http://gautham.maediratta.com

facebook opening up platform architecture

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:57:32 +0000

facebook announced today that it plans on opening up it’s platform architecture so that other social networking sites can use facebook applications…ha haa, bring it on OpenSocial!

Considering facebook has already hinted at transportable identities there is MUCH more here than meets the eye…this gets better every single day!

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Bring the Love Back

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 20:33:09 +0000

Video: Bring The Love Back

Was sure I had posted this video earlier ….better late than never!

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Red Bull – Start Right!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 01:56:01 +0000

This is a video that Shiv Shinh made back in college. Totally hand it to him for ingenuity. The brief can be found on Shiv’s blog.

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Google on Microsoft-Facebook

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 22:20:00 +0000

Found this on Adotas.

Sergey Brin on the Microsoft-facebook deal – “Some of our competitors might be willing to spend very large amounts of money…and we’re really interested in doing sustainable economic deals so we would rather not participate in those sorts of transactions.”

Coming from the company that drove inflation into web company valuations (on the back of strong free cash flow/stock) to keep Yahoo! and numerous other web players out of the acquisition ring on numerous occasions. Ouch, must hurt!

To quote another Googler, the views expressed here are mine alone, and not those of my employer.

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Has Facebook hacked it again? Transportable Identities!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 02:11:21 +0000

Pete Ryan pointed me to two posts on allfacebook that helped rid my blogging inertia

“Mark Zuckerberg dropped an indication that Facebook is considering opening up at some point. While there was no mention of when that would occur, the fact that they are considering an opening of their network is significant. By opening up their platform to make identities transportable will help them to become a Google competitor. Without opening their platform, Facebook is indeed risking becoming a fad. Conversely, the older generation’s presence on Facebook is expanding rapidly and this generation is known to stick with the sites that they use.

While it is impossible to say what would happen if Facebook falls off their high horse that they are currently riding or what will happen when Google launches their social platform, Facebook does have a shot at becoming an industry leader. It’s as simple as that. Facebook now needs to make all the right moves and currently they have a board of advisors that can help them execute successfully. If Facebook does indeed decide to make identities transportable, I believe they could become the center hub for a large portion of identities online.”

Though the Customer DNA wars have been on for a while Facebook can potentially crash this party with homegrown intelligence… would be interesting to know how this impacts their own valuation and companies like OpenID and Plaxo. What’s also really interesting is Google’s opinion that The web is the platform. Devaluing Facebook? Or love for the web the way it was supposed to be? I could argue either way.

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Engagement: Google Gadgets a Yahoo! killer?

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:47:31 +0000

The last week has been fantastic. Between the IAB Mixx & Expo and other events associated with Advertising Week, i’ve learned much more than i imagined.

I attended this session by Google on Ad-Innovation, where they spoke extensively about Gadgets and other innovation on Youtube etc. If Google Docs is Google’s attempt at hitting at Microsoft (albeit a VERY long shot), Gadgets (IMHO) is aimed square at Yahoo! by hurting their biggest stronghold (rich media & innovation) by adding longevity (users can save ads) and no hosting/serving costs in a bidded marketplace.

Engagement is clearly the new benchmark. The Live platform is rife with gadgets developed for it and given that these can integrate across the platform on Spaces or Messenger or any other catchment area owned by Microsoft…the only person missing this party is Yahoo!

Given their dependance on rich media (and the possible impact), it will be interesting to see how they comeback.

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Mind-STORM! :D

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 00:59:00 +0000

Back in 2006 i wrote about the evolution of toys in my life and just how badly i wanted Mindstorms. Though my experiment with micropayment donations didn’t exactly work as per plan…things have progressed a little.

No prizes for guessing what i’ll be doing with the spare time i get this weekend.

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A Long Pending Post

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 23:09:08 +0000

The last couple of weeks have been exceptionally hectic…

To start with, i moved jobs…to a really interesting role at Microsoft which i won’t talk about just now…all i will say is I’m very excited to continue working with some of the sharpest minds in the business…also, my new role is based out of Bangalore (though i write this post from Bellevue…my base for the next couple of weeks) …

I don’t see myself blogging too much in the coming month or so….as i immerse myself into work and read about a gazillion documents to understand alot of what i need to. However, i just went out and bought myself a new camera which should ensure that i have content of some form or the other up from time to time…

Rock on…

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Eric Schmidt on Web 2.0 vs. Web 3.0

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 13:25:27 +0000

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Now handing out Spock Invites

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 06:38:55 +0000

Discovered Spock last week but didn’t have an opportunity to spend much time on it. To quote their site, “Spock is the online leader in personal search, helping users find and discover people. With over one hundred million people already indexed and millions added every day, Spock is building the broadest and deepest people specific search engine.”

What i like is the fresh look at image/people search and novel means of user participation such as users rated ‘tags’ to increase/decrease relevance.

In true internet spirit…am just trying to spread the love …. Let me know if you want an invite.

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Distribution 2.0 – Talking without voice!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 15:12:57 +0000

Call this Distribution 2.0 …. toys that talk to each other: Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Widgetbox & Netvibes.

What do I use and what does it do?
Wordpress: An open source blogging platform that publishes RSS feeds and allows hyper personalization using plugins.
Facebook: A popular social (networking) platform that publishes RSS feeds and allows publishing on its own platform.
Twitter: A simple but brilliant micro-blogging solution.
Pings: Hello World! Automatic updates from my blog to over 70 sites such as Technorati, Icerocket & Pingomatic
Twitterfeed: Updates my latest blog entry automatically into my Twitter Status
Twitter Facebook App: Automatically updates the twitter badge on my facebook profile.
Widgetbox: Updates Blog Widgets with my latest posts (aka blidgets) on a couple of friends blogs and social networking profiles.
Wordbook: Publishes new post notification into Facebook Minifeed.
MyRSS (Facebook app): Updates my feed on the Facebook RSS directory for new users to find.
Share This (Wordpress Plugin by Alex King): User initiated bookmarking, voting (digg it, fave on technorati) and send via email.
Digital Fingerprint – Enables you to easily and quickly search the web for potential cases of plagiarism and content theft. It works by adding a customizable “digital fingerprint” to your RSS feed in posts that you select (or all posts if you wish). You can then easily monitor the blogosphere for your digital fingerprint in the hopes of finding potential content thieves and scrapers abusing your content
Netvibes: An RSS aggregator that I spend almost half my life on. In addition to getting updates from all my news sources, i now get my email and facebook feeds as well. Netvibes – very very cool!

Gotta get back to the real world now….happy blogging!

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MyMobiler: View your mobile screen on your desktop

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 04 Aug 2007 08:46:26 +0000

Contrary to popular belief the concept of a free lunch does exist….we call it freeware!

One of my favorite features on the Windows Mobile platform is the ability to use your PC mouse and keyboard to operate/input data on your mobile phone. I recently dumped TranCreative Pocket PC Connector for MyMobiler. This is a short review:

Mymobiler runs over an active sync connection and allows you to:
a) View your mobile screen on your desktop.
b) Control your mobile by using desktop keyboard and mouse.
c) Copy/Paste text between mobile and desktop.
d) Capture mobile screen.
e) Drag and drop files to your mobile.

It displays your mobile screen on your PC like any another window in your taskbar and is very easy to operate. I would recommend you restrict the number of ‘Running Programs’ on your Pocket PC while using MyMobiler as it consumes moderate amounts of RAM (since it needs export the mobile screen). A stable utility…i haven’t had any connectivity issues so far. It’s faster for me to operate Hotmail, Google Maps and Widsets using the mobile interface (sharing the PC Internet Connection simultaneously) and is a huge productivity booster.

Strongly recommended.

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Thankyou God!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 04:24:38 +0000

Had an accident last night, very very lucky to come out unscathed (more or less).Â Hats off to the Fiat Palio, the car took all the impact.Â Had i been in a Japanese car i’m not sure you would be reading this post.

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Thought for the day! :)

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 07:28:27 +0000

If India is a free country why the hell do i get taxed?

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Can someone please send me a Crossloop Beta Setup file?

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 12:50:12 +0000

Last week i blogged about remote desktop sharing and about how happy i was with Crossloop (the screen sharing app which i use to control Papa’s computer back home) … earlier this week i stumbled across a limited version from Crossloop and they’ve included some neat features namely FREE File Transfers (i wonder why nobody thought of that earlier, this is a first), a view only mode for added security (this exponentially increases the chances of corporates adopting crosloop as a secure communications channel) and lastly switching control with one click…

Appears that i’ve missed the deadline to download this since it was a beta test. Looks like there is a long long list of fans…if any beta testers are reading this can you PLEASE send me the setup file? I’ll be both eternally grateful and very willing to trade Joost invites and a host of other private betas … thanks in advance!
Did i hear someone say that barter was dead …

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http://www.crossloop.com/3y6io3/index.html#filetransferhelp
CrossLoop 1.1 Beta Test is Over

We sincerely appreciate your interest in taking CrossLoop 1.10 for a drive. Currently due to the overwhelming demand, we have closed our private invitation to ensure a phased release for the best of all our users.

We recommend that you go to our blog and subscribe to it via RSS or via email on the top right of the page – we will inform all our users of the availability and status through a blog post.
–

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Cool & Nifty Windows Mobile 5.0 Software

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 10:38:20 +0000

The main reason i upgraded to the Windows Mobile platform was to surf the internet….and before you say it…i might as well….i’m beyond hope!
Most of the software i have downloaded and tried on my mobile computer has revolved around adding speed/convenience to my online experiences…here is a very short list of FREE tools that help you surf better or online tools that aid your offline life!

a) Opera – An absolute MUST HAVE … tabbed browing, multiple views, data compression the list goes on and on and on …
though i am a BIG fan of firefox….i will urge you to stay away from Minimo … though its based on the mozilla shell, it falls way way short.
Opera Mini is also an alternative, albeit a limiting one…very strange that Mini offers an option to remember passwords which the full version doesn’t ..

b) Mobispine – Discovered yesterday…and i’m already addicted! An RSS reader for your phone…helps you maximise your news sources and adds some interesting feeds of its own… i’m just piping my “What is Gautham reading just now” to my phone …. and running up some very moderate data usage ….also, on the PATHETIC edge speeds that Hutch offers RSS is a much better alternative to HTML…

c) Google Maps – Brilliant! Necessary if you’re not too used to the offline world or a typical male that can’t ask for directions….offers you the ability to zoom down to street view (well, almost) , has landmarks, aerial or satellite view, route mappers etc etc etc…

d) Widsets – Allows you to run widgets on the Mobile platform…is fun to play around with…. I’ve kitted this out too… the Wikipedia Widget is absolutely rocking….scrapes content, compresses and renders very very quickly…other feeds i’ve added include techcrunch, assorted news and email widgets… i’d urge you not to miss this one…

Gotta run now…but will be back to update this later… have fun!

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Remote Desktop Access

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 14:00:46 +0000

There are 10 kind of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who donâ€™t.

If you happen to be of the first kind, i can confidently say that you gladly double up as a sysadmin to friends and family, not just for “best practices” / must have software, but more importantly during emergencies where computers refuse to work…nothing can be more frustrating than providing ‘blind’ telephone support and dealing with error messages that you’ve never encountered before.

