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!

'Busy'ness

I often wonder what is Seth Godin's typical day like or whether the concept of a typical day even exists for him. And yet amidst his daily entrepreneur+author+thinker superhuman day, he 'ships' blog posts so frequently as if they were tweets. Maybe his brilliant blog posts are really the usual stuff that's 'on his mind' but the point is as Seth very succinctly puts it - It's all about shipping! Quieting the lizard brain to get things moving and it pretty much applies to everything right from an amazing start-up idea to the long-lived intention of penning down your head onto your own blog.

Now that I have your attention, let me probe further into our sense of 'busy'ness. Let's just for sometime agree that doing a full-time job doesn't afford energy for non-work-related interests during weekdays. However, mostly everyone has 2 full days off every week and invariably everyone has a wishful list of want-to-dos. Typical items featuring on that close-to-heart list are start a hobby, read more, practice a sport or volunteer for a cause. Sigh! but who's got the time for it? Umm..the weekends are practically a third of our lifetime and yet the weekends are somehow not enough! Or is it that 'feeling' busy makes for a convenient way to explain inaction? Is "I don't have enough time" just a deluded version of "I have not been able to get myself to do it yet"? Is the real problem with not having enough free slots for the dear wish-list or is it with what actually makes it to those free slots? And I'll leave it at that.

Masterful Men

Relax, this post is not about how Federer will age. This post is about my respect for two masterful men whose faces just happen to be really similar. Federer - master tennis player and Tarantino - master filmmaker with one marked similarity - the fluid style! Despite my bias for Rafa, when Federer rises with both his feet in the air to hit that inside-out forehand, I behold that sight in awe. One of Tarantino's masterful acts is his swanky take on revenge in Kill Bill. Smooth yet genius renderings - be it Emilio's death, Bill's narration of Pai Mei's tutelage by the fire with a flute or the classic Relief and Regret after killing Bill with which Tarantino closes Kiddo's character. Check out glimpses of pure genius for yourself.  

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!