Please make my blog popular

There I am again at my wits. After cajoling/coercing some folks into reading my blog – I realized that this will not work in the long run - so went seeking for some tips as to what will make others interested in my blog . I very well understand that generating content daily is an uphill task nevertheless took it as a challenge not sure till what time this journey will last. Still on the subject of the feedback – the blog should be a bit more personal than what I have said so far. This made me thinking.

I personally feel that we all lead at least two lives. One is the our innermost self with all the deep dark secrets, those weakness smartly tucked away - you know what I mean. The other self is what is projected to the outside world – the personality what consciously or unconsciously we keep modelling both of the very core to our existence balancing out each other in the normal course with each part giving and deriving strength from each other.


Coming back ( you might have guessed by now – like to give sermons at the drop of the hat ) - what do I write on my personal front – as mentioned earlier the personality to the outside world is fairly known and folks have their own opinion so what could be more interesting now - the best I can do now ? there are enough internal turmoil to write about ; those seemingly ludicrous monents of high - Already getting this knotty feeling in my gut. Or do I write about things which make me weak in my knees , those days about feeling down and out ( for no reason ). What will the folks think - pour souls who have been kind of forced into reading through this. Am I exposing my self ? for example Can I write that my current job is getting boring and need a change -- did I spill the beans ? Will people take advantage ? What do I do ? where do I go ? Unwitttingly seem to have opened a pandora's box.

Inviting some feedback ....

MapmyIndia.com - worth visiting once

I happen to stumble on this website called mapmyindia.com some time back - it offers very good directions from one place to another. Considering that there are hardly any good websites in India which offers proper directions - this comes as a boon. Some of the features are really liked are

1. The ability to zoom in and zoom out
2. Good search facility - you can put in a free text and the website does the rest for you
3. Fairly fast - does not take much time to load particularly when zooming in and out
4. Simple UI
5. and the best part that it is still free at least for the direction search - for detailed maps the charges here I think are unreasonable similar to mapsofindia
6. elocation has the potential to become a hit - this is similar to wikimaps where users can put tags to identify their own location
7. For the person on the move - it has a solution which can be accessed on the mobile for a fee

We still don't have very good map related websites which are rich both in content and feel . Nevertheless I feel mapmyindia is a good start.

Mid life crisis - Article in Times of India

Times of India has sometimes very interesting articles - this one caught my eye recently. It has some very interesting observations though like other articles in TOI doesn't probe the depths of the subject. In spite of that it made me think - where are we heading and how many of really give a thought of what actually we want to do of our lives ( including me ) - its just about living a day as it comes probably too much into the present. This is in my opinion affecting the Indian youth more than their counterparts in other countries. Just re-live what you around bustling malls , cramped roads with cars , un limited job opportunities multiplexes going house full with shocker of movies ( unmindful of the ticket price ) there is no end to what can be achieved. Pick up any pink paper and see the stats. We never had it so good and in spite of all this there is an uneasy sense of disbelief. What our fathers achieved in a life time - can be achieved by the time you reach your forties . There is growing number of people who retire before 40 - then the big question " NOW WHAT".

Though I had a different thought when started to write - totally got veered off the subject and had to end it abruptly. More on this to come...




http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=VE9JQkcvMjAwNi8xMS8xMyNBcjAwNzAw&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom

How to be a good writer ? - Part 1

I have always wondered how good some people write. The clarity of thought which is mapped into very appropriate sentences with the correct semantics conveying everything what needs to be conveyed in the most appropriate manner you think. Though not a voracious reader myself but except reading 3 newspapers daily and couple of magazines - I have noticed that good authors have great mastery not only on their subject but also on the flow of words.

