computing. He said in future access will be more popular through devices like mobile phones,etc. rather than computers/laptops. He talked about the importance of portability of applications from computer to the mobile phone via GPRS or SMS.
Last but not the least was Ajit Balakrishnan, Founder & CEO, Rediff.com. I was really looking forward to meeting Ajit since a long time as I had once approached him for a project in 2000 which was related to e-Commerce and I planned to meet him up in Mumbai but it didn’t work out. He is also known to be the e-business guru in India so the anticipation for his talk was really high. And he delivered! 
He started with the slide showing Ash-Abhishek wedding and claimed that Rediff first showed that picture within minutes of the wedding ceremony starting; as a rediff user took the picture on his mobile and uploaded it to rediff forums. He talked about how people are going to be the king of content and how there is a paradigm shift from editorial content to user generated content. He also gave an example of Rediff Q&A which receives close to 15,000 questions per day and each question gets answered by at least 3 other people. So what started out as a controlled activity grew to gigantic proportions once it was left to the users. He also talked about Sukanya Verma (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
suku)’s review on Aishwarya Rai’s “Provoked” which spawned discussions in the discussion board on that article; which themselves were excellently written reviews of the movie. He also talked about how a user provided the following picture of Sania Mirza on a pilgrimage at Haj, rather than professional photographers. In this way, he talked about the power of e-Access with people right now in the form of latest camera-phones, GPRS,etc.
He also talked about how the Wisdom of Crowds is reflected in the search Results. As an example, he did a Rediff image search on Mallika Sherawat and he showed that the search engine gives you related search results in the form of a sentence like this: “Related Images: Aishwarya Rai , Bipasha Basu , Priyanka Chopra , Sania Mirza , Pamela Anderson “. This determines that the search engines learn from the users and suggest new searches based on user patterns. He summed up his session by saying that “e-Access is all about bringing people, information and facilities together in the same place at the same time”.
All ‘n all, a very interesting couple of hours!
05.29.09
My experience with Shopcorn.in, India’s 1st social shopping community
I hate shopping! In a very famous incident, I went to the first shop on commercial street (shopper’s paradise in Bangalore) and picked up the first jeans I saw, for my birthday. Shopping done within 5 minutes and lot of time saved for more interesting stuff like loafing on MG road !
And shopping with Women is like experiencing hell down under (pun intended!) 
I took my cousin Kanu out for shopping when she came to Bangalore once; and she would take hours to shop for just 1 garment. She would check out 5 garments in 5 different shops in 5 different malls before going back to buy the 1st garment in the 1st shop! My body gave up half way through the shopping and I was slumped into waiting room chairs trying to catch forty winks! But her selection for me was always very nice; and helped me get compliments from everyone!
Now Kanu stays in Australia and I miss her company whenever I go out to shop. She is not here to choose the best t-shirt or jeans for me. And of course I have no patience to go for offline shopping. So what to do?
Then I heard of Shopcorn.in, India’s 1st social shopping community. Hmm… interesting concept I thought. Let me try it out for myself.
I mailed Kanu and told her to be online at the same time that I was; and we jointly logged onto community shopping website which promised a very interesting shopping experience.
And did we love it! within minutes of logging and using the video chat feature, we were reviewing the good and bad deals in the deal box. 
Deal box was giving us options to drop in deals from other websites like Rediff, Indiatimes and then evaluate them online via text/audio/video chat. We are kicking the worst deals and picking the best deals among the lot. Loads of fun it was! One particularly bad deal from Indiatimes for a faded jeans for Rs.3000 was promptly kicked by my cousin and she said I’m much rather not buying a pair of jeans. You know how it is with Women and making decisions! If this chat feature was not there, I would have blindly bought it!
Another very interesting feature we liked was the community angle of the entire online shopping experience. As a social media evangelist, I totally believe in the power of crowdsourcing. I rely a lot on blogs and sites like moutshut.com more than advertising websites for information. This community feature actually allows people to create profiles of themselves, write blogs, participate in question & answers section, and even upload videos. How cool is that! We really benefited a lot from this feature failing which we would have fallen prey to a unscrupulous vendor!
The entire online shopping comparison experience would have been bought to a naught if not for the wonderful Tataindicom USB connection which I had for my laptop. I was sitting in the balcony of my highrise building and sipping chai while I was doing this shopping, on a pleasant summer evening. The speeds were so good that it was almost as if I was sitting across with my cousin and chatting away with her about life in general and shopping in particular. I had used Tata Indicom’s earlier USB modem and the speed of Photon Plus is atleast 10 times better than the earlier one. Really impressive! The flexibility offered by USB modem has always helped me in online shopping as in the middle of a long road trip, I have been able to quickly order supplies to reach before I reach my destination. It always helps to stay connected on the entire road trip via a laptop with USB connection!