Our pad in Gurgaon was pretty hooked up…a monster desktop, 3 laptops, 2 windows mobile computers, 2 smartphones and a long long list of peripheral devices hooked up around these…goes without saying that almost every gadget had multiple forms of connectivity with any/all other devices (wifi, bluetooth, usb, firewire)… and for any ideas i may have had, De had the ability to bring it to life….while we weren’t close to Googleplex capability, we’d easily excite any technology enthusiast in the region…

The most convenient mode of controlling a device on any network is when you can browse the device in first person…and essentially thats what “Remote Desktop Control” is all about. While the best application for local devices on a network is ‘Windows Remote Desktop Connection’, the best tool i’ve used to playing sysadmin for my folks back home is Crossloop.
It’s pretty light (couple of MB), extremely simple to use, doesn’t sap precious system resources nor cause conflicts with other programs running on your computer. I’ve been able to run all sorts of tasks remotely, without any issues and would strongly reccomend this to anyone looking for a remote screen sharing solution.

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Update 1:
i just found out about remote desktop sharing via Windows Live Messenger (the process is outlined below) …however fails to work with folks on the Reliance network…

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The Long tail, in short!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 07 Jul 2007 10:38:58 +0000

The single critical success factor of any new startup (including any 2.0 idea) lies in its ability to leverage the ‘Long Tail’. Though the long tail is not exclusive to the internet, it is almost synonymous with the wealth creation we have seen over the last couple of years… here is a very brief attempt to demistify the fundamentals.

To put it simply (in internet terms), the sum total of all PageViews/Visits/Monetization Opportunities in the so-called ‘Tail’ is more than the popular consumer hangouts (read: portals). A new blog born every second and brings with it another potential influencer, voice and opinion sets.
As we’ve evolved from an era of Mass Media (the days of Doordarshan) to My Media (cable television, early internet) to We Media (Wikipedia, Y! Answers, Facebook….), choice has become a whole new reality …. and human beings can’t get enough of it. For traditional media, the Internet is the paradigm shift….the rate of evolution – the checkmate.

Consumerism isn’t merely limited to owning physical objects…we’re now (thankfully) seeing it in the ever increasing need to know .. (refer Quaero Quero Ergo Sum). It is the Long Tail that drove usage/adoption/popularity of Search Engines… people wanted to find new sites, new information, new applications. However, search merely connected people to long tail… and the next wave of wealth creation (popularly known as Web 2.0) came when technology allowed bits of the Long Tail to connect with other bits …. in the seamless aggregation and distribution of Content (Text/Photos/Videos/Other) & Advertising.

The Long tail is here to stay, and the rules to build a viable business model are no different from a traditional one. Affinity (in cyberspace/blogosphere) is a function of niche; media spend is a function of affinity, reach and relevance.

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A peek into my inbox! :)

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 10:13:22 +0000

If you thought this would bring you all sorts of juicy gossip….i’ll just say that’s not my style .. this is a Jai RSS (Really Simple Syndication) post .. and the inbox in question is the one i use on Netvibes.
Stumbled across this Yahoo! Messenger plugin which led me to the developers page… which then me thinking about whether i could export all my feeds from netvibes and get Y! Pipes to parse them into the script.
This is an attempt to show you what i’m possibly reading at any given time and aims to add some level of dynamic content to my otherwise static blog.

Update 1:
This refuses to work….so i’m going retro and pointing you to my pipes page…
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=yGumNJP92xGUOqbZlfXiAA
Update 2:
Just for my friends from Russia (the largest non-english/hindi speaking country on my blog) here is a translated version in Russian.

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=qjQ3ot0n3BGtrf_a6kjTQA

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Apple’s iPhone Problems – Get the facts!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 09:53:22 +0000

We all marvel at the buzz that any Apple launch manages to create…
If you do plan on buying the iPhone, knowing some of the shortcomings and problems, is essential….

While the detailed list and conversation can be found at http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php?t=1190824 i’ve handpicked a few…

Bluetooth is ONLY good for connecting a headset. That’s it.
There is no file browser on the device at all. Data must be organized (if at all) in the appropriate application.
The keyboard sucks. It gets slightly better after the iPhone “learns” you, as the employees said, but even then, it’s not a device you can use with one hand comfortably, much less without looking.
You can only send one picture at a time in an email.
No custom ringtones (yet, as we were being told) and the alert tones can not be changed whatsoever.
The default ringtones are incredibly lame.
The only form of customization outside of a lame default ringtone is the wallpaper, which you’ll only see when you need to unlock the device or when you get a phone call.
No document editor or native viewer. You can not store documents on the device to be viewed, they can only be viewed as attachments when they’re sent to your in an email.
No voice dialing.
No speed dialing (which can be made up by the “quick list”, but getting to that quick list isn’t as fast as holding a single key on a real keypad).

Being a heavy phone user… I’m definitely not letting go of the Windows Mobile platform anytime soon…

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Introspection…

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 07 May 2007 04:26:15 +0000

An interesting way to introspect….this one is courtesy Rahul ‘Sunny’ Chaudhuri!

Read my VisualDNAâ„¢ Get your own VisualDNAâ„¢

Sent from my Windows Mobile Computer!

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Now handing out Joost invites

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 01 May 2007 11:50:11 +0000

My friends at Joost finally sent me an invite (had to wait a couple of weeks) and three more invites for my friends. Drop me an email if you want one.

Update:Â Now have 999 invites…and so handing them out by the dozen…leave a comment if you want one….Â

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The Andover of India? Graduates From Doon Score Top U.S. Jobs

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 09:38:35 +0000

from The Wall Street Journal
for the doscos reading this…catch me on the Facebook group
I went to The Doon School…therefore i am way better than you!.

DEHRA DUN, India — At the Doon School, near the foothills of the Himalayas, life is spartan. The 500 boys enrolled here bathe together in communal showers. In winter, they pore over textbooks in rooms with no heat. Cellphones are forbidden and parental visits are kept to a minimum.

For 71 years, Doon has supplied India with business leaders and well-known writers such as Vikram Seth. Even Rajiv Gandhi, the late prime minister, suffered the school’s famously bad food. Now Doon is taking its uniformed students in a new direction: up the U.S. corporate ladder. The head of Citigroup Inc.’s North American credit-card business is a Doon alumnus. So too is a Merrill Lynch & Co. senior currency executive. From Raytheon Co. to Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Doon is supplying a new old boys’ network in an increasingly international business world.

Many of the Doon alumni say they are still driven by the school’s humbling culture. Vikram Malhotra, head of McKinsey & Co.’s New York office, recalls the pain of failing to earn one of the school’s coveted blazers, awarded for excellence. “Imagine 500 boys, homogenous in what they wear, and the only way you could stand out is if you wore a blue blazer if you were good in sports and a black blazer if you were good in academics,” says Mr. Malhotra, 46 years old. “I fell a point short on each one and to this day it rankles me.” Even as Doon graduates penetrate the upper ranks of corporate America, the school draws criticism that it is out of step with the times. The headmaster is pushing for reforms — such as heating the study rooms –but he faces some opposition from alumni.

And proposed national legislation may mandate that private schools set aside a quarter of their places for underprivileged students — including the country’s “Dalit” or “untouchable” caste, which has largely been absent at high-tuition Doon.

“There is a debate now whether Doon’s elitism is required and whether it works in a changed world,” says alumnus Bhaskar Menon, the former chief executive of EMI Music Worldwide. Founded in 1935, Doon once drew the sons of prominent Indian industrialists and politicians. Today scholarships, partly covering the annual tuition of about $4,000, assist one in four students. About half of the students’ parents own small businesses. To be admitted, boys must pass a tough entrance exam.

Located on the site of the former Imperial Forest College & Research Institute, Doon is an oasis in Dehra Dun, a dusty town of about 700,000, 140 miles northeast of New Delhi. Thousands of trees shade the 70-acre grounds, where 55 teachers lead classes six days a week. Each morning except Sunday, boys rise at 6:15 and down a small snack to fuel them for 20 minutes of military-style exercises. Two classes precede breakfast, with another five crammed in before lunch. Academics are leavened with music, poetry and drama. Every April, the boys vie in a calisthenics contest in which judges award points for clean, pressed clothes as well as team coordination.

On a recent Saturday morning, in a room lit by fluorescent lights, more than a dozen 17-year-olds sat at old wooden tables as fans whirred overhead. The work at hand: CPA-level accounting problems. “Is depreciation on a delivery van part of selling overhead?” asked one student. (Answer: yes.)

Some graduates, like Ravi Sinha, say they got their first primers on deal-making at Doon. As a 13- year-old student, he bartered breakfast goods with the other boys. Milk and bread “had no trading value” because they were ubiquitous, recalls Mr. Sinha, now a 43-year-old partner at Goldman Sachs. But the less-available “butter and eggs were tradable,” he says.

To help blur class lines, boys perform menial tasks such as pruning plants or window-cleaning — unthinkable chores for those of high social standing. The school’s de-emphasis of wealth explains why many material goods, including fancy cars and designer clothes, are not allowed on campus. Unless parceled out by the school, money, or “home dough,” as boys call it, is also forbidden. Those found with unauthorized cash are stripped of their precious few privileges, such as Sunday forays into town.

Article of Faith’ “The monastic existence” is an “article of faith of the school,” says Dr. Kanti P. Bajpai, Doon’s headmaster. “It is a leveler, a reminder that you are here to work and participate in campus activities and not wallow.”

One common penance is a “change in break.” That’s when a student must run to his room and change into sports clothes from the school uniform — gray blazer and slacks — and return and get a chit signed by a prefect.

On occasion, the lessons are more physical, and not sanctioned by the school. Among them: “putting” — beating boys’ rear ends with field hockey sticks or cricket bats — often for poor performance in sports. Although such bullying was once fairly common, Dr. Bajpai says that it is “the exception rather than the rule today.”

The rigor endears Doon to some parents. Many of the world’s top private schools are “too privileged,” says Indian-born Vinit Khanna, a Doon alumnus who runs an outsourcing business in Bala Cynwyd, Pa. In January, he pulled his son Vihan out of a local school and sent him to study at Doon.

Three to four years ago, between 30% and 35% of Doon graduates went overseas for college, according to Dr. Bajpai, with most going to the U.S. and the U.K. Last year, the number rose to 50%; this year he predicts it will hit 70%.

The rise of Doon alums underscores a broader phenomenon dating back about two decades: the success of first-generation Indians in America. That was largely due to India’s strong education system, as well as wider availability of U.S. visas and college scholarships.

“The average Indian in the U.S. is 30,000 times more likely to have an advanced degree than the average Indian in India,” says Marcelo M. Suarez-Orozco, a professor and co-director of immigration studies at New York University. “So we are really skimming the cream of the crop.”

When Doon graduate Deepak Thakran looked for a job in the late 1990s, he got an introduction to consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton from Kabir Sethi, another alum. After helping him get a foot in the door, Mr. Sethi picked him to work on his team — setting strategy for an institutional bank in Sydney, Australia.

Rajiv Dutta, president of Skype Technologies, the newly-acquired Internet telephone-calling unit of eBay Inc. says that Doon boys get a natural head start in business. Once, during a trip through the Himalayas, he and four others emerged from a stream to find their legs covered in leeches. Some of the boys wanted to head back to school. But after putting their heads together, they threw salt on the leeches, forcing them to recoil. The boys pressed on.

