Lens

Hey! Looks like you are a new visitor, you may want to subscribe to my Lens RSS feed. Or my shared links Convex RSSThanks for visiting!

# As said earlier, I am not daily-digest-posting my del.icio.us links on this blog. Instead I strongly beg-recommend-request-urge you to subscribe to this feed : http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lens/Convex - this will contain the google reader shared items and selected items from my notebook. Together now it is a complete link feed I could wish for. If you want to have a look at the page, it will be redirected from this easy url : http://rkblogs.net/blog/link-blog ,

# As is obvious, the email updates, from the blog will not include the links as was happening earlier. Feed readers request you to subscribe to above feed.

# Waiting for feedburner integration of Twitter daily digest and Reader link blog available under link splicer. How do I get heard ?

# The feed will be a mixture of all things that interest me - numerous blog posts from others, tech news, this and that and all. Be warned but do subscribe !

# Finally I can now use del.icio.us for what it is - bookmarking, instead of link blogging.

# Notebook (combined with this) is actually much more and I am possibly using it to full capability Just for the sake of completion here is my public page and here is the feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lens/Window ( However, subscribing to Convex feed is enough, the notebook updates will be available there.)

# Not subscribed to Convex yet ? my last reminder, request - Do it now !

Since the twitter daily update isn’t happening, some random bursts of thoughts and activities over a last few days:

# Feedburner’s link splicer does not have support to Google reader shared items ??!! It has for bloglines, yahoo..but despite Feedburner is now Google’s, there is no support for Google ?! Wake up !!

# While at it, a daily twitter digest splicing would be great, and of course the option to use more than one splicing !

# While at it, ok, check out next post.

# We agree to disagree & We disagree to agree - both sentences mean same, no ?

# Me having pownce invites…anyone wants ?

# Number of chars supported by twitter should have been longer or customizable ..140 is too less for my random bursts of thoughts !

# For real-time random bursts of thoughts (and fortunately for you and unfortunately for me - restricted to 140 letters) follow me on twitter

# Paapa HR ->http://tinyurl.com/26n6bm

# Life is the continuous adjustment of internal relations to external relations. Herbert Spencer

# A wounded deer leaps the highest. Emily Dickinson

# Last weekend was super failure weekend - wanted to attend bloggers’ meet, lost the way, searched and went an hour or more late. Twas at Brewhaha, nice ambience. Wanted to watch a play, FPS, went few hours early and returned. Twas at Chowdiah Memorial Hall, first time there, the audi looks HUGE, should be great fun to watch a play.

# ”We hate some persons because we do not know them; and we will not know them because we hate them.” Charles Caleb Colton

# Suffered from terrible cold and bunked office 1 day - and I think this the first leave I have taken for being sick since I started working !

# It is not what we learn in conversation that enriches us. It is the elation that comes of swift contact with tingling currents of thought.

# Do not, on a rainy day, ask your child what he feels like doing, because I assure you that what he feels like doing, you won’t feel like watching - Fran Lebowitz.

# Could not fill IT returns online. ( Submitting the acknowledgement physically can not be considered as online filling). The digital signature was not accepted for being zombie (not finding parent authentication). Anyone filled successfully ?

# added odiogo plugin to blog - another listen to me button for posts ! has male voice and sounded better than talkr

# ”I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there.” Herb Caen

# Played 28 in office for many rounds !

# Ppl always use “busy” to mean they are doing something they didn’t wish to do.what is the word for the being busy with what one likes to do.

# In my todo list, the first and last items are : Read and Finish things in todo list.

# It goes without mentioning that I don’t even start with the to do list - first point itself is a huge put-off !

# Play: Work that you enjoy doing for nothing. Evan Esar // Work: Game you hate playing even if you are rewarded at the end - Rk

# Gossiping and lying go hand in hand. Proverb

# Like facebook. Though I had a login few eras ago, I had not bothered to check it out. With apps and all, it looks cool now. I will repeat again - I hate orkut.

# Seeing all these facebook apps, I think facebook is moving to become first adress and one stop for most normal chaps. Facebook = Internet!

# Office guys blocked the sites I use one by one - *.blogspot, wp.com are the latest entries. Thankfully Reader is not blocked so far.

