Firefox Release 3 Beta 2

My first impression on typing in the address bar of Mozilla Firefox's new beta release was "Wow! This product is cool."

My Books List

My Movies List

Some Statistics about my Blog

I was curious to check my reader profile right from the time I started blogging. Unfortunately, I didn't have a proper analytics subscription before I started using Google Analytics. So, I have data available only from July 12, 2007. A modest 335 visits and 614 pageviews from 125 cities in 35 countries over 5 months. Well, a decent beginning.

Here's some useful information I managed to get:


Thanks to all my readers out there!!!

Broadband over Power Lines - Now in India

Finally, I'll get to see something which always stirred my curiosity during my engineering days. Broadband over Power Lines (BPL) is making its way into India, according to the news item in Economic Times. The very fact that there are thousands of power lines crisscrossing our country, resting on huge arms of towers gave a ready-to-use infrastructure for carrying data. All that is needed extra - repeaters at regular intervals to boost the data signal and a BPL modem connecting the power point to the computer's LAN port. Simple. No need for laying thousands of miles of underground optic-fibre cables, no need for installing towers, no need even for telephone cables.

However, some concerns will also need to be addressed before BPL is implemented.

• The quality of power is as such poor in India - both in terms of the outage as well as voltage fluctuations. The BPL should not be affected by this, and in turn it should not make the existing poor quality even worse.

• There are two different frequencies (50Hz electricity and UHF for data) mounted on the same line. This may lead to degrading of the already poor power quality. Though this may sound highly impossible to happen, it is something which the generating and distribution stations stations face everyday due to the high use of electronic appliances (computers, CFL etc) which inadvertently feed high frequency signals into the power lines, leading to higher inefficiency in generation and distribution. BPL will only add to this problem
  

If these two points are effectively addressed, then we have hit upon an excellent solution for rapidly enhancing data connectivity across the country without the need for pumping money into new infrastructure.

A Very, Very Crazy Idea

Just a few minutes back (around 7PM IST on 30-Nov-2007) I got an idea. What if I open a spreadsheet file and write down the names of all people we remember? Going forward, I could make different worksheets for different phases of my life, say primary school, high school, college, work etc and list down the names. Then I would go on to find out the level of contact I have with these people, perhaps I'll also put down a few lines on what I thought of them when I was actually in touch with them and what they've become now. This sounds very interesting, and a little frightening too! Let's see how much light this idea sees.

This idea struck me as I was reading in "The Google Story" about how Page thought he'll download the entire internet from his Stanford University lab in 1996. I was also thinking about how I am moving with my friends - in my current and my past life, how some people have entered and exited my heart and mind, how some have stayed longer and more importantly, what I can do with all these thoughts.

Now I want to get back to my book. I don't want this train of thought to disturb my reading train. And this is exactly the reason for this post, so that I will come back here sometime later and see that I was thinking of something which I should try to do.

Udaipur Trip (15-18 Nov)

Blogging from mobile

Came to Chennai on 6th night, a Deepavali surprise for everyone back home. The significance of this post is that it's posted from a mobile using Vodafone's EDGE services. Looks pretty good to me, esp for someone like me who needs unlimited service on a very short term basis. (I pay Rs. 19 whenever i need and will get unlimited browsing for 24 hrs)

Post on my Chennai visit to follow soon after i can get my hands on a proper computer.

Of Renaming Places

Somehow the very concept of renaming a place makes me go, "Urghhhh. Not again! Not this place too!"

The first ever name changes I remember happening during my lifetime were those of Bombay and Madras. There were obviously very valid reasons for these name changes. For one, Bombay was a scary place for foreign investors to come and establish themselves with its possible association with weapons of mass destruction. Madras had its own set of problems. Anywhere outside South India, Madrasi was a derogatory term and Chennaite sounded more hip and fashionable. The politicians thought 'let us bring about a change in this world' and whooosh, we had two brand new cities - Mumbai and Chennai.

Not to be left behind was Calcutta. After all it's also one of the Metropolitan Cities and the Communists' pride would be affected if they didn't follow suit in their homeland. And Calcutta became Kolkata.

