5 signs that you are just part of an internet fad, Tremendously put:

1. People Are Way Too Into It.

Internet fads are started by what I call the nerdy douche. These people live and breathe the phenomenon so much, it’s alarming. They’re the ones with the T shirts they get custom-printed to announce to the world how much they enjoy the current fad.

2. People Are Scared When Something Else Comes Out.

When Google Buzz came out and people called it the “Twitter Killer”, thousands of people on Twitter grew frightened. If Buzz actually killed Twitter, all of those days they spent getting super hot spambot followers would be wasted.

3. The Spam Surprises You With Its Creativity.

Internet fads end when the service loses its epic battle against spam. It happened to Friendster when webcam chicks became so overpowering that you either had to shut down your Friendster account or have your seventeenth private cam show with Roxy from Vegas.

I think I put Roxy’s kids through college.

4. It’s Called A “Game-Changer.”

When a social media “expert” is calling your service a game changer on his horrible weekly podcast nobody watches, look out.

5. It Becomes Corporate.

Facebook and Twitter were started by regular people. That’s what made it cool. But when corporations take over, and I mean fully over, it feels hollow.

Fads keep things fresh. I like.

And for those paranoid about their ‘data’ (knowing what your sister’s friend’s acquaintance had for dinner does change your life), or think their effort at self-whoring to collect followers and connections has gone waste – the web’s now much more open, there’s a high chance you will be able take your shit over to the next fad.

Enjoy the fads, just like fashion – if you can use it wisely and make some money out of it WTG!

Now, here’s an example of why apple fanaticism and valentine’s day are evergreen fads -

My rationale is built on the premise that to be a better public speaker, one needs to feel free from the fear of the act itself ; and the more experience at it, the better.

History

America – The land of freedom

Most modern Americans can trace their roots to their immigrant ancestors, who came to America to be free.

The immigrants were seeking freedom from religious persecution, economic troubles, political oppression, famines. Others who were brought in forcefully (as slaves or deported criminals), stayed on even after they were freed.

America’s policies throughout time have been democratic and have encouraged immigration (barring recent years).

India – The land of culture and society

India, on the other hand, has always been bound by culture and traditions. (I am not labeling this as good or bad. It just is.) Each person’s value was as estimated in the eyes of society.

Our inherent closeness to our family and friends has meant that almost everything we generally do or say takes a second thought to think about how it will be perceived in society.

We look, and rarely leap.

Even our freedom movement was driven by rebelutionary individuals rather than the masses. We fought for freedom from the English oppression,  to go back to our culture and traditions.

Education System

America – Flexible, Fostering independent thinking. Historically, no of opportunities > no of people.

America’s education system encourages students to choose their subjects right from high school. It also happens to be a system designed to boost self-esteem in classes. (Although getting everyone to pass in school lowers standards in high-school and so on, that’s not the focus of our reasoning.)

An effect of this choice for students is that many opt out of mathematics (which builds a foundation for logical thinking), and as a result Americans tend to do and say impulsively, rather than rationally.

This system encourages and demands independent thinking and ability to express opinions. Even relationships with professors are engaging, almost as if they are equals.

India – Methodical, Herd mentality. Historically, no of people > no of opportunities.

In India, the education and social system is hard on students. If you dont perform (which is largely dependent on how well you memorize stuff), you are labelled stupid and looked down upon. This memorization approach does not recognize or encourage independent thinking.

Classroom discussions are conspicuous by their absence. Even teachers are treated as Gurus with respect, raising barriers to open and engaging communication. (That teachers tend to use their dictatorial powers to harm students who oppose them does not help either.)

Effectively, Indians tend to be deprived of a platform to express their views.

As a result of these, Americans are better speakers than Indians.

This post is guilty of generalization (of course).

It takes guts to get out of the ruts.

Get out. Now.

Wondering about the multi-touch though. What about Apple’s patent? Or maybe it doesn’t really matter.

Google’s speed to market combined with Apple’s love to hold features back for future versions should make this a very interesting battle.

Also, as Siegler puts it -

What’s interesting is that for either of the two to be massive hits, they both will need consumers to continue to feel comfortable moving away from traditional software applications such as Microsoft Office. But their plans to get consumers to do that are very different. Google wants everyone to move towards doing everything on their apps in the cloud. Apple, as they made clear with their overly-long iWork for iPad demo on Wednesday, wants everyone to move towards using iPhone OS-based apps.

Bring it on!

