A tale of abandoned topics

There were several topics in my mind which I was considering blogging about, but have abandoned them later due to various reasons. This post is a quick intro to few such topics which would have appeared as a post in this blog but unfortunately didn’t/couldn’t.

 1 Blogging vs Movie making

                I thought of comparing blogging and movie making, and highlight the similarities. (for example, a. it is difficult to give hit movies all the time and similarly it is not practical to expect each post to be very popular, b. Each movie is released with lots of expectations and hope. The cast and crew await public response eagerly after release-same with blogger-he eagerly awaits what his readers may say on the latest post…and few more such observations)

                But scrapped the idea because I felt that reasons are not strong enough to associate blogging with movie making alone. Almost everything in life is equally challenging-the new project at work, a new tournament, the next academic year-almost everything involves anticipations, hope, expectations. Right?

 2 Posts that were overhauled completely

                Whenever required I keep refining my contents. I don’t do a publish and forget job. Several posts have undergone multiple updates-some typical reasons for update are: correcting syntactical/factual error, adding additional information/image, refining the content for SEO purposes/better readability, linking to similar posts and so on. Most of the time changes will be quite small, but nevertheless, regular readers, who read my post within a day or two of its publication, often miss these updates. I can’t ask readers to read the whole post again because I’ve revised it, nor it is feasible to list every small change.

                But some posts have undergone major changes since its first publication. The post on Skandagiri was first written as an experience account. But since it started attracting visitors looking for tourist information about the place, I split the post into two sections-experience account and tourist information. The legendary Club Mahindra post has evolved a lot over time and is a lot refined and mature now, than what it was initially written. In post navigation, excerpts from interview with Club Mahindra executives, disclaimer, 2008 membership price list etc were provided over a period of time. The BMTC Volvo post was constantly updated to include latest available timetable information, route info etc. In some cases the comment written by readers were so relevant/informative that I absorbed them in the body of the post (with due credits of course-like this post) and more

                 Was thinking of publishing a post listing those posts which have undergone major revamps, but dropped it, because such posts (posts listing summary of posts , best of 2007 and the likes) were never popular in this blog. Reading once is itself a big task- don’t think anyone really cares to read it second time.

  3. Journalism and Investment experience part 2

Have written earlier about my teenage journalism experience and investment experiences. Some points which were left in those posts-was planning for a part 2. But have covered most of the points in few recent posts (the SBI one and this post), so had to drop the idea of part 2

 4.  Reliance-Digitally fooling everyone

                Reliance seems to be obsessed with the term “Digital”. Way back in 2002, when Reliance launched its mobile phone service, with that legendary LG handset and a scheme wherein user had to pay some Rs. 24k over 3 years, Reliance used to call those ugly handsets as “Digital Multimedia handset”. If you’re able to visualize those handsets, just think, if those handsets were “Digital Multimedia handsets” what would they call today’s Nokia N95, iPhone etc? Only Ambani has to tell what is so digital and what was so multimedia in that handset. The advertisement those days used to show an image of K3G, a popular movie of those times, giving people an impression that they can watch movies like K3G in the handset if they buy them, which was purely misleading.

               Their current ad again speaks about Digital Voice clarity. As per my knowledge no mobile operator is using analog technology for telecommunication. So thought of blogging about this. But a quick chat with Jayasimha, a telecom engineer, revealed that CDMA is supposed to have better voice clarity than GSM. With that concluded that the case is not strong enough for a post. (This post was planned for our Ad Critics blog)

 5. Tourist places

                Have visited several places during past 9 months-Places around Mysore, Coorg, Mumbai, Manipal and more (and Many more trips lined up for near Future!) Wanted to blog about places like Dubare elephant camp, Talakaveri, Talakad, Shivanasamudra and more, but lack of unique content is holding me back. Have some photos and some basic tourist information, but these are already available on internet and since I have no unique experience/extra information/observations to share, not sure if writing a typical post-“went there-saw that-it was nice-came back” would add much value.

 6. Grand Theft Auto-Vice City Game review

Long back I’d reviewed this game from Rockstar Games and published this review in Mouthshut. Republished this in March in my blog but recalled the post after few days because of these reasons: a. With GTA 4 making record sales and rocking all over,  it’s a bit too late to talk about Vice City b. When I read my own review, after few years since it was originally written, felt that it could have been written in a far better way than the plain vanilla description of the game. Didn’t have the time to refine the contents and decided not to serve an uninteresting version to my readers.

 Do you think any of these topics deserve to be detailed and independent posts?

 That’s it in this episode. Now can you tell me the supreme irony of this post?

Karnataka Home Minister Dr. VS Acharya comments on my blog post

Yesterday Morning I was in for a pleasant surprise-Was checking my mails in gmail and saw a comment from Dr. VS Acharya. (for my Coco Fresco Hyderabad post, wherein I had described a new approach adopted to promote tender coconut) The name sounded familiar-went to blogger profile and subsequently to his blog. 

As suspected, it turned out to be the blog of the very person who had taken oath as Cabinet Minister along with Karnataka CM Mr. B S Yadyurappa a week ago and was assigned the portfolio of home ministry less than 24 hours earlier. (He was minister for Medical Education earlier).

Never expected politicians to be tech savvy and have a blog. (Do SM Krishna, known for his IT friendliness, has a blog? No idea.) But then, Dr. VS Achar is a doctor by qualification and is one of the few highly qualified personalities in the political corridor. His bio data in this post. 

I feel honored to have such high profile visitors to my blog who stop by and leave a comment too. Here's wishing Dr. Acharya all the best for his tenure as Home Minister of Karnataka and sir, we're hoping to see some real improvements this time...

You can read the person blog of Dr. VS Acharya here. Photo sourced from his blog.