As if these were not enough, very recently Bangalore became Bengalooru (you'll have to roll your tounge to pronounce the 'r' in Bengalooru correctly), Mysore became Mysuru. Hosur won't become Hosuru - unfortunately it managed to edge over the Karnataka border into Tamil Nadu during the second (lingual) Indian partition. These name changes make me confused about how to call some items. For one, what do I call a 'Mysore pak' as? (No no, don't think on those lines...)

Back home in Madras, the roads were renamed after famous politicians and popular figures. Mount Road became Anna Salai, Beach Road became Kamarajar Salai, Ponamallee High Road became Periar EVR Salai, Chamiers Road became Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar Road, Nungambakkam High Road became Mahatma Gandhi Salai (yet another MG Road in another city), Lloyds Road became Avvai Shanmugam Salai, Royapettah High Road became Thiru Vi Ka Salai, LB Road became Dr.Muthulakshmi Salai... The list goes on. Imagine my problem if someone asks me the route from Nungambakkam to my home. I would start at explaining at 8.00 PM - "Start from Mahatma Gandhi Salai, go straight down the Avvai Shanmugam Salai, second right will bring you to Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar Salai, and blah blah blah.. There you are, at my home." I look at my watch, it's 8.30 PM. The other person would have dropped dead on the spot.

As if names after dead politicians are not enough, we have the likes of KK Nagar and JJ Nagar named after still very much alive persons. God knows what will happen in another fifty years when additional hundreds of politicians would have ruled the roost. We'll need to start naming each and every house after the politicians, his/her kith & kin, sons & daughters, and (not to be left out) their housemaids and servants.

One thing which the politicians forgot is that 'Old habits die hard'. Kochi remains Cochin, Vadodara remains Baroda, Tiruvananthapuram remains Trivandrum, Puducherry remains Pondicherry, Thoothukudi remains Tuticorin. We still have IIT Bombay and IIT Madras, the Madras Christian College, Madras Music Academy... We still have 'The ET Madras Plus'. We still use Mount Road, Chamiers Road, LB Road, Ponamallee High Road, Royapettah High Road, Nugambakkam High Road, Beach Road... Rajiv Chowk in Delhi (or is it Dilli?) still remains Connaught Place. These politicians and leaders who want to rise to quick fame can never ever change these.

Of course, no one calls a Chennai resident as Chennaite (I still am a Madrasi, and am proud of it).

I take comfort at the mixed history of this renaming bug that bit our leaders, to safely still live in my own IIM Indore Campus in my own F-Block instead of in some Prabhandh Shikar in some Nishchith block. So when some of my poor non-Hindi speaking buddies ask me where I live, I don't have to give a (roughly translated) answer that will come to mean the 'management on a mountain top' campus and get little giggles. Thank God for saving me from this complicated way of explaining things!

The effect of renaming would ultimately be this much...

Before:


After:


Some interesting links:
What's in a name? from The Hindu dated August 05, 2001
The Politics of Name Changes in India from web page of a Ph.D student at UC Berkeley
List of renamed Indian public places from Wikipedia

A Tale of Two Companies - Successful, but starkly different

Think of the new, young, open, innovative kid off the block which is trying to change the way the world looks at internet; Scheming the death of all client-based applications; Aims to make everything right from Office Applications, Photo Editing, Mails, Storage Space (and any other thing that comes to your mind) available online.


Think of the other and you cannot, but smile at its resilience. Highly innovative, came up with radical new ideas and devices (think of GUI, laptop etc) that would have spelled glory - only to be snatched away at the most (in)opportune moment by another (then) rising company. It went through all the pains and all the lows that could ever hit a company to rise again from its own ashes coming up with new, sleek, hot devices that's flooding the world like a virus.


Can't think of a better way to describe these two rising behemoths. I can go on to write a book on these two sometime in the future.

Now, coming to why I sat down to write this post. These two companies are trying to redefine the way computing and communications will happen in the future, each charting its own path to glory (or doom?) that only time will tell. One is all about open source, simplification and the like while the other is about sleek, hip and modern.