“It is tremendously uplifting when you make a decision like that, when you run into an obstacle and you overcome that obstacle,” Mr. Dutta says.

Changing Focus
In recent years, Doon has faced challenges of its own. When Dr. Bajpai, a former university professor, arrived at Doon in 2003, “the school was quite inward-looking, consumed with its own competition and awards.” Since then, he has tried to bring a greater focus on the world outside, encouraging more discussion of public affairs and topics like bullying and substance abuse. He’s done away with some formalities. Dr. Bajpai is the first headmaster not to don a traditional black robe and he urges instructors to drop the honorific “sir” when addressing him.

Consensus isn’t easy. Doon currently admits the daughters of a few teachers, but the issue of coeducation has been divisive, with many alumni and students against the idea.

At a recent school-council meeting, boys asked administrators to boost the allowance they get each time they go on a private outing, to $8 from about $6. The boys scored a minor victory: They got an increase of a little more than a dollar.

“Let me tell you — we are getting soft,” Philip Burrett, Doon’s deputy headmaster told the students at a recent council meeting. “Next thing you’ll want to go in a taxi.”

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Democracy – A Consumer Insight

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 22 Apr 2007 07:30:56 +0000

Many of you have written/mentioned in passing that I hardly ever talk about Y! and what’s next, and only mention press releases/coverage from time to time about Y!…i’ll just say that the multiple Y! blogs (starting with http://yodel.yahoo.com) would do a much better job of describing what Y! is upto…also, this is a personal blog…and alot of the content here are thoughts about how the space is evolving…yeah, so on with my post…

The internet is the world’s biggest democracy…i first came up with that line back in 2004 when i was writing my SoP for an eBusiness Management course for a school in england…i didn’t go due to a multitude of reasons, but the SoP really helped me crystallize my thoughts…and this was my opening statement…

The Internet has no parallel, it is the world biggest community (11.5% of world population)*, the worldâ€™s biggest marketplace (740 million users), and is growing and evolving everyday. We have witnessed the social implications it has had on our lives and how it has revolutionised the way we do business. Today, we are witnessing the second Internet revolution, the era of Wireless Networking. This will increase the reach and growth of the Internet making it a more central part of how we live and operate. I am driven by my passion for the Internet, and am decided on being a part of this global movement, that continues to add value to our lives.

That was 2004, 3 years in a conventional landscape (30 in cyberspace)…those numbers have already clawed up to a billion users globally (15% of global population…growing at 10% a year)…media moguls across the globe are now watching the wireless revolution evolve and attain critical mass…wi-fi and wi-lan are available in india, mobile access continues to grow at 5MM new users in india alone, mobile VAS revenues exceed P2P… we are all witnessing faster evolution of our species thanks to the ever widening proliferation of media and technology…the key trend we’re seeing is, the company that builds the best ecosystem, that allows for the fairest democracy, and that allows the user to be the real winner will eventually win…
Google made online advertising democratic when they first launched ad-sense…they weren’t the first online ad-network, but were the first the allow virtually everyone to run ads on their site and make money of it…in retrospect, the manner in which fastclick, advertising.com and the other networks treated small webmasters was pathetic, and thats why they paid the price…Google continues to grow, and in no small part due to the number of webmasters across the globe that run their ads, swear by their practices and, how their system allows advertiser, webmaster & user to win… the online ecosystem is built (and continues to grow)…Google is not aiming to be a destination….Google wants to be the platform…and has done everything it needs to do, to be the center of the world’s biggest ecosystem…
Don’t for a moment write Microsoft out of this game…they’re still very rich (USD 30BN in cash, billions in profit every quarter) and if you read between the lines of last weeks $3 windows student license announcement for developing economies…you find that they are the only company on earth that could aim at doubling the number of PC owners in the next 8 years… almost all of us use Windows, and alot of their products across the productivity (windows, office 2007, mobile) and entertainment axis (mediacenter, xbox360) are leaps and bounds ahead of the competition… we’re only too used to personalising our computing experience…the key here is we can personalise it because MS has built the ecosystem… even though some of their tactics can be mildly termed aggressive, that’s just business right? …. in the words of kevin kelly, the infinite game is played to keep playing, and to win at every level you play at….

Today we can install almost anything we find on the internet on a windows machine…and thats what affords us options, choices, freedoms which in turn empower us….we can now share our ideas with the world (this blog being a classic case), get feedback, collaborate and jointly evolve…this is the role that technology & media combined are playing in the evolution of mankind… technology was always supposed to be open, to be free, shared, transparent…and media today makes it viable… web 2.0 is the biggest attempt and success story ever towards socialization of media & technology … its anyones guess about which company will eventually prevail… but the one thing i can say with absolutely no hesitation is that the consumer will win (and is already winning) … we’re really really really lucky to live in this day and age… subsidised by media, empowered by technology… democratic, free and liberated!

This is just ONE more reason why i LOVE the internet…

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Zapak.com Aggression

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 05:07:40 +0000

Zapak is firing all cylinders….preparing for blast off….got this in my mailbox today…
(However, the typo …’click here to check your mails‘ .. is a total dampener)…

Hey maedi,

How are the games going? To start with, thank you for being a part of my Zapak family. Youâ€™ve been playing a lot and thatâ€™s why, Iâ€™ve decided to add more levels of excitement. Get ready for finger tapping thrills.

Letâ€™s gift you 2 Games! Since I like your style, Iâ€™ve decided to give you 2 great games worth Rs. 990 for free. You can just download them, have it on your PC and play it anytime.

No Paisa, No Gyanâ€¦ only Masti! So click here to download the games.

Letâ€™s challenge your buddies! When we throw a party, we throw it big. Thatâ€™s why; you can share that game with ALL your friends for a limited time. Tell them to log on to Zapak.com and Iâ€™ll give it to them. Itâ€™ll be an exclusive game for just your gang.

Letâ€™s go crazy! I know you must have played most of our games but did you know we have launched 35 new games in last 2 weeks? You can now play over 225 games on Zapak.com and we are adding 1 new game everyday. Your fingers will get tired, but the games wonâ€™t end.

Mail me from your new Account! Did you know, you already have an email id maedi@zapak.com? itâ€™s Fast , simple to use & has unlimited storage space. I am using it right now and it works great. You can experience it too. Click here to check your mails.

Thatâ€™s all from my end. Iâ€™m getting back to my games now. You should get back to yours. Log on to Zapak.com for a new adventure everyday!

Keep playing,

Rohit Sharma
Chief Operating Officer,

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Really neat Royal Enfield Advert

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 07:18:24 +0000

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Yahoo! India launches Maps

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 15:11:39 +0000

Discover India. Go Anywhere.

Before that, check http://in.maps.yahoo.com

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How Consumers Hijacked the Media Model

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:44:53 +0000

From Marketwatch:

It is no secret that the traditional media are under assault from audiences.

Not only are some consumers not paying for content, some are displacing those heretofore assigned to create it and others are affecting the economics by their online-sharing behavior.

That additional power given to the audience is evident in the financial results of many companies.

In the magazine industry, advertising pages at Time Warner Inc.’s Time magazine were down 23.8% in 2006 from 2000, according to Publishers Information Bureau. Newsweek’s ad pages fell about 17.6% in the same period. In the newspaper industry, the New York Times stock has been halved since trading above $50 in 2002. In the music industry, sales of CDs have been declining in the last seven years and fell 20% in the first quarter of this year. Contd…

–
Most indian marketers and traditional media professionals would discount these as western trends. Keep in mind, indians are highly aspirational and have shown a higher affinity for technology-entertainment than most developed countries (a classic example is india’s booming Mobile VAS Industry). India’s share of global internet users has hovered between 3-4% since 2000, clearly illustrating a set of advanced users and new user growth proportionate to the rest of the planet. We’re already approaching the tipping point and distribution continues to get better (wi-lan, mobile…). While traditional media waits and watches, online media models change …real-time…by the user, for the user, of the user!

He who laughs last, laughs loudest…

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Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services Launch

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 14:08:19 +0000

instead of pointing you to a PR announcement, here’s quoting Search Engine Journal….

Last week Yahoo introduced their oneSearch mobile search experience for the majority of cell phones which offer Internet access. This week, Yahoo is working to fortify its innovative hold on the mobile search market with a suite of services which enable publishers to increase the discovery, distribution and monetization of their content via oneSearch; Yahoo Mobile Publisher Services.

Read on…

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AB in the Rokr Ad

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 19:30:18 +0000

Hats off to Moto & Ogilvy for pulling this off… there is nothing i can say that will do it enough justice!

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The Apple TV Sales Pitch – Compelling huh?

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 13:59:27 +0000

Got this email from Apple announcing and pitching Apple TV.

We all know Jobs is a ~~good~~ great salesman, this pitch is well in line…i’m not saying i’d buy it…just saying even this email pitch has Apple’s signature packaging…
———————————————————————-

Your computer is the center of your digital life. Your TV is the center of your entertainment life. But what if you want to watch movies, TV shows, movie trailers, podcasts and photos from your computer on your TV? At $299, Apple TV brings iTunes to the big screen.

Enjoy your iTunes library Â— movies, TV shows, music and podcasts Â— plus movie trailers from Apple.com on your TV. And your digital photos from iPhoto on a Mac or Adobe Photoshop Elements or Adobe Album on a Windows PC appear in high definition, so you can put on a stunning big-screen slideshow.

With QuickTime 7 Pro and Apple TV, you can easily enjoy your home movies on your TV. QuickTime 7 Pro allows you to export any file playable in QuickTime to a format optimized for Apple TV. You can even export 720p content from most high-definition sources.*

Change the way you watch digital media. Learn more about Apple TV, now shipping.

———————————————————————-

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Nice tool to check PageRank of all pages on your blog

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:50:48 +0000

http://www.iwebtool.com/visual/?domain=gauthaM.MAEDIRATTA.COM&nofw=1&ex=1

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Gootube has met its match

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 09:27:52 +0000

Simple math.

Quality of Video is directly proportionate to volume of Streams.
TV Programming is high quality. (NBC + News Corp produce adequate content globally to keep every demographic entertained)
Y! + MSN + AOL = Huge Captive Audience (30% of online video is viewed on Y! alone)
Y! (and the others) have a lot of respect for rights & IP …
UGC quality still lags commercially produced content. (I illustrated this point in my post titled….the funniest phone review EVER)
A certain portion of the USD 1.65BN bid for youtube was premium to prevent the competition from getting their hands on a portion of it… a huge portion of this was for audience (since google video had poor adoption)
So Gootube now has a USD 1BN Viacom lawsuit to deal with (obviously factored in during acquisition), NBC + NewsCorp + Y! + MSN + AOL, Joost, Apple TV (will eventually converge), Grouper and the rest of the long tail of online video.

Excess pride in a nascent, evolutionary and shifting mediascape is dangerous.

I must add…all views on my blog are mine alone….i am not a spokesperson for any of the companies listed above…and as much as i’d like to believe i know enough, there’s still a long long long way to go

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Yahoo! launches Widgets 4

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 12:42:32 +0000

Excerpts from the Y! Widget Blog

Yes! Yahoo Widgets 4 is now available for download. This version has a lot of cool new features for users as well as developers of Widgets.

