I was musing over how popular are India-specific blogging services on Alexa - and here is what I found. The graph below plots RediffBlogs against BlogStreet and BlogPulse. Click on the images to see enlarged versions I have added BlogSteet [in Blue ]and BlogPulse [in Red ] only for comparison because they are pretty unknown services at least in India [BlogStreet is a coranking site cum blog directory (of Indian blogs) while BlogPulse is a blog metrics tracker (not focussed to Indian blogosphere though)] Observe that the traffic of RediffBlogs[in Green ] - is quite comparable to these 'unknown' services. Now I added RediffBlogs competitor O3 [in Cyan ] from Indiatimes.com to the comparison ... Just observe how the scale of the graph changes - BlogStreet, BlogPulse and RediffBlogs , almost vanish when traffic metrics from Indiatimes are plotted. Clearly O3 is way ahead of rediffBlogs - so much so that - if I were to decide the fate of RediffBlogs, I would shut it down! Link to a

I haven't read a more classic piece since days .... Wah Manish - this is a classic post from you .... a sensational serial killer .... Six young girls had been murdered ... with their throats brutally slit open ... the girl had begun to doze in her seat ..... just how naïve and unsuspecting young girls can be..... ... marriage had been transformed into a dead corpse buried deep beneath a pile of painful memories ....  He should have thought of a better reason than that to get rid of me.... GO Read  it  ...

A Very Happy New year to all those who are reading .... 2008 comes along as the stock market soars, the rupee strengthens and people talk all positive about India. It indeed feels good to be in India at times like these, some 3 years after the slogan was raised - India is indeed shining. So in this mood, I allowed myself to fantasize further. We went to the Gateway of India yesterday and I found the place quite clean as compared to my last visit, no pieces of paper thrown away, little dust on the footpath and no horseshit on the streets (due to the Bagghis ). I was surprised - what had happened? I saw a few dustbins around, but people had hardly taken up the habit of using them - they were still throwing stuff on the street. Then what miracle had happened? This was when my eyes fell on the army of cleaners with broomsticks in their hands fervently sweeping the footpath and the roads, and dumping the garbage in dustbins. I immediately recollected that I had found the railway stations

Out of 20 New Year Wish emails that I fired to my former colleagues in the UK (some of whom are now in Australia)- I got "Out of Office" messages from 12 .... the British truly love to be on leave during the festive season .... Something to learn ... to take life easier ... and maintain a work life balance!

A comment on Atanu Dey's blog . “Educate the elite alone so that the unwashed masses will be more easily controlled.” British built a educated class (bureaucrats) to do slave work for them. That worked very well for them. All they needed were dumb slaves who know how to read, write and regurgitate. And they did a terrific job of marketing. The slaves feel good about themselves and brag about it too, like so: “I work for the Indian Civil Services”. Why do we keep blaming the British for the state of our education? The concept of keeping education limited to few coveted 'castes' was preached and practised by Indians long before the British set their foot on this soil. And indeed, the reason why we have not been able to uproot the "flawed macaulian educational system" is because we DO NOT WANT TO. So many among our population still believe in casteist ideas!!

I should not have copied a complete blog post from another blog and pasted it here ... but I simply couldn't resist ... Atanu - please forgive my plagiarising Woman 1: "What is that little trash can on the screen?" Woman 2: "My son says that is called the 'recycle bin'. He tells me when I don't want a Word document anymore and I delete it, it really goes in there." Woman 1: "Why in the recycle thingy? Can't you just erase it?" Woman 2: "Oh no, Word wouldn't work for very long if I did that, I would run out of blank pages." Woman 1: "Why?" Woman 2: "Because it cleans the words off the pages, then sends the blank sheets back to Word so they can be used again. That's why it's called the recycle bin." Source: Atanu Dey on India's Development

I am at a client's office and there is one hot-shot who is shouting (on the phone) to anyone and everyone whom he is talking to - even worse he has kept the door of his cabin open to make the 'heat' felt to everyone outside. To one he says - "Its 10.30 and you are still not in office, when do you think you are going to start working" and then to another he says - "I have heard people walk in sleep, where did you get this habit of sending emails in sleep? What's the sense of sending an email at 12.30 in the night?" I despise such people (and companies) who lay too much stress on timing of work than the work itself. What's the point of hankering around the time one works as far as you get the desired results? Why should a company mandate work timings on its employees - especially in these times when most 'corporate' workers are knowledge workers and virtually everything works 24x7? I am thankful that I don't work for a company like this

There were two articles in the Hindustan Times (Dec 10) which I felt like reacting to. The first one was a very relevant plea for attention towards sensibilities of the disabled . No surprize that that article is written by a Britisher. In India, we have become so used to witnessing misery, poverty and disability that it never strikes our subconscious when disability is used as a comic element in movies. I never felt anything watching the scene in Om Shanti Om which makes fun of a limping character? Some of you may argue that no one is making fun of the disability but rather the character - well I think its a matter of sensibilities. The fact that we find a disabled character funny, clearly signifies we do not feel any pity and definitely no compassion towards the character. I am not surpized, no one in the censor board noticed this as well!! The second article is actually a news item about Maharshtra Knowledge Corp - creating its own version of the Wikipedia. What amazes me is our h

Australian startup Fluc is an innovative new mobile advertising network [where] Users provide Fluc with a profile of their tastes and interests when they sign up for the service, and Fluc uses that information as well as geopositioning data to deliver extremely well targeted ads. I.e., if the GAP knows you're near a mall where they have an anchor store, and they know from your Fluc account that you fit their consumer profile, then they might pay to send you an ad even if your motives for receiving it may be hazy. Instead of going through this complex and extremely expensive 'geopositioning' rechnology - Indian Malls are providing the same service through Bluetooth . Pros - cheap, definitely targeted and users 'opt-in' by enabling their bluetooth connection Cons - Every Mall must set this up independently, If the user  does not make his bluetooth  visible to the mall, the promotion cannot be done (but this service is an opt-in anyway) I suppose I will give full

The first results of the Human Genome project (HGP) have started coming in. Hindustan Times reported in a front page article today that Humans have evolved fastest in the past 5000 years since we separated from our 'parent' chimpanzees - and the rate of evolution is seeding up, also thanks to " the surge in global population ..... since more mutations occur now". The research in specific is not of so much consequence, as is the fact that the genome project has started its data analysis stage and some results have started emerging. Why this is exciting is because the HGP holds the key to several breakthroughs in the field of biomedicine - and probably a permanent cure for several unconquerable diseases like cancer and AIDS. Scientists also predict that when the study of the Human Genome is close to completion - it will lead to development of 'customized medicine" - wherein each person can be given medicines depending upon what would best suit his/ her ana