Note: Its official- In an interview with Vishveshwara Bhat, editor of Vijaya Karnataka, VS Achar speaks about his blog. Image here (refer last question). So this is authentic enough to believe that the said blog is of Home minister

Ups & Downs of my blogging

This post shares few ups and downs I faced during past two years of my blogging:

1 The MLM Supporters

Any talk on network and multi level marketing will be potentially controversial. When I wrote couple of posts on MLM (12 reasons why MLM cos go wrong * QuestNet reopens as Lotus marketing in Srilanka * Amway Inside story * An analysis of MLM companies) as expected there were lots of comments which criticized my stand. But then, I received couple of communications wherein someone sent detailed arguments and wanted to meet me in person and explain why & how their business is genuine and legitimate. Few wanted me to attend their presentations to understand the business properly. One thing common among these people was that they agreed that a particular company (Amway or QuestNet etc) are scams but insisted that their company is genuine and legitimate.

I am not sure if I want to take the discussions offline. I have an opinion, based on certain observations and analysis, which I publish as a post. Few will like it and benefit from it, some more will not agree and ignore it and rest of the world will not even notice it. That's the way it is-we need to accept that. To a reasonable extent I can respond to comments and provide clarifications, but beyond a limit it gets too much. Certainly I can’t afford to spend all my time and energy convincing the world that I am right. When someone doesn’t agree and insist that I change my stand I may have to ignore them and move on. Sorry folks.

It may not be bad to make friends online and take it offline. But not all will have good intentions and some due diligence will be required before trusting an hitherto unknown person and chose to meet him offline. For this reason I had to reject certain friend requests and requests from unknown people to meet me in person. When Club Mahindra suddenly invited me for their Coorg Trip for travel bloggers I had to do considerable ground work before accepting it. Sometimes it is like suspecting too much, but can't help it. Protocols are to be followed.

2. Me not an expert

I may not be an expert in most of the topics I write upon. But some readers believe otherwise and send in questions and concerns-Sometime it feels good that people are approaching you for help, sometime feels bad that you’re not able to help them (not knowing what to help or time constraint etc). Tried my best to help those who sought it, while had to ignore some.

a. One person sent a mail (with his resume) saying he is a student of hotel management and wishes to work as an intern with Club Mahindra. I have no clue what made him think I could get him an internship at Club Mahindra. Though his resume was written in such a bad English I sent it to Club Mahindra executives.

b. Someone else said she invested 30 k in reliance mutual fund and hasn’t got any communication in months. I had nothing specific to console her but assured her that probability of fraud seems very less in this case and after a quick discussion with a friend advised her to check with her broker or call reliance office to get her portfolio number. Never heard again from her-hope her investment is giving good returns now.

Many others sought help buying a laptop. (Because of this post) Responded them to my best knowledge-Haven’t received any feedback how many of them went by my suggestion.

The Club Mahindra post went beyond control-Many commented saying they feel cheated by CM and asked me how they can come out of that mess. I do not have any control over CM and there wasn't much I could do about it. Wherever possible I pointed them to other comments where readers had shared similar concerns and were considering their options, including legal ones.

3. Journos Contacting me

One Russian Lady, Reshatova Anneta approached me early last year [Read her comment here] who wanted my help in some article/report she was preparing. She said she works for russian company HR- media (www.hrmedia.ru). I verified her identity and couldn’t find anything fishy. I spent around half a day of my time and gave her the information she wanted. (Her article was something related to employment and empowerment of women in India) . This effort from my side proved to be a total waste-never heard from her again as to what happened to that article-probably it was rejected by her editor/boss or it was used for some internal purpose or she decided not to bother me once she got what she wanted.

Another lady, who identified herself as ABC (name withheld) from Hindustan Times, contacted me from Delhi regarding timeshare holidays. I gave my opinion as to why I felt investing in timeshare might not be a good idea and she promptly asked “What else people should do?” Think I didn’t give a convincing answer to her- I said something like “People can invest their capital smartly and  using the returns take one time holiday which gives lots of flexibility” Probably it didn’t convince her. Never heard again from her as well.

Few people sought my permission to use my club Mahindra articles for their newspaper/magazines-(like this comment for example)I generously permitted, but never heard from them. Thinking of it, a newspaper cannot easily quote a personal blog. If I were an editor, I would never rely on information sourced from a personal blog, because unlike a blog, a newspaper cannot easily criticize a company in its articles, unless the newspaper has enough evidence to survive a defamation case and be ready to lose advertisement revenue from that company. Also business articles seldom publish links to personal blogs-(Swati did that once [read it here] and for reasons not known to me, her column got stopped thereafter) So for all these reasons I guess those who wanted to quote my blog in their articles couldn’t do it.

4. From ideas to reality

In this post I suggested that public toilets in India can be made free (by recovering operating expenses by showing ads). A group of people, headed by Abhishek Pandey, under the umbrella of ‘soon to be registered’ NGO called Dream India projects (DIP) came up to implement that idea in Delhi. They made some good progress initially but since past one month or so there’s been no updates on that. Hope that project becomes a reality soon. Details in this post

5. Prizes that never came

Won a contest in Mouthshut.com January last year and was supposed to get return air tickets as prize- Never got that till date. (Last year abandoned pursuit after a set of email follow ups) [Details in this post]

6. Lucrative offers 

Once upon a time my Club Mahindra post used to come right below Club Mahindra official website (image in this post).(Now the position has dropped due to a set of reasons, including smart counter SEO strategies from CM, such as registering dozens of websites with club mahindra in its name). During those days I have received several offers where some people wanted me to either a. write a positive article about their company and make it come on top or b. write a negative article about their competition and make it come on top. Nothing great about those companies either-people who approached me identified themselves as "representatives" of the company. I had to reject such offers because those were not my purpose of blogging. Can’t write good or bad just because someone is willing to pay me. 

