Know thy readers

Just added a Guestbook to my blog. The blogger audience tracker tells me that my blog has reached people in more than 20 countries. So I thought I should try to find out more about my readers - how you landed onto my blog, which posts did you like/dislike and which of my blog's labels interest you the most. Do drop a note! 

Since BC

The quote 'Love begets love' comes from Virgil, a Roman poet (70-19 before Christ). That line is over 2,000 years old and has lost none of its power. Hugh expressed it with this cartoon that he drew in 2004 (just before FB). He added that it's funny how LOVE makes one feel hyper-connected, like a node on a circuit board, and how isolated one feels without it.

I don't know whether Hugh tried to depict a family tree or our social structure using the graph. What I found striking though is that, a simple graph, with heart-shaped nodes, could fully capture the idea behind the 2,000 year old line. Another interesting link to it is that all social networking websites internally use graphs as the data structure to represent relationships among people. Well, what begets what?

Marking time

Well, the strip for sure is a thought on marking time i.e. waiting in readiness for the right or opportune moment to start a new phase or set on an adventure. 

Sorry about the freakish inclusion of the death bit. I got a little carried away experimenting with the drag-n-drop comics at pixton.com! If you have wanted to create your own comic strips but are as artistically challenged as I am, do give it a shot! If you like it, do post links to your comics  in  the comments below. Would love to go check them out.

Shake 'n' Go

Mechanically powered devices are a godsend in times of distress. I realized it recently when a crank flashlight guided me through an 8-hour power cut, till long after my cell phone battery had died on me. Every time the device discharges, all you need to do is crank it and with some physics inside, its battery charges up right back. I also came across wrist watches designed to get charged from the wearer's arm movement.  I wondered how brilliant would it be to have a cell phone that I could just crank and recharge! No need to carry a charger, no more disrupted conversation, no more 'Oops! a dead battery in the middle-of-nowhere.' Extra topping: when on vibrating alert, the cell phone will recover some energy from its own movement. Quite neat I thought to myself. But as usual, I was not the first one to think of it. The Internet returned a gazillion results for 'mechanically powered cell phones'. Check out some sleek solutions here. My favorite amongst these is the iYo charger.

And it doesn't stop here. They are also building talk powered cell phones - yes, these would recharge as you speak into them. Waiting to get my hands on one of those!

Privacy lists on IM, anyone?

How we like talking to some people more than others? How we like to be interrupted (read pinged) by some people more often? How on some days, nostalgia makes us want to connect to one part of our life sooo much more than the rest of it? Oh and, how we sometimes want the rest of the world to drown out when we are in the middle of certain conversations! Times when other pings feel rather annoying..And yet, our flat IM (office communicator/gtalk/yahoo messenger) contacts list has everybody who we ever added to it since we began internet chatting! We can either be online to everyone or offline. On one hand, the invisible setting just blocks everyone out. As good as disabling the chat feature, right? And on the other, the block/blacklist feature is for non-friends! Well, not always useful :) Yahoo! messenger's stealth settings allow to either be online/offline(invisible) or permanently offline (=block) to someone but have to be set distinctly per contact. Aaargh! super tedious, ain't it?    

I want privacy lists in my IM! I want to be able to create lists of people based on the context of my interaction with them and be able to set my status separately for each of these lists. Imagine lists for family, school friends, college friends, work pals, close buddies, once-close buddies et al miscellaneous and the flexibility to set here/idle/brb/dnd/out/random custom status for all of them So if you want the privacy lists too, raise your hands and say Aye Aye Captain! or you know you can even just Like this post.

Surprised??!!

At the inaugral edition of the PechaKucha night Hyderabad, a gentleman presented a 20x20 talk on his new venture, let's call it V. It is a place that takes orders for surprises i.e. if A wishes to surprise a loved one B on a special occasion or even otherwise, A just needs to furnish the V-team with some info on the likes/dislikes of B and voilà! they will generate a bunch of 'free' thoughtful ideas from which A can pick one and then pay V for 'arranging' the surprise. I was surprised! at the presenter's enthusiasm about the idea of outsourcing of all the things - a surprise?

Umm..personally, I wouldn't find an outsourced surprise particularly flattering. Surprises are after all gestures which at least I appreciate not for anything else but the effort that goes into making them happen; that feeling of 'Awww..you did ALL this for ME?'...I wonder how many would argue that having someone else plan/implement a gesture does not reflect insincerity and even shallowness. Howmuchsoever convenient it may sound, I wonder if a splendid or extravagant outsourced surprise can for anyone really even do what a sincere compliment can. Knowing that there is an existing clientele for this venture makes me more curious than ever on how varied are the ways in which various people feel about creating moments in relationships.  

Wishing the V-team all the best and really looking forward to discover how this venture idea takes off!