# ”A person is always startled when he hears himself seriously called an old man for the first time.” Oliver Wendell Holmes

# A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be written again. Carl Van Doren

# RGV’s Sholay is renamed to RGV ki Aag after fight in high court..can’t use names of Basanti and Gabbar Singh ..Super . I know it does not make big difference with the last minute name change but then, a small relief!

# Pownce is blocked in office..it wasn’t blocked last week..now that I have an account it is blocked 09:56 AM July 16, 2007

# Yesterday saw Satyavan savitri..remake of maine pyar kyon kiya..review later 09:55 AM July 16, 2007

# GM:I don’t think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday. Abraham Lincoln

# Wrote few (2 in particular) private-post of event/get-together targeted towards the relevant group of friends, and not to mention - they were super hits. More importantly the writing flow was super smooth after a long time And I think my such write-ups - covering events - are way better than the other ones I do. 

# played badminton after a looooooong time .. 09:55 AM July 15, 2007

# Osome day : picnic to shivanasamudra and talakaadu 09:03 PM July 14, 2007

# Becoming a star may not be your destiny, but being the best that you can be is a goal that you can set for yourselves.Bryan Lindsey

# http://tinyurl.com/2co5fx 12:04 PM July 12, 2007

# Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. Tom Lehrer 09:31 AM July 12, 2007

# To prev Gm quote, Skv replied “Life is like a trumpet. Why care what others think? Blow it to your heart’s content” My email signature changed.

# ”to kill a mocking bird” is not taking off…will try few more times, if it does not it will join the group of catch22 & pride&prejudice 07:59 PM July 11, 2007

# My feed subscribers’ count was 31 but it now looks like its only 14 (probably a correct figure as I had guessed earlier too). Now after this long a post, I think it will decrease even further !

# I love micro-blogging.

Undoubtedly one of the most awaited and most useful plugins is here finally - a plugin to automatically upgrade the Wordpress. No lazy procrastination anymore.

Here is what it can do for you

1. Backs up the files and makes available a link to download it.
2. Backs up the database and makes available a link to download it.
3. Downloads the latest files from http://wordpress.org/latest.zip and unzips it.
4. Puts the site in maintenance mode.
5. De-activates all active plugins and remembers it.
6. Upgrades wordpress files.
7. Gives you a link that will open in a new window to upgrade installation.
8. Re-activates the plugins.

The plugin can also can be run in a automated mode where in you do not have to click on any links to go to the next step.

Go here for the release site (and I got it via). I have uploaded and activated it but not yet tried it.

******

Among other changes to this blog, del.icio.us links are discontinued to be posted as blog entries. As I am using feedburner, del.icio.us links are being sliced there to the main blog. So no more blog entries and thus saving little space on my database How I wish some arrangement like that could be done to my twitter udpates too! Also I wish, I could change the frequency to weekly rather than daily. Ah ..wishes…if wishes were horses…

Installed odiogo plugin for audio feed. On my last post about talkr there was a comment from Odiogo that I could try odiogo and hence I am trying it. Now you can compare both talkr and odiogo for sometime. Any feedback would be appreciated !

*****

Among the lows, still haven’t had time to write few posts thats on  my mind. Still haven’t found a way to fix the repeated entries (its only a repeated display and not actually repeated entries though) and still have not been able to figure out why twitter updates often repeat same tweets or as is happening now it does not even update, or to make it post at the Indian end of day or to exclude reply tweets from the post.

*****

And if you haven’t already heard, Windows Live Writer is being used by lots of people. With plugin options and all, it has been the best offline blog editing tool I have seen. It is terrific and just what I wanted - I could save a copy of my blog in my computer and not bother about remembering where I save them, could write/edit in a feature rich editor, that too proper blog editor, rather than in boring notepad, could save on multiple clicks by logging in etc.

Just wondering what would have happened if these things did not happen in our life time - iPhone, Harry Potter, Rajnikanth ? What would have people talked about so passionately ? What would have caught the fancy of people ? What would have got the cult following ?

More importantly, would people have led a mundane, mediocre lives or would people have found something among the available things as craze-worthy and cult-status worthy ?[1]

If it is the former, we have been very lucky. If it is the latter, more thoughts needed. Till then happy reading/watching or experiencing.

Be maniac, be happy [2]

[1] Lets leave out iPhone from this discussion. iPhone or actually iPod created a space for itself when there was none. Its not one among 100s like movies/books.

[2] I personally feel, everyone, everyone should have something to be maniac about.

