Father and son...

I was reading the blogs to catch up on "The day after iPhone launch" buzz, when I came across this blog from Thomas Hawk, the CEO of Zooomr. One piece that struck me in that blog was the following paragraph:

Hanging out with Robert and Patrick Scoble. Two of the best people you'll ever know. What an amazing experience for a father and son to have together. You should read Robert's quick recap of the event. What a great thing for a father to do with his son. Patrick was so proud to be #1 in line. They made a big deal about it when they let him into the store first. That's a memory that he'll have the rest of his life. What a great dad to make that happen.

I am not sure how Patrick Scoble feels about this but I feel that Robert Scoble has done something to his son which not many dads would even dream of doing. Think of spending 36 hours in a line with your son, who BTW is just 13 years old, to get an iPhone. That iPhone may become useless in another 2-3 years but the memory of that 36 hours will be there forever. Whatever maybe the motivation for Robert to spend 36 hours outside the store, but the thought of sharing those moments with his son was just wonderful.

As I was reading that piece, I was reminded of this beautiful song from Harry Chapin. In this time and age, every moment you spend with your kid is to be treasured. It may not be a big deal for the father but it makes a big difference in that child's life.

Robert, you made a big difference in Patrick's life in those 36 hours....

The iPhone experience

I cannot believe myself that I am posting another blog about iPhone. I happened to be watching the live feed of people waiting outside the Palo Alto Apple store on Zooomr TV and I could feel the excitement and a sense of "I am going to be one of the first to make history in owning an iPhone" among the crowd. I also felt that it is the experience that counts more than the actual purchase of the iPhone. Folks like Scoble have been waiting in line since 9.30AM on Thursday for buying an iPhone at 6PM Friday and I can guarantee that he would have gotten more PR in this 36 hours than in the last 36 weeks. It was an excellent platform to pitch portals like Zooomr, Ustream.tv, Justin.tv, Digg, Pownce and many other startups that are into social networking and those that support the social networking space. I could see them distribute T-shirts, hats and jackets for their PR campaign and made sure that their company was recognized for it.
Ustream.tv also took this opportunity to drive traffic to their site by doing two things. First, they hosted the live show of the Apple store line in Palo Alto and second, they lured new users to sign up by giving away an iPhone for a lucky one signing up before 6PM on Friday, July 29, 2007. They really used this event to bring their company to mainstream audience. Great job guys!!!.
I am still not convinced that this phone is for me. For one, it is tightly integrated with iTunes which I hate and everything in it is proprietary. I am sure I would be blogging more about this.

iPhone releasing today...

The much hyped about iPhone is releasing today at 6PM nationwide. People have camped out since yesterday morning outside the Apple store and are using live streaming video technologies like Ustream.tv and Kyte.tv to show the world their perseverance. Bloggers like Robert Scoble along with his son is camped outside the Palo Alto store and is broadcasting his ordeal live here. Zooomr CEO Thomas Hawk and his team is broadcasting it here. There are people camped outside the stores at SFO, NYC and Chicago to be the leaders in the pack to hold an iPhone.
I for one, never really understood what all this hype is about iPhone. I purposefully did not put up a picture of iPhone, which I normally do when I write about a new product. I have nothing against Apple products. I always thought they had an excellent design team and that's about it. I can get the same meat in Apple's product, in most cases more meat in other similar products from other vendors for a price that is usually less than half of what Apple sells its products for. iPod and iShuffle are classic examples. I still do not own one of them and probably never will. The same goes for iPhone also. AT&T and Apple are trying to squeeze out every last bit of curiosity that they could get from those people waiting in line for the iPhones and the million others who are waiting for the next version. $600 with a 2years contract and a phone that does not have a physical keyboard and one that I cannot use with other SIM cards when I travel overseas? Why would anyone in their right mind would want to plunk down so much for such a tightly controlled product. Well, as long as there are those million plus people eagerly waiting for such a product, companies like Apple and AT&T will thrive.
Oh!! By the way, Apple did piss of Stephen Colbert. Here is his review of iPhone..