Greasemonkey scripts are really useful, and there are over 40,000 to choose from. It only makes sense for Google to officially support these scripts, since they are essentially exactly the same thing as what you can build with Google Chrome extensions.

If you want to see what kind of scripts are available, try going touserscripts.org — installing them is a one-click process. These scripts are essentially converted to Google Chrome extensions, so managing them is exactly the same.

Extending Chrome has never been easier — now there’s even fewer reasons not to switch to Google Chrome from Firefox or Opera.

Read the original post below:

Google Chrome now officially supports Greasemonkey | Googling Google | ZDNet.com.

Fernando Flores on Bullshitting:

I think people should think about on what is to give an opinion. Written language is more reflective than oral language. In oral language people tend to give fewer reasons on what they are saying. In the written language people give more reasons, about the things they say. It is a much deeper phenomenon, it is the ontological discussion between statements and judgments. People do not know that opinions belong to the family of judgments and therefore they cannot ask for evidence to settle them. On the other hand, affirmations can be settled through evidence. Every time we make a judgment we risk something. If you said that a person is talking bullshit, people can ask you, ‘why did you say that? And if you don’t have an answer, you will appear to be the “bullshitter.”

The bullshitter is the person who talks and is not careful with what he or she is saying, but that’s not the same as being a liar. Bullshit says things as real without checking if they are true, they don’t care if that is going to affect others; it build castles in the air. The judgment of the liar is different, because the liar does give false statements knowing they are false. This is a failure of sincerity.

An example of this is the Google and China issue. Several people have judged Google, as if judging is the main matter. I believe that what is relevant is the fact itself and the recognition of it as an ethic dilemma. It is not an easy decision to abandon China. China, as any nation, has a principle of sovereignty therefore you have to negotiate trade agreements the best way possible. Anyway that’s good for China. I dare to say this now, as I had formed this opinion through all the discussion. Before, my opinion might have been a quick reaction. Quick reactions can become negative judgment.

The bull shittter makes careless promises, careless statements, (without evidence) but they dont have the deceit of the liars. It also happens with promises which cannot be denied through evidence, there’s always a gap, in the moment a promise is made and in the moment the promise gets achieved. If the gap is not defined ahead, that takes you into a bullshitter attitude. There is also the liar who makes promises knowing beforehand that he has no intention of achieving them.

Language has two components, one part of language represents reality and other part has to do with inventing worlds with another. The invention of worlds is done through offers, promises, requests, and statements. When a post is written, what the person is really doing is offering, promising, requesting and declaring. These conversations open the possibilities of building a collective world together. When these four actions are made carelessly (without evidence) and like biased opinions, they do not contribute to build a world together.

This beautifully defines the current state of ‘conversations’  taking place almost everywhere around the web.

Monetization, rather than generating value, has taken center-stage, while clearly it’s only value that can drive money.

The whole interview can be found here:

Global Voices Online » Reflections on Blogging with Fernando Flores.

Once upon a time they were quite formidable, with the Flower brothers, Heath Streak, Neil Johnson,and even a certain Henry Olonga whom Sachin took a real liking to.

Then around the 2003 World Cup, the political situation turned so bad, that England forfeited a match refusing to play in Zimbabwe, most of the Zimbabwean team, including Andy Flower and Olonga, applied for political asylum overseas.

What we should know about this country is this:

This presentation won the third prize in the Slideshare World’s Best Presentation Contest.

We have our problems in India, but nothing compares to this. Period.

The highlights:

1. Includes a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8. Your browser is now like your OS with multiple threads and processes and also a task manager of its own! So next time one tab crashes, you dont have to shut down your entire browser; now that’s cool enough for me to want to switch from Mozilla, much as I love it.
2. The tabs are the most important elements and this design reflects just that. Each tab has its own address bar and menu
3. Auto-completion in the address bar, but this time not intrusive and irritating, but genuinely helpful (Google Search incorporated) while being subtle
4. Your homepage will be your dashboard with 9 previews of your most-visited websites, and on the sidebar you have your favourite search engines, all setup and ready to go
5. An ‘incognito’ mode, where everything you browse,search,do is private
6. Webapps now open in their own windows, without the address bar and toolbar
7. Sandboxing – improved security against malware and phishing

The whole project is open source and described in wonderfully by Scott McCloud. You can read the comic here.

The browser is the OS, that’s what Google is telling the world with comics and backing them up with innovation.

Ofcourse there’s going to be endless debate and speculation about Google’s war against Microsoft and how if this sticks, Google could end up being the new Microsoft.

