1 YEAR

Yesterday, I completed 1 year in Singapore.

They say every picture tells a story. Here is a collage of the past year seen thru the vga lens of my cell phone.

Graduate Hall - Shame of NTU

There are a few chuths who wonder why I am so vocal about the facilities for Graduate Students at NTU - here are a few of my issues:

• The pantry is filthy by the end of the day, and it stinks. And on Sunday evenings - its in a wretched state.
• There is always one washing machine not functioning
• The refrigerator is packed with all kinds of stuff - food and otherwise (CDs, books, sanitary napkins, mouldy bread, purplish-green cheese, thick white heavy substances in tetrapacks originally for milk, broken eggs, indonesian prawn paste... etc etc)

• The microwave ovens are never clean... there are always remnants of something cooked ealier - because strange assholes leave rice, eggs etc to cook for 25 minutes. I mean which sane bastard would cook eggs for 25 minutes?? See the pics below...

• There are a pile of wet clothes on the bench in the washing area
• The Graduate geniuses who wash 1 bra, half a panty, 1 pair of socks and 1 hairband for 75 minutes in the only fully-working machine - using 57 litres of water...
• The exit form Lobby 3 that never works with the contact-less card: and some genius asshole who decides to stick a fucking stone in the door so that it stays open - letting in strange 4 legged reptiles, insects and garbage-hogging cats.
• Rose, the stinky, ugly whore who refuses to stop spitting in the wash basin
• The overflowing garbage bin...

• My 2 mentally deranged neighbours... last night the Oxbridge Gujju was on the phone trying to lick a white guy's ass in the U.S. "I must say that you don't sound your age. You sound definitely younger". This coming from a guy who plays that geriatric bitch Mangeshkar's 'Didi tera devar deewana'... And Robin 'zarqawi' Tandujaja.

Countdown begins - 10 days to go...

Google: So Much Fanfare, So Few Hits

Rivals get the jitters when Google's non-search products grab headlines. But a close look shows that so far, there's not a market leader among them.

When Google launched an instant-messaging program late last year, tech watchers buzzed over the looming confrontation with America Online, Yahoo!, and Microsoft. Google's launch of online spreadsheet software in June was deemed a shot across the bow of Microsoft Excel. And when Google prepped for its June 29 debut of Google Checkout, an online payment system that will compete with eBay Inc.'s PayPal, several headlines blared: "Google Readies PayPal-Killer."

But if you cut through the hype, Google's intimidation factor quickly fizzles. An analysis of some two dozen new ventures launched over the past four years shows that Google has yet to establish a single market leader outside its core search business, where it continues to chew up Microsoft and Yahoo.

Consider just a few examples:

Google Talk (instant-messaging service) launched last August, now ranks No. 10, garnering just 2% of the number of users for market leader MSN Messenger.

Three-month-old Google Finance, heralded as a competitor to market leader Yahoo! Finance, has settled in as the 40th-most-visited finance site, according to data from Hitwise, a competitive intelligence firm.

Gmail (e-mail service) that was lauded at its 2004 launch for offering 500 times as much storage space as some rivals (they quickly closed the gap), today is the system of choice for only about one-quarter the number of people who use MSN and Yahoo e-mail.

Fortunately for Google, its $120 billion market valuation is based on its domination in search, a business that is expected to keep growing at 30% to 40% per year. Analysts assume that services such as Google Checkout will generate fees from online transactions. Others, like Google Finance, could bring in more users, offering Google more opportunities to serve up lucrative ads.But the company's struggles with expansion raise long-term questions about whether it can eventually diversify revenue away from the small text-based ads that now constitute 99% of sales.

The problem is that every time Google branches out, it struggles with the very thing that makes its search engine so successful:

SIMPLICITY

The minimalist Google home page offers a stark contrast with the cluttered sites of key rivals Yahoo and MSN. People go to Google to find information fast. So Google can't showcase its plethora of new products without jeopardizing this sleek interface and the popularity that generates a $6 billion geyser of cash from search ads. But the lack of exposure for its new products means only 10% of Google visitors use it for anything other than Web and image searches, says Hitwise (a competitive intelligence firm).

Orkut, Google's two-year-old social-networking site has seen limited changes and has faded in popularity everywhere except Brazil. Today it draws less than 1% as much U.S. traffic as MySpace.

Company officials concede that some of the newer products haven't caught on. Marissa Mayer, vice-president for search products and user experience, estimates that up to 60% to 80% of Google's products may eventually crash and burn. But the idea, she says, is to encourage risk-taking and let surviving products truly thrive.