For those that think weâ€™ve been sitting around drinking tequila and not really focusing on Konfabulator/Yahoo Widgets, todayâ€™s the day we show you what weâ€™ve really been up to for these past months. Well, weâ€™ve been drinking some tequila too, but letâ€™s stay focused, shall we? What?!

Read the rest of this entry Â»

PS – Am downloading it, as i type this. Excited, and how! Yahoooooooo!

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The funniest phone review EVER

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:39:42 +0000

Was checking phone reviews and a search for the i-mate pdal found me this site…

http://www.gsmarena.com/i_mate_pdal-reviews-1787.php

Look closely at what ‘S9he’ had to say…..i’m still dying laughing!

Talk about the power of UGC!

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Yahoo! Offers Best Mobile Web Experience

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 09:21:12 +0000

Boston, MA – March 12, 2007 – The newly launched Strategy Analytics Wireless Media Lab service has released, “Yahoo! Offers Best Mobile Web Experience as Interest in Web 2.0 Outstrips Media Industry Content,” which concludes that Yahoo! has the leading mobile web experience, based on evaluation of leading mobile web offerings by a Strategy Analytics Wireless User Panel.

Yahoo! beat Google, Napster, YouTube and MySpace, after participants carried out a set number of tasks specific to each provider on both a laptop PC and a wireless device.

“Yahoo! Mobile achieved the highest rating, primarily due to the fact that it represented the best replication of the full website on the Third (mobile) screen,” according to Paul Brown, User Experience Analyst at Strategy Analytics. “However, mobile implementation of these brands is tangibly inferior to the fixed user experience across a range of metrics.” Mobile implementations of these brands are tangibly inferior to fixed with user experience ratings ranging form -12 to â€“ 34 index points. MapQuest is the most sought-after web location on mobile followed by Google.

David Kerr, VP of the Global Wireless Practice, added, “Many users, especially among digital enthusiasts, show a preference for web search, web mail and web 2.0, user generated content and social networking content over branded content. However ease of access and discoverability of content on mobile handsets continue to be a huge pain point which is directly limiting content consumption”

Benchmarking Key Brands: Fixed and Mobile Experience

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Gimme some Joost quickly please…

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 05:55:31 +0000

Just in from my friends at Joost….if any beta testers are reading this…could you pass me an invite?

Hi Gautham Gauruv Maediratta,This is just to let you know that we haven’t forgotten your request to try Joost. We’re now speeding up the process of adding testers and we’ll shortly be inviting everyone who has signed up to try Joost.

This includes you, so expect an invite within the next couple of weeks – in the meantime, thanks for bearing with us – we appreciate it.

See you soon on Joost!

The Joost Team

–
You are receiving this email because you applied to be a Joost beta tester (The Venice Project). If you no longer want to be a beta tester, please send an email to xxx with the subject line: Please Remove

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Dell offers Business Desktops with Vista Home

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 05:33:42 +0000

This is hillarious….Dell recommends Windows Vista Business but is packaging Windows Vista Home Basic with its Business Desktops.Â What do you call that?Â Strategy to net the aspirational, price conscious, ill informed SME indian entrepreneur.

And yeah, if you missed the fine print, this wouldnt include half the WOW factor…the Aero interface!

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The things websites do for traffic

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 05 Mar 2007 04:20:38 +0000

Got this email from Indiatimes today….and am baffled….not surprised, not astounded….but baffled! I haven’t logged onto my Indiatimes email for over 3 years (the email mentions 3 months) and Indiatimes wants to do a springclean…the question i’m still grappling with is….to what benefit?

“In the next few days, we will be launching a host of new services, and would need to delete mail ids which have been lying dormant and have not been used for a long time.”

How hard is it to learn from the mistakes of the past..mistakes made by popular mail portals, who dictated terms to users – ‘no more than 250 contacts, 2 MB is all you get….maybe 10MB is what we’ll give you….sign in every 90 days or you lose your ID…’ … this list was pretty endless…and in walked google and swept away the heavy users… who didnt wanted to be dictated terms….is this a novel way of getting users to sign in to indiatimes mail again? Tough luck buddy….i don’t give a flying one about your mail….

As an experiment i’m not going to log in to indiatimes (i’ve only used them to shop for airtickets in the past and have a couple of carrots to my credit .. nothing substantial)….lets see what i miss out on…i’m reasonably sure its not going to be anything worth dying for….

Appended below is the email from Indiatimes….

–
Dear Member,

We are delighted to have you as a part of the Indiatimes mail family. But we have noticed that, for some reason, you have not used your Indiatimes mail for over 3 months!!

In the next few days, we will be launching a host of new services, and would need to delete mail ids which have been lying dormant and have not been used for a long time.

To retain your id and to continue accessing your Indiatimes mail â€“ with a far better experience, please log on to http://mail.Indiatimes.com today. Start using the mail once again and get ready to get surprised!

Looking forward to your continued support and patronage.

Thank you!

Warm Regards
Indiatimes Mail Member Services
–

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Fiat Palio Advert

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 09:12:21 +0000

Those who drive them, love them!

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Salman Khan, Spam, Potty Training & Mother Teresa

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 08:28:21 +0000

Pick the odd one out.Â Want a clue? Click on the image below.

Was clearling my spam folder and came across spam from ‘Salman Khan’…i had to hand it to the spammer…he had earned an ‘open’ for sheer creativity…while the mail was loading i was curious about the kind of contextual ads that might get thrown up, and if any would correspond to the brands he endorses…
When the page loaded i laughed so hard, it took me a minute to get my breath back… goes to show that contextual targeting is still a WIP…

PS - No offence to Mother Teresa, i’m still wondering what word the SEM targeted his ad on…Salman Khan? Pheronomes?

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The Coolest Video Site of them all

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:53:25 +0000

Some sites rock….but some, blow your mind away!Â I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a couple of years now, and nobody i’ve ever referred it to has complained*.Â Essentially, stumbleupon is a tool that allows you to channel surf websites, bringing you sites that would interest you to instead of you having to actively seek them out. Channel surfing ensures you spend more time online, expend less energy and have more fun. Stumble is funded by Sherpalo.
Television is a braindead medium (it’s not called the idiot box for nothing), and is ideally suited to the doofus next door who isn’t looking at seeking out information, he’s looking for information to come to him…Stumbleupon does just that…it filters, prioritizes and delivers sites that would be relevant to you on the basis of your expressed interests, surfing habits, ratings and pages being surfed by other people like you…and the most you use it, the most accurate it gets! And so, in the medium term, it stands to be a game changer….loved by the geek and the doofus alike!
Stumbleupon Video takes its proprietary algos and applies it to videos…which it aggregates from multiple sites and then serves on its own interface, the best part of which is the background fades out when the video plays to reduce the stress on your eyes…you need to use it to believe it!
Also, one really nifty feature is being able to search for a new video while seeing another…the only other site that offers that is MSN Soapbox.

* – The only complaint i’ve got about Stumble has been from De. Between search, newsletters and RSS feeds he had enough of an information overload problem, and Stumble is exponentially increasing exposure to new sites/articles etc he just HAS TO SEE.

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Expanded Alexa Traffic Rankings

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 17 Feb 2007 04:02:09 +0000

Alexa has added more meat to their traffic rankings page, after about three odd years.Â I must add that they updated the graphs about a month back, offering more options with data smoothing and time period…
What’s nice are the geo-specific ranks and geo-composition of Alexa toolbar users for any site.Â The top sites accessed from india can be found here

(Click on the thumbnail for the full-sized image)

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Google Apps to start Charging for Services

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 18:30:17 +0000

Trackback:
http://tech.cybernetnews.com/2007/02/06/google-apps-to-start-charging-for-services

Businessweek recently wrote about Google ‘charging a few dollars’ for its ‘Apps for domains’ which would include the entire suite of programs from their Writely Acquisition to their homegrown calendar, gmail and notebook….Since they are chasing SOHOs, Educational Institutes and Public/Private Corporations it takes the Microsoft Office Live Suite which is priced at USD 39.99/month.

Seemingly unrelated, when Toyota launched in India, they launched with an outdated model called the Qualis. Some people argued that lanching with a ‘Multi Utility Vehicle’ was a strategic move primarily to ensure dealerships opened in B Tier towns,district capitals etc. While it was undoutedly a key factor, i learnt later that this was done for a slightly different reason. Reason being…to choke sales of their biggest potential local competitors…Tata (whose Sumo was their most profitable product) & Mahindra (India’s biggest MUV (people mover) manufacturer. Choking sales of the best sellling product would ensure that these manufacturers would have substantially less money for R&D of future launches, and so the beginning of the end of the competitor … classical Art of War stuff that Google is aiming to do to Microsoft.

Web companies are a product of the paradigm shift of computer to network & subscription to advertising…and thats just where MSFT is struggling. Billiions of dollars of R&D, need to be earned back… MSFT either passes the subscription cost to the consumer or advertising ROI to the advertiser. Google is offering lower subscription (the growth-lever is consumer adoption) and already offers good value to advertisers.

We live in interesting times…robust sales of Tata’s low cost Indica & Mahindra’s higher cost Scorpio kept them out of trouble… i wish i knew the answer to the trillion dollar microsoft question!

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Today’s Blessings! :)

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 03:44:19 +0000

Aerobics Fees: INR 1500
Air soled shoes: INR 3790
Track Pants: INR 1500
Walk into the gym to find you’re the only male in a batch of 15 people: Priceless!

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Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 21:46:38 +0000

This has to be the best UGC video i’ve seen this year…thanks Rajit, this is absolutely brilliant!

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New woman in my life

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 13:54:16 +0000

I’m not entirely schizophrenic, but the petrosexual in me just got a new woman in his life.

The pics should be up on my flickr account soon.

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The real implications of Web 2.0

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 17:36:58 +0000

Over the last couple of months, i’ve been bombared by questions about social media (or web 2.0 products) and my responses have been consistently varied on the real implications for users, brands and communities. I finally managed to cut myself out of tech explanations and put down the real, simple, business / marketing implications:
1) Marketers, brace yourself for the handover of power; large corporations & brands to individuals & communities.
(We consumers now officially rock )
2) Webpreneurs, the value-store (read VC valuation) is not in content but in shaping & delivering a unique experience seamlessly across digitally converged devices. (read computers, mobile phones and other devices. The other devices are where the next wave of innovation is going to be led, and the best thing is
3) The barrier to entry, and time to market, in innovation is a thing of the past. Due to the permutations/combinations, and constant evolution of the platform itself, it is much harder for innovation to be driven top-down. The sheer nature of experience, demands it be built bottom-up.

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Really cool Viral Campaign

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:39:26 +0000

This is really neatly done…won’t tell you who its for, will kill the surprise!

http://202.56.228.25/viral/

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Is ‘Web 2.0′ Another Bubble?

