April 2005 Archives

Browsing the web has turned out to be an interesting experience, especially because of the amount of interesting techniques browser makers put in to their tools.

Browser developers are not just developing an application that will enable you to browse the web, but are enabling features that will make browsing an interesting experience to the users.

Whenever i get on this word "experience" in relation to software, i remember Microsoft Windows XP. Very aptly did Microsoft name its new version that time. XP for experience. Making known that user experience of an application is of atmost importance to sell an application. Ah..ha.. i jumped on another interesting topic that i would like to detail on "user experience in computer applications".. may be in another blog.

Ok. coming back to our topic of the day... (i do divert into items away from topic now and then, just the way i am .. got to bear me pal)

Browsers like Opera and FireFox are gaining popularity for their good innovative browser feature design.

Opera designed something called "mouse gestures" wherein you move your mouse straight up and straight down casually on the opera display area, and that means a command to the browser and the page refreshes. There are many other interesting gestures you can make on a opera browser to close the current website, open a new window, move back one page, move forward one page, make display area full-screen... and the likes.

The FireFox browser..takes its turn into innovative design with "dynamic bookmarks" in its newly launched browser version 1.0.6 (yes version 1.0.6 and innovative design is already in, with many other features which other browsers took to give only in versions 6 or higher)
Dynamic bookmarks works like this.. All of us are aware of RSS feeds, which are headline and short-description xml feeds of a website that gets updated everytime the website has new content. keeping track of the RSS feeds itself would tell you whats new in a website. This is more for applications which can read RSS feeds and tell you when the website is updated or the better off download the update on the website.

The functionality as read in Forbes review of the firefox browser

When Firefox sees a site with an RSS feed, a little orange tag lights up in the lower right hand corner of the browser window. Clicking it gives you a new bookmark that changes as the content of that site changes. Dragging down to that "live bookmark" leads to a menu of headlines of new stories. Selecting one takes you directly to the story you want, without having had to go to the trouble of first visiting that particular site and rifling through its headlines. (It only sounds complicated in my description. Trust me.)

Interesing? Try these browsers.. and experience the advantages of browsing with something other than the usual Internet Explorer.

Dowload Links: (You can find download links in the sites below)
Opera home
Firefox home

Now, coming to reality..
You might ask, is there a browser which has both the above features, so that you dont have to try different browsers for different things.

Well, i am afraid we are still in a technology-age fix on this now. Because if i am right, all these innovative features are patented by the respective companies and others can't try to implement the same.
That leaves us with opera not implementing 'dynamic bookmarks', and firefox not implementing 'mouse gestures', neither can Internet explorer implement both.

What else.. hmm.
may be you will be interested in a 2-part article of mine on 'Browsing Smarter' which was published by www.infinsource.com long back.

Firstly, talking about cinema and especially Tamil Cinema(India) is not to be considered gossip. The kind of activity that's happening
in this industry is worth a lot of respect for the skill involved.

I am very sure, soon people are going to talk about management skills available in the tamil film industry, like they spoke about mumbai's
dabbawallas last year.

Dance choreography
First and foremost are the dancers and dance choreographers
of tamil cinema. And... only, Raju Sundaram and Prabhu deva in that context.

For the past 5 years whatever these fellas have done to tamil cinema songs is unforgettable... and never repeatable.

When there's a song on screen, I only watch the dancers behind the hero and /or main actors in the film. I will tell you something. Try to watch the dancers on the screen one by one and their movements. Each one's eyes, actions will reveal to you that they are enjoying the dance and all focussed on only enjoying it with perfection other than anything that's happening around them, not even looking at how the other fellow is dancing.

They are the best examples i can find in the world for team work. The best team is that of raju sundaram & prabhu deva's group. Watch two-three or 10 popular tamil songs in the same manner. You will find something interesting. The dancers in 9 out of 10 songs will be the same set, or atleast the first row of dancers will be same. They are all working for raju sundaram. Check up if you don't believe me.