Case in point: Google Maps, which trails only MapQuest in mapping-site traffic thanks to such innovations as aerial views and "click-and-drag" maps to make navigation easier. The product has become so popular that other outfits build new businesses or services around it, creating "mash-ups" that show things like real-estate listings or crime statistics on top of Google's maps. And four-year-old Google News offers top stories in 40 different countries and languages. That has spurred a jump of over 600% in international usage in the past year, making it the second-most-trafficked news aggregation site.

As the list of Google products swells, five tabs don't do the trick. And for most users, it's out of tab, out of mind. One way around the tab problem is to push more users to create personalized home pages around Google's search engine, an option the company has offered for the past year. A custom-built Google home page can be surrounded by information from Google News headlines, stock quotes, and a list of e-mails from a Gmail account. True, this pushes people toward a busier home page. But at least they can set their own threshold, including only as many add-ons as they wish. Google claims that "tens of millions" of visitors have set up customized home pages, though it's not clear how many are actively in use.

But even if Google leads users to its new products, it needs to add pizzazz and improve functionality. Most areas it is targeting have entrenched rivals: For surfers perusing stock quotes, there's Yahoo! Finance. For chat addicts, there's AOL Instant Messenger. Those services have that elusive "stickiness" that makes users likely to return - for instance, often checked stock quotes already queued up in a finance site - which boosts ad values.

With its huge market cap and lead in search, Google has time to work out the kinks and a culture committed to learning from mistakes. And it is collecting a wealth of data about what surfers want. Still, the message coming back so far is that if Google wants to live up to its reputation as the beast of Silicon Valley, it needs to search harder for products people want to use.

From BusinessWeek, July 10, 2006

I'm back...

Hello Hello Hello…

A lot has happened between my last visit to the blogosphere and now – Materazzi pinched Zizou’s nipples and said something mean to him. We all would like to know what. But I think the head butt looked bloody awesome. How many times I wanted to do that to a few people!!

Contrary to most articles I read about the incident, I doubt Zizou's presence on the pitch over the next five minutes would have done anything to avoid the shoot-out: Italy was targeting the penalty shoot out anyway. As for the shoot-out itself – the best have failed here. Baggio, Lampard, Gerrard,…

Anyway, apart from that, I have found a house. Finally I resume what I left exactly a year ago – thorough independence. I must admit that I was getting rather fucked up at Graduate Hall of late. This is no place for grown ups – and its certainly no place for people who have had a life in the past. Apart from free internet – there is nothing going on here. And I was especially unfortunate to be flanked by neighbours like Amit Agrawal, the Gujju Oxbridge chimp-grin microwave-stink specialist and Robin ‘the thug from Jakarta’ Tandujajajaja… (let me know when I stop please). Yes, I have found a place off Holland Road – it’s a 2 bedroom condo, one that I am certain my girlfriend will approve of. I move into the place on 24th – but before that, I have a list on an excel sheet – I need help in shopping – anybody volunteering?

What else happened – apart from the football fever that nearly paralyzed my regular life… yes stitches: the doctor said that it would last 5 months – apparently, it would dissolve into the blood and form part of my DNA etc etc … but it so happens that every time my lips touch a pint of microbrew, one stitch promptly exits my mouth. So, with a small calculation of averages – I have no stitches left.

I watched a few movies as well – all on DVD. ‘Broken Flowers’ stood out. ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset’ are pretty over-rated.

Bought CDs - First Lady of Love - Patti Scialfa, ‘From the Cradle’ by Eric Clapton, Volumes 1 and 2 of the Afro-Cuban All Stars.

I am so looking forward to Season 2 of The Contender. Season 1 was an event in my life. I remember coming home from the gym after work, and watching the show with Renu while we ordered dinner from Papa Pancho. I would simultaneously digitize my music collection while watching the show. And Renu's Sergio 'The Latin Snake' Mora fights it out this Thursday in a special episode. Those Bandra days!!

The best person to discuss the show was SS.

What else happened – Yeah Jack Sparrow got bigger than Spidey for the opening weekend in the U.S!!

Ken Lay dies before he served time in jail – now that’s not poetic justice.

If you are in Delhi and you hear that faint cracking at night – its got to be Manmohan Singh getting his ass whipped.

Bombay was under water for a few days. And Shivaji Park went nuts after miscreants desecrated Mrs. Thackeray’s statue. Her soul must have stirred. Wonder how she feels when her old man picks his bahu’s cherry now and then.

India beat West Indies in West Indies. Guys grow up. Its been a long time coming.

Placed my order for the LA40R51B… and Samsung is throwing in a 500 watt (RMS) home theatre in with it. Now, this should keep me company till the Hi-Fi comes in.

So, let the countdown begin…