7. Stupid acts

Some of the activities I did during initial days look stupid now-During early days I didn't know if Vijaya Karnataka (a kannada newspaper) is available online. In one of the Kannada blogs I wrote a comment asking for URL of ’s website. The link was available in their blogroll or I could have even googled it-but these simple things didn’t strike me that time…

Wrote comments leaving by blog URL behind and then wondered why the blog owners deleted it…

There're some more incidents like this which I can share. Will do that sometime soon...

2nd anniversary-Belated anniversary wishes to my blog

While talking with Raveesh today realized that I have missed second anniversary of this blog. On May 22nd this blog completed 2 years of existence. In one my earlier posts this month I had written about the upcoming birthday but forgot on the celebration day.

Better late than never, belated 2nd happy birthday to my blog...

Here's the first post that was published 2 years ago. Two years of blogging was great experience-Given that there're bloggers around us who are into blogging since as early as 1998-2000, me still an infant in this arena. Nevertheless blogging did take me to couple of places (Coorg, Manipal and Mumbai) and allowed me to have an online identity for myself. More than 200 people visit this blog daily with couple of them leaving their comments behind. (This is relatively smaller number compared to blogs that get thousands of hits every day-still I am happy with this, given that I don't spend much time on this and haven't made any serious promos-for past 6-9 months avg visitors per day is between 200-250-Not crossing that benchmark-don't know why). enidhispeaks.blogspot.com had reached a PR of 4 but lost it after moving to own domain. Waiting for next Google PR revision.

Because of my posts on network marketing etc I am sure there are quite a few souls angry with me as well, but I have also made some very good friends through this and have leveraged the potential of blog for real life benefits, though there weren't any significant income from it (such as by ads).

Thanks to each one of you for your readership, comments and encouragement. Looking forward for your continued support.

Related: Post written on first anniversary * Ups and downs during my blogging

SBI finally accepts me as a customer

Country’s leading Bank, State Bank of India (SBI), has finally accepted me as its customer.

My first contact with SBI dates back to year 2001, when I approached NR Colony Branch (Bangalore South) of SBI with my uncle (who had an account there) and we met the branch manager with a request to open an account. I had just joined an engineering college then and was new to Bangalore. The branch manager refused outright to open an account in my name. His reason for rejection was this-“Students don’t keep any money in their account-it is not economical for us to operate such accounts. We already have hundreds of such dead accounts. Sorry we don’t want another one”. Despite my assurance that I would maintain the required minimum balance he was not willing to listen and we had to leave. May be he was right in his views, but what he forgot was that students of today will be professionals tomorrow and some of them would even reach the status of HNI (High net worth Individuals). Allowing children to open an account is an easiest way to catch them young and treating them well would ensure a customer for life. Unfortunately that respected branch manager wasn’t trained to understand that.

SBI is not the only bank in town. Eventually I opened my account in the newly opened Bsk 2^nd stage branch of AXIS Bank (then UTI Bank). I was one of the first few customers for that branch and bank staff used to remember my name and welcome me with name every time I visit the branch. I hardly had Rs 1000 in my account but they treated me as if I have kept millions there.

An experience: One evening 7 pm while buying some books I swiped my debit card, but no slip came out. Shopkeeper told there must be some problem and I paid in cash. On my way back I checked in ATM, money was debited. I panicked and asked the security guard outside the bank to let me in so that I could complain about this to the bank staff. It was 8 pm and those guys were still working in the bank. After checking with the manager security allowed me in. In full tensed mind (as I had lost around 800 Rs) I explained them that shopkeeper swiped my card, but no slip came out and I had to pay in cash but now money is debited… The bank staff calmed me down (I really feel sorry I do not remember their names now to give credit) and explained me that if I have not signed the slip no payment will be made to the shopkeeper and transaction will be reversed. I felt relaxed and had a peaceful sleep that night.

Unlike traditional banks there was no need to run from counter to counter and one executive would address all requirements at his desk. It was a really great experience dealing with that bank (though after few years the staff changed and with thousands of account holders personal attention is a history now)

Couple of years down the line (me still ‘student’) my cousin opened student account at NR Colony SBI branch (may be the bank changed its policies or the new manager was liberal enough). Because national banks charged much less fee for Demand draft and outstation cheque clearances, it was still economical to operate an account with a traditional bank, despite the inconveniences, vis-à-vis modern banks (I am speaking of year 2003-At par clearance was nonexistent then-Once I submitted Rs 2000 ICICI bank cheque issued in Mysore for remittance in UTI bank Bangalore-UTI Bank charged Rs 125, ICICI Bank ate Rs 50, I lost 9% of the cheque amount- Rs 175 for no fault of mine-Nationalized banks charges much less for such services).I had another account at the Vijaya Bank extension counter in my college but they used to take 2 working days to deliver a DD (as they have to get it from main branch). I decided to try my luck again and went to SBI Padmanabha Nagar branch. The branch manager there was willing to let me open an account but only if I can get reference from a person who holds an account at that branch. I didn’t know anyone having an account there(May be I should have sought reference from Ravi Belgere or Devegowda who live nearby), so opted out. I could have gone back to NR Colony branch and tried my luck again, but I didn’t feel like going there or to other traditional banks which wouldn’t let me open an account with respect.

Next couple of years I managed without depending on SBI or any other traditional banks. After I got my job, Salary account was opened with ICICI and everything is running smoothly since then. Each time a DSA tried to sell me a SBI credit card all the above would flashback in my mind.

