Kindle.. Do u love it or u don't??

Kindle is an e-book reader from Amazon. It provides us with the facility of reading from a choice of almost 1500 books whenever we want. It was launched not so recently and I wonder is it making waves in India?? I haven't seen anyone using a Kindle yet,but maybe someday soon.As the much lighter and upgraded version of the Kindle has been lodged,there are talks around the corner about is it really lovable? Book lovers of the world.. would you be loving every moment of using Kindle? A book on the move, you can switch anytime,you can save as many,saves you the effort of carrying an actual book in your bag.

You can read a very interesting review of the product at the blog http://anandsathya.blogspot.com/2010/07/amazon-kindle-in-india-review.html

But what I want to ask is who will actually love Kindle? Is it the right choice for a vivid book lover? We all have read at least a couple of e-books in the PC, but somehow for me it doesn't give the pleasure of actually reading a book. Strange it may seem to someone who doesn't love books,because be it an e-book or an actual old fashioned book the content of the book would be nevertheless the same. Then why should reading it in digital or print make any difference? Can't a book evoke the same emotions,the same excitement? Kindle actually means evoke. So I would say it is sad that Kindle won't evoke the same emotions as a book to me.I'm sure many of you can relate to me when i say I prefer a book,thank you! :)

I'm a book lover and I can boast of having a mini library at home. I read different genres depending on my mood and maybe it's also a phase. When we are younger and in our teens we believe in love stories and such things excites us more,that was when i used to read classics. Shakespeare,Jane Austin, Louisa May Alcott and such reads.We all have been through the phase of Enid-Blyton,then Nancy Drew,Secret Seven,Famous Five and Hardy boys.Thats how the love for books begun for me. Sure I read a lot of Shakespeare and classics in my early teens.Non-Fiction was something i appreciated only at the end of my teens.Now I carry the love for mystery books for quiet a while now,thanks to Sidney Sheldon. :)

Having said this, can you imagine reading a Sidney Sheldon late nights when everyone at home is sleeping.Sometimes I'm so into the book that i don't feel like putting the book down and I've read till it's just before sunrise. The love of a book!! Just takes you to a different world altogether.No matter how you day was or whats your stand in life now,a book gives you the luxury of forgetting yourself and just immersing in the magical world (like Faraway Tree if u remember).

No,I cannot let anything replace a book.It's just too precious and no e-book can take its place,at least not now.All my books are my treasures and i don't cherish them virtually.

But there are times when I would prefer reading something online rather than buying a book.To give you an example I would recollect what my college librarian told me once. My students were all excited about the robotics project I'd assigned them.That evening I got a call from our librarian requesting me to suggest some books related to robotics.She took me by surprise,then she told me how my entire class has been asking her for robotics books for their project.It took me a while to convince her that buying books are not necessary as they all have access to the biggest source,the internet.Reluctantly she agreed but added "Ma'am the demand for books will diminish because of internet,I'm worried about my library."

So I think that maybe Kindle would do well if it had to deal with more of magazines, some technical books used for reference,newspapers maybe or blogs.Such variety of products which don't require a lot of your time,concentration and most importantly your emotions are a good sell for the Kindle.Because reading a book you cherish is also like a relationship,it is no fun virtually!! It needs physical presence for it to be worth the experience.. :)

Life is beautiful...

Life and its mysteries are not a stranger to man, no matter what his age,caste,gender and place with no boundaries. Someone loves the idea of being in love, and loneliness is the love of someones life. Beyond all the riches and material benefits, we all dream and long for a happy life. For an eternal romantic the ultimate destiny would be finding true love. But no I'm not looking for it, I'm just hoping someday (if not sooner) I will find it around the corner of the street like serendipity. In all it's confusions and all the troubles, life is beautiful. :)What is life but a series of fortunate accidents. Cheers to the thought!!

A Mixed Day

It's been a mixed day today, with the festivities of Dussherra in full swing in my home and with the rising number of victims of "Ondoy" in Philippines.