• Reading “iphone hacked” articles #
• Advertising Age - Digital - 23-Year-Old Mark Zuckerberg Has Google Sweating: What’s the only company that..http://tinyurl.com/38jtkb#
• “to kill a mocking bird” is not taking off…will try few more times, if it does not it will join the group of catch22 & pride&prejudice #
• Life is like a piano. What you get out of it depends on how you play it. Tom Lehrer #
• To prev Gm quote, Skv replied “Life is like a trumpet. Why care what others think?Blow it to your heart’content” My email sig changd to it #
• iPhone hacking as summer project & as a toy Link #
• Fake e-mail about Bangalore techie transfering traffic fine through laptop Link #
• Becoming a star may not be your destiny, but being the best that you can be is a goal that you can set for yourselves.Bryan Lindsey #

Some posts are repeated ..This has resulted after WP upgrade. Actually it is the side-effect of a hack I had done earlier to achieve something else. Now I am not able to figure out what… It was a plugin if I remember correctly, but can’t see it now (but its effects are there)…

Also, hope you don’t mind about the two captcha stuff, which might be little irritating and intruding, but it has reduced the spam little.

The twitter updates started behaving erratically (again possible due to some change I made which did not result as I had wanted), so is disabled now ..Also wanted to exclude the username posts in twitter from appearing on blog, once that is achieved, it should be back.

• twitter tools plugin is repeating the posts and that too without all the tweets of the day… disabled it for now #
• can’t believe i did a full length post on HR & his topi ! looks like i rediscovered that touch for few minutes. post will be up 2nite #
• good weekend:saw hr’s topi, went to amoeba (didnt bowl) and hung out with old pals, cleaned up the cds, saw tv shows&wimbledon, wrote posts #
• … if we wait for the moment when everything, absolutely everything is ready, we shall never begin. Ivan Turgenev #
• Damn,topi is avlbl on moviewalah I should stick to my decision to avoid hindi&english films on bigscreen!Only plays&kannada movies now on #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Sometimes you never know what hits you. Himesh Reshamiya (HR), yesterday in Saregamapa show, when asked what he feels about the feedback for his movie Aap Ka Suroor (AKS) which has got the biggest opening collection of this year, he said he is thankful for the audience and God for encouraging him. He also said, as usual the 1% of critics is unhappy about my product and has trashed it and ridiculed it heavily - but I will work harder and win them over next time. It could convey many things - is it his honesty or a doubt if this is just a masked sentence in the place of actual anger and arrogance, or is it just a sincere self-feedback that he has to work hard and he is ready to work hard, or is it a plain treat that the sequel is in the making ? But it hits - the honesty and hard work part hits.

It hits even further when the movie is watched because he makes fun at himself - the nasal singing becomes a part of the joke, the cap thing is a part of another. It is known that he has accepted that he is a nasal singer but to make it a part of joke and throw at himself takes some courage.

This movie was expected to open a can of worms, to answer few curious questions one has ever since the day we have seen him on TV - why does he not laugh, why is he in pain in all songs, why are his most songs about lost-love or something like that, why does he wear that bloody cap all the time, where was he before he started coming out of every channel and every speaker in the autos, what was he before and so on and so forth. The promos and speculations touted that the movie would answer everything.

Unfortunately the movie begins with him in the cap and instead of being a semi-biographical is instantly in a commercial story telling framework. That he is an already established singer - India’s rockstar at that - and the best performer in the world (whatever that means). That he is a very good man at heart. For the first time in his life he falls for a girl who also falls for him. Her father opposes their marriage strictly, as he is from a different lifestyle. HR is determined to win over him. Throw in between a denial of a singing contract , a third-angle Mallika who wants to seduce HR. And throw in a murder accusation and classic proving oneself innocent.

Performance wise, it would not have hurt if HR had shed his weepy image and looked somewhat cheerful. Giving any point to his acting would be major insult to him - he is acting himself ie he is HR in the movie and there is no way he should be any different than he is in his actual life - a painful face which he has mistaken to be the face filled with emotions. The teenager Hansika Motwani is not bad - her previous experience in movies makes it easy for her. But she does not have much to do in this HR worshipping movie, sorry movieee. Mallika chips in and does her part. The much publicized Mehbooba song is not a part of the movie, but it is just shown at the end, totally out of context, for which my explanation is this - producer had signed on Mallika for an amount for the movie but they also wanted a video song done by her. By making it a part of the movie, they saved on the extra expense on her! And I feel equal pity for the person who takes 3.5 pheres with Hansika but his face is not even shown!