T-Mobile Hotspot@Home service

A lot has been reviewed about this service here, here and here and in many more blogs and forums. This is the first of its kind in the US and to be honest, I am pretty excited about this. If Cingular had this service, I would have subscribed for it without a second thought. I wanted to find out what the cost would be if I were to sign up for it today and it was not very expensive for such a "first of its kind" service. Total initial cost would be $50(for the phone) and Linksys wireless router is free after a mail-in rebate. This makes it very affordable for the features and the Nokia phone that comes with the plan is an international tri-band phone. The minimum monthly plan should be $39.99 plus a $9.99 for the hotspot@home service.
I look at this as a desperate attempt to get back the customers that T-mobile lost to Cingular. If they are ready to pay up my early contract termination fee with Cingular, I may even consider switching back to T-mobile. For now, I can only hope that Cingular comes out with such a service soon.

Drive Speed limit day on Friday 06/28/2007

Just like spare the air days, there is a new initiative by the San Jose Mercury News Roadshow host Gary Richards to designate this Friday 06/28/2007 as the Drive Speed Limit Day. I think this is a great initiative and those driving on Friday, please stick to 65mph. Lets see if it makes a difference in driving as well as the number of accidents on bay area freeways. Given the gas prices these days, it will not only save precious life but also our environment.

Google Desktop for Linux

Google announced the availability of Google Desktop for Linux yesterday(06/27/07). I have been waiting for this since my move to Ubuntu couple of months back. This is one of many Google's products that I have come to love and I am looking forward to see its capabilities on my Linux OS. I am especially curious to find out how it would search for man pages and how easy would it be for me to search for options in my Linux commands that I keep looking for all the time.
I am planning to install it by this weekend and give it a go. Will post for some interesting finds in it. I am still waiting for Google to come out with a Linux version of their Google talk gadget.

Limited beta for Windows Live folders

Another online file storage/sharing technology and this time it is from our Redmond friends. Windows live folders is the latest entrant into this space with some cool features. The first one, which I love is the integration with the Windows live account. I can sign in with my hotmail account and so one less password to remember. It also gives you ability to make the files personal, or share it with just your friends or to the whole world. I am yet to find out the ease of embedding links of my docs and pictures in emails and documents and based on reviews so far, it seems to working as expected.

Update 1: Just came to know that not everyone was able to get into this beta program. I logged in with my hotmail account and I was able to get in just fine. Looks like I am one of their pre-defined beta customer. Not sure what criteria is being used to select the beta users.

Guatemala 6.8 Earthquake

A 6.8 magnitude earthquake just struck off the shore of Guatemala as per this report. The casualties are yet to be determined. The epicenter was supposedly 40 miles deep and so the effect was not as bad as it should have been. The force of nature gets revealed from time to time with such disasters.

Google Reader blanks out on me...

This is the screen I get when I log into my google reader. I was reading reports about Google reader feeds getting erased and then restored for many users. Looks like its my turn now. Hopefully I will get my feeds back. But I did take a backup of my feeds just in case it decided to go south on me.

Update 1: I was briefly able to open my Reader on IE but I was not able to use any of the shortcut keys to browse through my feeds. I refreshed the page and now this is what I get on IE.


Update 2: I am able to read my feeds from my iGoogle page. But not a very intuitive interface for someone who is so used to using the k,j,p,n and Shift+s keys in Reader.

High school graduation - A view from the stand...

This is my first time attending a high school graduation. The class of 2007 graduated high school and the parents, relatives and friends of the "high school graduates" were beaming with pride. This reminded me of my high school days and how I graduated from my high school. No ceremonies and no celebrations. All the high schoolers were nervously standing near the notice boards waiting for the list to the posted so we could look at our scores in the final exams. Those scores were the deciding factor of our life and every eye was strained at the door through which this attendant would come through and stick the long sheet of paper on the notice board. The parents of the high schoolers would be nervously waiting near their vehicles for their kid to make them proud with a good score.
I was told that the kids here go through practice runs of their graduation ceremonies. The "graduation walk" was supposed to be the momentous moment(hmm.. nice phrase) of a high schooler. The walk that we took from the notice board to our parents was our graduation walk and the proudest walk ever a high schooler would have taken in his/her entire life. Here, I could see the parents waiting in the stands cheering for their kid when he/she takes their graduation walk. Cameras flashing, tapes rolling and horns blaring, the kids are given a farewell that they would remember forever.
The ceremony starts of with a welcome note, a graduation speech and a farewell address my students holding various positions in their class. Then comes the graduation walk. The grand finale is the students lining up and throwing up their hats in the air all at once which proclaims that they are now graduates and are ready to take on the world without their "hat". That "hat" was the protective shield that the schools and parents had provided them for the past 16 years and now they are ready to take on the world. I did see some kids pick up their hat after it fell to the ground. I wonder what that means.
All this left me wondering on how many of these kids really understand how lucky they are to be in such a nurtured community where every milestones in their life is celebrated with galore. I for one never had that celebration even when I graduated college since it was not a tradition to hold such graduation ceremonies then. I am not sure if it is still. I only wish that every kid who took that walk that evening turn out successful in their life.