Recently I felt like opening a PPF (Public Provident Fund) account. Opening this account gives some unique advantages like tax exemption etc. Unfortunately one can’t open this type of account in any bank-one needs to go to certain designated banks only. For TamilNadu this was SBI Bank, so if I had to open a PPF account I had to approach SBI. With erstwhile memories intact I visited nearest SBI branch. I didn’t have much expectations and expressed my interest of opening a PPF account. The lady at the counter gave the forms with a smile. After few days I went back with necessary documents and the same lady asked if I wanted to open a Savings account also. I told her SBI has rejected me twice from opening an account years ago citing sundry excuses. She smiled and said anyone above 10 years of age can open an account and mantra of the banks these days is to focus on younger generations. (not that I didn’t know that) I said “OK, let me open one” and she held out another set of forms. I filled the forms, made some deposit and in 20 mins I was their customer. No reference, no waiting for weeks, no bad treatment as if they are doing me a favor by allowing me to open an account there. Single window service with a smile, quick and efficient.

This is the saga of how country’s top bank finally got a chance to serve me…LOL. It was a good feeling experiencing the changes in Banking sector.

I just want to meet that NR Colony ex branch manager and show him my welcome kit. Where is he?

Similar posts: ICICI Cashback offer * My teenage investment experiences * Journalism Experiences * Saving money on air travel

Manipal Visit – Other updates

This is a sequel to my previous post on visit to Manipal for Manipal Bloggers’ meet and Manipal Media Students’ convention, MMSC ‘08

Some photos of the event are available on Flickr here.

Some random thoughts:

Mohan spoke about the idea of Blogathon (coined from Blog+Marathon), where all bloggers would blog about a specific issue on a given day. Do you like that idea? I couldn’t see much merits in it-yes, it may give thousands of different perspective on a given issue as thousand minds would key down their thoughts, but as a reader, will you have patience to read thousands of blog posts on same topic? One would get tired/bored before finishing 5^th post on same topic. I certainly don’t want to read same topic on all blogs. Will it succeed in creating some awareness (as all blogs try to draw your attention to a specific topic)- I don’t know. As a reader if I see same topic on all blogs that day I would probably close the browser and do something else-what is your idea on blogathon?

Another person (sorry I forgot the name) spoke on why people stop blogging- Anne Zeidi asked a simple question-what is the problem if someone stops blogging? I too don’t see anything wrong if people stop blogging. Do you? With 80 posts being published every second, let us not force people to blog.

Nobody talked on SEO, though it was part of agenda. If there was a requirement I could have talked on that.

Due to time shortage KenneyJacob volunteered to opt out of his talk on Campus Blogging. Nithya Dayal talked about piracy (she runs a music website muziboo.com) Talk on piracy resulted in statements like several singers gained star status as their songs reached millions through piracy and that companies like Microsoft unofficially encouraging piracy and more-great topic to debate upon. Siva spoke on Internet Society Chennai Chapter-I registered at their website but yet to explore the potential of this organization.

Unlike Webinnovation08 where sponsoring companies took good amount of stage time, presence of sponsors was hardly felt here, except some banners and brochures. On day 2 I asked for Times Of India (a sponsor) and I was given The Hindu. All participants were sent a campus18 registration mail-me yet to open that. In fact Mr. Kamat appreciated these students ability to get funding from so many companies-“Next time I want money for a event from sponsors I’ll call you guys” he said in an appreciative tone.

Met Priyam Malhotra who is building muftware.com a website which promises to list free alternative to every paid software in the world. He is a Microsoft beta tester and happily calls himself a geek. He showed me an interesting video on how Linux is better than vista…

The talk on "why new media is not new" by Lawrence Liang was interesting, though his slides were full of small sized text and difficult to follow. What he said was basic sense-what is new today will soon be old someday and those we call 'old' now were new once upon a time...but he gave several interesting examples in this context

The event continued till late evening but I had to leave to catch my train. Missed some action because of this.

ಮಣಿಪಾಲದಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡ ಎಲ್ಲಿದೆ?

ನಾನು ಗಮನಿಸಿದ ಒ೦ದು ವಿಷಯವೇನೆ೦ದರೆ ಮಣಿಪಾಲ ಪರಭಾಷಿಗರಿ೦ದ ತು೦ಬಿ ಹೋಗಿದೆ...ನೀವು ವಿಧ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳ೦ತೆ ಕ೦ಡು ಬ೦ದರೆ ಅ೦ಗಡಿಯವರು, ಆಟೋ ಡ್ರೈವರ್ ಪ್ರತಿಯೊಬ್ಬರೂ ನಿಮ್ಮನ್ನು ಹಿ೦ದಿಯಲ್ಲೇ ಮಾತನಾಡಿಸುತ್ತಾರೆ.
ಹಲವು ಸ್ಥಳೀಯರಿಗೆ ಈ ವಿದ್ಯಾ ಸ೦ಸ್ಥೆ ಮತ್ತದರ ವಿದ್ಯಾರ್ಥಿಗಳಿ೦ದ ಉದ್ಯೋಗ ದೊರೆತಿರುವುದು ನಿಜವಾದರೂ, ಇಲ್ಲಿಗೆ ಬ೦ದಿಳಿದ ಹೊರಭಾಷಿಗರು ಒ೦ದಕ್ಷರ ಕನ್ನಡ ಕಲಿಯುವ ಪ್ರಯತ್ನ ಮಾಡದಿರುವುದು ಖೇದಕರ.

Related: Endpoint Manipal| Karkala Photos | Bekal Fort, Kerala | Dual TVs in coastal karnataka buses | Speed Governors in Mangalore - Udupi -Kundarpura buses | LiveBlogging at WebInnovation 08

Event Blogging at WebInnovation08-Experience

It was a good experience attending webInnovation 08 at Mumbai this week (8th May 2008). Live blogging the event was even greater experience.

Live blogging was a good new experience for me. Enjoyed every bit of it. But there were some challenges too- the conference room didn’t have any power points where I could charge my laptop. It is impossible to live blog whole day on battery- I had two of them- a 4 cell one and another 6 cell one, together I could manage for half a day and by charging during lunch time I could extend life of laptop for some more time post lunch. Still, if Hotel could have provided electric sockets (which I asked but they said they don’t have) it would have been good. Tata Indicom Plug2Surf was performing decently during initial hours but post lunch the connectivity was very bad. Because of these limitations and because the fact that I had to take down notes while speaker is speaking, I had to sideline several activities like approving comments, editing/improving posts etc.

