...shoOOonya...

I had thought that the magic of the information age was that it allowed us to know more, but lately I have realized the magic of the information age is that it allows us to know less. It provides us with external cognitive servants — silicon memory systems, collaborative online filters, consumer preference algorithms and networked knowledge. We can burden these digital and electronic servants and liberate ourselves from the 'human' tasks of rememebering and some day ... even thinking.

This year will be my third Diwali away from Home. 2005 Diwali - I was mid-air over international seas between Mumbai and Switzerland 2006 Diwali - I was in Geneva, Switzerland . Yes we had a Diwali Function under the aegis of the Indian Association of , but nothing beats Diwali celebrations with family 2007 Diwali - Well, right now I am in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on a short 3 month business stint. And by all coincidences, the 3 months had to envelope Diwali within its folds. Although, I am not completely alone this year (I got married in April and my wife has accompanied me to KL) BUT still ... I am not in Mumbai .. not in India ... Away from the country where the festivities are in the air. Celebrating Diwali in Mumbai and with family is quite different. The entire atmosphere is charged with lights, music, smiles all around, crowds in all shopping places, meeting so many relatives, calling up friends whom we have not talked for several months just to say Happy diwali, sending the ...

I have never been so much excited about meeting or seeing Bollywood stars (except for may be the first time I saw them). But this time it was different. JACKIE CHAN. For me, he is not just a Filmstar …. He is a master entertainer and a great performer. He has been entertaining me (and of course, the world) ever since my childhood and I am all for a Jackie Chan movie even today. When I read about Jackie visiting Kuala Lumpur to inaugurate his signature Café, I had a faint desire to take a chance and see him in person. Read more about his Kuala Lumpur visit and his café at this link … http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/Features/20071016170958/Article/indexpull_html http://www.bernama.com/bernama/v3/news_lite.php?id=291440 As the day approached, the feeble desire was gathering momentum, bouncing on the insides of my mind. I finally declared to my wife that we will take our chances. The idea was simple. We go to the café opening function. We participate in the Buddy Bear Pain...

What will be your reaction be if you are waiting for the local train to come at the platform and you hear / see the announcement ... The Train arriving in 31 seconds ! Well, first time i saw a similar message at the underground metro train station in KL ... i was amused. I felt it was more of a gimmick than precision. Everyday, reading similar messages off the display i no longer got amused. Yesterday was different. Don't ask me the difference. I dont know. It was just different. When i heard the announcement " The Train arriving in 31 seconds ! " yesterday evening, i simply started counting in my head 1, 2, 3 ... slowly ... timing myself at approx. 1 second intervals ... Now i myself dont know why i did this but i surely did it .. an continued to do it ... 10, 11, 12 .... I felt i was acting stupid but still i continued with a muted smile on my face ... 18, 19, 20 .... As i crossed 25 , the smile started to show .. as if i was going to disprove the announcement and w...

I posted the Intro which V gives in the movie V for Vendetta ... a real tongue twister of a very unlikely alphabet ... Found its video so you can get the Vocal Effect too ...

Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of Fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is it vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a by-gone vexation, stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition. The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta, held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose so let me simply add that it's my very good honor to meet you and you may call me V." - V for Vendetta

Hi All, I would like to announce with great pleasure that Arbit Choudhury has been awarded the prestigious Manthan Award under the e-Entertainment category, for its contribution to developing the concept of micro-distribution. The Manthan Award is an initiative by Digital Empowerment Foundation , India as the National initiative of World Summit Award, to select and promote the best practices in e-Content and Creativity in India. As the Award Jury put it – “Comic characters and ICT [Information Communication Technologies] offer immense possibilities for communicating serious thoughts quickly and to a large audience and in an interactive mode. [Others] could adopt Arbit's strategy of micro-distribution over a large geographical area to reach the target audience.” Check out the Manthan Award website for more details ... http://www.manthanaward.org/ About Arbit Choudhury's Manthan Award ... http://www.manthanaward.org/ArbitChoudhury.asp We (Shubham, Nikhil and Myself) would like t...

I know , I know .. with Yahoo offering unlimited storage space, Google jumping above 3 Gb is no big deal ... BUT For die-hard Gmail fans like me who were very close to 100% GMail inbox space utilization and who hate yahoo mail for its cluttered interface, distracting colour flashy ads and ineffective spam filters .... this is Good News ... I was offline from Gmail for quite some time and lot of mails and forwards and newsletters accumulated in my mailbox … taking the used storage to almost 99% …. A full day spent in deleting mails took it back to 90% … since then I have been regularly filtering, deleting mails and maintaining the utilization at 90% Suddenly I noticed the counter say … You are currently using 2640 MB (73%) of your 3608 MB …. the fall in % utilization made my heart leap .. with fears of a malicious virus deleting my g-mails …. A further look at the whole line indicated that the 73% was of 3608 MB and not of some 2980 MB I had been seeing since quite some time …. It comes...