MyJottingz

I'm sure someone has forwarded you this funny pic sometime, but it's not funny if you actually get laid off that way.
Some unfortunate employees of Radio Shack got this in their email :

"The work force reduction notification is currently in progress," read an e-mail delivered Tuesday morning. "Unfortunately, your position is one that has been eliminated."

Steven suggests that since you do everything online from finding jobs, applying for them, working from home on the internet, so why does your Boss have to see you to fire you.

But even if that's the way things are going, how callous can a company be, do you think people will be ready to work for companies like Radio Shack once they know how they treat their employees?


Tags : email, internet, layoff, corporate culture

The new season of Survivor has drawn criticism because the contestants on it will be divided based on ethinicity. That means blacks, whites, Latinos and Asians in separate groups.

Shakes feels based on stereotypes it is better that there is no Indian group.
Do you agree / disagree with these reasons :

• There would be no fire in the Indian camp for 4 weeks. No one on the Indian team would take the initiative and their would be massive infighting over the "Fire-Making Scheme." Finally a fire will be inadvertantly started when one ofthe trendy young males uses his Parachute brand coconut hair oil as fuel.
• No one would build a shelter. Instead everyone would scurry off to their own corner of the camp.
  
• While the other tribes would initially use local island coconuts to provide sustenance in the early days, the Indian tribe would destroy all their coconuts while doing a puja
• If Deepak Chopra were on the show he would be on the White team
• One of the Indian members would start a protest for an undiscernible reason and proceed to fast for 20 days. This would be his excuse for not having to do work.
  
• One of the female desis would find a way to smuggle her cellphone on the island, only to see that it doesn't get any reception.
• One of male characters, "Anand," would only wear very large white reebok shoes and a dhoti
  
• While trying to pick a tribe leader, several members of the team would choose an Italian woman from the White team.
• The Indian team would never win a challenge. Never.
  
• The Indian team would be the only one that would ask the host if it's possible to vote off more than one of their members at a time
• After the 3rd day the desi camp would be mysteriously littered with paan stains (via)
  

Tags : television, India, culture, survivor

Recently completed one of my tasks on 43things which was to get an orkut invitation.

Orkut is an online community like Friendster and Myspace. What makes it popular is that it is backed by Google. To login you need to have a google account. And like Gmail it is an invitation only group, which means you need to be invited my another member.

That I guess is how you make a membership coveted. When Gmail first came out, it was a cool thing to have a Gmail account because you could not just sign up for it, someone had to invite you.

While there are orkut members out there who will sell an invite
I would gladly give out invites free.

All you need to do is leave some feedback about this blog along with your name(first & last) & email address.

Folks looking for gmail invites are welcome too.

Tags : orkut, internet, online community

Business Week profiles Kevin Rose, the founder of Digg and others in the brat pack of valley startups who are almost as famous as rockstars if not more.

Two years earlier, Rose had gambled on his idea to change newsgathering, letting the masses "dig up" the most interesting stories on the Web and vote them onto his online "front page" on Digg.com. Rose had given every last piece of himself to the project -- all his time, all his cash, and even his girlfriend, who fought with him after he poured his savings into Digg instead of a downpayment on a house. Today, Digg, Version 3, the one that would go beyond tech news to include politics, gossip, business, and videos, was going live. At 29, Rose was on his way either to a cool $60 million or to total failure.

Tags : digg, free videos, web, internet

Yeah that's right. Imagine if you could test drive a new career, while keeping your present job, how cool would that be?

Many of us at some point in our lives have wondered what life would be if we had a different job heck if we had a different career. Well you could do that while taking a vacation. And there is a whole list of professions you could try.

Check out www.vocationvacations.com




Tags : vacation, career, life

TBS tonight featured some of the worlds funniest ads. They ranged from condom commercials, mexican food, sports clubs to beer ads and then there were ads that you did not know what was the product being sold until the very last second. Some of them were suggestively adult so viewer discretion advised.

For more on that check out veryfunnyads.com



Tags : television, advertising, funny, tbs, humor

After my post on the AOL debacle, EFF has some steps to keep your search history private.

• Don't put personally-identifying information in your searches, little keywords to leave an entire trail to you.
• Don't use a search engine operated by your ISP, that way you do not end up as AOL searcher no xyz (example)
• Don't log in to a search engine account such as GMail or Yahoo while searching
• Don't accept cookies from your search engine
• Use a separate browser or browser profile for search and for other activities.
• Use an anonymizing proxy, or proxy network like Tor, to prevent search engines from learning your IP address

If you are an AOL user spread the word.