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 13:54:24 +0000

The Wall Street Journal Online invited two technology venture capitalists, who were active in the dot-com days and have invested in the current crop of startups, to debate the topic. Todd Dagres spent nearly a decade at Battery Ventures before starting Spark Capital last year. David Hornik, a partner at August Capital and a former Silicon Valley attorney, writes the popular VentureBlog. Their conversation, carried out over email, can be found here

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2007

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 01 Jan 2007 13:47:03 +0000

Like any other – a year to learn, adapt, grow, challenge the limits, make the most, do the best, to stand, punch and follow through, to believe, to develop instinct, to hunt, to constantly evolve every function, every task, every role, every relationship and every bit of information.

kaizen – 60×60x24×365.

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Nokia 5300 – A Review

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 31 Dec 2006 14:01:40 +0000

We live in an age where evolution is not just a way of life but a mandate. I frankly believe that this is accelerated by technology and even more so by the internet. Ref : Quaero Quero Ergo Sum (the geeky cool great-grandson of Cogito ergo Sum)

Over the course of my mobile life Iâ€™ve owned several Nokia phones. It all started with a Nokia 3310, followed by a Nokia 3330 (where I was first exposed to WAP 1.0), followed by a Nokia 6600, followed by the Nokia n-gage, and another n-gage, then a 1100 and most recently a Nokia 6600. Though Iâ€™ve owned other mobiles the bulk of my phones have been manufactured by Nokia & I havenâ€™t had too many complaints. This post actually is about the latest Nokia I got my hands on, the Nokia 5300.

I wanted to gift my mother a new phone, and the requirements from the phone were basic. Symbian for the UI, USB Connectivity, expandable memory, a decent camera (1.3 MP+) and a decent looking phone considering women are far more conscious of form factor. Expandable memory knocked out the Sony Ericsson range, Symbian knocked out Motorola, Samsung & LG and I was back hunting at a Nokia store. The 5300 caught my eye and since it met every single basic requirement I went ahead at bought it.

Whatâ€™s the verdict: Brilliant (except for average battery life)
Pros:
Symbian 40 phones, being simpler, are much faster than their Symbian 60 cousins.
Basic features like number duplication warnings make your life much easier.
This is something that neither the NSeries nor the ESeries offer.
A BRILLIANT PC Suite and USB Connectivity.
Backing up the entire phone has never been easier.
Iâ€™ve been known to curse Nokia for the shitty versions of their PC Suite and compliance / connectivity issues with their phones over Bluetooth/ IR but from all the handling of this phone & the new suite , this version ROCKS.
The ability to backup every bit of information on your phone including messages, contacts, images etc by simple drag-drop mouse commands.
A crisp camera and 2GB Memory Cards.
Dedicated easy access buttons for Music and deep base earphones.
An additional pin to add after-market headphones.
Connectivity: IR, Bluetooth, USB (youâ€™ll be surprised how many basic phones donâ€™t come with all 3).

Cons:
Battery Life. For heavy users, this can be limiting.
From heavy user perspective: The inability to multitask with multiple java apps.

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GO, FIGHT, KILL!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 09 Dec 2006 16:02:14 +0000

36 hours: 3 Regions, 4 presentations, 5 excel sheets, 13 Categories, 1 seamless business plan. Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.

GO GET ‘EM TIGER!

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Introspection, anyone?

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 16:53:30 +0000

The Myers-Briggs-Jung test is an interesting personality test…for the introspective amongst us! Answering these questions accurately requires honest reflection on how you really think, feel, and act in general. Â Some of the questions on this test measure personality traits differently than you might guess so trying to answer the test in a way you think would be ideal.Â Trying to fake it is just going to screw up your results, so just focus on being honest if you want the most accurate results.

I am supposedly INTJ – “Mastermind”.Â Promise i didn’t rig it
Introverted intellectual with a preference for finding certainty. A builder of systems and the applier of theoretical models. 2.1% of total population.

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Hidden emoticons in Yahoo! Messenger

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 13:28:44 +0000

Its not often that you stumble upon hidden emoticons. These aren’t available from emoticon menu on the IM window ….

http://messenger.yahoo.com/hiddenemoticons.php

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My Blog on the Wayback Archive

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 04:56:55 +0000

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gautham.maediratta.com

Evolution? I’d love to hear your thoughts

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Add the Yahoo! Search box to Mozilla Firefox Beta 2

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 04:45:38 +0000

For those of you who want to add Y! Search or Y! India Search to your Mozilla Firefox 2 Beta 2, here is an easy way to do it.

Instead of using the convulated route of managing search engines / adding new providers etc etc etc, all you have to do is visit http://mycroft.mozdev.org/quick/yahoo.html. Listed are about a 120 different Y! Search services which can be activated extremely easily.

Happy Searching!

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Sony Ericsson Walkman Phones – Killer Advertising!

Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 08:01:05 +0000

The new Sony Ericsson Advert has to be the best ad this season. Found the complete 60seconder on youtube which is embedded in this post as well as available at


 My next phone is DEFINITELY a SE...maybe a mini Viao or an enterprise phone....but definitely not a Nokia. 
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Boys Toys: Nothing beats this!
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 22 Nov 2006 16:30:59 +0000
 I can live with the fact that i am a kid at heart…not just heart, make that mind and soul …and in order to be true to myself and keep myself interested, intrigued and engaged i’m constantly on the lookout for more toys…
As a child, i was fortunate enough to have parents who ensured i had the right toys to think the right way…..so Lego blocks, my Technic bucket, assorted ‘dinky toys’ (over 80 of them), a railway set, Atari &  a ‘Media’ gaming set,  tonnes of ‘101 in one’  gaming catridges (and the list goes on) kept me busy…with the advent of the PC…the PC became the new toy… i spent most of my college life playing NFS (something i’m not sure i’ve grown out of)…and once the PC / Mobile Phone combo arrived, they suddenly turned into all the toys I needed…
In college, i became a gaming enthusiast, and once i started working with Juno i discovered the joys of unix, daemons, servers & the internet.  While the internet is by far my biggest toy / playground (i’m on the threshold of starting to develop a 3D Vision of it – Audience, Tech & Brand), the PC & Mobile combo isn’t far behind…. can we ever get enough of whats new….think of it …. Windows OS – Symbian OS, Office 2007, PC Apps – Java Apps – Symbian Apps, Web Services, Plugins for Firefox, Yahoo! Widgets, Microsoft Gadgets, Google Gadgets, Opera Widgets, Float’s Mobile Agent, Bluetooth controls, p2p, torrents, advanced charting tools for excel, Second Life, Comscore Stats, Forrester Data, eMarketer Info, NFS, Search Engines, Blog Tools, Wordpress, Rich Media, Web 2.0, rss, Syndication, and this list goes on and on and on…. could anything ever tear me away from a world centered around the PC / Internet?
Till two weeks back, i honestly believed i had access to most of the toys i wanted…(except my imaginary auto collection)  and was relatively content with the toys i could afford…. and then, De introduced me to a concept called MindStorms NXT. Made by Lego, the guys i owe my sense of reasoning, logic and proportion to, this is the stuff dreams are made up of!
Mindstorms is about building Robots… not tiddly fink $0.02  robots….but robots with base functionalities that include Light Sensors, Touch Sensors, Sound Sensors, a programmable brain, intelligent robots that walk, have ultrasonic sensors to make the robot see, a 32bit microprocessor, 4 input / 3 output ports, USB / Bluetooth compliance, a speaker, display and the Lego Mindstorms NXT software which allows you to program your NXT and upload new programs via USB or Bluetooth connectivity.  The software, comes with building instructions & programming guides to easily begin constructing and programming.  As simple as Lego, as complex as Asimo; they might as well take rizla’s  tagline – It’s what you make of it!
If the base functionality isn’t enough for you the software you could scale up to NXT Extreme!!!

Since Mindstorms is open-source you can use the SDK (Software Development Kit) which includes the NXT driver interface specifications and tools to create 3rd party programming environments.

The HDK (Hardware Development Kit) includes documentation and schematics for the NXT and all related sensors. This enables you to design and develop your own sensors and actuators that can interact with and control the NXT through various digital and analog interfaces.

And to top it off, the Bluetooth Developer Kit can be used to create apps for various Bluetooth devices to communicate with MINDSTORMS NXT robots.
So to put it in perspective, one of the simplest things you can do with your mindstorms, is have your Mindstorms crawl the room on voice command (via a bluetooth headset or voice) , spot a red object, send a photo of the object to your phone, send a command to play the file crisis.wav on your computer, then turn around and come back at 2x the pace.  If the lights go out during this period, then move to the closest corner, turn on all its lights, camera and beam the video to a remote ftp server. 
So what does Mindstorms cost …. you wouldnt believe it  – USD 249!!!!!!

However, that is $240 more than i can afford at this time and so i’m setting up a paypal fund so that nice people like you can contribute a dollar each to help me live my dreams! (does that sound convincing enough   … the paypal account you can pay into is gautham@maediratta.com … my top 10 donors get my inventions named after them and some emotional satisfaction and most importantly some ‘very good karma’)! 


Here are some cool links:
The coolest Mindstorms applications : LEGO MINDSTORMS Hall of Fame

The team that built Mindstorms: Meet the MDP

NBC (Next Byte Codes) http://bricxcc.sourceforge.net/nbc

Microsoft Robotics studio http://msdn.microsoft.com/robotics

HiTechnic Products http://www.hitechnic.com

Mindsensors.com http://www.mindsensors.com 
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How to use Yahoo! Social Media tools effectively
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 06:13:46 +0000
 Social media consists of Blogs, podcasts, wikis, RSS feeds, and social networks; nexgen tools that bring sites, users and communities into a dynamic, ongoing conversation.  Syndication and sharing are key to social media since they accelerate the (r)evolution of that specific content/page.
Yahoo!’s dedication to social media and variety of offerings to its users is well known. Many webmasters and bloggers miss the opportunity to drive boats of traffic from the biggest portal on the internet by using these tools effectively enough.
Given below are a list of tools, what they offer and relevant URLs

blo.gs – a pinging service to broadcast updates



del.icio.us – social bookmarking site that allows users to attach tags to saved entries.  These tags allow users to attach keywords to their bookmarks.  Since no webmaster, blogger can cover every relevant keyword in his description of his page in meta content and reflect them well enough in his keyword density, delicious tags are a useful way of allowing users to generate content on your behalf and thus drive more relevant traffic organically.  Especially useful for niche topics.  You can include an ‘Add to del.icio.us’ button to the bottom of every post thus turning your users to evangelists.
Save to MyWeb 2.0 – Allows users to save, share and re-visit your sites pages.  MyWeb Tools are numerous and consist of everything from buttons to save to myweb which you can include at the bottom of your post to Badges & APIs.
Y!Q:  Sounds like IQ   and allows                you to provide related searches and information to your users at the mouseover!  Users love sites that provide them the worlds information in the easiest manner.  Y!Q allows you to offer your visitors a more wholesome experience.  Recommended for advanced bloggers as the install is a more complex.
Add to My Yahoo!:  My Yahoo! is amongst the most popular services that keeps Yahoo!s users engaged. The ‘Add to My Yahoo!‘ button allows your RSS feed to be integrated into a users personalised page thus allowing him to find you in his daily dashboard of online updates.  Whenever your blog gets updated he is automatically notified on his next login to My Yahoo!
Similarly you can add buttons for users to post your content and on their 360 Pages, and get them to build buzz around your content.  Similarly you can upload your podcasts onto the popular Yahoo! Podcasts and display what users think of your podcasts on your own site thus adding to the credibility of your content.
This week Yahoo! also released some easy-to-plug-in (interactive) Social Media Optimisation Tools for anyone who creates content on the internet (publishers, podcasters and bloggers) making it extremely easy for users to share, save, recieve updates and blog about your content. These tools are in multiple formats and can be customized to the look and feel of your site.