Below: Myself with Kaushal Karkhanis, fellow event blogger.
About the event: As I was a sponsored delegate probably I am not supposed to speak negative, but don’t want to suppress my observations. Participation was good, but many speakers were from companies that had sponsored the event. That happens with all the events- you can’t deny 10-15 minutes of presentation time for companies who have shelled out lakhs of rupees to sponsor the event. But a delegate who has paid Rs 7000 is, in all probability, won’t be interested in attending advertisement sessions of products/services being promoted by the sponsors (as the information will be available on the company website, why should one pay to attend such sessions?). Nevertheless, most of the sessions were good-the one on raising VC money by Bikas Birai of iViZ, on demysitifying the web 2.0 by Amit Somani of Google India, about email marketing by Dominic Powers were personally interesting to me.

Don't know what happened at other 2 tracks. In this event there were three tracks- Business, Technology and Enterpreneurship, all running parallelly. Since I cant be in 3 places at once, I chose to attend Business track. Don’t have much idea what happened at other 2. There were supposed to be 6 event bloggers (me one of them) but I guess only 2-3 turned up. Only Myself and Kaushal live blogging and Siddig live twittering the event. As 3 tracks ran parallelly, any delegate is guaranteed to miss 2/3rd of the event. If organizers can arrange for transcripts of the talks given by other speakers to all delegates it would be good.

The event didn’t get much visibility in print media- I was in Mumbai airport next morning and couldn’t notice event reported in any of the leading papers- DNA, Indian Express, Free Press, BusinessLIne and Asian Age. Infact Yahoo launched its new gen search features "GLUE" in WebInnovation 08 event [details] but they held a press conference in Bangalore to release this news, so all papers reported this launch, but without any mention of the webinnovation08 event. Would have been good if Yahoo could hold the press con in Grand Hyatt, Mumbai (where the event was going on)

More photos of the event
http://flickr.com/photos/tags/webinnovation08

I spent most of my time listening to speakers at the Business Track, noting down key points and publishing it as a blog post next moment. Now I feel it would have walked around and interviewed few people as well. Will try this next time.

Right-with Kiruba Shankar at the event-He giving admin rights to us so that we can approve comments that were pouring in on the event blog site.

I wish to thank Kiruba Shankar and other organizers for this opportunity (of contributing as an event blogger). In fact I was answerable to two stake holders in this-The organizers of Webinnovation who invited me with a complementary registration for which I was required to live blog the event and another stakeholder who has provided travel and accommodation, to whom I had to take back some value out of the summit. Hope I will be able to meet their expectations.

The conference bag sponsored by WebEx was good.

Be sure to watch this video on start-ups

Event ended a bit ahead of schedule and I could go for a drive around Mumbai City.

Update: I mailed Kiruba seeking some feedback on my work, so that I can identify where I can improve next time. Seems he is too busy to respond. It doesn't feel good when you're denied some basic feedback on your work.

Related: Manipal Media Students Convention * Mumbai visit-Other observations

Watching T20 live-A first timer's experience

In a sudden turn of events I found myself heading towards MA Chidambaram Stadium in Chennai and watch the IPL T20 cricket match between Chennai Super Kings and Kolkata Knight Riders. This was the first time I ever watched a match live in a stadium and this post shares some experiences of the same.

I am not a cricket fan and am quite ignorant of the happenings in that business (you’ve to agree-Cricket is no more a sports-it is pure business). I don’t watch live matches on TV and my interest is confined to checking the result in next day’s newspaper, if possible, for the purpose of GK.

Yesterday afternoon, 1430 hours IST, yet to have my lunch I reached home, casually asked my roommate, when does the match starts? He replies “I have got a ticket-do you want to go?” He said his friends had bought few tickets but plans got changed and they won’t be going. They managed to sell of all ticket except one. It was bought at cost price of Rs 200.

After an emergency board meeting eNidhi India board of directors approved the purchase of that ticket and entrusted its CBO to explore what it feels like to watch the action live from stadium.

I got ready to leave and invoked Protocol 32 (Precautions to be taken while going to places with unusually high density of human population)-offloaded Credit cards, extra cash and other important things from my wallet, added Rs 100 emergency cash to a safe pocket and left. Decided not to go in bike, fearing possible shortage of parking space and high parking fees, reached there in public transport.

Reached the stadium 45 mins late-There was no frisking at the entrance and no scanning of barcode printed on the ticket. Everyone were busy watching the match-the metal detector didn’t raise any alarm though I had some metal objects on my body (belt buckle). 5th wicket fell as I entered.

I was thinking there will be some reserved seat for me for the ticket I had (like in movie theatres) but there was no such thing. People would have laughed at me if I had asked: where is seat number 002108?
The stadium was jam-packed. I quickly noted nearest exit points, managed to get myself a seat and started observing the gathering.

The view was good, but it was not easy to identify what is going on. Players’ face was impossible to identify from such a distance and there was no running commentary. Most of the time I could locate the ball but that is no fun. Where I sat the sun was directly on me, forcing me (and others) to cover my face. You will have to watch everything from only one angle of view which is quite boring.

Suddenly someone wearing red shirt started dancing in the middle of the ground- kind of balle balle stuff. I was clueless why he is doing that. After few seconds both his hands went up and I realized that he was doing all those circus to tell everyone that it is a six. Watching this umpire dance was the only thing I enjoyed throughout the match. Unfortunately the other umpire wasn’t dancing at all and I missed some possible entertaining moments. If you ask me, IPL should penalize this other umpire for not properly entertaining the crowd.

Few police constables on duty were during an Ukkaro, Ukkaro (tamil for- sit down, sit down) at regular intervals. Spectators in front would act as if they are settling down but would get up next moment...After sometime, these cops abandoned pursuit and repositioned themselves in a slightly elevated position.