I came across two articles today. One was about Gmail coming up with IMAP support to make it available on a client-based system like Thunderbird. (Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client) Google is trying to make its applications more open to increase the user comfort. The other was about how people are defying the block imposed by Steve Jobs on Apple iPhone in a small shop in some remote corner of Mumbai. (Handbag seller takes on Steve Jobs) As Apple tries to apply brakes on the (so called) unauthorised 'opening' of iPhones, people become even more resilient in doing what they are not supposed to do.

An indication of how things will shape up in the future. It's time to wait and watch!

Blog Action Day

Today, I came across a site which plans to unite all bloggers around the globe with the concern for environment in mind. On October 15, every blogger registered in this site will post an article related to the environment. Here is the banner promoting the Blog Action Day.



Personally, I found this concept of uniting people for a common issue (faced every living thing on this planet) very appealing. Right now I'm thinking of a topic on which I can post. Lot of things come to my mind - initiatives in college to ensure that printing paper is not wasted, the rain-water harvesting equipment that every house in Chennai is fitted with in order to save the fast depleting ground water resource, my personal experience of the acute water scarcity that Chennai faced at the turn of the millennium and the subsequent actions taken to resolve this, initiatives taken in my apartments to have a healthy environment and hygienic surroundings and a lot more.

Google's new offerings

Two pretty interesting offerings from Google: Google Presentation and Blogger Play.

My initial thoughts on Google Presentation:

• Google presentation offers very basic presentation options.
• We can just about create a simple presentation having texts and pictures.
• PPT uploads of upto 10 MB allowed, though the presentations we create in Google Presentation cannot be saved in .ppt format
• No slide transitions or animations available.
• Online collaboration and file revision is the greatest advantage this has as of now
  

Overall Google Presentation offers nothing great as of now, except ofcourse the online collaboration tool. However this is bound to change once Google starts offering more features. Hope the addition of Google Presentation helps users move more towards web-based services.

Blogger Play is a simple, but interesting tool which continuously shows the latest pictures that have been uploaded by Blogger users. A never ending slideshow, it's a nice distraction especially when someone is too much tied down to work.

Twitter Add Ons for Firefox

For those of you who can't live a minute without Tweeting, check out the Ludicrous Plugin. This integrates "Post to Twitter" with the Firefox Searchbar. For other Twitter plugins, check out this post on Mashable.com

The Power of Google in T20 World Cup

Google's got it right on time once again. Cricket lovers need to go no farther than the ubiquitous Google Search which they use everyday for everything. Just Google for the match going underway or any other match which has been played in this first edition of T20 World Cup and Voila! You have the match summary right there on the top of the search results.

For eg search for 'Aus vs Zim' (without quotes) and you'll get the match summary.


Searching for an ongoing match gives the latest score updates.

Wow Google. Way to go!

A term break with a difference

I can say that I've successfully completed four terms (results pending) at IIM Indore. This break has been pretty different - field work as a part of a course called Society, Business and Management, FMCG Marketing project work hanging in the air, some change in vision & perspectives and some shopping work to be done here. And above all this I'm at home enjoying the gentle rains and the flashes of lightning in the night. Man, what a break!!

Sony Ericsson W810i - Mobile Review

Finally, here I get the chance to post about something close to my heart: my new mobile phone, Sony Ericsson W810i - my love for the past one month now, and going steady!

I started scouting for a mobile in the Rs. 10K-15K price range a couple of months back. A lot of names flew around – the Nokias, Motorolas, Samsungs and Sony Ericssons. I was fascinated by the extensive range of phones available in this price range. This was my first move to a mobile featuring more than the usual voice and data features and I wanted the best one for the money I’ll be paying. I started doing extensive research on the mobiles. The Univercell website was the reference for comparing the price and featured of the mobiles. In addition, the Mobile-Review site provided a wide coverage of various mobile phones and their features. Check out this site if you want to have a look at a different view about the phone.

My initial shortlist included the following mobiles:

• Nokia : N70, N73
• Motorola : A1200 (Motoming), Moto Rokr
• Samsung : D600, D900i
• Sony Ericsson : K750i, W810i, W830i, W610i

Every person has his/her own reasons for buying a mobile. There is nothing called “the best mobile” in any price range as we have to factor in the competing products. Ultimately the final rationale for selecting a particular mobile over the rest is solely an individual preference. And this is exactly the reason why there are so many products in the market with scores of unique and differentiating features, competing to grab the attention of the unsuspecting customer. To cut the long story short, whatever reasoning I give below is my personal choice made out of my own set of preferences which I try to put as rationally as possible. This need not be the best choice for the whole world, but has worked great for me. Hence I’m putting it.

