A good friend of mine (and a former classmate as well) left a comment on the Facebook Wall asking me why I hadn’t posted here for a long time now. Well, here I am and I would like to thank BV for getting me back on track on this blog. I must mention here that he runs an excellent blog on movies – Srini at the Movies

There have been many things to update, but just not enough motivation or time to write them down here. However, off-late, I have been more into micro-blogging (twitter etc) than blogging. Some of my recent updates on Twitter are:

Bhadmanus – A play in Hindi at Rangashankara on Tue, 31st March. Telebooking on 9739803104 , 9739096270 | Onlinebooking: www.indianstage.in

Just finished reading book 1 (Kapilavastu) of the series Buddha by Osamu Tezuka. Its a beautiful graphic novel. Recommended read.

Watched Majid Majidi’s highly acclaimed film – The Song of Sparrows. Visual metaphors abound and make you think – http://tinyurl.com/d9ye9w

Coming back to more interesting details, the media frenzy over the upcoming elections has been fun to watch. Every news channel worth its hosts is selling the election fever. One such piece of news was that of the emergence of a professionals’ political party – which aims to get into politics on the strength of the proverbial educated class of the society. The television campaigns urging people to vote has worked well on me and I am ready and armed to go to the polling booth. Bring the candidates on the inspection stage. The only problem, however, is that I am not quite sure whom to vote for. All the parties currently contesting have dubious track records and not-so-morally-correct candidates. I am aware that there is a vote to “not vote” , but I hope I don’t end up doing that. Because in that case, I would have had no say in the government that will be formed post these elections.

The emergence of the Third Front has been a welcome addition to the already full newspaper columns. It wasn’t enough to have the Left and the Right. We needed a third direction, which will perhaps not take us anywhere, but at least it is an option. Then there are the inflammatory speeches by certain candidates and retaliation from the others.

At one point in time, don’t you feel really disgusted at this whole song and dance show? At this mad craving for power at no matter what cost?
And we running to the poll booths to satisfy the hunger of these authority-seeking supposed servants of the public? I don’t know about you, but I do feel disgusted on seeing this crazy circus during pre-elections.

Yet, I shall go vote. Because I also believe that only by voting can we bring about a change. It might be a slow, very slow process. But it will be worth the effort. And, lest you forget, it will give the news channels something to talk about.

Enjoy.

Satisfly.com taps into the various social networks such as facebook, myspace and twitter to figure out the behavior of a person who has recently travelled by air.

By profiling such information and sharing it with the airlines, it aims to provide you, the passenger, with the ability to decide on the kind of person you would prefer as your seat mate. Satisfly stems from the problem that not everyone has good seat mates. And in long journeys, it becomes all the more important that the person sitting next to you does not get on your nerves. Step in Satisfly. They figure out a person’s on-flight behavior and needs and then categorize the person (along with the help of the airline, I suspect). Based on this profiling and categorization, they are then able to suggest a co-passenger to you with whom you might have a higher degree of comfort.

As of now Hawaiian airlines has tied up with Satisfly to improve their customer service and to ensure that no passenger is grumpy at the end of a long flight.

What next? Choose your preferred air hostesses/stewards perhaps? The world sure is evolving.
Link obtained via Economist.com

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?)