A group of spectators started to make some strange sound-everyone around turned to see what that is-These people were trying to get the attention of Kolkata team’s cheerleader girls. How pathetic. The group settled down only after those girls turned towards them, gave a smile and danced a bit.

The music was loud and unbearable. Add to that, several spectators had bought this locally made whistle like noise generating device (I don’t know what to call them- in childhood we used to call it Pee-Pee in Kannada, for the sound it makes. Look at the image.) Blowing that thing every now and then, creating and irritating experience to ears.

The digital score card didn’t work during second half- from their desktop which was displayed on screen at times, it looked like they are using Windows 98.

It was written at the back of the ticket that camera is not allowed, hence I didn’t carry my digicam. But several spectators were carrying their digicams and clicking all around. (Last year, a journalist cum blogger was suspended for live blogging the cricket match on his blog)

I could identify several places where they could have displayed advertisements, but was left untouched.

Had a closer look at some international players but it was more interesting to hear girls in front row yell-Ganguleee.
Thank god it was a T20. The whole match would end within few hours and only 10 min break between the innings. I certainly don’t want to spend whole day watching cricket this way. TV would be more convenient.

About the match I don’t have much to write-you might have already seen in TV or read in newspaper. Chennai team defeated Kolkata team by 9 wickets. Btb no one spotted me on TV? (How sad, I thought I would be a celebrity by now)

Finally I present a true Knight Rider-Everyone else are FAKE.
Btb, don't you think IPL may have some impact on National cricket-dressing room secrets of Indian Cricketers will be shared with international players by fellow team mates, which may backfire later. Any comments?

Similar: Kiruba Shankar writes his observations on MAC * Sandesh writes what he feels about IPL commercial *

About Fortune Tellers and Astrology

Few small incidents, observations and comments related to Astrology and fortune tellers... Not that I am making fun of these professions, just not comfortable the way our thought process is influenced by these elements

Case 1: Approx an year ago-Necklace Road, Hyderabad

A parrot reader approaches me offering to tell my fortune for just Rs 10. I do not believe in non scientific predictions so offered him a challenge: I pulled out my wallet and asked him to tell me how much cash is there inside. (Something which can be instantly verified to the satisfaction of both parties). He simply asked वो कैसे बोल् सक्ता हु साब | (“who kaise bol sakta hun saab”). I replied “you can not count something right in front of your eye (of course enclosed inside a wallet), what future are you going to predict?” He silently left.

The zodiac signs columns in newspapers, astrologers, parrot card readers- always make generic statements left best to the discretion of the believer.  For example, one statement can be “today you’ll be very happy”.. Chances are that out of 100s of incidents that happen that day few incidents might give you happiness. If you believe in the predictions you can always associate that with whatever it was written and feel good that predictions came true.

Case 2: Year 1997, Pandhana, Madhya Pradesh.

I was studying in 9th standard there and had a postal subscription of kannada weekly magazine, Taranga. In one of the issues Taranga predicted that there’ll be a devastating flood (mahaa praLaya) during march 1998 and a majority of earth will be wiped out.  This topic became a sensation and magazine minted huge money. This article was quoated by media all over India including few Indore based newspapers. My classmates in MP came to me seeking explanation. I had tough time explaining them I do not know on what basis the magazine has predicted.

The flood never came and I don’t think there was any explanation from Taranga as to why they created an unnecessary tension all over without scientific evidence.

Case 3: 2007:

Karnataka BJP Leader Yadiyurappa changes name hoping to become Chief Minister, because an astrologer told him, he would become CM only if name is changed. Had that astrologer also told that Yadyurappa will become ex-CM within a week probably it would have been good.

Problem is, everyone want to know what will happen in future and want to use that info for their personal gains and few have mastered the art of predicting the future to the satisfaction of those who believe in it.

What is your take on these issues? Do you rely on things like these for taking key decisions? Probably once upon a time all these predicts had some backings of scientific studies done by our forefathers but of late everything is about making some quick money

www.eNidhi.net-eNidhi India's new identity

F

inally it has happened. As most of you have noticed this blog has been moved to www.enidhi.net from the earlier http://enidhispeaks.blogspot.com

Since enidhi.com was not available next best options were enidhi.in and enidhi.net. '.in' extensions were not available with Google backed eNom and I made a mistake of trusting a wrong person for advice and bought it at Sify, only to end up with ownership issues with the same. I would regret that for long. Also Sify doesn’t give a basic feature like adding CNAME alias unless you buy their hosting service (which you don’t need if you choose to host it on blogger itself. More about this in some other post.

The new URL is shorter, sweeter and will be easy to remember and type. This all new identity will help eNidhi India stay distinguished from the crowd of free blogspot subdomains.

My readers working in companies where all .blogspot.com urls are banned should be able to read my blog without any hassle now (of course unless their companies choose to add enidhi.net to banned websites list, like as happened with Shande) For near future I do not have any plans of moving to a own host and this blog shall continue to be hosted on blogger-Blogger being free and with very good uptime, reliability and easy interface I don’t have any serious thoughts of moving away.

Along with domain name I got an option to create upto 200 user ids with custom email address (say xyz@enidhi.net ), add n number of sub domains etc, which is quite cool. Anyone who wish to move their blog/site to http://yourblog.enidhi.net can contact me

Reading few other blogs I was thinking traffic may drop for few months after migration. But Google has handled the transition really smooth and there’s been no dip in daily traffic during and after transition. Almost everything was taken care by Google and blogger, I only had to pay and watch the transition. Wherever I had given manual links I had to edit them on my own and had to submit the new URL to Google for inclusion in search engine. Besides these, everything else was automatic, including redirection, feeds etc. Technorati rank has dipped but that is fine-It hardly generated any traffic for this blog so far.

