Thursday 31 January 2013

Love, Music & Bob Marley!

"You may not be her first, her last, or her only. She loved before she may love again. But if she loves you now, what else matter? She's not perfect- you aren't either, and the two of you may never be perfect together but if she can make you laugh, cause you to think twice, and admit to being human and making mistakes, hold onto her and give her the most you can. She may not be thinking about you every second of the day, but she will give you a part of her that she knows you can break- her heart. So don't hurt her, don't change her, don't analyze and don't expect more than she can give. Smile when she makes you happy, let her know when she makes you mad, and miss her when she's not there." 
(6th Feb 1945) -Bob Marley- (11th May 1981)

Friday 25 January 2013

Fragrances and Memories

Last two weeks were great, I was on a holiday, and guys, it was awesome!!

But somehow, I'm still neurotic!!

Before heading back home this weekend, I was seeing my relatives and cousins, the whole day there were things like big family brunches and such stuff!!!
Just as I was moving around in the house, a sudden memory, a sudden flash, and I was thinking "Gosh, why did I walk into this room?"

[Those of you who read my posts regularly must have gone through the one on fragrances, for those who haven't, it's Lose It!!!
PS, I have a very good olfactory system, and I sniff and recollect real good! ]

I could feel the pheromones gushing through my veins, just as they did last year! It was that typical hint of cologne ( or whatever) I could feel lingering in the room that had caused all this.
It had been a hundred years since I had sniffed that fragrance, it only feels like that, but yeah!
Where had the time all gone? All of it seemed to be stolen and hidden in bottles of likable odours- perfumes!

It was a nice smell, and when it first hit me, I was living all those memories again, unbidden.
I didn't know what to do then, to sniff it as much as I could and bring it home, or let out all that I had breathed in and get out of that room asap!!

Just then one of my cousins joined me in the room, and I realized the things that had just crossed my mind were far, in some other part of the country!

I knew, the other end of life it was!! And it was supposed to be long lost and forgotten, times change, so do the meaning of fragrances and memories linked to them!!

Brains? I wish there were things that could format human memories back and again, when needed!

Sunday 13 January 2013

Indian Cinema- (Un)Realism In The Air


Time to time, we all need a break from our tight monotonous schedules, and when a nobody invented the concept of plays and dances ages ago, it was heartily welcomed.
Hence, the advent of stages and actors and cinematography!

Indian cinema has it all, but do we really take it as a break or do these tend to inspire us and influence our lives?? Is it good or bad?

Now, coming to the point, India is a nation where the West has failed to influence our tradition to the roots, and, in bits and pieces we still find the natives trying to pull together their original culture and live with it.

Movies like "Gangs of Wasseypur", "Shootout at Lokhandwala" etc did share thoughts that revealed the reality of rivalries between real gangs, and I'd call them shooters of realism!

The others went a lil far off like "Student Of The Year" etc which displayed classrooms and high school which never existed in India, thus leaving behind a sense of disappointment and disapproval in the minds of youngsters that they never had the chance to be a part of such a merry making flirting and dancing learn-group.

The movies of the late 90's added "Karan Arjun", "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" and other not-never-happening stories that have digged deep into the minds and now every love bird out there expects his/her story to be of the kind.

Hilarious movies like "Housefull", The Govinda Collection, "Andaaz Apna Apna", etc do lack common sense but at times they can be a good watch for viewers rarely take inspiration from them and apply it to their real lives negating the chance of danger!!!

I'm not completely against Indian Cinema, but the fact that movies these days tend to influence more than 60% of the viewers and such influence mustn't be lacking the base of reality, which Bollywood lacks makes me criticize the movie makers, writers, and the viewers as well for promoting such inane creations.

Books that have been the best sellers can be filmed without a question but stories that inspire foolishness and inactivity should be condemned!

Not just the above mentioned movies, but many of the like join the list of a huge unrealistic collection of stories that doesn't just seem good to me to watch for a break or to watch for tips that really work in real life.

[I couldn't recollect many movies that could be added here, but, I'll be updating this post soon after I return, leaving for a holiday, Mumbai calling!! ;) ]

Saturday 5 January 2013

What's Next For Apple?

[I was reading just randomly, and this is what I came across! :) ] Source- Anonymous

I have no inside information or insight, but historically Apple’s product improvements have strongly broadcasted where they’re going in the future. Here are six things I think are inevitable for Apple to do over the next decade, from most to least obvious: maps, iCloud, payments, TVs, search, and cars.

1. Maps
When the iPhone was first released Steve Jobs called Maps on iPhone the best version of Google Maps on the planet, with emphasis on what Apple’s designers had brought to Google’s raw technology (can’t find that link). Four years later, you can’t imagine such a core piece of the mobile experience reliant on their largest competitor. Hopefully this will also give Apple a chance to fill usability gaps in the maps experience today, like that you can’t click from the “where” field in a calendar appointment straight to maps. (Drives me crazy.) Note that the only “Google” branding in maps today is in the bottom left, they know they’re getting replaced and have done an admirable job on the Safari version of maps on iPhone and iPad.
Google Maps + Navigation on Android is my favorite mobile app of the past 3 years (haven’t used Siri yet) — it’s what Garmin should have built $8 billion in revenue and R&D ago. (Remember the Garmin Nüvifone?) Apple was smart to partner in the beginning, but they can, and should, raise the bar.

2. iCloud
The abstraction of documents, photos, videos, their equivalents in “bought” media (iBooks, music, movies, and TV shows from the iTunes store), the deemphasis of the filesystem with every iteration of OS X, and the rough ideas of things like MobileMe’s dock syncing, points to the combination of services that will ultimately disrupt the “magic folder” providers like Dropbox. I love Dropbox, but it’ll be impossible for them to do the deep OS integration needed to match the direction Apple is heading — never thinking about what is where, ever again, just having everything you’ve ever created or used available in the same place on all your devices.

