Dhimant Parekh

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January 4, 2010 @ 9:38 pm

Book available for the visually impaired on InclusivePlanet

Inclusive Planet, formerly called BookBole, is a platform that enables visually impaired readers from across the world to connect and share accessible content. We had covered BookBole in this article at The Better India.

I am happy to inform that my book is now available on Inclusive Planet and many of its visually and print impaired readers will get to read it.

Personally, I think Inclusive Planet is a wonderful initiative and in case you want to know more or contribute to their cause, you can visit their blog or just mail them at founders[at]inclusiveplanet[dot]com.

Filed under Books, Interesting, Internet, Sketch Stories, Social Initiative · No Comments »

December 10, 2009 @ 9:27 pm

Introducing Startup Crush

Well, most of you who follow me on Twitter or are on my GTalk friend list have perhaps already seen this. But those who haven’t here is the unveiling of  Startup Crush.

It is a Digg-styled clone catering to the niche of news, reviews and information about technology startups. I don’t yet know whether this is going to be focused on Indian startups alone or will want to continue to cover global startup news. An interesting section added there is that of Startup Jobs, which I hope many startup job consultants will make use of to get to the right audience.

And personally, this is an experiment on how user generated content and a social community can be rallied along for a particular subject.

Love to know your comments/reactions on Startup Crush.

Filed under Entrepreneur, Interesting, Internet, News, Website Review · No Comments »

November 16, 2009 @ 10:05 pm

Nature’s Call

The editorial page of Hindustan Times carries this revealing article on why the west might now be encouraging their people to “let it flow in the great outdoors”:

As suspected by some of us busy unclogging pipes here in India, these ‘naturalists’ with a twist want people to urinate in the open to save the world from — well, of course! — global warming. The more we take a piss in the privacy of our bathrooms, the more we end up flushing the lavatory, thereby ‘wasting’ water.

Well, someone should figure out soon on what we should be doing. Lest we have a globally warming smelly planet on our feet.

Filed under Articles, General, Internet, Nonsense · No Comments »

September 17, 2009 @ 8:30 pm

Crime-Noir Contest

DailyLit, a site I admire a lot (and also a site from where I source books into my e-mail) is running a Crime-Noir in 50 words contest.

You need to write a 50-word crime story (incorporating criminals and cops, the good and bad stuff ) and submit it there.

My entry is titled ‘Cold Dust’ and is present here:

http://www.dailylit.com/forums/other/reader-challenges/2009/09/15/crime-noir-in-50-words

Go ahead and submit yours (registration is free)

Filed under Interesting, Internet, Short story · No Comments »

August 29, 2009 @ 6:05 am

Not a favourable Goodbye

As much as I respect the Tata group (and consider myself lucky to have seen Mr. Ratan Tata in person way back when I was in school), I think they have gone a bit off the mark here.

Tata Sons has reportedly filed a suit against the popular travel community website OkTataByeBye.com. Infact, a panelist of the World Intellectual Property Organization has declared that the ownership of this domain should be handed over to the Tata group!
Clearly, the usage of the phrase “Tata” in the website is more in line with the colloquial goodbye that we all use. I really don’t think this infringes any copyrights or trademark of the Tata Group.

Please read the appeal put out by OkTataByeBye.com here:
http://www.oktatabyebye.com/support-us/Appeal.aspx

And add your comment there if you think this is a bit overboard.

Tata for now, ladies and gentlemen. I meant the goodbye one, of course.

Filed under General, India, Internet, Killing time, Nonsense, Opinion · No Comments »

August 25, 2009 @ 10:27 am

And we are back!

Time was slowly slipping by on this blog while things were becoming too fast paced in the offline world. Finally, a balance seems to be on the horizon as we resume interacting here once again.

First news first, Dhi Junior aka Taksh has well and truly arrived. Taksh is named after the founder of the Takshila University. For those with a mythological interest, Taksh was the name of Bharat’s son (Bharat being Ram’s younger brother of course). For those who think this is a wonderful name, we should let you know how the name got selected. Those who think this is quite a bad name, we should still let you know how the name got selected.