I’ll first give the reasons for eliminating the mobiles I didn’t want.

The two Nokia models were the first to go out for two reasons. First, I didn’t need a 3G phone as there is no network operator providing the service in India and it’ll take some time before 3G networks are rolled out and the price becomes feasible enough to use the service. Second is the inherent suspicion about the high end Nokia models. This has got to do with many of my friends who used to complain that Nokia phones are slow and hang frequently. Though I don’t like to make generalisations, this piece of news was always running in the back of my mind when I look at Nokia phones. Plus, these two models weren’t the greatest looking on the planet.

Next follows the slide phones. It’s not that I don’t like slide phones as such. In fact, I was too impressed by Samsung D900i and Sony Ericsson W830i. I had to forego W830i because of its poor camera (a 2 megapixel without autofocus). In addition both D900i and W830i had a keypad which didn’t have good reviews for fast typing and usage. This is especially important for me as I need keypads which are fast and easy to use. With heavy heart I had to let go of Samsung D900i, as it looked really great with respect to all the other factors under consideration.

Considering the necessity for a keypad (atleast in the near term) I had to rule out Motoming and Moto Rokr. I was impressed by both these models, especially Motoming for its amazing looks and use. But then, I’m still not into the corporate life and don’t need a mobile with PDA features or one which requires the use of stylus.

Finally, I was left with 3 models, all Sony Ericsson – K750i, W610i and W810i. All the three models have similar features. K750 is a highly successful model – a milestone for Sony Ericsson. However it’s now a piece of history. In place of K750i come W810i and W610i – both walkman phones and great looks. I settle for W810i as the camera has relatively better protection compared to W610i, though the mobile is a little thicker.

W810i

My decision to purchase W810i was partially inspired by my college friend Hariprasad, who bought the same mobile a month before I bought it. This gave me ample time to know how the mobile is performing before deciding to purchase it. The black bar-type phone with orange logo markings and orange display is reason enough for me to fall in love with this mobile at first sight.

My impressions about the phone and its features after one month of usage:

Overall Design

SE W810i is a pretty compact phone with no wastage of space anywhere. The display is big enough for a bar phone. The camera, flash and the speakers are well integrated in the rear. The camera button and the zoom buttons are available on the right, while a customisable play button and the memory slot are available on the left. The integrated port on the bottom and the power button on top complete the overall design. The keypads are soft and very easy to use. The main reason for this is that each number key is designed as a standalone button that makes it easier to feel and use.

Walkman

The phone has excellent playback capabilities. Put on your handsfree and set the equaliser mode to Megabass, that’s it. You cut out the rest of the world and can enjoy music in your own world of eternal bliss. If you are too bored to put on the headphones, simply connect the speakers that come with the package and listen to the same music in a room with the effect of big speakers. The only problem I faced with this phone is the lack of option to jump to a particular section in a song/video being played. This was a nuisance, especially when playing a movie when you may want to go back or forward a few seconds to see a particular scene again.

Camera

The 2 megapixel, autofocus camera provides excellent photos in daylight. Night-time photography is a suspect with the appearance of lots of grains in the image. The phone has a macro mode to take close range shots of small objects and three picture size options. The flash is very weak and is not of much use in dark. It’s more of use as a flashlight in dark to guide you around than as a camera flash. We can take photos of 3 different sizes – small (160x120), medium (640x480) and large (1632x1224). There is no option to turn off the shutter sound (except in silent mode). This is a small nuisance. The video size is very small at 176x144 pixels when the camera can take photos upto 1632x1224 pixels. The camera doesn’t have a protective cover. But this has not created much of a problem as the phone design is such that the possibility of scratches happening is minimal.