Tags : search, internet, AOL, privacy

Well do you remember Jassi jaissi koi nahin, the pic below should jog your brain cells

Well the BBC reports that her Latin cousin is doing pretty well

It is not worth trying to ring anyone here in Colombia at 9.30 at night. They will either ignore the phone or answer it with ill humour.
Because this is the time the nation's favourite soap opera, I am Betty the Ugly, is shown, and it has become little short of a religious ritual.

And as usual whatever hit show is out there has to be duplicated in America, be it Who Wants to be a Millionaire or American Idol, ABC's fall schedule has this

Click here for a preview.

Pratik asks is this a first? You bet, until they can replicate our saas bahu serials. You never know do you?
After my rant about Indians not being original it seems neither is the West. I guess the saying "Plagiarism is the best form of flattery" still rings true.

Tags : television, India, culture, jassi

For those who did not download vista beta 2 CD before microsoft pulled it from their website, here is another chance.
All you need to do is answer a quiz

Too lazy to search for the answers? GAS has the answers for you.
Check it out.
Here they are:1- Vista 2- Clarity 3- November 2006 4- True 5- Aero 6- All 7- All 8- 512


Click here to Get your free Vista Beta 2 CD now!



Tags : microsoft, download, vista

The register has a compilation of ways to becoming a Youtube star. Some of them are actually doing the silliest /dumbest things you can think of. After all, who does not like to watch someone make a fool of themselves.
So here's the list

1. Lip-synching

Who has not seen the lip synching of "I want it that way"?
Examples: here and here.

2. Animals do the funniest things

Grab TV footage and post it
Examples: here and here.

3. Have an original idea no-one else would bother to do

such as a girl who's taken a photo of her face once a day for THREE years, and then strung them all together into a video-montage.

4. Fight strangers in the street

No-holds-barred fighting competitions are hugely popular on YouTube,
Examples: here and here.

5. Get your camphone out at gigs

Record new songs of bands using your camera phone and post it on youtube
Examples : here and here.

6. Be bloody good at videogames

Amazingly(and silly) gaming feats. Examples: here and here.

7. Corrupt innocent childrens' characters

Any spoofs and parodies of popular kids TV shows. Examples: here and here.

8. Drink. Lots.

Fratboy antics, people downing pints, bottles and yards of ale, and in one memorable case, Examples: here and here.

9. Rip obscure Japanese cartoons off the telly

Post DVD rip version of Japanese cartoons and you should find yourself an audience.

10. Make high-quality one-minute vids reviewing hot gadgets of the day

Apparently every tech gadget reviewer is guilty of doing that.

[via]



Tags : youtube,free videos, web, internet

After having blogged about the Million Dollar Homepage here. Now comes the desi version. Just as we had a copy of who wants to be a millionaire, called Kaun banega crorepati we have a desi version of this idea too.

A 28-year-old Indian woman who last December started http://www.crorepatipage.com/, an advertising billboard on the Internet for Indians alone, has already earned around $5000, not an insignificant sum in India, The Hindu Business Line reports. Sunaina Bansal hopes to emulate the success of Briton Alex Tew’s Million Dollar Home Page from which Tew reportedly earned a million dollars.

‘Crorepati’ is a Hindi word that means ‘One who owns a crore of Rupees.’ A crore is equal to 10 million, so a crore of rupees would be about $227,272. The better-known advertisers on Bansal’s page are matrimonial site Shaadi.com, engineering conglomerate Kirloskar and rediff.com. (via)

Why can't Indians be the first to create something, why only copy? Is it because the risk is less with an idea that is already a hit?


Tags : advertising, India, web, internet

A friend sent this to me :

It has been scientifically proven that if we drink one litre of Water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than one kilo of EscherichiaColi Bacteria found in water that contains faeces.

In other words, we are consuming one kilo of shit. However, we do not run that risk when drinking rum, gin, whiskey, beer, wine or other liquors because alcohol has to go through a distillation process of boiling, filtering and fermentation.

It is my duty to communicate to all of you people who are drinking Water, to stop doing so. It has been scientifically proven that it is unhealthy and bad for you.

THEREFORE - It is better to drink alcohol and talk shit than to drink water and be full of it !!



Tags : humor, water, aside

In the wake off the foiled plot in Britain, the US authorities went into "red alert" mode. One commentator said that this again was another ploy by the Republican administration to gain sympathy with the "war on terror" considering that, this is the only card they can play to win the elections now that the American public has had it with the War in Iraq and Bush's popularity is at its nadir. This is a familiar strategy, last year just before the elections in NY, Mayor Bloomberg declared a terror threat for the subway.

While there may be some truth to the 'liquid' terror plot, how far will the security measures go.
So now that liquids are banned, what if the terrorists move to dry substances like powder and paper, will that be banned next? Will there come a point as one radio host suggested where carry ons are totally banned and the airlines will supply you a laptop, a blackberry and a iPod all ofcourse, for a handsome price?