Feel free to email me on ‘gautham at maediratta dot com’  if you have any questions. 
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quaero quero ergo sum: Search Engines & Descartes!
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 15 Nov 2006 18:02:13 +0000
 Gaurav Pradhan enlightened a couple of us on the true story behind ‘cogito ergo sum – i think therefore i am’ and i have ‘been’ eversince  . So much so that i found myself on a an English Latin Translation Site to check for translations for ‘i search’ and promptly titled this one ‘quaero quero ergo sum’.
Thanks to Capitalism, Democracy AND the Internet we live in an age of opportunity, in an age where doubt is something you address on a Search Engine.

IMHO the assurance that the answer exists out there somewhere further fuels curiousity (doubt). Living in an age as complex/connected as ours, multiple cycles of doubt, resolution, discussion, further doubt, further investigation….leaves little time for existential  concerns.  While cogito still holds water, quaero quero holds the key to success.



PS – So much for my $0.02, De coined ‘cogito ergo tum’ – ‘I think therefore you are’  years ago!  The latin-hindi probably has Descartes turning in his grave but i don’t think De ‘thought’ about it!   
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GO, Get ‘em Tiger!
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 13 Nov 2006 05:19:39 +0000
 Today is the first day of the rest of your life…What have you done that will last for eternity? Face your fears, live your dreams…GO, get ‘em TIGER! 
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What Media Mix Modeling WON’T Tell You
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 17:33:32 +0000
 This has to be one of the most realistic articles i’ve read in a while…the only issue from an indian perspective is marketers in india are SO BLOODY oblivious to what the blogosphere and cybersleuths are talking about it sucks!
Marketers: Ignore at your own peril!   

What Media Mix Modeling WON’T Tell You 

By          Tom Hespos

I am often asked how a brand should allocate its media dollars to achieve the best possible ROI. This is a topic that media planners constantly think about. Some media agencies even have proprietary technology that helps determine the appropriate media mix for a client. Some media agencies even have proprietary technology that helps determine the appropriate media mix for a client.  
 One area I find somewhat lacking in attempts to address the question is, just how interactive factors into the mix.

Contd..  
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A Little Piece of the Google Algorithm – Revealed
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 06:10:59 +0000
 http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1467

The comments and discussion are a must read for SEOs/Webmasters

GoogScore = (KW Usage Score * 0.3) + (Domain Strength * 0.25) + (Inbound Link Score * 0.25) + (User Data * 0.1) + (Content Quality Score * 0.1) + (Manual Boosts) – (Automated & Manual Penalties)
KW Usage Factors:

KW in title tag
KW in header tags
KW in document text
KW in internal links pointing to the page
KW in domain and/or URL

Domain Strength

Registration history
Domain age
Strength of links pointing to the domain
Topical neighborhood of domain based on inlinks & outlinks
Historical use & links pattern to domain

Inbound Link Score

Age of links
Quality of domains sending links
Quality of pages sending links
Anchor text of links
Link quantity/weight metric (Pagerank or a variation)
Subject matter of linking pages/sites

User Data

Historical CTR to page in SERPs
Time users spend on page
Search requests for URL/domain
Historical visits/use of URL/domain by users GG can monitor (toolbar, wifi, analytics, etc.)

Content Quality Score

Potentially given by hand for popular queries/pages
Provided by Google raters (remember Henk?)
Machine-algos for rating text quality/readability/etc

Obviously, this isn’t a perfect summation of the algorithm by any means, but I have a strong suspicion that if we were to see the exact algorithm in perfect form, we’d see that a lot of these factors are strongly reflected in the weighting.Read on… 
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Merill Lynch upgrades Yahoo! to “buy”
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 05:05:49 +0000
 This morning, Merrill Lynch issued a bullish report on Yahoo! and upgraded the stock to “buy,” noting that the downturn in the company’s stock price seems to have created new opportunities for investors. “Yahoo is at an attractive entry point entering a seasonally strong holiday period and in-front of a two-year search monetization upgrade cycle, in our view,” wrote analyst Justin Post. The report also pointed out that Yahoo’s share of search queries has remained relatively stable and the new Panama platform is expected to help it compete for search dollars.
What’s more, Yahoo’s large audience should be a plus when it comes to drawing marketing budgets, according to Merrill Lynch. “Yahoo has a best-of-breed Web user base,” states the report. “The company is well positioned for all online advertising growth opportunities, including branded, search, mobile and video.” 
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Steve Jobs – Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish!
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 11:38:14 +0000
 This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.
The first story is about connecting the dots.
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5Â¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something â€” your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
My second story is about love and loss.
I was lucky â€” I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation â€” the Macintosh â€” a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me â€” I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.
My third story is about death.
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything â€” all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma â€” which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960’s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.” It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
Stay Hungry.  Stay Foolish.
Thank you all very much.
Coutesy: http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/june15/jobs-061505.html  
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Media is not just the message
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 14:36:38 +0000
 “The media is not just the message. The media is a massage. We’re constantly being stroked, manipulated, adjusted, realigned, and manoeuvered.” -

Joey Skaggs 
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A video of the Yahoo! life
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 12:26:37 +0000
 http://video.yahoo.com/video/play?vid=2a6da7a27cd603f00682c2e8f1ed0ea4.711349&fr=
This video is about life at Sunnyvale, features David Filo, Jerry Yang, a walkthrough the data center & NOC operations, the fitness center, the Guiness record and buzz marketing promos.  A must see if you want to understand the ethic @ Yahoo!  Videos of the life @ Yahoo! India would soon be uploaded on Timecapsule.  
YAHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!   
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YouTube vs. MySpace?
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 13:02:17 +0000
 Just a few months ago, News Corp. (NWS) landed a crucial deal with Internet leader Google (GOOG). News Corp. designated Google as the search engine for MySpace, the social networking leader that News Corp. acquired last year for $580 million. The Google deal guaranteed $900 million in revenue for MySpace over a three-year period, more than

enough to recoup News Corp.’s cost of acquiring MySpace, plus a tidy profit.
Today, YouTube doesn’t compete directly with MySpace, where members keep home pages loaded with photos, videos, music and messages. But YouTube has a social networking component, because its users can share playlists and other information. That could be the foundation for more YouTube social networking features that would put it into more direct competition with MySpace.
Read on… 
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Media Titans Pressure Youtube over Copyrights
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 16 Oct 2006 19:52:09 +0000
 In an apparent display of saber-rattling aimed at nudging video Web site YouTube Inc. into cutting favorable licensing deals, a number of major media companies have banded together to explore the legal implications of the video site’s unauthorized use of copyright material, people familiar with the matter say.
The move comes just days after YouTube agreed to be acquired by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion. If the deal goes through, deep-pocketed Google could be held responsible for YouTube’s legal liabilities.
Read on… 
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The Mother of all Auto Ad-Wars (BMW, Audi & Subaru)
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Fri, 13 Oct 2006 11:16:08 +0000
 Coutesy: Team-BHP



 
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Julianne Moore
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 12 Oct 2006 16:20:44 +0000
 1 Julianne Moore please….like thrice….i mean PLEASE….
to give you some background to this, i just saw “Laws of Attraction”! 
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Shanu Taxi Update
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 08 Oct 2006 06:14:11 +0000
Shanu Taxi was selected in the International Competition section at the Asiana Short Film Festival in Korea.Â  It will happen sometime in November. For those of you who haven’t heard about it, check www.shanutaxi.com, or make it to a screening in Mahim in Mumbai on Friday, theÂ 13th of October: 7:30 pm.Â  It is with Aviskhkar, an organization that screensÂ documentaries and shorts on a regular basis.

The address is

Avishkar
New Municipal High School
Miya Mohammadh Chotani Marg
Mahim West (Near Station)
Mumbai

Those of you who are in Mumbai and still haven’t seen it, here’s the chance.
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Internet Mergers & Acquisitions 2006
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 05 Oct 2006 13:37:40 +0000
 From Mediapost
MERGER AND ACQUISITION ACTIVITY IN online media grew dramatically in the first three quarters of this year, compared to 2005, according to media investment bank Jordan, Edmiston Group Inc.
The online media industry saw 131 deals in the first nine months of this year–up from 72 in the same time frame of 2005, according to Jordan, Edmiston. But without any blockbuster deals this year, the total value of online media mergers and acquisitions came to only $5.17 billion–down from $8.14 billion last year.
“In 2005 we had a wave of large acquisitions, from MySpace to AskJeeves to MarketWatch, and now there’s a lot more middle-market deals,” said Adam Gross, vice president of marketing and communications for Jordan, Edmiston. “But these are very, very dynamic businesses, in the forefront of where online businesses are going.”
Gross added that the companies involved in the latest round of M&A are among the most dynamic in the Web space. Gross pointed to DoubleClick’s recent acquisition of online video services company Klipmart (which his firm was involved in) as an example of a “good business that’s growing but that’s not of the size as the ones bought last year.” Also representative of the latest trend are MTV’s purchase of Atom Entertainment for $200 million, TheKnot.com buying Weddingchannel.com for $79 million, and Reader’s Digest buying Allrecipes.com for $66 million.
By contrast, last year IAC/Interactive bought search engine AskJeeves for $1.85 billion, News Corp. purchased MySpace for $580 million, eBay acquired comparison shopping engine Shopping.com for $620 million, and Scripps purchased comparison shopping engine Shopzilla for $525 million.
The dollar volume decline began in the first six months of 2006, which saw 85 online media mergers and acquisitions amounting to just $3.7 billion, compared to 48 deals in the first half of 2005 worth almost $6 billion. Big deals in the first half of 2006 included NBC’s purchase of iVillage for $600 million. Overall, the first nine months of this year saw 493 media deals that totaled $40.2 billion, including 116 consolidations among marketing and interactive services companies, 64 newspaper mergers and 37 consumer magazine deals. In 2005, by contrast, there were 398 mergers totaling $41.4 billion during the first nine months.
 
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Kaizen
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 09:18:19 +0000
 
Tidiness, Orderliness, Cleanliness, Standards & Discipline! 
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Plugins to Chat on Yahoo! Messenger in Indian Languages
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 28 Sep 2006 12:58:09 +0000
There are several language Plugins available for Yahoo! Messenger Version 8  which allows users to chat in Indian langages.Â  IndiChat allows users to chat in Hindi & Tamil while JholÂ  allows you to chat in Hindi, Marathi, Sanskrit, Kannada & Telugu.
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An IMPORTANT notice from the Writely team
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 05:27:49 +0000
 Another Google Property integration…just got this email from Writely…oops i meant the Google Writely Team.

—————————————-
Dear gautham,
In a few days, we will update your Writely account to use your gautham@maediratta. com Google Account registration settings.
This means you’ll need to use your Google Account password when signing in, not your Writely password (if they’re different).
If you’ve forgotten your Google Account password, just go to https://www.google.com/accounts/ForgotPasswd
Thanks!