I deeply feel for the forlorn Philippians. How can we celebrate and be merry when in another country people are struggling for their life. I feel hapless in such a situation. Is God being partial, who are we to decide?? We in India have experienced numerous natural hazards be it the Tsunami in 2004, Latur Earthquake in 1993, Orissa floods in 2008, Orissa droughts. Then the survival through the terror attacks in Mumbai, Kashmir, and the rest of India. When we are having a tough time back home we stand united. It’s touching to see how we pray for everyone to be safe; we extend our hands for help. But why do we lack the same spirit when another country is in a catastrophic state. It has taken years for us to be untied in tough times beyond caste, religion, state, language, rich and poor divide. I wish to see a world where everyone stands for each other. Beyond even the country, continent divides. No ocean should be able to distance the love for each other. Such a loving world I dream of.Such a world I hope world. Come lets try and make this come true. One world, One People, One Love.

Friend

Casually walking through life we meet some people who walk with us. Out of those we start liking someone. Walking together we share our troubles, our happiness, our dreams and our experiences. While sharing our thoughts we begin to think like each other. We get to know each other so well with time that we can understand what that person is feeling before they even talk about it. We comfort each other and support each other. In good times and in bad times we begin to walk hand in hand. We grow up together without realizing how time has passed. How many times has my sweet friend made me laugh when I was crying, but made me cry…….never!

Laughing, crying, talking and sometimes even sitting silently we’ve shared a beautiful bond of friendship. We weren’t silent because we had nothing to say, but because we were lost in our own beautiful world. The most beautiful thing was how we were a part of each other, how we believed in each other’s dreams and we were a part of it. We could do anything to make each other’s dreams come true.

Suddenly while walking one day my friend began to walk in another direction. I asked where are you going? My friend said my road has turned now; I’ve to go in this way. We hugged and my friend said long goodbyes. But the word bye never came out of my mouth. Guess I can never say it. It was tough to let go of my friend’s hand; it was the same situation on the other side. While I saw my friend walk away I’d tears filled in my eyes, my friend kept turning back and waving at me. Even I was waving till I could get the last glimpse of my sweetheart friend.

The only thought that lingered in my mind was hope that someday in the walk of life I meet my friend again. Hope someday our roads cross again. The time we spent together will always be carved in my memories, decorated with gold and diamonds actually. Just a hope that we get to live such moments again.

Missing big B

Dont know why.. I'm missing my Big B so much today.. :)
God bless him with all the happiness...
It ain't about looks,not about time but just about love and care.
Whenever i needed and whenever i didn't,he was always there.
Best Big B in The whole world.... :)

IPL the Game that was...

Our entire nation and the world has been watching IPL since a year,like my friends at college say this has become the only form of entertainment at such boring times.We youngsters are at a certain time of our life bored of tv,internet,cell phones,movies and studies never interested us much (but we all took it as our duty),IPL did come to our rescue in such times.

Personally i was hoping Chennai Super kings or the Mumbai Indians team wins,because of my idol worshipping of Dhoni and the love for amchi Mumbai.But both the teams didn't see the light of the ay and didn't enter the finals.

RCB did enter the finals by fluke and had a pretty much roller coaster ride in the finals.Bangalore’s road to the finals could well be attributed to Anil Kumble’s leadership and performance with the ball.The first half was really well played,I almost hoped for a win but the last half an hour or 45 mins of the match seemed exhausting.The points table turned and so did the fortunes.


In a cracker of a match, Deccan Chargers outclassed and outplayed Royal Challengers Bangalore in the finals of the second edition of the DLF IPL in Johannesburg.Seeing wicket after wicket fall was no fun for a room full of hostel girls cheering the RCB team to win.Every 6 and four was accompanied by whistles and ear hurting screeches (hooting to be clear ).The First year girls have an exam tomorrow morning and the second years have an exam the day after,but they were happily sitting right in front of the tv enjoying the match as if they were a part of the RCB team itself.Uttapa was literally acting like a ball has never been tossed at him or he was confused whether he had to bat or go ahead and catch the ball.A few balls were wasted at this mighty Uttapa Dosa.As the match was progressing the hopes of winning the match were diminishing at a speed greater than light.But still we stood on till the last ball to salute our team for reaching the finals and giving it a good try.8 runs for 1 ball read the scoreboard and i had girls around me still expecting a miracle,they said "1 no ball,1 wide, and a six and another run would make us win!!! oh god please!!!". This is called as heights of optimism.The match over and lost I came back to my room to continue with my preparation for my final project demo tomorrow.