What it takes to be good writer ? I am have been not able to find suitable answers . Is it an inherent talent or a skill that can be acquired. What does an average bloke like me do to able to write well. Another problem is what do I mean by "write well ". I dont intend to ac hive the greatness of Salman Rushdie ( read his books to believe ) or even Sri Aurobindo ( his thoughts are tooo profound for a moron like me ) , not counting the several people who have mastered this art in their respective fields. The qualities I like a good write up are

• Lucid - not much of a jargon ( I mean you are not writing a book for a medical student )
• Properly structured - This problem is rampant - you suddenly find articles ending without even a summary
• Binds the reader - I admire the novelists here - how they are able to get the reader hooked on 100s of pages through the plot mostly in case of fiction.(lots of them ) The challenge increases manifold in case of non-fiction thesis ( lots of these new age writers - paul coelho et all - they have been hugely successful - I have my doubts how many people have actually realised the potential)
• Grammer - Anyone if has come till this point reading this post will agree me with what I mean - Bad grammer or which is absent. You would hardly find wrong grammer in good write ups. ( Anyways please exclude Times of India - the quality here is something not worth spending time on - I have see some really bad instances for a national newspaper - Kudos to The Hindu)
• More to come ..

Even after having some insights on what could be a great write up - I still fail to measure up . I had once asked a someone how do cultivate this trait . He gave me just one advice - Keep writing what ever you can and atleast 500 hundred words a day.

The inspiration is this blog - and guinea pig - You " welcome to my blog"

The story doesnt stop here ... more to come . This is the age of sequels and I have planned one for this post already.

If you have any tips to offer - send them to me

Search engines - Conundrum

I have been amazed by the results of any query on a web search engine. Typically the number of search results displayed by the search engines run into several million except if the search criteria is very narrow. I have always wondered what is the relevance of giving out that huge number of results when hardly any user goes beyond the third page to check - as anything beyond will be anyways irrelevant for the search criteria. The usual habit - go and refine the search criteria.

Then why so much computing power is spent in giving out these many results which will hardly ever be used ? The rise of google has been amazing considering what I have enumerated - just imagine the market cap of 150 Billion USD in a business model where the users still dont pay for use of its services. In my opinion if the search engines devote all their algorithms to display the correct match in the first 3 pages - half the work is done.

Google has become part of our every day lives its hard to imagine a day without it. Terms like "googling" , " did you google " are part of our normal conversations. Everyone has a gmail account - most of the ideas people share these days are of Gmail rather than yahoo and hotmail. No wonder to counter the onslaught hotmail has increased the mailbox size to I GB.

A small tid bit - If you try and search the word "search" in google and yahoo the results are surprising - try it out.

Communities Web 2.0

There is a rush to create properties on the web targeting communities. The successful buy outs of Myspace and Youtube reflects the bullishness and optimism of the larger players. Even Microsoft has gone and record to say that their new MP3 player ZUNE will have the certain features of sharing files across communities which currently Ipod doesnt posses. In my opinion the power of connecting to another user or the early seeds of the benefits of online communities was displayed by now defunct P2P sharing website Napster. Universities and Internet service providers actually blocked the Napster as it was clogging their network. I am not sure of the statistics but it was awesome - I have had a first hand experience had nearly downloaded 1 GB. As part of the evolution of communities in the days of Napster - the user did not care who he or she was connecting to till the song/file was available as a download. In the current scenario its more of bonding , finding the long lost friend , creating a virtual world around yourself. Its very difficult to predict the emerging trend. Increasing users are wanting to log out of different community networks as it is invading the privacy, abuse of photographs, malicious scraps ...oops anyway its a scrap etc. Where are we headed .... It will be an interesting space to watch with so much money being bet on how the online communities will behave ..... Google as usual is stealing a march over its rivals. Though yahoo was an early starter but some how seems to loose that edge.

First day at the blog

I have been thinking .hhmmmmm about creating my blog for quite some time .. its like one of those decisions you keep thinking without acting - some body called it procastination. Now with a lot of effort - started to do something about my blog .. let see how it goes and if does the power of procastination takes me over..