Some photos that I took with this camera:

File Transfer

File transfer is one of the notorious things in this mobile. File transfer is possible in 3 options: using USB cable, Bluetooth or plugging the memory card into the computer. I normally prefer Bluetooth file transfer for small files and using memory card directly for large file transfer. The data transfer thought USB cable is painfully slow, though the feature list indicates that the phone supports USB 2.0. The company has provided a memory card reader that can be used to directly transfer data from a PC or laptop to the memory stick. We can remove the memory card without switching off the mobile, which saves a lot of time and energy.

There are many other features which I can comment about. But there are scores of websites available with these information. Hence I’m refraining myself from doing that.

If I were asked to suggest a major change in this mobile, I would like to see the port for the headset separated from the rest. This way the mobile can be used as a walkman when it is being charged or when some file is being transferred. I hope Sony Ericsson would look into this and make changes in the subsequent designs so that this mobile can do complete justice to its role as a walkman phone.

Back from Hibernation

It seems that I resolve to keep my blog updated regularly only to fall back on my resolutions. The two months of Summer Internship hasn't made me any better in this regard. But me being a eternal optimist (and a bad one at it), here comes my fresh resolution with respect to my blog.

The past two-and-a-half months have brought in a hell lot of changes in my life. The way I look at things have undergone a sea change. I got to see a lot more of people, their behaviour and the motivations which lead them to do what they do. I've done so many things, been into so many queer situations and experienced a variety of emotions in these 2 1/2 months that I have enough content to keep my blog alive with something or the other.

I won't shy away from the task I have at hand. This is a God-sent opportunity to revive my lost love for blogging.

As much as I would like to post something now, a factor called laziness has crept in that I can only postpone my blogging duties (if I can call it so) to tomorrow. Procrastination... Ahh, how good it feels!

Atleast I'll put down some of the topics which I will be covering in the coming few days (in no particular order).

• Two months in Delhi/Noida
  
• Sony Ericsson W810i
• Yellagiri Trip
• Sivaji - The BOSS
• Homecoming (back to Planet-I)
• Life at IIM Indore
• Dabbling with Firefox and Blogger
  

I hope this post would be motivating enough to keep me occupied for a few days.

The past two months

It's now exactly two months since I posted anything here. Much as I would have liked to keep this blog as up-to-date as possible, a lot of factors came in the way - laziness being the main culprit. These two months have had a lot of significant events, beginning with the placements here at IIM Indore, the Holi celebrations immediately followed by my birthday, 4 hectic weeks of academics (the most hectic times I've ever had in terms of the enormity of the job that was at hand), going out of touch with some friends, gaining new friends, Ranbhoomi finals (the inter-section sports event of IIM Indore), the end of one year of management course, the separation from friends I knew for one year and the new beginning (Summer Internship) in Noida. This is not the end of the list. Much as I would like to write about each of the above events, it will take me hours to do it and still it wouldn't be complete. Ultimately I won't be able to do justice if I write an incomplete article about any of them.

There are two things I learnt from these two months - the tests that I went through made me realise the importance of home (the place where we can go any time and people who are always there for you) and friends (the nice circle of people who always keep hovering around you, in times of joy and sorrow). Well, just a crude way of defining these two important words, I'll update with a better definition when I get more time.

I finish this post with the hope that the present two months of summer internship (April to June) will make me a better, and more importantly a wiser person.

My New Blog

This is just to 'officially' change my IIM related blogs from http://mareers.blogspot.com/ to http://iimlife.blogspot.com/

Today as I was going through my Blogger Dashboard I found out my long lost blog. Now here was an address which I was lucky to get it (and surprising, considering the fact that this is an id someone would love to have but would be difficult to get). I was in a dilemma whether to keep my old (this) blog or throw it away for the new one. There was a Tamil ad which went something like, 'yaen, rendume irukka koodatha' (why not both)?

So, here I am, proclaiming the arrival of my new blog. I would continue posting about general stuff here and IIM related stuff in the other blog.

The Metro Man of India

There have been quite a few occasions when I had to change my perception about a person or event after getting first-hand information. That happened once when we here at IIM Indore got a chance to interact with Shri. Ranil Wickremasinghe during the course of a guest talk. More recently (February 9, 2007), we had a guest talk by Mr. Sreedharan, India's Metro Man. This talk gave a lot of insight into how the Delhi Metro Rail Project was completed successfully well within the deadline, an unusual feat in India considering the amount of red tapism happening in the Indian bureaucratic system.