Google Writely Team

———————————– 
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Getting back onto the Hotbot Search Index
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 05:00:32 +0000
 Marketleap revealed that HotBot had chosen to drop me from their index. I hopped over to Hotbot’s page and used their help service to find how i could submit my site to lycos search.Â Â  So i found my way to http://help.lycos.com/faq.php?do=article&articleid=542 where i discovered that Ask.com has starting powering their results. Hopped over to Ask fom where i found bloglines (also owned by IAC Search & Media), signed up and started the process of claiming my blog.Â  (Users can do this by selecting My Blog and then clicking on publisher tools.)Â  I have been asked to place a unique code code Â  anywhere on my blogÂ  and some other code on my template.Â  Will check back in a week or so, lets hope this helps! 
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Blog Basics – Check the number of pages of your blog indexed by Search Engines
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 04:54:05 +0000
 To continue from where i signed off last time,  it is imperative that major Search Engines know that your site exists and have a majority (if not all) the pages of your site in their index.  Industry folks call this Search Engine Saturation.
The logic is simple…the higher the number of pages indexed, the higher the likelihood that a Search Engine throws up your site in their Search Engine Result Pages (SERP).
Marketleap.com has some brilliant meta tools, that are FREE & allow you to understand

a) Search Engine Saturation

b) Link Popularity &

c) Keyword Verification (where your site appears for a particular search phrase)

The importance of each one of these parameters cannot be emphasised enough and the relatinship between all three are interwoven.  The higher the number of links pointing to your site, the higher the likelihood of a meaty index. The link  text forms the base for the terms associated with your site. (So for e.g. if all the links that pointed to my blog were Netreaucrat my site would be associated with the term Netreaucrat and figure higher in SERPs for that particular phrase).  Lastly, keyword verification allows you to check where your blog features for pertinent search terms across different engines.

The last time i checked my Search Saturation i was pleasantly suprised to see the statistic at 477.  Appears that this has now crawled up to 685 with the MSN index still being the largest.



Engine
Current
Min
Max
Avg


 maediratta.com


Google/ AOL/ HotBot
159 
3 
159 
99 


HotBot
0 
25 
25 
25 


MSN
400 
71 
400 
171 


Yahoo!/ FAST/ AltaVista
126 
1 
126 
57 


Total/ Current
685 
71 
685 
289 


Click on the links above to view trending for each engine.



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Blog Basics – Robots.txt
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 13 Sep 2006 15:45:55 +0000
 So you have your blog set up and you’ve started pouring your heart out.   It’s natural that you expect your name to be all over search engines, loads of traffic, money, fame, your face on the cover of Forbes…hold it…not yet…nothing begins if a search engine doesn’t know you exist! No traffic, no money, no fame…

The next natural question is….how does a search engine find my site?

Text links from external sites (which lead the SE crawlers/robots to index your site) and manual search engine submissions requesting your site to be crawled.  Web Robots are programs that travel across the Web. They’re also known as Web Wanderers, Bots, Crawlers or Spiders.  They invariably find their way to sites on the back of embedded text links and check back for updates from time to time.

(The names are misleading and make them sound like independant adventurers moving from site to site and transmitting data home.  This is not the case, these bots are couch potatoes, firmly planted home birds that constantly keep pinging new sites…disappointing, huh?)
You need to ensure that your site has a functional Robots.txt that allows all search bots to crawl your site.  A Robots.txt is a simple text file that you need to upload into your root directory for e.g. http://maediratta.com/robots.txt.  Feel free to copy the lines below and upload after correcting the URL.
# http://www.yoursite.com: robots.txt

#

User-agent: *

Disallow:
What this particular robots.txt has done is allowed all Bots to index the site and hasn’t banned any.  If however, you do not want xyz bot on your site simple add them to the disallow list.
If you are keen on reading up, you should check http://www.robotstxt.org/wc/faq.html.  Advanced users should check RoboGen. RoboGen is a Windows-based program that helps you easily manage robots.txt files for your websites.  Instead of the time consuming manual management process, described in the tutorial, you can either edit your robot exclusion files on your local computer or on a remote FTP site.
Just remember that the Index of a Search Engine is built on the data gathered by these bots, so the more they crawl, the better your chances of featuring on a search result, getting traffic, money, fame, the cover of forbes and so on…   
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Increase Traffic to your blog using Pings
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 05:15:15 +0000
 It’s not just about putting content up on the web, the trcik is all about getting people to find this ifnormation.  So far the easiest way to get people to your site/blog has been  to get on the right side of the Search Engine and cross your fingers and hope for the best. However, today Pinging would stand as the single best way to drastically increase the number of visitors to your blog .
There are several services on the Internet that track Blogs for new information and announce updates in one form or another. These services are monitored in turn by the major search engines, so if you can get your Blog information to appear in these services, you then have your foot in the door for Yahoo!, Google and others. It can take months of hard work if you are not Blogging and Pinging.
Most half-decent Blog softwares offer services to ping the major services after you create a new Blog.  To add the list of pings to your WordPress Blog all you have to do is Sign-in and from your dashboard choose Options/Writing and paste the list below into the ‘Update Services’ box.
Happy blogging!

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://1470.net/api/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping

http://api.feedster.com/ping.php

http://api.moreover.com/ping

http://api.moreover.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/RPC2

http://api.my.yahoo.com/rss/ping

http://bblog.com/ping.php

http://bitacoras.net/ping

http://blogdb.jp/xmlrpc

http://blog.goo.ne.jp/XMLRPC

http://blogmatcher.com/u.php

http://bulkfeeds.net/rpc

http://coreblog.org/ping/

http://mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatt https://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZFinance.woa/wa/pingPodcast http://ping.amagle.com/

http://ping.bitacoras.com

http://ping.bloggers.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blogmura.jp/rpc/

http://ping.blo.gs/

http://ping.cocolog-nifty.com/xmlrpc

http://pinger.blogflux.com/rpc/

http://ping.exblog.jp/xmlrpc

http://ping.feedburner.com

http://ping.myblog.jp

http://pingqueue.com/rpc/

http://ping.blogg.de/

http://ping.rootblog.com/rpc.php

http://ping.syndic8.com/xmlrpc.php

http://ping.weblogalot.com/rpc.php

http://ping.weblogs.se/

http://rcs.datashed.net/RPC2/

http://rpc.blogbuzzmachine.com/RPC2

http://rpc.blogrolling.com/pinger/

http://rpc.britblog.com/

http://rpc.icerocket.com:10080/

http://rpc.newsgator.com/

http://rpc.pingomatic.com/

http://rpc.tailrank.com/feedburner/RPC2

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping

http://rpc.weblogs.com/RPC2

http://rpc.wpkeys.com/

http://services.newsgator.com/ngws/xmlrpcping.aspx http://signup.alerts.msn.com/alerts-PREP/submitPingExtended.doz http://topicexchange.com/RPC2

http://trackback.bakeinu.jp/bakeping.php

http://www.a2b.cc/setloc/bp.a2b

http://www.bitacoles.net/ping.php

http://www.blogdigger.com/RPC2

http://www.blogoole.com/ping/

http://www.blogoon.net/ping/

http://www.blogpeople.net/servlet/weblogUpdates http://www.blogroots.com/tb_populi.blog?id=1

http://www.blogshares.com/rpc.php

http://www.blogsnow.com/ping

http://www.blogstreet.com/xrbin/xmlrpc.cgi

http://www.holycowdude.com/rpc/ping/

http://www.lasermemory.com/lsrpc/

http://www.imblogs.net/ping/ http://www.mod-pubsub.org/kn_apps/blogchatter/ping.php http://www.newsisfree.com/RPCCloud

http://www.newsisfree.com/xmlrpctest.php

http://www.popdex.com/addsite.php

http://www.snipsnap.org/RPC2

http://www.weblogues.com/RPC/

http://xmlrpc.blogg.de

http://xping.pubsub.com/ping/

http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping 
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Resources for Bloggers
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 21:52:03 +0000
 Decided to give my blog some much needed attention.   Had wanted to add a host of tweaks, a resonable amount of syndication, and lastly get listed on all the Blog Directories i could think of.  Have added a detailed list to this entry and also created a permanent set of links in the sidebar (phew!…learning HTML was the easy bit…getting all the stuff to work perfectly took some energy)
Blog Directories

http://www.blogcatalog.com

http://www.blogflux.com

http://blogs.botw.org – A highly regarded Blog Directory.  Needs editor Approval quite like http://dmoz.org/

http://www.blogtopsites.com

http://www.blogrankings.com


Resources on Blogs & Bloggers

www.blogpulse.com – A service of Nielsen Buzz Metrics is everything from a Search Engine for blogs, to a set of buzz-tracking tools that are applied to blog content                       daily to track blog activity on key issues, people, news                 stories, news sources, bloggers and a fun look at real-world Trends as reflected through                 blogs.  There are some interesting ideas like daily blog stats that measure activity in the world                           of blogging (number of blogs identified, new blogs                       created, number of blog                 posts analyzed), trend                         charts comparing buzz in the blogosphere on up to three                 specific topics, a Conversation Tracker that follows and captures                           the discussion, or conversation, that emanates and                       spreads from individual                 blogs or individual blog posts, blogger profiles and a showcase of blogs.



http://www.feedburner.com – FeedBurner is the world’s largest feed management provider. Their Web-based services help bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers promote, deliver and profit from their content on the Web. FeedBurner also offers the largest advertising network for feeds that brings together an unprecedented caliber of content aggregated from the world’s leading media companies, A-list bloggers, blog networks and individual publishers.
http://www.blogexplosion.com – These guys ROCK!  I’ve been with them for a while and they have been a source of loads of quality traffic.
http://www.pingomatic.com – A one stop  shop to send  a  ping to every major RSS aggregator  in the wild west of the internet.  For e.g. if you click here you’d update something…and hey, Thanks!  
http://www.ipings.com – Another pinging service that is a must.
http://www.bloggerswap.com – Fundamentally a Banner Exchange where bloggers can swap banners which display their content.  Users are allowed to swap banners only within their category of blogs.

http://bloggerads.com – A Marketplace to Buy Sell and Trade Blog Adverts.

http://www.bloggerhub.com                  – Blogger Discussion board.
Also attached is a list of pings that you should perform.  I have integrated them with Wordpress so that this automatically happens when I post my post, if you get what i mean!  
I quite enjoyed researching and posting the Blogger Special so expect more…and much sooner! Stay smiling!   
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The ! in Yahoo!
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 11:22:09 +0000
 This one is courtesy Govind Menon
If you go to Yahoo.com & click on the exclamation mark in the Yahoo! logo, you can hear the yahoo yodel.  Just make sure you speakers arenâ€™t turned too high. And if you may want to save the Shockwave file used.
If you go to Yahoo.com & click on the exclamation mark in the Yahoo! logo, you can hear the yahoo yodel.  Just make sure you speakers arenâ€™t turned too high. Rocking Stuff! 
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Protected: Syncing Flickr with Wordpress
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 07:11:06 +0000

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Password:




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Google & Apple:  What’s up doc?
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 14:38:05 +0000
 Eric Schmidt recently joined the Apple Board. I thought is really strange since a Bill Gates owns a substantial amount of Apple. Ran a couple of searches and stumbled across some dizzying info.
Al Gore is a senior advisor to Google and is an Apple director.

