Answer: “FUD”

FUD = Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt

As we make inroads into newer means of broadcasting technologies, the users of these techs seem to take a few steps backwards (and pretty giant ones at that). In the race to grab the maximum viewers, they have switched their primary profession from news to a bollywood masala blockbuster. Any Indian news channel you switch on is glaringly coated with red colors, many even using explicit pics of bones and skulls etc. to get you hooked, maybe thinking that you will freeze with fear and forget to change the channel with your remote. The news readers are more like wrestling commentators, shouting at the top of their voices and acting better than most B’wood heroes to make sure you understand their importance of being your only saviours in this cruel world.

The reporters (most of which look like either teenage under-grads or ration-walla uncles these days) take a whole minute of air time, repeating the same set of 5–second sentences multiple times, contra-dicting themselves more than once. And you are left wondering which version was correct – the one he started out with, or the one he ended on. Things become even more complicated when the studio guy pitches in with more irrelevant info, a very funny example of this being the Ansal Plaza bomb scare a few years back. This particular news channel had already shown the same 1 minute footage of people thanking Delhi Police from saving them from a bomb more than a fair bit of times, and then the reader chimes in to let us know how cool Ansal Plaza is, how many floors it has and which things and brands are stocked on which floor. Cool, I can prepare my shopping list easily now. Wait, what was that news I was listening to a few minutes ago?

Today, Star News, Aaj Tak, etc told me about another “twist” in the Aarushi murder case. Actually, they infused the twist into my bloodstream. The twist was that her father’s compounder had called some CBI guy one day before the murder. Oh is it, but why? No one knows. Apart from this single line of information, no one had even a semblance of value to add. But hats off to the channel producers, they still managed to beam out an hour (or even more) worth of content from this.

Out of all the news channels, India TV, or whatever it’s spelled like, has a special place. It should be renamed to “Magic TV”, cuz all they show day after day is Chris Angel walking on water, David Blaine staying under water beyond human limitations, Franz Harary making the Statue of Liberty disappear, and even local babas with all their “siddhis” on display. Their expert panel looks like the World Congregation of Astrologists, Palmists, Godmen, vibhuti wale babas, etc. The best part is their punchlines “Kya Ye Ek Narpishaach hai, Ya Ek Khooni Mazaak”. I remember the time when we used to play dumb charades in college with fictitious movies like “Howrah Bridge Se Latkati Lal Khanjar Wali Khooni Chudail”. I guess if Rajat Kapoor had seen me at that time, I would have been quite busy right now as a chief editor or something in his channel.

And as if this was not all, the channels have special “filler” segments running all day rounding up all the jokey-concerts around the country or summarizing the latest happenings in the saas-bahu serials.

I guess Tata Sky should now make a special news-channels-package cuz why should I pay for the whole jumbo pack when the news channels can provide me the complete set of entertainment, except the news of course, which I can always scourge from news.google.com.

The Delhi Bloggers are having a one day “Social Media and Blog Camp” on 7th June 2008. So, mark your calendars right now. Details follow:

Date : 7th June’08 (Saturday)

Agenda : A one-day semi-camp style unconference which brings together stakeholders and audiences of social media and blogging.

Venue : Indiatimes office,

             Times Internet Ltd.
             I World , Opp. DLF Golf Course,
             DLF City Phase V,
            Gurgaon, Haryana - 122005

The venue is wifi enabled and has an auditorium, projectors and a board room for parallel tracks if the need arises. Lunch/tea/coffee/snacks would be provided by our prime sponsor - Indiatimes.

Target audience/speaker profiles :

 Experts/executives from social media related platforms or blog platforms, Journalists who know how blogs have become an alternative to mainstream media, Professionals who have used social media to connect and build communities, Marketers (clients or agencies) who are using social media/blog strategies, Techies/application developers in these fields, Entrepreneurs who have ideas around social media and blogging platforms, bloggers (corporate, professional and otherwise), blogreaders who want to know a bit more, PR professionals looking to develop/enhance their blogger relationship programs, Marketers who want to look at case studies on how others are using the same.

More details of the event and the method of confirming attendance/volunteering for the event/speaking on relevant topics will be put up on Delhi Bloggers Bloc and other related entities soon. Till then, you can follow the progress on the mailing list.

Check this. Really hilarious.

Everyone wants to make a name for himself. Everyone wants to do something new and extra-ordinary. People like me (read software engineers) want to develop “something” cool. BUT, the stage where most of them go wrong is the very first one. Most of them think that the road to develop something cool starts from a particular “language” or a tool. But I beg to differ. I say the first stage is “The Idea”.

Most of my friends and others around me think that having a particular skill set is very important to develop something the world hasn’t seen till now. And for this they end up reading through piles of books, which claim to make them a master in C, C++, PHP, Python, Web 2.0 and what not. This is all OK, but the problem is, when they have gone through the books, done all the exercises, made all the samle projects, then they have a question in their minds “Now What”?

