:: Sense - The Way I Sense ::

May the New Year be that New Sunrise that you have been waiting for thus far. Happy New Year

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Self-deception, they say, comes in forms varied. But few would have fathomed the extent that an entire nation can go in doing the same driven by the personal vendetta of a few men that rule (sic) the country. In exterminating Saddam and treating that as a milestone of sorts, betrays the facade that this war on terror has been thus far !

Rejoice. Yes, I mean You ! For You have been deemed worthy for the Time Person of the Year, 2006 ! Not convinced. give it a read. And to a certain extent, I guess that’s a very fair assessment of the impact that the web today is headed in a direction to. The Youtubes, Facebooks, Flickrs of the world might be community driven sites for sharing specific media/info. But they have succeeded in giving a new idea that online communities are no more the stuff of warez/pr0n sites! Closer home, online activity has increased significantly in India. However, it is a moot point if there has been a real numerical growth or is it higher levels of cacophony. And this is where I think the Time editors have got it spot on when they said

“Web 2.0 harnesses the stupidity of crowds as well as its wisdom”

Like some wise soul once said, stupidity and genius are congruent

Contrast has never defined itself with such a high contrast ratio !

The High

&

The Low

Aah, Din’t take long for youtube to be snapped up for a staggering $1.6 Billion. Sometimes, am wondering if Google’s buying out companies to justify it sitting on huge piles of cash. But a look at the finer details reveals its an all-stock transaction. Well, yeah, it’s a free world and sometimes insanity comes with such fat tags attached

Considering the funny markets I track at work (electronic markets, in case ya missed it), I have been watching the development of the Sem India project with more than a bit of interest and excitement. With the Govt’s much awaited Semiconductor policy yet to take any shape whatsover, and the Govt having successfully scared other potential fab-starters what with their overbearing bias to the Sem India project, it remains to be seen if it is going to be one of those areas that India needs to sit back and watch how the Indian consumer becomes one of the biggest markets for imported chips ! Of course, for the record an assembly and testing facility is in the works at the fab city, again driving the image that labor costs are what drives companies to set up shop here . Came across this case study from Thunderbird on site selection for Fab companies, with Intel as the case in point. You can check it out here (PDF). In the meanwhile, if ya know anyone who’s hiring at Sem India, do let me in on that

Sometimes it really takes just a single site to prove that insanity has come to rule the online roost again. Take a look at a site called Weblo that was launched a few days back. This site allows one to buy, yes-for real $$$, any and every piece of real estate that they wanted to buy in the real world, but couldn’t afford it ! Essentially, you could buy cities, states, countries, the whole monty ! Same goes with domains and believe it or not, with celebrities ! You could have ads on each of your properties, and make money off them, and when you believe market is ripe, even go sell them or auction ‘em off, true ebay style ! Now, I am a big enough fan of board games and the like, but to take the whole concept of a board game, extrapolate it globally and throwing in real cash…Hmm…More than a bit disconcerting…To me, more than anything else, it brings up the legal issues that are likely to come up ! Say, I own Harry Potter (the character) and google.com, and make money out of both these, why should they sit idle? But having said that, this has the potential to go insanely viral and build up volumes quite fast ! And which is what I believe the site owners are targetting at. Make a critical user-base, monetise the site from day-one, and hope to be bought out before they are sued left-right-center. And all of a sudden, Mark Cuban’s comments on Youtube seem to be applicable to a whole host of sites

Went to the Google Wordmasters 2006 challenge today. While I am no creative nut, it sure was interesting to participate in writing of a different nature. Writing (yes, good old fashioned pen-on-paper types) 200 words using 20 keywords that are supplied and being creative, hmm, can be a challenge…In case you are interested in the exact set of words, check this post by another participant….While I did enjoy the 45 odd minutes of writing, what was more intriguing to me was the kind of participation that I saw at the venue. Google had originally taken a print ad stating that the contest was open to only the first 300 registrants. To my utter surprise, a good 25-30% of the entire junta there were pretty…umm…senior, the above 40-club. And quite a few above 50 too. While English as a medium of communication is quite popular out here in Chennai, however, the fact that these older people too exhibited a keen sense of purpose in reading the ad and registering online immediately suggests quite a few things. A quick chat with a few of such people revealed that a few of their friends regretted on missing out since they were late in registering, not because they did not know how to browse ! The form for registration was, in itself, quite basic. Just thinking of these….Are we under-estimating the internet-savviness of the older generation (I, for one, was!)? Or is it that a simplistic procedure attracts such people? Hmm..Interesting questions in these days of online marketing.

As for the contest itself, the best prize is a visit to the Hyderabad office of Google, which, imnsho, isn’t really something to look upto for..Yea, a visit to the googleplex would have been just the thing that the doc ordered for

They’ve had their ups and lows, but they’ve never failed to entertain! Each in their own way, have left their mark on sport in ways very few sportsmen have.

 I might not be a big fan/follower of sports, but there are days when you really feel sports will be less interesting in future.

Yep, PaGaLGuY.com turns four this Saturday. It has been a journey like no other. Starting as just another site, having fun, racking up numbers (@last count, over 78000!), facing misguided mainstream media’s attention, and all the while, being the great community that it is ! Having been around for the better part of these four years, sure feels mighty good to look at where the insanity is headed. Here’s hoping it touches a lot more lives

And yes, just in case you haven’t noticed, there’s a host of amazing contests up to celebrate the event. Get to win travel trips, Tees, Books, and lots more only at the hotbed of insanity !

Days hurtling on real fast. Was just going thro’ this nice li’l article on TV News in India. It directed me to one of my best reads in recent times, a blog on The War for News in India. Racy, Unsubstantiated, but definitely unnerving if you are on the other side of the News channels. Do give it a dekko. And yea, people seem to have learnt after the Mediaah debacle. Its all anon posting there

And lest you missed it, 59 year olds with a tube of hand cream are harbingers of paranoia now