And if we modify the way we live is not that helping the terrorist cause, because that is what they are getting after. A bunch of people decide how people in western countries live their lives in fear and under constant threat draining their resources as they are forced to spend billions on security measures, resources which could other wise have been used for better purposes.

Bruce Schneider's post on security makes an excellent argument that security should not focus on terrorist tactics but on the terrorists themselves :

Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won't make us safer, either. It's not just that there are ways around the rules, it's that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.It's easy to defend against what the terrorists planned last time, but it's shortsighted. If we spend billions fielding liquid-analysis machines in airports and the terrorists use solid explosives, we've wasted our money. If they target shopping malls, we've wasted our money. Focusing on tactics simply forces the terrorists to make a minor modification in their plans. There are too many targets -- stadiums, schools, theaters, churches, the long line of densely packed people before airport security -- and too many ways to kill people.
Security measures that require us to guess correctly don't work, because invariably we will guess wrong. It's not security, it's security theater: measures designed to make us feel safer but not actually safer. Airport security is the last line of defense, and not a very good one at that. Sure, it'll catch the sloppy and the stupid -- and that's a good enough reason not to do away with it entirely -- but it won't catch a well-planned plot. We can't keep weapons out of prisons; we can't possibly keep them off airplanes. (via)

Tags : security, politics,terror

We know who AOL Searcher No. 4417749 is, she is Thelma Arnold.

For those who came in late, earlier this week AOL apologized for releasing search log data on subscribers that had been intended for use with the company's newly launched research site.
The randomly selected data, which focused on 658,000 subscribers and posted 10 days ago, was among the tools intended for use on the recently launched AOL Research site. But the Internet giant has since removed the search logs from public view.

Then came the bizarre revelations as to what were some of the actual keywords used in the search. In the case of AOL user 17556639, these were :

how to kill your wife
pictures of dead people
photo of dead people
car crash photo

That raised the question whether it was possible to identify a particular user based on search keywords and prevent a crime or say even a terrorist attack. And now the NYTimes puts a face on No. 4417749 of the AOL list. It's a widow who from Georgia. Her searches over a three-month period included topics ranging from “numb fingers” to “60 single men” to “dog that urinates on everything.”

While the file was pulled by AOL, it is already circulating on peer networks and will never die out. A number of blogs are pointing to mirror sites to let people take a peek at the search logs of AOL users.
That raises several issues. If it was easy to track Thelma, it opens a can of worms when it comes to tracking down individuals based on what they searched for and who wants to exploit that information.

The next step would be for the Govt. to step in and order all the major search engines to profile search users inorder to track any criminal or terrorist activity.
While it could help in tracking the plans of terrorists as has been observed in recent times,they have relied heavily on the internet search engines for information on explosives etc, it would also make people hesitant on searching for information on the web.
As aptly summed up by this comment on techcrunch:

The ability to have curiosity and freely explore information is the greatest ability of a free culture. When people become afraid of seeking information — from fear of being viewed as a criminal — it will set society back into repression and darkness.

An alternative would be to not maintain those search logs at all, but will the search engine companies do that?


Tags : search, internet, web, privacy

If you are like most people, when you want to search on a new topic, you would generally "google" it. And more often than not you will find a link to a WikiPedia entry. And it will be a fairly detailed description of the information you are seeking. WikiPedia is a wiki based encylcopedia.
What makes the concept of a wiki so cool is that any member can add or edit its pages, and previous versions are stored for recovery. So the information in there can be checked as well as stays updated as time passes.

PC Magazine featured WikiPedia as its site of the week and has a brief history on it.

Ward Cunningham invented the wiki concept in 1995 to host a collaborative discussion of patterns in programming. He called it the WikiWikiWeb, wiki-wiki being Hawaiian for quick. Ward's Wiki, still going strong, hosts discussions on programming and wiki philosophy. Another robust wiki is WikiPedia, a wiki-based encyclopedia and a PC Magazine Site of the Week whose members and visitors have crafted over 300,000 articles.

The O'Reilly Network has a very detailed article on the use of wikis and how it's so terrifically easy for people to jump in and revise pages that wikis are becoming known as the tool of choice for large, multiple-participant projects. To learn more about wikis can go to wiki.org
This is getting so popular that when you google wikiweb there are numerous versions of collaborative websites out there.

The latest entry to the wiki world is called wikicars. It's slated to be everything that you wanted to know about cars. In it's own words

"Wikicars aspires to be the most comprehensive source of fact based information about automobiles-- a Wikipedia of cars. At the same time, Wikicars is a guidebook, offering the consensus opinion of our community about the good, the bad, and the ugly of the automotive world. "

While this is great, there is also a flip side to it. This article points out the problems related to writing objectively and also the bias that may creep in depending upon one's political views, if one is writing about someone like say George Bush.