However there’s been some dip in the position of this blog in search engines. For example for Club Mahindra this blog was in number two earlier but now the position has dipped to number 5 and it may go down even further. Since the new domain name has a pagerank of absolute Zero it will take substantial time to recover to PR4, the rank outgoing enidhispeaks.blogspot.com had. While most of you have edited your blog rolls and linked to new URL it might not be possible to ask few admins and site owners to edit their age old posts to give correct link. Other bloggers and site admins will have their own SEO strategies to gain higher position and fight will be really tough, if not impossible. (Related: SEO Fundamentals)

So I may have to forgo certain considerations and may never be able to recover some key positions I enjoyed in search engines. But that should be fine. The change (migration to custom domain) was inevitable and had to be executed sooner or later.

If you’ve linked to my earlier URL please take this as a personal request to edit the same and link to my new URL. Thanks in advance.

Thanks to the immense support given by all of you- My dear readers and visitors, because of which I was motivated to spend money on this domain and work towards giving better content and user experience to you. Assuring you of my sustained commitment towards quality blogging.

Other Quick updates:
1. If you haven’t noticed, this is 200th post on this blog. (Infact I have written more than 200 posts so far but decided to delete some of them due to wide range of reasons, 200 out of published but not yet deleted posts)

2. We’ve also started a Forum called MoneyTalk India Finance Forum (MTIFF).The idea is to facilitate discussions related to wide range of personal financial matters. I couldn’t come across any such good community for Indians hence decided to launch one. Will write about it in detail later.

You’re welcome to register there. http://moneytalk.enidhi.net As of now we have got around 21 users within first few days, which is quite a good sign.

3. I spent some time and revised many of my old posts. realized that I'd made several silly spelling mistakes at many places (comparision instead of comparison, offence instead of offense etc) Corrected most of them, except few errors which were induced exclusively for SEO reasons. Also happily added nofollow tag for most of the commercial websites I had linked to.

4. Also tell me if you're comfortable with the new background colour I've kept. If you feel uncomfortable I can revert to earlier white.

5. I'd deleted the chatbox sometimes back. have re introduced it

Deal Closed- Bajaj Pulsar Sold.

Few days ago I’d published a post here stating my friend NR Bhat wishes to sell off his Bajaj Pulsar 150cc Bike. One of my readers, JOJO (I know his real name but it is withheld as I don’t know his preferences) has purchased the said bike from NR Bhat and both parties are now happy.

eNidhi India takes pride in generating real life value to two of its readers who have benefited from this blog.

But now, JOJO says he has “no one” to take pillion seat of his newly bought old bike…Unfortunately eNidhi India is not in a position to help him in this regard. Any suggestions anyone?

e-निधि इंडिया New Year Resolutions

eNidhi India board of directors met recently and following new year resolutions have been cleared by the board. These resolutions will be in effect till next revision, as and when felt necessary by the board. (We understand that New year is a week ahead, but eNidhi India Planning Commission is very active and strives to keep eNidhi India and its readers future ready!)

1 Opening dialogue of any conversation (such as but not limited to face to face/chat/email etc) shall be anything other than “Hey! Have you read my latest post?”

2 Friends and relatives shall no more be hit with “Know what? My Pagerank has got increased to 4 from 3!” (and waste another 30 minutes trying to explain what a pagerank is and its significance).

3 Visitor stats will be reviewed once in a week or a fortnight only. There shall be no mourning if number of hits falls far below average one day and there’ll be no jumping with joy if it doubles another day.

4 Friends, relatives and fellow bloggers will not be taken to task for not writing any comment at my blog.

5 Attempt will be made to diversify from core blogging and try to focus on other fields of creativity and knowledge building.

6 Number of posts per month will be restricted to a maximum of 15 while attempt will be made to write at least one post per week (or 4 posts per month).

7 Each new post shall be published with a default expected comment count of zero. This way there shall be no disappointment if no one comments.

8 Effort, time and money spent on blogging shall now be documented and monitored against the value generated by the same (tangible/intangible).

9 Precious disk space of blogger shall not be wasted by writing yet another post saying “My abc article is topping the search engine!!!!”

10 No more pressing of fellow bloggers to write new post. No more follow ups “its quite sometime since you haven’t updated your blog”.

11 friends and contacts shall not be dragged into useless conversations like “Listen, I bought 7 Infy shares at Rs 1619.4 last month… I knew it had support at around 1550…it went down till 1510 but has now recovered to 1735…I think it may appreciate till 1850 where it may face some resistance…”.

It is hereby declared that all above resolutions were passed in a sound state of mind. Please be informed that New year resolutions are subject to dilution over a period of time. While every attempt will be made to adhere to these resolutions, eNidhi India accepts no liabilities in the event of deviations for the stated guidelines.

eNidhi India wishes happy new year 2008 to all its readers.

What is your new year resolution? Drop a comment.

Also read: Excessive blogging syndrome | Ladies who call me every day| eNidhi India Operational Policies

Random Updates, December 2007

1. Currently I’m facing an otherwise rare scenario where I want to write lots of posts but do not have time.

2. I do not scan my gmail spam folder very carefully. Recently realized that several genuine mails were marked as spam by Google. If you'd mailed me earlier for which u were expecting a reply but never got any, please mail again or drop a comment. Chances are that your mail headed to spam folder and got deleted automatically. Sorry for the inconvenience. (Check your spam folder once a while as well.)

3.Mrs. Mridula, a fellow traveler during my Coorg trip earlier this month (and one of India’s top travel blogger), has written few nice words about me at her blog here. She’s giving brief account of all bloggers who participated.

4. Rakshana M N, One of my ex-classmate (Chinthana M N)’s sister is very good at poetry and other creative writing. She’s published three collections so far of her Kannada poems. The Hindu published her profile recently which can be read here.


