About blogging delays…

I was offline for the last two weeks. I live in a part of town (in Pune, India) that is newly developing. All the residential phone lines in our area have been down for so many days. Broadband didn’t work. Roads are dug up by any tom, dick, and harry, for whatever reason, and no one knows why. Some cables were seemingly affected, and that brought all the phone lines down. The telephone repairmen working at the spot looked either like gangsters trying to hide some loot, or a group of men squatting to urinate at a wall. This is the developing India. Sigh!

The comments and responses on this blog during and after the prolonged delays have humbled me. When I started this blog, I never knew and never expected to make so many friends or develop such a readership. I am still taken aback by the entire experience. One of my blogger friends even traced me, got my cell phone number, and called me up to ask what’s the matter, and that (s)he didn’t want to lose a friend like me. Experiences and comments like these make one realize that one is not alone in this world. There are people who care about the same things you do, who think in a similar fashion, who value similar things like you, and that the world is not such a hopeless place after all. I cannot express how humbled I am at all the emails and comments I received.

I am trying my best to put my life in order, such that I will be able to devote some more time to blogging. I have been dragged into several things on the personal front, and dealing with all of them at the same time has been a challenge. But the wonderful experience of blogging - the interaction I’ve been having with you folks - educated, intelligent, sensitive, and insightful - is a rewarding experience that I don’t wish to sacrifice. So I am myself waiting to get active in the blogosphere again. The only request is to be patient with me.

At the same time, I am also missing out on reading your wonderful blog posts. I cannot tell you how many times I think of some of your posts while sleeping at night, and either have a good laugh or empathize with your feelings, or be enriched by your knowledgeable posts. I am looking forward to getting back to reading your blogs and learning from them. You folks make life worthwhile. I mean it.

This post is not composed, orchestrated, or edited. The backspace or arrow keys haven’t been used. It is coming straight from the heart, as they say, and there is no filter. Forgive me if it is not as structured as my usual posts. I know you will. Thank you.

India & China: Govt. & Politics

After his recent visit to China, the Indian Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh had a message for the Indian industry: Try to learn from the Chinese industrialists. It was widely broadcast across all the Indian media. I do not know what he meant by that - Indian industry is as great or aspiring to be greater than the Chinese regarding quality, size, or any other parameter you might choose.

Why are great Indian industrialists buying and investing in foreign companies, and not investing in India? Why is FDI flowing into China at a much greater rate than into India? Wealth and investment goes where there is least governmental interference. This is the lesson our politicians are yet to learn.

In my opinion, it would be better if the Indian government learnt from the Chinese government regarding politics and economics. Particularly, the Indian Left, who is so glad about the PM’s visit to China, will do the nation a great good if it learns from the Chinese government’s economic principles. China has welcomed all sorts of capitalist investments, which the Indian Left still myopically opposes.

I thought the Indian PM is intelligent enough not to dish out a moral lecture to the Indian industry when his own government has failed to support the industry. Does he think intelligent Indians do not see the irony and hypocrisy in his speech?

Resuming Soon…

This blog has been inactive and dormant for quite some time due to personal reasons. I hope to resume in a week or two. Thanks for all the comments and patience. And a very happy new year to all my readers!

A Busy Week

Dear readers, this past week has been very hectic and I’ve mostly been offline. My gratitude to all the comments, and apologies for the delay in my response. I hope I will be able to spend more time posting, responding, and visiting your wonderful blogs in the coming week!

Thanks for bearing with me.

Weekend Flea Market 20-Oct-2007

An assortment of stuff I came across in cyberspace, offered second hand, for anyone who may be interested.