But Chrome is not exclusively about browser or OS wars. This open source project is about improving all browsers, making them more suitable for applications rather than pages for which they were originally built.

It’s the theory of complements at work. Google lives on the internet. Every application, service and now browser from Google is aimed at improving the internet at large, increasing usage and dependence on it, and thus fostering its core business, Search and Advertisements.

For me, as long as they continue to make my life a tad bit easier and comfortable, I am game.

And how disruptive is Chrome going to be? My guess is very.

Do give it a shot and let me know if it works for you. More on my experience later.

As per reports, starting TODAY, 2,000 ‘high value’ customers of Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited will be able to access 3G services at select areas of the city.

No idea what you need to do to qualify as High Value. I thought bearing BSNL’s slow and pathetic services, customer and otherwise, suffice.

Within two km of the 10 BTS that are 3G enabled, customers will be able to access 3G services. There will be no additional cost for the time being as we are in the trail period, customers will be able to access 3G services at 2G rates,” said Chandra Prakash, Chief General Manager, Maharashtra circle, BSNL.

The 10 3G hot spots in Pune are the exchanges at Satara Road, Bajirao Road, Bhavani Peth, MHS – Camp, Atur Park, Shivaji Nagar, Model Colony, Janavadi, Chinchwad and Bal Gandharva. Once the 3G spectrum is auctioned, BSNL will provide this service at 56 cities in the state, said Prakash.

10 hotspots and a 2km radii for each. Sufficient? Doubt that.

At 2G rates during the trial period. I thought 2G is still in the trial period. Do they have UATs in telecom??

However, when 3G is launched commercially, it will make possible other services like video conferencing, online gaming, high speed internet, video streaming, live IPTV, video-on demand on 3G enabled mobile phones.

“We have been asked to design the equipment for 20 per cent of the customer base,” said Neeraj Sinha, Alcatel-Lucent, the vendor company for BSNL.

At present, BSNL is waiting for 3G spectrum to be officially auctioned. “The cost of the services will depend upon the auction of the spectrum. The number of people opting for 3G services will also matter, but it will still be expensive if the spectrum is auctioned at a high price,” said Mahendra.

So it depends on the auctions.

Auction design, for very good reasons, is a dedicated topic of study in Economics. I truly hope, being a country which has produced some excellent economists, there are a few who’ve been working on our 3G auctions.

All said and done, we know it’ll take time to really kick in, but when it does, it’ll be interesting to see how it sticks in a market like ours.

More on that later.

Update: BSNL High Value customers are those on the Rs 750 plan.

Being agnostic and an atheist in India is tough. I dont have anything against religion or faith or belief, it’s religious fanaticism and extremism that I despise.

I don’t believe in ‘No God’. I just don’t believe that God exists. Big difference.

Amit Varma at the India Uncut blog nails it…

Nonbelief

Some people think that atheism means believing that there is no God.

The conviction that there is no God is irrational because one cannot prove a negative. (How do you prove that something does not exist?) However, it is entirely rational to not believe in something whose existence has not been demonstrated. I don’t believe in dragons or fairies because no one has yet proved to me that they exist. Ditto God.

The Economist published a letter from Chad English of Ottawa a few months ago that summed it up well:

“Atheism is a religion in the same way that not collecting stamps is a hobby. When you understand why there are no ‘aphilatelist’ conventions, you will understand why atheists don’t congregate.”

Agnosticism

The word ‘agnostic’ is a combination of the Greek α (without) and gnōsis (knowledge), and refers to a person who believes that the truth about something, in this case the existence of God, is unknowable. It has nothing to do with believing or not believing.

Indeed, it is possible to combine agnosticism with either theism or atheism. A believer may choose to believe in God while accepting that some things are fundamentally unknowable. An atheist may agree with that view. I see myself as both an atheist and an agnostic: an atheist because I do not believe in God, as His/Her/Its existence has not been proved; an agnostic because I believe that on this matter, we may never know the truth for sure.

What other people choose to believe in is none of my business, and I respect their right to their beliefs. But the right to religion does not imply the right to force it on others. I object when people try to coerce others into conforming with their beliefs, believing that their religion gives them the license to infringe on the rights of others.

Religion in the private domain and in community settings can be useful, and a force for good, but too often in recent times, it has been used to justify the worst excesses: genocides, riots, terrorism, and all kinds of coercion. We have seen deplorable instances of this from every major religion in the last 100 years (including communism, which relies as much on faith as any God-based belief system).

It is not religion per se that is a problem, but our attitudes towards it.

And here’s what George Carlin has to say about it