Google Blog unavailability

Today Google Blog wasn't available for a short period time to much of a surprise. When they are back the update given sprang a much bigger surprise.

We've determined the cause of tonight's outage. The blog was mistakenly deleted by us (d'oh!) which allowed the blog address to be temporarily claimed by another user. This was not a hack, and nobody guessed our password. Our bad.

Petrol bunk cheating

Cheating at petrol bunks is very rampant in India. It is done at various levels,either through adulteration (mixing kerosene with petrol) or tampering with the quantity.

I just came across an incident today, when I went to fill in petrol for my bike in a Bharat Petroleum bunk on the koramangala inner ring road. I was forced to fill in at this unusual place as my bike was in almost dry condition and I missed out the usual place when I regularly fill-in.

The service guy at the bunk was acting very hastily. I was keeping a watch on the meter at the pump, then another guy distracted my attention. Before I could realize the service guy finished filling in and has reset the meter. By no way I could ensure that he filled in the correct quantity. I was suspicious that he would have cheated at the least 1/2 litre of petrol from me. To support my claim the bike went to reserve mode even before I could travel another 5 kms.

404 - Page not found

It is rather unusual when I got Page Not Found in News.com when I cliked on a news link on their Front Door page.




In case of rediff, it is very rampant that you often hit upon Page Not Found or wrongly linked page.

Poster campaign

With the impending state elections in TN and the curb by the EC on advertising in public walls, the political parties have gone haywire in trying to reserve private properties and walls to do their campaign. I am surprised why the parties still haven't embraced other forms of campaign. At the least in metros, e-campaigns should take precedence. Bangalore is no exception. Even with the advent of multiplexes, one can see a lot of cinema posters all over the city. It really gives an ugly look to the city. Over the years, I haven't decided on the movie to watch by looking at the posters. Probably the poster campaign could work only in smaller towns where the e-media still nascent.

Photo blogging tool for camera phones

Couple of months back myself and Gops were thinking of writing a small app to upload photos from camera phones to blogger. The idea is to experiment and understand the capabilities of J2ME and getting exposed to atom specs/Blogger API.
We did start with some prototyping. Then the project went on hibernation as both us were occupied with office stuff.

Nice to see that ShoZu really implemented the complete solution. I guess this is the second time I came so close to conceiving a brand new product idea and failing to capitalize on it.

(via)

Telecom tariff tumbling

The Telecomm tariffs India are in flux. The tariff are tumbling down like an avalanchee. When there is a competition, the subscribers are most benefitted. Close on the heels of every service provider providing One India One Rupee tariff, the Reliance Infocomm has spearheaded another tariff cut. Now with reliance you can enjoy 40p per min to any Reliance number across the country and 75p to any other number in the Joy 499 plan.

Reliance customers are getting the best deal out of this tariff wars.

Not a surprise

Google is known for its pamper. It doesn't come as a complete surprise when I saw pug speak at Official Google blog. Even I remember Oracle Japan having a dog listed as their employee.

Awesome Photo

It took me some time to grasp the camels and their shadows

Spirit of Entrepreneurship

Over last week, I read an article on Rediff about how people take chances for pursuing their dream job. There were clear statistics showing people leaving their well-paid risk less comfortable office job to pursue their real interests. In a sheer coincidence, I learnt that Gopal (via) has relinquished his job to pursue his dream company for full-time. Eminent Infotech which has been nascent for a while is set to ramp up its operations. (the website is partially complete, hang on for while)

This initiative does answer my quest on India born tech companies rolling out its products and securing market leadership. I wish Eminent Infotech the very best in all their endeavors. And I hope to see another Joel in Gopal sooner. (Now I get a better chance of having shares in Eminent Infotech IPO !)

Jokes apart, the sheer experience that this exercise will bring is unquantifiable. This also reminds me of an adage, "Taking no risk in life is a big risk on it own".

Motivation - Failure is your friend

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Failure is your friend

It is really a motivational article on Failure. To be honest, something has been bugging me down for the past couple of weeks. It was related to an attempt (I know this is vague but can't reveal anything more) I made, that got flopped drastically. Though I am convinced that the decision gave me a very good learning expertise on various fronts...Still there is a pinch of feeling that I miscalculated a lot of stuff while taking that decision. I had failed to give due significance to a couple of factors or suggestions that came along my way.

A quick read of this article really made me feel consoled. I hope this learning experience will help in the future!