So, thanks to the drivel you read here, I got offered a sort of gig to write a few pieces for the Hindustan Times’ Mumbai Supplement called ‘HT Café’ and I took them up on the offer. The first piece came out today and I’d have linked to it but HT’s online version (or epaper) requires a (free) user account to view. I know most people can’t be bothered to go through the hassle of setting this up (I wouldn’t) so I’m posting the article right here, after the jump. To the powers at HT please get with the program and remove the login requirements for your epaper. Even The Times of India dropped their login for the epaper sometime last year. Imagine that!  Welcome to the year Two Thousand and Nine.

The piece I wrote was about Gmail Offline, a new Google labs feature available in your Gmail account. The article is refreshingly free of cuss words and snarky euphemisms (mostly) for those who’s fragile sensibilities are offended by such stuff. If HT’s readers like the piece (and more importantly, if HT ‘shows me the money!’ I’ll probably do this occasionally) Read on..

Read more…

Random, Tech apple, Gmail Offline, Google, Google Chrome, Google Gears, Hindustan Times, Mac OS X, Microsoft, Safari, Steve Ballmer, The Times Of India

Google Analytics is a service from Google that gives you a lot of interesting stats for your website. One of the most interesting lists available is the search terms that people have input at Google.com that led them to your site. Here are some of the funnier ones for this site.

1. this is all gonna end in tears samreth

2. obama bush same clinton sheeple

3. barkha dutt bitch

4. dating love site lv

5. body searches

6. coz i’m cool

7. indian bitch

8. mighty mouse fucking piece of shit

9. obama is bs

10. satyam fucking company

11. happy singh.com

12. video footage of george w. bush waving to stevie wonder

Random, Tech apple, Barack Obama, barkha dutt, George W. Bush, Google, Mighty Mouse Wireless, Satyam fiasco

This is Microsoft’s official infomercial for SongBirdSmith, their <cringing> GarageBand Killer. While you watch it please remember that Microsoft is one of the biggest software companies in the world and this is the best it can come up with.

For those not in the know GarageBand is Apple’s entry level music production software that comes preloaded on every Mac. It makes it very simple for anyone but the most tone-deaf moron to quickly throw together a jingle or soundtrack like this one here. Try sitting through the entire film. I couldn’t.

P.S. Those shiny silver laptops in the Microsoft ad? ALL Apple MacBook Pros. MICROSOFT FAIL!

P.P.S. Thanks to Aditya for the tip. Its SongSmith not SongBird. In my defence MS’s naming isn’t the most intuitive in the world. Look at Windows’ names: 98,ME,2000,XP,Vista,7 i.e. A year,two letters, a year, a word and a random number. Geez.

Tech apple, GarageBand, MacBook Pro, Microsoft, SongSmith

Since I am feeling rather geeky today I thought I’d write about a new utility I discovered recently for my notebook and how that got me thinking about the Mac platform. If you aren’t into tech you should probably just skip this entire post. Go look at cute cats here.

One of the greatest things about a Macintosh notebook is that you never, ever need to shut it down, ever. One things Macs do really well is what the PC world calls a suspend state or in Mac lingo is Sleep. This is particularly important on notebooks because once you are done with your work, say in a library, in class, at work or wherever, you drop the lid on your MacBook and get up and go. Once you’ve got where you want to be you pull out your MacBook, open the lid and you are right back where you left off. Immediately. No boot up, no login, no restarting applications or opening documents, everything is the way it was when you last closed the lid.

You pull out your MacBook and start doing what you have to with it while people with Windows notebooks sit and look at boot-up screens resignedly and if they are running Vista you’re normally done googling, mailing or writing half a page before they hear their Windows startup sound. 

Its also fun to just close the lid and drop the MacBook into your bag and have people say “Don’t you need to shut it down?” and answer “Meh.. It’s a Mac.”

 
From here on things get geeky.

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Tech apple, apple killing firewire, developers, firewire, Intel, Mac, MacBook, MacBook Pro, Nvidia, Power PC, Safe Sleep, Smart Sleep, Steve Jobs

More than a few people have asked me this recently since I use and love macs at home. So, here are all the reasons in decreasing order of importance:

1.  36K INR. I dont want to be identified with the type of douchebag that would pay that much for a cellular telephone.

2.   36K INR.  That is about 30K INR more than I am willing to pay for a cellular telephone no matter how cool it may be thankyouverymuch.

While we are on the subject. Click here.

Rants, Tech apple, douchebag, iphone