For the past 4 months..

The following kept this devil's mind occupied...

1. Ubuntu
2. Google Reader Feeds
3. A wedding
4. 2 trips to Mumbai
5. Work
6. My Canon 30D
7. Wine
8. Allergies
9. Crazy ideas
10. My better half

Switched to Ubuntu..

Yes. It is official that I have switched to Ubuntu as a de-facto OS on my home computer. I have to thank my wife for it since she was the force behind it. She managed to infect the machine with some malware which refused to let go of my machine. I got so frustrated trying to clean it up, I decided to ditch Windows and move to Linux. This happened about couple of months ago before Dell decided to adopt Ubuntu for its Linux line of desktops. During that time, I had heard quite a bit about Ubuntu but being a big fan of Fedora, I was a little hesitant to try it out. But curiosity got the better of me and I decided to go for Ubuntu. My first impression was astounding. I popped in the CD and it loaded some binaries into memory and boom, I was presented with a desktop to play around and get accustomed to the OS. It even recognized my wireless D-link PCMCIA card and installed the driver for it and I was able to get on the Internter within 2 minutes of popping in the Ubuntu CD. The Windows OS is still there on my machine and I can revert to it if I wanted to. But I decided to go for a clean install of Ubuntu and completely wiped out Windows from it.
Without boring you with further details of my encounter with Ubuntu, I wanted to say that my wife was not very thrilled with the interface at the beginning. But then she brought this on to herself. Atleast, that is what I have been telling her so far. But she got used to it and she is able to do most of the stuff as before. One thing she could not do is to infect this with malware as before and I do not think she is too concerned about it now.
It has been 2 months now and it has been working great so far. A few kinks here and there and few websites not working properly since they are written in ASP(Morons!!!) but other than that, it has been a wonderful experience with Ubuntu. The ease with which it installs and the options available to play around is worth pointing out. A few neat applications I have come across for Ubuntu will be discussed in detail in a later blog.

After a long Hiatus, I am back with Google Reader and Stock photography...

I do not have a reason for my long hiatus. I can attribute it to a variety of things beginning with laziness, time management, guilt and so on. I am not going to delve into the reasons now and I just wanted to say that I am happy to be back in my blogging world. During this time, I was keeping up on my daily dose of feeds using my Google Reader account. Now with the introduction of its off-line capabilities, I am even more addicted to it.
I have been contemplating to convert this to a technology blog but then decided against it. This blog has got a tradition and I do not want to change it. But going forward this will contain many technology updates that I come across and which I feel are cool. It will still be my space and will get to decide what goes into this. Hmm.. Now that makes me feel good.
I am also in the process of setting up a Photo blog. I started off with some sites like Aminus3 but did not like the interface. Lately, a photo sharing site called Zooomr has been in the news quite a bit and I also came to know that they are into stock photography. I tried registering for an account just after the site came up from a week long downtime but was never able to register. The site was supposed to send me an email to authenticate my account and it has been 4 days since I created my account and I still have not received authentication email. It is not letting me create another account also with the same email ID and I do not want to use another email ID. So now I am debating if I should follow-up on this or not.
Coming back to Stock photography, I have been following up on some websites like iStockphoto which has been into Stock Photography for quite some time now. I also went through their registration process (which is quite lengthy) and in order to become a member, you need to take a test and qualify your photography skills by uploading 3 of your sample pictures and based on the quality of those pictures, you will be offered a membership. I am not sure how many people qualify, but I was able to. I can now start to build my stock photo portfolio. Now that is going to take me a while. Meanwhile, I am going to follow-up my Zooomr account to see if they can activate my account.