And while the popularity and breadth of Wikipedia’s coverage has boomed, there have also been problems with inconsistent quality and outright revisionist history when it comes to politicians and their staffers. So I thought it might be instructive to consider the entry for George W. Bush and how difficult it would be to create a “neutral point of view” for our polarizing president. Remember, the object is to create something neutral and not totally neutered of controversy. The idea is to state the various sides without picking a side, or as the NPOV entry states, “One can think of unbiased writing as the cold, fair, analytical description of debates.”

Techdirt's post points to Stephen Colbert's exercise in taking down Wikipedia. On the Colbert Report, Stephen took on Wikipedia, and discussed his vision for a new "Wikiality," where the masses create the facts they want to believe in. At the conclusion of the amusing segment, Colbert instructs his audience to find the Wikipedia entry on elephants, and edit it to say that "the number of elephants has tripled in the last six months." Not surprisingly, plenty of people went to either make the edit, or to see if had been made.

So even if this can be termed as another one of those ploys to increase ratings, it does demonstrate how facts could be created / manipulated depending upon whether a group would like someone credited or discredited as was evident in this case where a former staff member "independently went on to Wikipedia to correct some material he felt was not appropriate."

Bottomline, while it is handy tool don't be so quick to swear by what you read on there.


Tags : wiki, internet, web, reference

Many of us like to read the the latest articles, comments, opinions on say the WallStreet Journal, The Financial Times etc but some of these websites charge a subscription fee for them. Now here comes a workaround that allows you access to these sites

Congoo NetPass is a free service launched this spring that offers limited access to subscription-only articles with just a few clicks of your mouse. It works with 35 sites offering paid content from more than 300 sources, including Morningstar, the New Republic, Billboard.com and the Philadelphia Inquirer. (Several sites offer content from multiple sources. Libraryo.com, for example, archives more than 200 city newspapers and newswires.) Depending on the site, you can make between four and 15 free visits to paid-content per month.

Over time, that can add up to substantial savings. An annual membership to Encyclopaedia Britannica, for example, would regularly cost you $69.95 ($84.95 if you also wanted access to Merriam-Webster Unabridged). But by using the Congoo toolbar, you can access five articles a month.(via)

Tags : internet, technology,web

Close on the heels of the film Corporate which has a plot of how companies in India would use their nexus with politicians and the government to sell soft drinks inspite of having pesticide content, comes this disclosure:

The Centre for Science and Environment on Wednesday came out with a fresh study claiming the presence of 'pesticide cocktail' in 11 brands of soft drink giants Coca Cola and PepsiCo, three years after the same brands were found to have contained pesticides.

The new findings, publicised after testing 57 samples of 11 soft drink brands of Coca Cola and PepsiCo collected from 25 manufacturing units across 12 states, claims that all the bottles examined were a "cocktail of 3-5 different pesticides" which was 24 times above the standards finalised by Bureau of Indian Standards. (link)

Three years ago there was a huge uproar regarding this issue. As in the movie, was this staged , as there were failed lab test reports and court cases creating a huge media circus, possibly, at the behest of the rival competitors.

Is this a case of life imitating art imitating life, where ultimately the players behind the scenes divert the already short attention span of the general public, which could care less, to another issue while nothing is done about the actual problem. All that will remain are some headlines on yesterday's newspaper. May be 5-10 yrs down the line when it is proved that those drinks were the cause of some disease say cancer, who, if anyone will be held responsible, especially in a country where life is precious only if you are rich and connected.




Tags : corporate, india, life

Are you swamped by errands? Consider foisting your chores onto a valet in India or Ireland. It's like having your own Jeeves but Virtual.

David Sowsy of Dracut, Mass., hired GetFriday, in Bangalore, India, to help him catch up on his to-do list last fall. GetFriday assigned Sowsy an assistant, who revised his résumé, researched stock investments and comparison-shopped for wireless routers at online stores. Had Sowsy asked, the assistant would have bought the router using Sowsy's credit-card number. Overall, the cost for a month of requests was about $300. Concierge firms charge from $560 to $1,000 for 80 hours of work, depending on the firm and the complexity of your tasks. GetFriday charges $15 an hour, plus $10 a month. Irish outfit Corporate Services Group provides similar services at $12 an hour, using Irish and Indian workers to handle requests.(link)

Now is this not interesting. Everything that can be done via phone or online is done overseas. While a few years ago this was just for credit card companies to manage their customer service operations. Then came homework help from overseas.
Now this opens up a whole realm of opportunities to the truly innovative companies. If someone is willing to pay for a service, there will be a cheaper way to provide it, even if it means going half way round the world.



Tags : society, culture, outsourcing