They know this is best for consumers. My friend Rene told me how when his hard drive crashed last year he contacted Apple support and they gave him a link to re-download the past 4 years of music he’d purchased on iTunes. That’s obviously the right thing to do, even if labels have had to be dragged kicking and screaming toward it. By this time tomorrow it’ll just be part of the experience when he signs into iTunes on a new computer. Update: Apple released iTunes 10.5 a day early with this feature.

3. Payments
Your phone becomes your credit card. Apple doesn't replace Visa or Mastercard, but they do replace all of those scammy rewards and branded cards that prey on unsophisticated consumers. Google will probably do this first, but it’ll be like Microsoft Surface, brilliant but two sandwiches short of a picnic.

4. TVs
I recently got one of the new Thunderbolt displays and man, a super-sized version of this would be killer in my living room. (The speakers are surprisingly good.) TVs are just so bad, not so much in the hardware which can be beautiful like Samsung’s C9000 but in the mediocre software, un-features like Auto Motion (which makes beautiful films look like they were shot by a Jersey Shore cameraman with a beer in his other hand), and interfaces that just don’t do anything you would expect. Hello — you can detect when a cable is plugged in, don’t make me switch between 15 sources when only one is connected. My TV takes 5-10 seconds longer to turn on than my iPad. “Smart TVs” look like “smart phones” did in 2005 — completely lacking in imagination or joy.

But to really imagine the strategic importance of this you need to think beyond a super-sized Thunderbolt display and imagine what replaces iMac, one of Apple’s most beautiful creations. People’s need for a desktop is seriously declining for the first time since pundits started predicted the decline of the PC a decade ago. The post-PC ecosystem is in place now — touch, battery life, mobile-first applications, ubiquity of internet access, flash memory. (In Steve Jobs introduction of the first iPod, two things stand out to me: that terrible font, and the fact one of the main features is 20 minutes of skip protection.) Mobile works and is getting better, and you won’t have what we call a desktop 10 years from now.

Now imagine Apple has a shining 55″ monolith smack dab in the middle of your house. How big of a wifi antenna could they put in there? Could they crush all that lame Cisco teleconference stuff with TV FaceTime? Is there room for a few disk drives that don’t need to worry about skipping plus a SSD to make it fast? If you look at the direction Apple has been heading with Time Capsule locally caching software updates it’s not hard for something similar to work in the other direction, a digital hub that’s your media server for the house, a large-format display, a time capsule, and an Airplay target all in one. Imagine just one power cable coming out of it, and everything else wireless, just like the iMac, and a few killer apps we can’t even imagine yet.

Finally, home theater needs disruption — this is a land of $200 Monster HDMI cables and similar gouging that functions like a state lottery, an intelligence tax. When I walk through Best Buy, which I try to do once every few months, it feels like it’s technology at its worst, the magic of progress used as smoke and mirrors to confuse and dupe consumers rather than make their lives better. The Apple TV is just another form factor for the unified experience Apple wants to create every time you touch an electronic device.

5. Search
There are hints of this in maps, but just like Craigslist is being killed not by a Craigslist-like clone but rather by a thousand highly focused replacements, so too Google will face its existential crisis not from another webpage with a centered white box, but from the interface and context of search changing completely. Many of Google’s searches aren't that valuable, and a huge percentage of the ones that are aren't going to happen at the desktop anymore .The context of your location (which your phone already knows) the “results page” of a fantastic map application and the input of a next-generation search interface, like Siri, completely changes the rules of engagement. Google’s not investing in mobile because they wanted a better phone.

6. Cars
This is the most far-out, but I think most certain. Voice-controlled search through Siri and Apple Maps provide the hands-free framework for a rich interactive experience while driving. Walk down the car stereo aisle in Best Buy and see what $800 gets you, or a $300 GPS from Garmin, vs an iPad or iPhone. The screens feel like a TI-92 calculator. The typography makes my eyes bleed. I find it morally reprehensible how bad these products are because it’s one of the areas of technology where a bad interface is most directly tied to injuries and deaths. Car folks are making their iPhone/iPod integrations better and better, which may be a glass of ice water in hell, but they’ll never make the jump to providing a beautiful marriage of media, search, and navigation that a great in-car experience needs. Right now you can spend 110k on a Tesla Roadster, a car of the future, and for an additional $4,500 (9 iPads!) get this Alpine head unit. (Watch that video and try not to laugh at how bad the interface is.) Retail it only sets you back 1.4 iPads. That’s just sad.

Tuesday 1 January 2013

Awesome New Year!

Happy New Year...
I always knew this year would be a fun awesome great start! And so it was...
WoW! I just can't believe I had such a wonderful time..


For those who know it and also those who don't I must say Calangute and Baga is a place to go for every occasion that's worth partying! Be it a seasonal fest or a music launch, whether you wanna hit a band or go tanning in the sun, beaches are the best paces to hang out! And the best part is that you don't have to bother yourself with the way you look or the things you wear, how loud and bad you scream, it's just your world!



My Beach Rule: Wear things you won't even think of putting on in your city, carry the best music system in your circle and make the best of it. Use your car and dump all your things the way you like, Do Not try to settle and pack your bags before it's time to leave. Ha! Eat what you like, drink all the way you want, scream, swim, tan, run away, dance and lose yourself, you obviously won't get a chance to do it every month.

My Other Party Rules: Just Enjoy!!!!!

And, I have NO resolutions this year, coz I'm going to live it up the way I want!! Life is too short to restrain yourself!




One Life it is!!

Hope this year works out just the way I want it, or may be even better than that, God always has better plans... :) Ciao...
Click on the image to read about the interview and more!