Rewind a few months back and the Mrs. and I are thinking whether we should start thinking about names. The Mrs. thinks perhaps and I say perhaps and then we go about doing other important things like solving crosswords and drinking tea. Rewind a few weeks before Taksh is due and we are thinking whether we should start thinking about a name. But then again, we don’t know the gender so why bother right now? More crosswords and more tea follow and we nod in unison at our decision.

Taksh arrives, known and recognized more as the son of the Mrs. and Dhi. We are still thinking whether to start thinking of names. I get online (what more could be expected of someone who blogs) and search for names. That becomes a tiring exercise so we break for a crossword and tea. Then we get possession of a book of baby names and believe that this was the best thing to happen to us (after the baby of course). We are told by the powers that be that the baby’s name should start with an R or a T. We run through the Rs and don’t find anything interesting, anything remotely difficult to pronounce or explain. We then browse through the Ts and immediately stumble upon Taksh. It’s got a slight tongue-twisting feel to it and the dude is going to have to spend some time explaining the word and the spelling.

“So much like my name,” I beamed to myself. That was sufficient for us as far as naming him was concerned. And thus arrived Taksh. We are back to our crosswords but are briefly and rightly so interrupted by him every few hours of our sleeping time. He is one of the reasons why I have groggy eyes and sleepy afternoon meetings. He is also one of the reasons why blogging, apart from other essential activities, has taken a back seat.

***

Moving on to other things now. During one of the nights that I spent at the hospital, I am walking on the corridors at around 11:00 pm. A couple of nurses with worried faces are running behind a sort of matronly looking nurse.

“Sister, sister, we don’t know what are the exact procedures to be put up in the list sister”, one of the younger ones complains with a hassled face.

“Yes sister, how can we know the procedure?” adds her companion meekly.

The matronly sister turns around and says “Eh, what ya! Take it from the net no! It is there on the net, just take it from there.”

I smiled and felt glad that even hospitals were referring to pieces of information on the internet to know procedures of some kinds. Hoping it wasn’t exactly some life-saving procedure, I walked along as the nurses turned around and trotted away with immense happiness.

***

Ladies and gentlemen, it’s time to give Taksh his due attention lest he decides to bawl through the night.

More later. Enjoy.

Filed under General, Internet, Life, Looking around, News, Personal · 5 Comments »

March 13, 2009 @ 2:41 am

A long due Hello and other interesting things

I have been on a mini-sabbatical of sorts from blogging. Amongst various reasons, the primary one is that of switching jobs. My new job is in an area which I am not too familiar with (the mobile space) and hence a lot of learning is required to be done.

Having said that, I believe that blogging worldwide is now moving towards micro-blogging, slowly but surely. People want to update their thoughts instantly and in as few sentences as possible. So, if you don’t have a blog yet, don’t fret,  you could just go straight ahead and become a micro-blogger.

If you do have a blog, then it makes all the more sense to supplement your online presence with something that is quicker and has a larger impact. A micro-blog is a logical next step.

“How do I start?”, you ask. Simple, I say. Just head over to the all new Wikyl.com (www.wikyl.com) and get your own microblog for free. Mine is accessible at http://wikyl.com/dhimant

And don’t forget to leave your feedback and thoughts on the new UI of Wikyl :-) Somethings that still don’t work properly include the Groups application. However, the Twitter integration works just fine, so even if you have a Twitter account, just link it up to your Wikyl account and update only on one place, but get twice the impact!

Have a great day, ladies and gentlemen. It’s been drizzling in Bangalore the past few days, something that you could perhaps micro-blog about? (The last sentence was a bit of a stretch eh?)

Filed under Blog, Interesting, Internet, Web 2.0, Website Review · No Comments »

June 16, 2008 @ 10:05 pm

As I had mentioned some days ago, I lost my mobile phone at one of the Cafe Coffee Day (commonly, and irritatingly called CCD these days) outlets. The phone I lost was a Nokia N72 and the only reason I was frustrated was that it had various applications installed which had made my life a little simpler. One of them was an application called mCheck which allowed me to make my bill payments directly from the phone. The another most used application on that phone was the Gmail app and the Opera mini browser.