• Despite veto threats from the Bush administration, the House of Representatives approved the Free Flow of Information Act that would shield journalists - and some bloggers - from being forced to reveal confidential sources in federal cases. See Are Blogging Journalists Shielded? for background information. Not everyone is happy, however, since only bloggers who derive substantial portion of their income through their writing are shielded.
• Are Indian IT professionals among the worst paid globally? A study by HR consultancy Mercer finds India to be the fourth worst IT paymaster.
• Flickr plans to expand from photo sharing to photo editing through a deal with start-up Picnik. Picnik lets users perform a variety of basic editing tasks - crop and resize photos; change exposure, saturation, color temperature; sharpen edges; remove red-eye; and rotate pictures by 90-degrees or finer increments.
• Genetics pioneer Craig Venter took the stage at the Web 2.0 Summit. Venter’s own DNA was sequenced at a cost of about $70 million. Today it costs only $300,000 to sequence a person’s DNA, and the $100,000 benchmark is in sight. It’s an information processing problem. In other words, Moore’s Law and genetics are tightly tied. It won’t be long before your genome - and your likelihood to get various diseases, live long, be athletic, etc. - will be available in a standard medical test. Read The Information Week report here.
• AP had reported that China is increasing efforts at Internet censorship ahead of the Communist Party Congress. However, an interesting article by Dan Sullivan at SearchEngineLand says that China is upset with the US over the award it granted to the Dalai Lama. It is retaliating by hurting US-based search engines by redirecting Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft search traffic to the China-owned Baidu.
• Expedia and Travelocity are readying India operations, reports LiveMint.
• About 16% of men and 8% of women who have access to the Internet at work acknowledged having seen porn while on the job, according to a survey cited in USA Today’s article: Technology makes porn easier to access at work.
• Photos: Scott Wolf disassembles an iRobot Roomba, to see what’s inside and remarkably, puts it back together as well. You can see how the Roomba works with collision detection, how it has a customization software interface, and much more. How I wish I had this toy in India!
• I do not use Firefox, but if you do, remember that it’s not safe out of the box. Here are five security/privacy extensions you must have.
• Astronomers may be on brink of finding habitable ’second Earth’, reports The Guardian. Earlier this year, scientists reported finding the most Earth-like planet ever, just 20 light years away.
• The co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, James ‘Black People Are Stupid’ Watson, has again disgraced himself. The Telegraph analyzes what it calls the Nobel Syndrome, Scientific American has its take, and Wired Science has its strong rejoinder.
• Webyantra profiles Indian food-related sites on the web - online delivery, recipes, restaurant reviews, etc.

Visit the earlier weekend’s flea market here. Have a great weekend!

Dubai: World’s Trade Center?

These images tell a story.

The Twin Towers, a symbol of US capitalistic superpower, have collapsed. The US is busy fighting the war against terror.

In the meanwhile, Burj Dubai, the tallest free standing structure in the world, just reached a soaring 574.5m (1,885 ft) with 154 completed stories. It is predicted to be the tallest man-made structure in the world, as well as the tallest building by any measure. It’s official web site is here. Note the ‘.com’ address of its URL, it’s not a cryptic ‘.ae’ address.

Here are some of the amazing developments in Dubai:

• Dubai’s revenues from oil and natural gas currently account for less than 3% of the emirate’s revenues.
• Dubai Mall aims to be the largest mall in the world when completed.
• Its port, Jebel Ali, constructed in the 1970s, has the largest man-made harbor in the world.
• The Burj al-Arab, a luxury hotel in Dubai, at 321 meters (1,053 ft), is the tallest building used exclusively as a hotel.
• Dubai World Central will have the Dubai World Central International Airport, the world’s largest passenger and cargo hub.
• It is a hub for service industries such as IT and finance. Dubai Internet City, combined with Dubai Media City includes IT firms such as EMC Corporation, Oracle Corporation, Microsoft, and IBM, and media organizations such as MBC, CNN, Reuters and AP.
• The World is a man-made archipelago of 300 islands in the shape of a world map currently being built off the coast of Dubai.
• Dubai Financial Market’s trading volume stood at about 400 billion shares worth US$ 95 billion. The DFM had a market capitalization of about US$ 87 billion.
• The Palm Islands in Dubai are the three largest artificial islands in the world.
• Dubai Healthcare City is scheduled to open by 2010 to promote medical tourism.
• Dubailand is an entertainment complex under development, to include mega-tracts of various kinds of attractions.
• The Dubai Waterfront is proposed to become the largest waterfront and largest man-made development in the world.

Is anyone observing the contrast? While the US is struggling to fight a war against terror, a country right in the middle east is stealthily rising economically - without relying on oil - in the global economy. The contrast is stark. The US has to realize and focus on its core strengths, if it wants to remain an economic superpower, and not be swayed to distraction with the war against terror.

Intellectual Blogger Award Update

As Paul points out, the Intellectual Blogger Award is gaining traction thanks to the gracious and kind support of remarkably intelligent bloggers. I thought it would be a good idea to maintain a list of the awardees at a central place for reference. This list would be like an Intellectual Bookshelf - a rich and varied source of great ideas, when you’re hungry for food for thought.