5. Hardalli Krishnadeva Kedlaya, a well known vedic scholar in his community (and my grand dad) was felicitated last week at Gayana Samaja. Photos, videos and report in this post.

6. If possible read Cover story of Outlook Magazine, issue dated 17th dec. The cover story is about how IT has changed Bangalore.

7. Recently I co authored a technical paper titled “Incident Management Solutions for Oil & Gas Industry”. This paper was presented at a conference in New Delhi and was published in a booklet.


8. Next post: A brief about those who have been writing comments regularly at this blog...

Hardalli Krishnadeva Kedlaya falicitated

Shivalli Smartha Brahmana Sangha falicitated Mr. & Mrs. Hardalli Krishnadeva Kedlaya, a vedic scholar last Sunday in a function organized at Gayana Samaja, Basavanagudi Bangalore. This post is a quick report of the same, in Kannada language. If this topic doesn't interest you please check my november archive more more interesting posts.

A brief Kannada report of this event will be added to this post later this week. Kannada readers may revisit next monday.

Above: Falicitation

ಹಾರ್ದಳ್ಳಿ ಕೃಷ್ಣದೇವ ಕೆದ್ಲಾಯರನ್ನು ಶಿವಳ್ಳಿ ಸ್ಮಾರ್ಥ ಬ್ರಾಹ್ಮಣ ಸ೦ಘ ಡಿಸೆ೦ಬರ್ ೧೬ ರ೦ದು ಬೆ೦ಗಳೂರಿನ ಬಸವನಗುಡಿಯ ಗಾಯನ ಸಮಾಜದಲ್ಲಿ ನಡೆದ ಸಭೆಯಲ್ಲಿ ಸನ್ಮಾನಿಸಿತು.

Above: Hardalli Krishnadeva Kedlaya addresses the gathering

ಶ್ರೀಯುತರು ತಮ್ಮ ಬಾಲ್ಯದಲ್ಲಿಯೇ ಕಾಶಿಗೆ ತೆರಳಿ ಸಕಲ ವೇದಗಳನ್ನು ಪಾರ೦ಗತ ಮಾಡಿಕೊ೦ಡು ಶ್ರಿ೦ಗೇರಿ ಸೇರಿದ೦ತೆ ಹಲವು ಮಠಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ಸೇವೆ ಸಲ್ಲಿಸಿ ನ೦ತರ ತಮ್ಮ ಹುಟ್ಟೂರಿಗೆ ಮರಳಿ ಅನೇಕ ವೈದಿಕ ಚಟುವಟಿಕೆಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ತಮ್ಮನ್ನು ತೊಡಗಿಸಿಕೊ೦ಡಿರುತ್ತಾರೆ. ತಮ್ಮ ಈ ಇಳಿ ವಯಸ್ಸಿನಲ್ಲಿಯೂ ಆಸಕ್ತರಿಗೆ ವೇದ ಪಾಠ, ಶ್ಲೋಕಾರ್ಥ ವಿವರಣೆ, ಪೂಜಾ ವಿಧಿ ವಿಧಾನ ಕಲಿಸಿ ಕೊಡುವಿಕೆ ಇತ್ಯಾದಿ ಸತ್ಕಾರ್ಯಗಳಲ್ಲಿ ನಿರತರಾಗಿದ್ದಾರೆ.

ಶಿವಳ್ಳಿ ಸ್ಮಾರ್ಥ ಬ್ರಾಹ್ಮಣ ಸ೦ಘವು ಇದೇ ಸ೦ದರ್ಭದಲ್ಲಿ ಸಮಾಜದ ಇತರ ಕೆಲವು ಗಣ್ಯ್ರನ್ನೂ, ಹಿರಿಯರನ್ನೂ ಸನ್ಮಾನಿಸಿತು. ಅತ್ಯುತ್ತಮ ಅ೦ಕ ಗಳಿಸಿದ ಪ್ರತಿಭಾವ೦ತರನ್ನು ಬಹುಮಾನಗಳೊ೦ದಿಗೆ ಗೌರವಿಸಲಾಯಿತು.


ನ೦ತರ ವಿದುಷಿ ದೀಪಾ ಭಟ್ ತ೦ಡದಿ೦ದ ನೃತ್ಯ ಹಾಗು ಮಾಷ್ಟರ್ ಹಿರಣ್ಣಯ್ಯನವರಿ೦ದ ನಾಟಕ ಪ್ರದರ್ಶನ ನಡೆದವು.

Two mobile camera videos of the function.

HKK being faliciated


HKK Addesses audiences

Coorg Trip, Courtesy Club Mahindra

Will it be fun to holiday at the expense of a company whom you’ve criticized heavily in your blog?

This blogger is just back from a trip to Kodagu (Coorg), fully sponsored by a leading resort and holiday company. Earlier last month, Arun Nair, Senior Manager, Marketing, MHRIL, approached me asking if I’m interested in taking a free trip to their Coorg resort. In other words, Club Mahindra was organizing a free all expense paid trip to a set of select travel bloggers and writers and asked me if it will be convenient for me to join.

At first I wasn’t sure to what extent this was true. I was bit skeptical about the offer and was thinking why they have picked me. If you’ve not been regular at this blog, you should know that I had written extremely negative article about Club Mahindra’s life membership,[Read that post here] by highlighting all negative aspects and drawbacks of their life membership scheme and advising readers not to opt for Club Mahindra’s life membership. This article eventually reached top of Google search results for keyword ‘Club Mahindra’ and was appearing right below Club Mahindra’s official website and within top 3 positions. Naturally the article drew lot of readers and got over 133 comments so far, with majority of them agreeing with me and stating that they are upset with CM or have decided not to take CM life membership after reading my post.

Photo: eNidhi India CBO with elephant Ekadanta and fellow travel bloggers Anita and Dev at Dubare Elephant Camp. Photo by Mridula. Standby for more photos and details.