Intuit Chairman Bill Campbell is an Apple director and Google advisor.

Arthur Levinson (CEO Genentech) sits the boards of both companies.

Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel , which supplies Apple’s microprocessors, sits on Google’s board.
At WWDC 2006 Steve Jobs mentioned apples 13% marketshare in new notebook sales in the US. Macs now run Windows, is more stable bla blah blah…for a complete list on why Macs are better check www.apple.com/getamac/ads

If anything does ever culminate, (Apple hardware, ilife & Google cloud..and add Open Office 2.0 to that) it could redefine the way the world computes…which brings me to the question….what’s up doc?  
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Google Apps Vs MSFT Office Live
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:51:50 +0000
 http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-8043_7-6632496-1.html?tag=cnetfd.ld4

Microsoft and Google provide myriad popular tools for Web surfers and consumers. Lately, both tech mammoths are also gunning to serve small businesses online. Microsoft Office Live beta and Google Apps for Your Domain let you design company Web pages and collaborate with chosen colleagues.
Unfortunately if you’re a fan of Firefox or Macs, most Microsoft Office Live functions work only with Internet Explorer 5.5 and may require Windows 2000 or later versions. Google’s services, on the other hand, are compatible with Mozilla-based browsers and Internet Explorer, as well as with Macs and Linux machines.
Microsoft is giving away domain names for free, which otherwise cost around $10 from a third party. Via Office Live, you can park and keep www.yoursite.com for free, which is superior to using some lengthy URL embedded within Microsoft’s corporate domain. However, in return, Microsoft slaps the Office Live logo onto your Web pages.
Google, on the other hand, doesn’t provide personalized Web site registration and hosting, although you can reserve a clunky URL through Google Page Creator beta. Google doesn’t even suggest a registrar; it only links to Google search results for “domain registration.” Instead, you tailor Google Apps for Your Domain to work with a Web site that you’ve already reserved. Basically, this lets you display your company’s name and logo (rather than Google’s) within Google Calendar and Gmail. Thus, customers can e-mail you at, say, owner@yourbiz.com, while you open the messages within your customized Gmail interface.
Microsoft Office Live Basics is free, but there are expanded, paid services too. There’s no calendar or instant messaging within the free Office Live Basics, for example, while Google Apps for Your Domain connects to the beta Google Calendar and Google Talk. If you’re serious about managing a small-business site with Office Live, you can pay for a calendar as well as 19 other business applications. The paid Office Live Essentials and Collaboration are free to try while in beta testing.
Neither Microsoft nor Google wrap together a built-in online Word processor with their small-business packs, which is odd given Microsoft’s corner on the productivity tool market, as well as Google’s Web-based Writely and Spreadsheets. We also find it strange that Google Apps for Your domain makes no mention of Google Checkout, which lets you set up a shop on your Web site.
Office Live is available at http://officelive.microsoft.com. You can access Google Apps for Your Domain at https://www.google.com/a/.



Microsoft Office Live Basics beta
Google Apps for Your Domain


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QOTD
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 31 Aug 2006 11:49:08 +0000
 “Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you are right” – Henry Ford 
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Quotable Quote
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 14:28:12 +0000
 “Pain is temporary.

Quitting lasts forever.”
Lance Armstrong (1971 – )

U.S. cyclist, 7-time winner of the Tour de France

Cancer survivor 
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Happy Independence Day
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 10:46:37 +0000
 At the stroke of the midnight hour….JAI HIND! 
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The Fire Inside
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 03:13:33 +0000
  
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Maediratta.com Search Engine Saturation
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 09:57:28 +0000


Appears that my Search Engine Saturation is at an all time high….with the sole exception of HotBot!Google still chooses to display PageRank as 0 but lets hope that changes soon…MSN as i mentioned earlier remains the most active bot and the largest index (w.r.t. my 2c)  








Engine
Current
Min
Max
Avg


 maediratta.com


Google/ AOL
159 
3 
159 
79 


HotBot
0 
25 
25 
25 


MSN
226 
71 
226 
125 


Yahoo!/ FAST/ AltaVista
92 
1 
92 
40 


Total/ Current
477 
71 
477 
210 


  






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Jimmy Cliff – I can see clearly now :)
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 03:14:12 +0000
 I can see clearly now the rain has gone

I can see all obstacles in my way

Gone are the dark clouds that had me blind

It’s going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day

It’s going to be a bright, bright sunshiny day

I think I can make it now the pain has gone

And all of the bad feelings have disappeared

Here is the rainbow I’ve been praying for

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day

Look all around

There’s nothing but blue skies

Look straight ahead nothing but blue skies

I think I can make it now the pain has gone

And all of the bad feelings have disappeared

I can see clearly now the rain has gone

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day

It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny day 
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3 Word Nirvana
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 06:29:36 +0000
 Om Namah Shivaya! 
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Solar Wi-Fi To Bring Internet to Developing Countries
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 05:24:09 +0000
 It’s nice when green thinking can be applied to closing the gaps between underdeveloped countries; indeed, when power’s not available, green solutions are practically a neccessity. Already, MIT and the UN have teamed up to provide kids living in the world’s least developed nations $100 laptops, their 2 watts of juice provided by hand or foot crank. Cool, butâ€”and this was one of Bill Gates’ criticismsâ€”what’s a computer without internet access? Enter Green Wi-Fi, a non-profit that seeks to provide “last mile internet access with nothing more than a single broadband internet connection, rooftops and the sun.” Their wi-fi access nodes, which consist of a small solar panel, a heavy-duty battery, and a router, can be linked together to extend one internet connection into a larger network. By using an “intelligent” charge controller that moderates power use and access based on amount of sunlight, the $200 nodes can run for as long as a month on low sunlight. The two guys who started the companyâ€”Bruce Baikie and Marc Pomerleauâ€”happen to be veterans of Sun Microsystems. Sun microsystems indeed! Deployment is set to start in India at the end of this summer. : : Green Wi-Fi
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2006/08/solar_wifi_to_b.php#perma 
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Windows Vista 5487 Screenshots Leaked
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Mon, 07 Aug 2006 05:15:46 +0000
 http://www.winfuture.de/index.php?page=wfv4/BSv2/scg-ia.php&id=1929&seite=1
Niiiice!   
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Protected: Windows Live Search Vs. Google
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 07:29:35 +0000

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Password:




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Windows Live Spaces
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 04:42:32 +0000
 MSN Spaces is dead…Spaces is now Live!  
Is it just me or is it rendering funny to everyone?Â  Checked earlier today and it rendered just fine.Â  Looks funny on Firefox 1.5 as well as IE7 now.
Whats new are hundreds and gadgets at the Windows Live Gallery (finally MS awakes to personalisation and boy toys) and new social networking features which it hopes will allow it to snowball past MySpace kinda numbers. Another key point is deeper integration integration with other MS Live offerings .

The integration is interesting, Windows Live SpacesÂ integrates with Live Contacts, which is also used in the Windows Live Messenger product. Instant messaging conversations can now be initiated through the Spaces site. (Why do i feel this is a hybrid of Y! 360 Contacts and Google Chat via Gmail)

MS has also added features to let users choose permission levels w.r.t. being contacted through their Space. (There is however a way of getting the IM address of the person whose space you are on…and works 80% of the time… the old naming structure was http://spaces.msn.com/members/maedi …. chances are the User ID on Live Mssngr is maedi …. this is because the default name given (unless the user chose while setting up to change it) was = Mssgr ID.Â  This however has been changed to http://maedi.spaces.LIVE.com
However, folks under 18 can only be reached via their Messenger Contacts. Issues surrounding easy access to children on social networking engines has become the topic of much controversy in the last couple of months, andÂ MS is doing its bit for greater common good…
All said, for the enthusiasts in us, Wordpress still rocks…and for the folks who only want a blog that integrates with the rest of their online experience, it just got a whole lot better! 
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The Rise of Social Networking
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Sat, 29 Jul 2006 03:27:49 +0000
 Social Networking  is one of those many buzzwords you hear flying around the place.  While Myspace dominates

discussions and headlines, the silent mover / dark horse is Google’s Orkut.  Its not easy to spot Google’s

revenue model in Orkut, but this is as close as i can get to it.  Search Quality!!!  Google aims to provide more

relevant results on the basis of social networks, associations, interests and skew of geographic inputs.I’ve been using Orkut for over 4 years now, and must add that stickiness is high.  While the scrapbook ensures

you login, the Recent Visitors tool ensures you keep adding folks in.
Appended below is a sneak peak of my Dashboard



Welcome, Gautham




   Invite your friends and grow your network now!You are connected to   24,184,827   people through   75   friends.   You have 1 fans.          90   scrapsYour profile views:

Since Feb ‘06: 714,   Last week: 35,   Yesterday: 8

Recent visitors:    

 		srujana   murali,    		Adnan   Farooqui,    		Arunita   Phukan,    		kanchan   sharma,    		Nitin   NayyarNext steps:

Have a great friend? Write a testimonial and let people know!Today’s fortune:

You never hesitate to tackle the most difficult problems


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Marooon 5 – She will be loved!
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 11:25:00 +0000
 I’ve been hearing this song non-stop all week!Â  I won’t point you to a download site….i’d say you should buy the CD….these guysÂ deserve it!!!  
Maroon 5 – She will be loved!
Beauty queen of only eighteen

She had some trouble with herself

He was always there to help her

She always belonged to someone else
I drove for miles and miles

And wound up at your door

I’ve had you so many times but somehow

I want more
I don’t mind spending everyday

Out on your corner in the pouring rain

Look for the girl with the broken smile

Ask her if she wants to stay awhile

And she will be loved

She will be loved
Tap on my window knock on my door

I want to make you feel beautiful

I know I tend to get insecure

It doesn’t matter anymore
It’s not always rainbows and butterflies

It’s compromise that moves us along

My heart is full and my door’s always open

You can come anytime you want
I don’t mind spending everyday

Out on your corner in the pouring rain

Look for the girl with the broken smile

Ask her if she wants to stay awhile

And she will be loved

She will be loved
I know where you hide

Alone in your car

Know all of the things that make you who you are

I know that goodbye means nothing at all

Comes back and begs me to catch her every time she falls 
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Netscape Vs. Digg
Gautham Gauruv Maediratta — Thu, 27 Jul 2006 05:32:10 +0000
 Netscape was relaunched recently in an avatar that is a mirror replica of Digg.  For the Digg loyalists amongst us, Jason Calacanis’s offer to pay top digg submitters was the turning point in turning irritation to action.   According to this article on eweek, Netscape.com Hacked by Digg Fans, netscape was hacked with comical pop ups and redirects to Digg.com (none of the hacks were malicious.)
I used and propagated the use of Netscape Navigator/Communicator and Netscape 8 for ages.  Funny that i couldn’t care less about Netscape getting hacked! 
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Engine	Current	Min	Max	Avg
maediratta.com
Google/ AOL/ HotBot	159	3	159	99
HotBot	0	25	25	25
MSN	400	71	400	171
Yahoo!/ FAST/ AltaVista	126	1	126	57
Total/ Current	685	71	685	289
Click on the links above to view trending for each engine.