So I have updated the Intellectual Blogger Award page to list all the awardees. I once again thank everyone for their support in taking this forward.

Weekend Flea Market 13-Oct-07

The Friday Flea Market is now open all weekend! An assortment of stuff I came across in cyberspace, offered second hand, for anyone who may be interested.

• Wired Magazine has a very interesting article on how racial profiling can be used in forensics with great success. The Inconvenient Science of Racial DNA Profiling also explains how this controversial technology raises uncomfortable ethical questions.
• Dr. Deb talks about a controversial ad in Italy that aims to increase awareness of Anorexia, while clarifying that Anorexia has a higher mortality rate than depression.
• Finally, three years after the devastating tsunami disaster, India’s tsunami warning system takes shape.
• The Iconoclast asks a very pertinent question about whether telecom companies like AT&T should be held responsible for cooperating with the National Security Agency (NSA).
• While you’ve been caught up reading on the Nobel awards, don’t miss this year’s igNoble awards!
• Photomicrography: Fine art photography though a microscope. For over 30 years, Nikon has rewarded the world’s best photomicrographers who make critically important scientific contributions to life sciences, bio-research and materials science. See the stunning winners of the 2007 competition here.
• Finally, Microsoft Research is coming to India! Microsoft has tied up with the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) to collaborate on research.
• A new Google Earth layer lets you view geo-tagged videos on YouTube. Just imagine how travelogues are going to take this to elevate themselves to the next level.
• Wikipedia’s middle-age crisis: Sad news. Activity on Wikipedia seems to be slowing down, reports TechCrunch.
• The Economist has a fascinating article on how lap dancers earn more tips when they’re most fertile in their menstrual cycle.

There are fewer items in the flea market this weekend, because of the increased readership, interesting comments, and enlightened discussions on my earlier posts. In short, my blog has kept me busy… Have a good weekend!

The Writing Meme

Nita has kindly tagged me for listing strengths of a writer that I aspire to have. I read a few excellent writers who’ve contributed to this before, like Suburban Life, The Individual Voice, Joe Felso, MariaCristina, and of course, Rambodoc. I liked MariaCristina’s way of listing each strength along with an example. All these writers excel at their craft, leaving me dumbfounded. So as Nita suggested, I will start by blanking out previous insights and starting afresh.

• English is my second-language. I couldn’t write basic, decent English till I was 17 years old. The Wren and Martin grammar they taught us in school was an insipid, laborious, meaningless exercise. It was several years later that I discovered The Elements of Style, and entered the world of English writing. If anyone asks me which is the one book to read about English writing, that is it. This “little book” can be read here for free.
• Be intimately knowledgeable of William Safire’s Rules for Writers.
• Read. After you’ve read, study it as a writer. Reading as a reader is different from reading as a writer. You cannot write unless you read. You cannot write well unless you study writing as a writer. Over time, you won’t need to read twice.
  I learnt the above by applying film appreciation skills to the art of writing. Watching movies doesn’t make anyone a better actor or director or script-writer. Only if you watch the movie from a script-writer’s perspective will you learn about the art of script-writing.
• Honesty, passion, sincerity, and practice. I need not say more.
• Voltaire said “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms”. We may not want to be as unreasonable as that in our daily lives, so let’s just say “If you wish me to read your writing, you better be able to back up your words with definitions”. There is a difference between ‘knowing’ the meaning of words to be able to make good conversation, and knowing the meaning of words you use to write.
• I meet two kinds of people. On one hand are passionate lovers of words and language. They are finicky about whether they prefer Oxford or Merriam Webster. On the other hand are those who respond “whatever”, when you painstakingly explain the precise meaning of your interpretation of a word. If you wish to improve vocabulary, subscribe to A.Word.A.Day - I joined in 1995.
  If you wish to write well, overcome inertia and proactively refer the dictionary and thesaurus. In the pre-Internet era, we used to have these huge reference books by our side to refer when we were writing. Now, it’s so simple!
• Writing is 99% thinking and 1% typing (or penning). What this means is that you can engage in the act of ‘writing’ when your commuting, or having a shower, or lying in bed. I often think of topics, structure, elements of the content, and the key message, while I’m away from the computer. When I do get a chance to type, it is just a matter of crystallizing what you’ve already thought through.
• If the 1% typing takes 99% of the time, you need to learn typing. I learnt typing on a physical typewriter in my 10th grade, when I decided on IT as my career. Then I improved my speed using typing tutor software. It has paid handsome rewards. I’ve met people who fumble at the keyboard and proudly talk about how their hands can’t keep pace with their fast-thinking minds. I wondered why their smart minds never gave priority to improving their typing skills.
  Improving your typing speed helps you write faster and better, since you are not distracted with typing and can let your mind flow freely, while your hands automatically type it for you.
• Be comfortable. Do not confuse external environmental factors with your ability to write. Have you slept well? Is the background noise or lack of sufficient light hampering you? Don’t get frustrated and give up. The negativity may be an external influence, not an innate inability.
• I initially used to have trouble imagining my reader while I was writing. Then I learnt to write ‘to myself’. I no longer visualize or imagine a reader, I write as if it is for me to read.
• Use the right tools to improve your efficiency. Choose the chair, keyboard, mouse, and screen according to your ergonomics. I use the Opera browser as its inbuilt shortcuts help me tremendously in referencing and researching while writing. Select your tools as per your convenience and use them efficiently.
• If you’re Indian, you might want to check this presentation I’d made about avoiding common English errors. People from the same culture where English is a second language tend to make similar mistakes. This essentially works like a meme. A typical Indian example is ‘updation’, which can be commonly found in Indian English, but is not an English word.