A very interesting shopping experience indeed and I would recommend the same to anyone who miss shopping with their near and dear ones, just because they stay far away.
Cameron Laird is giving away a Nikon D2H!!!
Cameron Laird is a wonderful commercial and editorial photographer from Townsville, Australia. His photographs are awesome. Check them out here – http://www.cameronlaird.com/ He is giving away one Nikon D2H to a lucky tweeter/blogger. Head to Cameron Laird – Photographer for more info and a chance to win!
03.20.09
Seagate FreeAgent Family and I: Helping me make better movies, faster!
The following is an entry for the Seagate Contest being organized by the Indian Blog and New Media Society.
Like most of you know, I have a filmmaking start-up called Flaunge which is into short films, internet films and documentary films. I try to create these short films whenever I have free time during my weekends and during holidays. Some of the short films we created are Tour of Nilgiris video and Grassroutes video.
As an independent filmmaker, I try and concentrate on making good movies rather than getting bothered with the technical aspects of it. I like to spend more time on the treatment, script and story-boarding of the subject; rather than trying to figure out technical nuiances. Apple hardware (like Macbook) and software (like Final Cut Pro) help me in minimizing the time I take to figure out the technical aspects of filmmaking. But one thing which is missing is secure storage space. Seagate steps in here!
I always shoot on tape as the quality of the video is much better than on the memory card. To transfer this quality onto the video on my PC, I need large amounts of space! 1 hour of video takes up to 15GB of hard disk space! We shoot close to 30 tapes in each of our documentaries, which itself amounts to 450GB! That is enormous! If we don’t have a good storage space, we could be in lot of trouble as its tough to create movies quickly.
Seagate FreeAgent to the rescue! FreeAgent with hard disk capacity of 500GB – 1 TB can help me in storing my invaluable footage and I can also access it very quickly! This helps me in creating my short films within hours, and I can immediately share them through the Internet.
FreeAgent hard disk also scores due to the fact that its very compact and noiseless. It just sits on your table and draws power from the USB itself rather than you rushing to find another power outlet for it. Security is also paramount to FreeAgent hard disks as they provide you with options to encrypt your precious and exclusive content. And wonderful colors too!
It was also heartening to read how Independent filmmakers have used Seagate storage data very effectively for making a cult film! This has really inspired me to create the next Indie block buster and I’m sure Seagate FreeAgent will be by my computer when I do so!
03.10.09
More info on “Tweet to beat – paying $3 per each twitter follower”
Help @tferriss donate $3 per follower to US schools & you could also win mac book pro or airlines ticket! http://tr.im/hccx
02.11.09
Ode to Pink Chaddis (by Swanand Kirkire)
Lyricist/Composer Swanand Kirkire’s glorious ode to the pink chaddis (Dev D style!)
Naa maarenge naare noore,naa todenge haddi.
Hum toh aap ko nazar karenge chatak gulaabi chaddi.
Culture wale vulture sun le. Kheli bahut kabaddi
pichchwaade mein bhar denge hum chatak gulabi chaddi
Tu piyee to dard ki dawaa, hum piye toh daaru.
Teri gaand pe jhannaa ke ek laath na mai kyun maaru?
Burkhe ghunghat pehnaa kar tune deal kya kar di waddi.
Hum toh tujhko pehnayenge chatak gulabi chaddi.
Devdaas ki paro khet mein gaddaa lekar nikal padi.
Teri akal se zyaadaa toh.woh nangi kaali bhains badi,
Sharam toh kar le, nazar jhuka, chhati se lagaa le thuddi.
Tere badan par khoob sajegi chatak gulabi chaddi
Chatak gulabi chaddi jisme ijjat hai hamari rehti.
Chatak gulabi chaddi jisme teri soch hai behti.
Chatak gulabi chaddi jisme sanskruti hamari soti.
Chatak gulabi chaddi ke jisko samjhe tu bapouti.
Khol jehen ka darwaaja, abey baat samajh of fisaddi.
Teri maa ki. Teri behen ki…chatak gulabi chaddi!!!
Devdaas ki paro khet mein gaddaa lekar nikal padi.
Teri sena muth maare hai,sandaason mein khadi khadi.
10.20.08
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