What I think is that this question should have been asked in the very beginning of the journey. And it should have been answered by the occurrence of a new idea.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all for reading books, developing skill sets, learning new technologies, etc. But the only point I want to make is that all this is a “means” to give your “idea” a shape. They are not where your story begins. What if you spent a lot of time acquiring perl skills and then when (and if) you get your brilliant idea, you find out that the best way to implement it would be using C. Are you back to square one? No. Skills acquired are never a waste. “Concepts” developed can easily be applied to the new tool that you have to use.

But one more thing, its again not a hard rule that now you should just sit in your chair all day long and keep thinking. I bet its much harder to get the idea stream flowing that way. Ideas don’t have a pattern that they follow while coming into your mind. They may come to you any place unexpected (I get most of mine while bathing ).

But there is something you can do to ensure that your brain gets accustomed to recognize an idea when you do get it. So, while you are reading through that book on C programming, don’t just get engrossed in typing out the exact source code that’s fed to you. “Think” about whether is that enough? Can you make some modification to it so that it becomes more efficient? Can you tweak it a bit to do more than its already doing?

Keep your eyes open when you go around your daily chores. Think when you open your door whether wouldn’t it be nice if the door could recognize you are there and open itself. There’s your idea. And while you are at it, think wouldn’t it be even nicer if your home would have poured you a cool drink itself when you enter it?

Now, tell me whether you would like to wait to think about these ideas till you read the book’s epilogue, or do you want to start thinking now?

• If you are twittering kinds, doesn’t matter online or offline
• If you blog or are interested in all things blog and blogging
• If you live in Delhi, have lived there, have been there, or just connect with Delhi somehow else
• If you want to meet up with your fellow twitterers and bloggers

Then you’ve got to be a part of the your very own City of The People With Hearts, Delhi. How, you ask? It’s as simple as pointing your mice and keyboards towards Delhi Tweetup to get the latest on every scoop about blogging, twittering and blogging and twittering in Delhi (and outside as well).

And if you want to be a little bit more involved, you can also join the Delhi Bloggers’ Yahoo Group.

A gaping mouth was all I had when my 3 year ol’ Canon Powershot S1 IS’s LCD/EVF went blank all of a sudden a few months ago. Nothing could be seen, clicking the picture button resulted in blank pics. Googling about it revealed an advisory by Canon, stating that it is a known issue with the CCD image sensor. Canon impressed me by that notice when they said they will fix it for free, even for cameras out of warranty period, and will also pay to-and-fro shipping. Contacting canon support in India (support, in India? Is that a joke?) resulted in just their ignorance about any such advisory.

Undeterred, I sent the camera to the land of dreams (USA) with a friend, e-mailed the Canon USA support at carecenter@cits.canon.com with my predicament, and they promptly sent shipping labels to my friend. So far so good. But a couple of months went by, with no word from them. Customer support told me they are awaiting parts. Sad I was that day .

One fine day, I just checked the status of the return shipping label on a whim, and found that they had shipped my camera back. I was disheartened thinking it had been returned unrepaired, but then my friend called to let me know that they had sent some other camera back. I thought they might have sent some low price, refurbished camera, but atleast a working camera is better than a non-working one.

Today my friend came back from the US, and what do we have? A brand spanking new Canon Powershot S5 IS (8 MP, 12x Optical zoom, flip out and twist LCD). Yessir . I truly heart Canon. Here is a pic of my new baby (Ah, the irony, the clicking powerhouse has been clicked with a low-res phone camera, but anyways.)

Note: Contact canon immediately if you are facing the same problem and your camera is one of these:

- Camcorders: ZR60, ZR65 MC, ZR70 MC, ZR80, ZR85, ZR90, ELURA 40 MC, ELURA 50
- Digital Cameras A60, A70, A75, A300, A310, S230, SD100, SD110, A40(*), A80(*), A85(*), A95(*), S1 IS(*), S60(*), S200(*), S330(*), S400(*), S410(*), S500(*)

As I wrote a few days ago, though India is supposedly the biggest democracy in the country, it hardly displays any signs of being so. Every right of any citizen can be demolished in the garb of democracy. The biggest offenders are our dear leaders, who become leaders to lead India towards a democracticly divided country where, if they could have their wish, every citizen of the country would have his ver own personal state.

The latest example is today’s parliament session, where all of them wanted to garner some free points by asking for waivers for farmers, which will anyways be announced tomorrow. The end result – The session could not be comleted and the speaker had to end it by saying “You are all working overtime to finish democracy in this country”.

But I beg to differ Mr. speaker sir, because they are not working to finish the democracy, they have already finished it. Now, they are just working to get their own monarchy established here..

If you have ever lugged around your laptop to Barista/Cafe Coffee Day, or have seen others doing the same, then you WILL most definitely be interested in seeing these geeky counterparts of yours (in starbucks though).