The above are factors that help me to write better. It is a never-ending road, so I too need to revisit each of the above regularly. As Nita correctly and graciously pointed out, I’ve a desire to learn about the craft of writing and am still learning.

To take this further, I’ll tag Asuph, hoping that his blog gets well soon!

(Image Credits: Details of a Waterman 42 Safety Pen, public domain.)

Utterly Butterly Advertising

For a very long time, my post on Amul: Longest running ad campaign in the world? is one of the most favorite search engine hits. I do not know why net searchers are fascinated with Amul’s ads rather than the usual utterly salacious searches with a dose of butterly. I do not know if it has anything to do with the Amul Star Voice of India reality show currently on Indian television.

Amul: India’s No. 1 Brand

Thanks to Trak.in, I was alerted to this interesting news: Amul is India’s No. 1 brand, followed by Life Corporation of India (LIC), and Nokia.

Leading media, advertising and marketing publication Media magazine, together with regional brand consultancy Asian Integrated Media Limited and global market research company Synovate, has released the 2007 results from the annual Asia’s Top 1000 Brands survey.

About the Survey: Nine markets were included in this fourth round of the survey – China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, India and Indonesia. Synovate interviewed people aged 15-64 years old, with sample sizes per market of 500, apart from China and India, where the sample was 750 across three and four top-tier cities respectively.

Asia’s Top 10 Brands for 2007

Rank	Brand
1	Nokia
2	Sony
3	Colgate
4	Coca Cola
5	Panasonic
6	Honda
7	7-Eleven
8	Samsung
9	Nestle
10	Adidas

You can see the Top 100 Asia brands and the top 3 in each market (country) here (PDF).

Word of Mouth Advertising

A Nielsen Global Survey shows that word-of-mouth advertising is still the most powerful in the world. Conducted twice-a-year among 26,486 Internet users in 47 markets from Europe, Asia Pacific, the Americas and the Middle East, Nielsen surveyed consumers on their attitudes toward thirteen types of advertising - from conventional newspaper and television ads to branded web sites and consumer-generated content.

87 percent of Internet accessing Indians still trust recommendations from others over any other kind of advertising, making word-of-mouth advertising the most powerful tool in the industry today. Let’s take a look at the interesting Indian results:

Form of Advertising Trusted	%
Recommendations from Consumers	87
Newspapers	77
Consumer opinions posted online	73
Brand Websites	72
Magazines	71
TV	65
Email I signed up for	58
Radio	55
Brand sponsorships	52
Search Engine Ads	41
Ads before movies	41
Online banner ads	38
Text ads on mobiles	24

This is amazing - online opinions (on blogs, social networking sites, etc.) are trusted higher than TV advertisements! And what about those ads before (and during) movies? Can this persuade the sponsors to reduce those TV ad break intervals down to zero?