Therefore, I was very keen on ensuring that my next phone also supports applications, which are predominantly made for the Symbian operating system. After doing a 10 minute research (to be correct, the research was outsourced to a friend and a colleague who logged on to the net and figured out the best possible features for my budget), I went ahead and bought the Sony Ericsson K530i. This phone is surprisingly power-packed with tons of features and yet sports a small and sleek design.

Some of the features that I really “dig” (to use CCD parlance) about this phone:
1. It has a Symbian operating system, hence you can run many third party applications.
2. It has a built-in RSS reader. For me, the Google reader is the next most accessed product after mail and blogs. I absolutely love having this RSS reader in my phone.
3. It supports 3G. Of course, this is premature, but just for kicks I am happy that this phone would support a video conference whenever our networks become 3G ready.
4. The software that comes with the phone is, simply put, extremely utilitarian. I have never found it this easy to synchronize my contacts and calendar appointments from my PC to my phone.
5. The built-in suite of applications include Music, Photo and Video editing software, which is basic, but quite handy to use.
6. It comes with the basic set of tools that are nowadays essential for any mobile phone – a camera, music player, speaker phone support and handset support.

In case you do have this phone, allow me to point you to an excellent source of useful applications for your phone. And do remember to download the latest Opera browser from the Opera Mini website.

Filed under Internet, Opinion, Review · No Comments »

June 3, 2008 @ 4:20 am

Facing threats from the new age economy, which should be read as the ever increasing internet penetration (and more importantly Wikipedia), Britannica recently announced that it will open up its premium content to publishers and bloggers.

I signed up for this offer of theirs and they considered this blog worthy enough to be given a premium account for free. What’s more? Well, for you, dear reader, there is a lot more. If I link to a particular Britannica article on this blog, you get to read the entire content for free (and which otherwise would have required some significant $ out of your pocket).

I think this is a good initiative by Britannica and it would definitely serve to increase traffic to their site. Wikipedia has done a great job of disrupting the encyclopedia market, but it does have its own percentage of biased and disputed information. However, Britannica.com is quite difficult to navigate through in spite of their ultra cool looking UI. I couldn’t find quantum physics for example on their list of topics sorted alphabetically. Having said that, I found the information on Britannica very comprehensive and indeed excellently written!

I leave you, ladies and gentlemen, with an opportunity to peek inside one of the world’s coveted encyclopedias – the Encyclopedia Britannica. As a sample page, I have chosen the life of Mahatma Gandhi:
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in Britannica

In case you want to compare, here is the link to Wikipedia’s content on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi.

Filed under Blog, Internet, Liberalization, Website Review · No Comments »

February 26, 2008 @ 9:35 pm

Just discovered that Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and I have at least one thing in common – we are all on Twitter. Of course, its a different story that no body follows my updates on Twitter.

However, I found that both Clinton and Obama are quite active on Twitter and here are their twitter links:
http://twitter.com/hillaryclinton
http://twitter.com/barackobama

Going solely based on these logs, I find Obama to be a lot more energetic and proactive as compared to his competitor.
Some updates of Obama:

- Encouraging everyone in DC, MD and VA to vote today. Heading to Madison, WI for a Rally for Change event at the Kohl Center (6:15pm tonight)
- In Las Vegas, Nevada. Fired Up & Ready to Go!
- is Fired Up!.. And Ready to Go!

Updates of Clinton:

- I’m delivering a major foreign policy speech at George Washington University in Washington, DC today.
- This afternoon I was at an energetic rally in Providence, RI. Later today I’m heading to Central Falls for a health care roundtable.
- I am in Tacoma and Spokane, WA to talk to voters about “Solutions for America.”

For me, it is interesting how technology has easily permeated into the political domes of the USA, whereas in India most politicians struggle with even simple SMS-ing or checking mails on the internet.

Filed under Internet, Politics, Technology · 3 Comments »

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