This was the time I remembered, I haven't seen the blog of the Fake IPL Player in a while,wonder what he must've posted after the IPL has seen its end.I came across this http://fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com/2009/05/awards-night-and-farewell.html


He is as entertaining as ever,considering the popularity of the blog,he cannot be left out whenever anything has been written about IPL.He has a sense of humour,a writing style, and a passion for various things cricket,writing and being in the limelight.His fan following is crazy people who compete on being the first one to comment,"yippeee... i'm the 6th to comment", "I am 7th......WOw!" "hEY I AM IN TOP 10 COMMENTS".Oh the craze and the people.


One thing I would like to point out.
Lalit Modi has donated millions to South African Schools and Charity organizations from the IPL money and they were showing this good work on screen also.
I want to ask how much has he donated to Indian Schools and Indian Charity organizations from the IPL money. I haven't seen any donations in last year of IPL tournament.
Isn't this a double standard of BCCI.

SRK was embarrassed,Pretty Preity was in for a rude shock and so were we witnessing her breakup in between the IPL proceedings and her team didn't make it anywhere great this year around.AmbaniThe last half an hour of today's match saw Vijay Mallya:King of Good times being depressed and speechless during the final downfall of his cherished team.Good Luck to everyone next year.Who stood last in the first edition of the IPL have emerged victorious in the latest edition. Congratulations to Deccan Chargers for this spectacular victory.



Three cheers to Cricket,to IPL,to all the teams and its owners,to our dear Rahul Dravid,Anil Kumble,Pandey and Mallya Uncle and three cheers to the winners Gilli,R.P Singh,owners Deccan Chronicle and the entire Hyderabad Deccan Chargers team.Keep Raging.

Wolfram|Alpha a brand new life to web search

I have always been a huge fan of Google.I belong to the group 'A day will come when i search my keys in Gooogle. With all the defects google had it was loved deeply from many.Our life literally depended on it. My newly married sister in-law is awarded as a good cook. Recently while speaking to her i found out about her much appreciated talent,well u can guess it,the complete credit goes to our good old Google.She being a software engineer working in samsung,googles out the recipes,gets d print out home n cooks like a pro.Google did have a few drawback,irritating at times when we wouldn't find what we were looking for in the first 10 or 20 webpages.But being a final year computer science engineering student we are aware that creating a better search engine is a tough job,close to impossible.We had taken up web search as our final year project with our professor Dastikoppa sir being very encouraging and supportive,who is immensely interested and knowledgeable in the topic related to web,web search, and everything in between.His knowledge has no bound,can dedicate another blog to our favorite sir. :) But this project wasn't well received by other lecturers,as they said it is almost impossible to do.

Now come Wolfram|Alpha,a completely new concept which is set to launch in about a week — likely on May 18.. It cannot be called a search engine as it merely doesn't search the query through index in the pages,but it actually calculates and processes the data you require.Though the looks of it resemble Google or Ask me but the similarity ends here.Wolfram|Alpha has a unique technique,it takes your query,processes it in such a way that the data you require is calculated from various sources,this data may not be available on a single web page at all.What Wolfram|Alpha does has never been done before.It can produce the exact data you require....

The service is built on four pillars: a massive amount of data, that the company has collected from various sources; a computational engine built on top of Mathematica, one of Mr. Wolfram’s prior inventions; a system for understanding queries; and technology to display results in interesting ways.
Mathematica is a webpage of theirs which is already widely used in institutes and research. The link to it is here

http://www.wolfram.com/products/mathematica/index.html

In a talk at Harvard Law School, Stephen Wolfram, a well-known mathematician, scientist and entrepreneur, gave a demonstration of his soon-to-be released Web service which promises to answer all sorts of questions.
It can actually solve any mathematical equations and even display the steps it followed to solve it.This can be very useful for school and college students studying maths and also to research mathematicians.
If you want to check out the tides in your near by sea before you go for a swim or surf,you can query as "tides in______".You can easily avail the tides.
If you are a investor in the stock market,you want to compare the two companies Wipro and Infosys. Wolfram|Alpha can come to your help now.It can collect data of the two companies from different websites,merge them and display the result including stats,graphs to give you the perfect info you wanted.The sources for this data will be displayed below.With Google this is impossible.
Wolfram|Alpha isn't a search engine.
Many bloggers are crazy talking about this and many are excited aboutWolfram|Alpha beacause the plan seems so lofty.In a press-release video,Wolfram says the site aims to “compute whatever can be computed about the world.”

The homepage can be found here..

http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

Will it change our lives.I hope it will.....