And, I believe raju sundaram, and prabhu deva are one of the best managers of india.
Dance Choreography is about managing people, and making them dance... and more so its about finding steps that suits everyone's body and brings the best moves of dancer's body. Yes, there are too many parameters they keep track of, and for each actor the parameters are different.

I am totally excited about the dance in tamil films these days... I mean, even if 60-150 people dance, the choreography is like, not even a single person is out of sync or is not giving the best of him. So much involvement will happen only if everyone accepts the manager and understand the task ahead.

And you would be as excited as me, if you can get to see the sets, surroundings, men & material with which people shoot films in tamilnadu. Its all directed, coordinated as easy as wearing a shirt. And, these tasks are commendable work which goes without recognition unlike the behind-the-scenes video on a jackie chan film.
...
Back to prabhu deva.. and raju.
While prabhu deva is busy with becoming an actor - and recently in becoming a director, raju is all focussed on his men and the business. Prabhu deva directed a telugu film which was a boxoffice hit in south india. Prabhudeva occassionally and selectively does choreography for films other than pursuing his new found career in acting directing etc., Mentioning about prabhudeva and raju, we have to make a mention about upcoming dance choreographer nagarjun. All three are brothers. Nagarjun shows up his skills now and then with songs like Hamma hamma - Of bombay, and films like Ghilli (the mega hit of all tamil films in 2004).

And what an idiot I would be, if i didnt mention, prabhu deva's excellent choreography of Hritikh roshan for Lakshya. Prabhu's steps presented by Hritikh was the ultimate way prabhu could have ever presented dance to people. The song Main aisa kyon hoon -of Lakshya took Hritikh back to fame as the best dancer in hindi film industry...Hritikh already had touched fame with his dance for his first film....cch cchh i forgot the name.. something pyar...

And when I talk about prabhu deva choreographing Hrithik, I remember the song where prabhu choreographed actress Kajol. The song won prabhu deva a national award.

Sometimes, I myself have thought that prabhu deva isn't any interestingly skilled person. My perception was so because he was terribly bad on expressions when it came to acting. He has definitely improved a lot these days. But, now I tell myself, dance is about body.. and the language the moves speak. .. expression is presentation.. sometimes, with some too good dancers, you can bear bad expressions...atleast with prabhu deva... considering that neither prabhu deva nor his brothers were trained by proffessionals.. or had the opportunity to learn acting or expressions ...off the scene, until past few years. Though his professional training is not something we should be bothered about, I am discussing things with the context of understanding the men's work, their failures and stuff.

Sure, prabhu deva and brothers have more homework to do with expressions, if they are planning to show up next time on screen.. and should improve their presentation adjacent to their skills, to make things better.

But sure, prabhu deva and raju sundaram turned trumps all the way for their hardwork and understanding of relation between body and dance.

I was having a normal, hot discussion with some collegues today about the way India is growing, and whether growth leads to rising costs, which itself is blocking growth as a cycle.

Our discussion drifted towards the political division of the country into States and Union Territories. During this discussion each one of us had differernt definitions for the difference between an Union Territory and a State in India.. like "Union territories are those developed territories which are small and can't be eligible to be state", "States are larger areas of governance, and union territories are smaller", "union territories are so created, because they need separate administration but are not big enough to generate revenue and support themself"... and so on.

Actually, I had a feeling only one of the views is right, but it turned out to be that all of them were in one way or the other correct. That's when I searched the internet for more difference of definitions, and landed up strangely in "wikipedia" - the new popular encyclopedia on the web.

Wikipedia had another definition, that, an Union territory is a region of governance directly ruled by the national government (or central government of India) unlike States which have their own ruling bodies.

I derived then.

Union territories are small areas of governance identified by the national government based on many factors as,
-Growth and Economic attributes of the region.
-Special consideration on the region due to its resources or location in India.
-For administrative constraints due to compactness and its difference in culture/heritage from its surrounding regions.