The very fact that Mr. Sreedharan has spearheaded the successful implementation of many big Government projects (Konkan Railway and Delhi Metro) after his retirement from Government service shows how being a straightforward person pays in the long run. His achievements even before his retirement is by no standards lower, considering the engineering skills involved.

What's Sreedharan's secret of success? During the course of the talk, he gave a five-point formula which he religiously practises.

• Punctuality

The fact that for every day of delay, the project cost would rise by Rs. 1.6 crores made DMRC employees dedicate their full energy into the project. Use of reverse-time clocks, which indicated the days left to complete each phase of the project acted as a source of constant pressure to always be on the toes. The employees of DMRC also had to be punctual, with the introduction of smart cards to log in/out the employees. This practice rubbed off on the Delhi Metro trains which are at the maximum late by 60 seconds, something unheard of even in metros of developed countries.

• Honesty

Sreedharan pointed out that at no point of time he bowed to the 'pressures' from the Indian bureaucrats. After a point, even the politicians had come to the view that this is a person with whom they can't play politics. In the end, it was a win-win situation for everyone. As another instance of honesty, he mentioned the speed of execution of tenders - the whole process from notification to the opening of bids to the final selection took no more than 5 hours - something which was achievable only due to honesty in work.

• Corporate Structure

For a company, which is a JV between Indian and Delhi Governments, following corporate structure is indeed surprising. DMRC has it's own vision, mission and corporate culture. All it's employees are government servants, but are known for their professionalism. The company as a whole is lean, with a Chairman, MD and few directors at top. The points of inefficiencies - namely peons and clarks are eliminated, save for the top level management. Every week begins with Monday meetings (there is no particular agenda, no minutes of meeting etc) where the targets for the current week is discussed, and ends with a Friday review meeting. All this shows how professional DMRC is.

• Health

As the adage goes "Health is Wealth", Sreedharan was convinced that only if the employees came to work fully fit would it be possible to successfully complete the project on time. By pursuing this, the medical/hospitalisation expenses of the company went down drastically.

• Integrity

What is the net effect of all this? An improvement in traffic speeds in Delhi from 12 to 18 kmph. Reduction in accidents. Clean and efficient mode of transportation. A successful model which even New York is envious of and is trying to emulate. Least hindrance to public - no disruption of water, electricity or telephone line. In the end, it's been a win-win situation for everyone.

There were quite a few questions raised. One question was about an incident which he would have liked to change during the execution of the project. Pat came the reply that he would have loved to have one station named as Connaught Place instead of Rajiv Gandhi Station. There was another question about how he was planning to execute Phase II of the project which has twice the work and half the time as compared to Phase I. His answer about moving beyond the learning curve and assigning the execution of each stretch of the project to different engineer so that the whole project is completed in parallel made good sense.

Sreedharan's future plans? He's chugging along the path of the completion of Phase II of Delhi Metro. DMRC has a long term goal of connecting the New Delhi Airport with the Metro before the 2010 Commonwealth games and an even longer term goal of having a Metro station within 1 km of every Delhi citizen's home by 2021. (A map of the full network in 2021)

I had two questions which somehow I couldn't ask.
One was about the technicalities of the project. Phase I was executed on broad gauge while the remaining phases are to be executed in standard gauge. How an interconnection possible then?
Second, and more important was on the future of DMRC. What is the corporate structure in place which will ensure that DMRC will continue to have a professional structure in place and upheld it's core values even after Mr Sreedharan leaves the organisation? Is DMRC very much dependent on a single person to identify itself with the core values?

MS-Word for posting Blogs? NEVER!!!

The previous post might have been amusing for some people, but had it been successful it'd have made life easier for lazy bums like me. The use of MS-Word for posting into the blog is a waste of time, and risky too.

