Perspectives

Just learnt that MGMaps has added Yahoo India maps support. What that means is now, using mgmaps and selecting Yahoo India maps as the map provider, you have lesser ways of getting lost in India. The default search is still from Google though. I actually didnt know about mgmaps until the Google controversy. But the app is one helluva sweet little thing. Works like a charm.

I was thrilled for a different reason though. I wanted to see how our maps look on a mobile. Sort of a first look for me as well. Aah, looks sweet. I searched all over the place and got my archaic digi cam to take a pic of my phone with our maps (these days, I click only with my phone).

What do you think? Is a mobile map app something that Indians want ?

Heard about it from Siddharth. Was an independence day special I guess, went over all the way to Hebbal. The place is called Lumbini Gardens along the shores of Nagavara lake, close to Hebbal flyover, bangalore. Well, Drum jam was not so bad.

Started off as a passive on-looker, I was slowly in the groove and before I realised I was following Roberto’s beats with a single congo in my lap. At the least, it was a different experience. Nobody invites me to play drums for free. Was fun. Thanks guys.

Here are a few videos I captured. And one of the fat white women in the middle is vasundhara Das.

The official orkut blog is in portuguese, the official language in Brazil. ( Well, they do have an english version at en.blog.orkut.com).

And now, they got that picture in my front page. Everyone knows that Orkut is most popular in India ( actually, the subcontinent) and Brazil, but I just love the fact that Google has not only accepted the fact, but also is actively pursuing it. Really actively that it is not about videos and features but about making it work on 800×600 resolutions on low bandwidth and on IE5.

Remember the friendster filipino screw up?
Happy Independance day, by the way.

A friend of mine at Athena Health is looking to hire smart people with Perl, PHP skills. He says they want tech leads, developers and innovators. The job will be based out of chennai and the company is in an expansion mode with peers from IITs and RECs. Good thinking and problem solving skills is what they are primarily looking for.

If you are one of them or know someone, let me know.

Sure, you are welcome to move the blog wherever you want. But giving two line snippets off on the feed and making people click, wait for the page to load to see the post with half the page taken up by stuff that I dont care about…I didnt expect that from you guys.. Very annoying.

Have you mafia-ed yet? The addictive game that has kept me and a number of my friends busy in their lives? Well, next time there are about more than five of you together (preferably with a few girls – why would you meet up otherwise anyway – ) and dont quite know what to do. Try Mafia.

If you cant read the ton of stuff written in that wiki, listen it out from one of the greatest proponents and players of the game, Ankit.

And ping-pong? No, I am not talking about table tennis. This is again a group game, preferably with five or more people. And this how it goes.

Everybody picks and says a country out loud, just so that group hears it. Now, someone starts off saying “ping”.. the next guy in line (or circle or whatever) says “pong” and the next guy says one of the countries picked by the someone in the team (other than his own, that is.). Now, whoever picked that country starts off again with “ping”. And it goes on. Simple enough? Two things: Play it fast and confuse people around you. For instance, Mukund (where the %^&* do you write man? ) points at you with a wrong country. And by instincts, you will probably blurt out something when you were not supposed to. The game ends when someone either says something when he/she is not supposed to. Or you say your country, or you say ping instead of pong or viceversa. Ofcourse, you play many such rounds.

Still confused? Call me in one day to your get together, give me food to eat and I will kick start it off for you ..

Gawd, How do people upload to youtube? Sucks. Failed thrice now. Is there a desktop uploader for youtube? I know Google video has one. Guess I will just stick with it.

Image used without prior permission from apple.
For illustrative purposes only. All copyrights possibly belong to Apple

Some soul captured videos from unband at Barcamp Bangalore a few weeks ago. On the last day, I was at the audi, and two poor souls were jamming to their own beats. I thought I d just walk up and lend my voice. And this is what it turned out to be:

Summer of 69:

Sweet child of mine:

And, ofcourse, smoke on the water:

Thanks, Prashanth, for all those recordings..

ubuntu2mac
Originally uploaded by shivku.

So, here is something I wasted one full day on. The day I got my laptop, I was eager to make a mac out of my gnome/ubuntu. I got a few of them working. Like the GDM theme, the iconset, the window manager theme, setting up the carousel etc. I would attribute most of my work to this blog entry here. Quite neat and thanks.

Ofcourse, somewhere along, I lost interest. Guess the new gizmo enthusiasm lasted for less than a couple of days. It was about a week for my Nokia N73 and prolly a day for my currently-defunct video Ipod.

One of the things cool about satellite imagery is the feel that it gives you of the surface of earth. The ups and downs, rugged terrains, deep blue oceans…satellite imagery have been wonderful in giving you a perspective of earth that only astronauts working in space stations enjoyed. A view of earth sitting on earth was un-imaginable a few years ago.

Now what if you could get the same feel on a political map? The map that was not really photographed from a satellite. Well, that is what Yahoo India maps have tried to capture. Ever wondered how a map of kargil would look embedded with the great himalayas ? Or what about “Bandipur and mudumalai? A lot of geometry and look and feel fixes have gone in too.. So, Did you know that connaught place, new delhi runs anti-clockwise? Or what about the loop overpass that they have been building for ever at airport road, bangalore

Update: The links to connaught place and airport road were incorrect. Just fixed them.

Enjoy. Be sure to tell us how you like it.