Union governments are ruled by the national government and at times (as felt appropriate) by the President of India or by an Appointed Governor for the territory.

In comparison to states,

Union governments, most of the times enjoy tax benefits on sales, and might have faster development in its economy or infrastructure (If the national government is interested in developing it).

Also, Union governments don't have the huge administrative overheads like a State has, since States have local governing bodies.

Another big difference is, unless a State government is formed by the same political alliance ruling the national government, the State governments lack good coordination with the centre and this leads to delay / almost stoppage of development and reforms in the State. This doesn't happen in the Union Territories since administration is directly done by the Centre.

Useful Links:
States & Union Territories in India
What's a National Capital Territory? - New Delhi
Popular union territories of India: Goa
Popular union territories of India: Pondicherry
Directory of India Govt. Websites
Maps of India

I was very happy to read this newsitem this morning.

The Hindu : College students to cross check electoral rolls on April 17

The idea was good. The city corporation is considering asking voluntary organizations and students (basically the new generation public) to verify the electoral rolls or list of voters in preparation for the forth-coming elections early next year.

This links youth atleast remotely to the election process itself rather than just being voters. This small step could in years become more involving where youth get their importance in the society and start feeling responsible of happenings.

May be not immediately but slowly if this idea is continued, over the years the youth could derive a fool-proof electoral system where only validly elected good politicians get to sit on the big chair.

Also I rejoiced more because, I didnt like the idea of the statement of election commissioner of india 2 weeks back, that online elections is to be explored, for enabling disabled voters and for increasing voter turn-out.

Grow-up, Online is good for chatting, browsing, may be promoting business, but, you should show your face if you are doing something serious, not stay anonymous and vote just after some verification.

Anyways, I hope the new idea of involving students in the process is implemented and not held back for any reason, and also that its continued for more elections to come.

Continuing on my thoughts with my previous blog (yesterday's), I wanted to put up another interesting thing my parents explored in their tour to Bihar and Orrissa last week.

Planning for their tour, my parents took the not so interesting route.. to register with local government run tourism offices wherever they went, and get guidance on transport, stay and tourist spots from these agencies.

These agencies showed decent hospitality, they were also surprisingly !Free! on their consultation, and my parents had to only spend for their tickets, accomodation, and food expenses. These expenses were very low since they were routed through government agencies, in lieu of promoting tourism.
My parents almost toured the two states for a week at almost 70% lesser than what it would have costed if they hadn't considered the government tourism agencies.

That was definitely news to people like me, who has had pretty bad experiences with government agencies for they delay things especially until they are bribed. Good news.

If you invested your time and money in developing people you get payed back as the investor. The same thing with developing your kids, your own thoughts, ..and all, but infrastructure.

Infrastructure development leads to developing everything else around. Catalyses development of people who use the infrastructure, the facilities in the infrastructure, the cost of things sold there, etc., And, all these costs are typically to be borne by the person investing on the infrastructure... who is expecting Returns already, rather than spending more.

Truth is, ROI on infrastructure is only for the eyes, or for the business in it, not for the investor to use as money unless its leased.

This holds good very well with developing a "City". When the infrastructure like roads, freeways, airports, in a city develop, it rather than doing good to existing citizens increases costs of the real-estate, costs of living, & costs of travelling.

Labour costs also increase since developed infrastructure gives a opinion to everyone that businesses are making more money (Though the city's infrastructure may not have been developed by these businesses).

Recently, my parents toured two states in India, Bihar and Orrissa. They came back with strange feelings that living costs, transportation and food costs are too high back here.. in Chennai, Tamilnadu. Bihar and Orrissa are relatively under developed compared to Tamilnadu and Chennai especially. That explains the difference.

If you are developing infrastructure, make sure you lease it or develop it for the sheer luxury of it. :o)