1. To post pictures into the blog, the URL of image provider is needed. Somehow I couldn't find this address for Blogspot. Some may suggest that pictures can be posted using Picassa, but that's another waste of time. I can post max of 1 picture per blog through Picassa.
2. Thinking myself to be very smart, I just inserted some pictures, some Word Art and some graphs into the Word document assuming that it'll somehow be displayed on the blog. This was an utter failure.
3. Use of special formatting like dotted underline, double strikethrough and special effects like shadow, engrave and emboss seem to work fine in the Word Doc, but not in the final post. However subscripts, superscripts and normal formatting stuffs like bold, italics, highlighting etc were working fine.
4. Special characters like Greek alphabets, sadly were converted to English alphabets.
5. Last, but the most important, posting a blog from MS-Word is very very risky. Anyone can actually monitor and find out the User Name and Password - the data is sent through an unencrypted connection.

Conclusion: The underlying principle of wysiwyg is lost if one uses MS-Word. Add to this the security risks, I wonder why such an option was provided in MS-Word.

And more important, is there a way to post blogs directly from a client application residing on my comp? Not the "Performancing" stuff that comes as an add-on with Firefox. It's too cumbersome. I'm looking for something similar to a Word application from where I'll be able to post whatever I want.

Posting Blog through MS-Word

This is just a post to test if I'm able to post my blog directly from MS-Word. If this works I'll save a lot of time taken to login through www.blogspot.com, entering User Name and Password, and then formatting the stuff etc.

However, I can deem this successful only if I can see the things below.

1.

2.

 

3.

Pack
my
box
with
five
^dozen
_juicy liquor bags.

4.

 

5.

6.

7.

abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

8.

 

Let's check the result in my blog!

CSI Chapter at IIM Indore

Weeks of hard work finally paid off with the successful launch of the Computer Society of India - IIM Indore Student Chapter on February 3, 2007. It all began last year with the enrolment of our senior batch of students into the folds of CSI. The inauguration of the Chapter should technically have taken place last year itself, but somehow it failed to materialise. However, this year, with the renewed dynamism showed by the present 1st year students of Infinit-I - the IT Club of IIM Indore (of which I happened to be a member) along with the guidance from the seniors and faculties, we were able to finally launch the Chapter.

Mr. Lalit Sawhney - CSI President inaugurated the Chapter. Dr. S. P. Parashar - Director of IIM Indore, Mr. Upendra Giri - CEO AstroWix and Dr. M. Scalem - Professor at IIM Indore were present at the inauguration.

The event got national coverage from leading newspapers like Business Line and Hindustan Times, and from some regional newspapers like Dainik Bhaskar and Nai Duniya.

Some snaps from the event...


Chief guests (L to R): Dr. Scalem, Dr. Parashar, Mr. Sawhney, Mr. Giri


Lighting of the traditional lamp


Launch of CSI - IIMI Website

We kicked off the activities of the Chapter with a workshop on Enterprise Project Management along with a live demonstration of Microsoft Project 2003, conducted by Mr. Upendra Giri.


Upendra in action, students in rapt attention

The whole exercise of organising this event was a bittersweet experience for me. The day following the event, we had elections for members of the interest clubs, which I somehow didn't manage to win. However, there were a lot of new experiences for me. This was the first time I'm trying my hand at organising an event. The fact that almost everything went on perfectly, except for some hiccups here and there, made me very happy.

But more than this; even more than the praises that came our way, what I treasured the most was the new bond of friendship that I got to make during the weeks of hardship that I had to go through to make this whole event a grand success.

Is world heading for better days?

Two recent incidents made me sit up and think whether the world is heading for better days.

First was related to the 2008 US Presidential elections. Two nominations from the Democrats - Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Hussein Obama. The former is a definite favourite in this elections and the latter has displayed a rising popularity in recent times. If one of these two gets elected, it'll be history in the making in US. The American citizens have a distinct possibility of electing either their first woman President or the first black (no offence meant here) President.




Second one was the appointment of Raleb Majadele as the first Israeli-Arab in the Israeli cabinet. This is seen as a positive step in bringing proportionate representation for Israeli Arabs, who form about 20% of Israel population, in the cabinet (though as a Minister without a portfolio). However, some section of people feel that Israel has an ulterior motive in appointing an Arab cabinet minister.

Whatever said and done, are these two events an indication of the things to come - a better world in terms of equality and equal opportunities?