It moves at Ok pace and sometimes it picks up more than enough - like one second he is bashing up villian, second his herione started her marriage third he gets the confession from villian, fourth the saath-pehre is stopped after 4 pehre in between after the heroine sees the live telecast of the confession. Wah, thanks to technology!

When one is not seeing Hansika Motwani or Mallika Sherawat but does not want to see HR, there is enough scenery to look at in the background which has beautiful locales of Germany.

There are no dearth for some cheesy dialogues. Like the one where his friend suggests “if i cut your nose …. how can you sing”, or Mallika suggests “if you want something, feel free to call me..any time in the day ….or night”

Given that it is a music artist’s film, there had to be enough number of songs, yet it just saved itself from being a story hastily thrown in between the video songs. It does better than that, for there is, however cliched and not-done, a story unlike many others that succeed despite the absence of any logic.

But I really wouldn’t have minded if the movie contained his old hit songs. They keep humming in the background music though.

Not sure what happened to the girl with heart problem. It was the most bizzare stuff that looks like a scene fallen from some other movie on to the editing table of this one. Don’t know what happened to Rajbabbar.

Though I drew for myself some parallel between Sivaji and AKS ( small things like both the stories start with the hero in jail and in the flashback and they escape after an attempt to kill them inside jail, so on and so forth, small things) I do not compare between the two. But let me just say, if you liked Sivaji and dislike AKS - there is some bias&difference in taste in your viewing, for both follow the traditional film making to the core.

And how can the talk about HR be complete without a mention of his caps. He wore around 13 different caps, yes I counted - but lost the count because even though he changed cap for every next scene, but he repeated his caps.

Since this is more of a personal interview than a movieee, there were few answers provided like why does he always keep a weeping face “why do you never laugh, HR?” - his dearest elder brother isn’t been around (I heard that right, no?) and he lost all interest towards life. ( But he sings even romantic songs with a weepy face which was why I always thought he was a singing Devdas ). Even in the movie he keeps his face as sorrowful and drunk as possible during all the times without any reason.

All said and done, this movieee is more about HR and his caps than anything else. Probably in the history of movies or history of anything for that matter, nothing has given as much importance to the cap as this does.

But the biggest question remains unanswered - why does he wear cap. And to know that, wait for the sequel.

Ps: As for myself, had ample amount of fun and laughter in the theater, no regrets at all ! We were more often laughing at it and not because of it. Low stakes and good company helps too !

• Geni-a-family-tree-software-plus-family-networking-space
  (tags: geni Lens)

• Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them. Stone W Clemen #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Histronics (have you heard in any show about terrible but cute host getting kissed on the show ? ) and contracts and emotionally charged over exaggerating shouting over the top “gurus” aside, Saregamapa is still immensely watchable for me for the singing talent it has. And also since it was a show I used to regularly watch pre-sms era. Though the names behind the show, like Gajendra Singh and Shaan have moved on to Star, I watched episodes of saregamapa. I tried watching Amul Voice of India in Star but due to the timing and the darkness of the set I fall asleep and the bright colourful set of Saregamapa along with the over the top performances of gurus of Saregamapa help me keep awake (and of course there is a repeat show in the day time plus entire show’s video is online).

Coming to the point of the post, last week I found all the 8 people in the Brahmastra round (or whatever round) in which only 2 would be taken forward.

My picks are Sarika and Raja Hasan. Sarika is the same lady who fainted on the stage after a biased judgement ( by Asha) . She sang extremely well in this round too and more I liked was her way - irritatingly innocent way - of asking for votes. Thats how my niece of 4 year old would have asked for votes chocolates !

She does have serious competition from Shaberi who has already bagged a singing contract from Visha-Shekar. And Vishal-Shekar are the most sensible and watchable gurus over there (save Bappi Da who is neutral most times). Lets not talk about Himesh (for there are conflictingly diametrically different opinions, and any stance I take is dangerous !), and his partner in crime Ismail. More about them some other time and oh I am digressing. Just wanted to say, really love the way Vishal-Shekar enjoy the music.

Among the boys, again there are very talented ones but Raja Hassan is my pick. He pulled out an unintentional emotional card which should easily give him more votes but that should not take away any credit from his ability. He is gifted, period.

And the Bengali contest winner really got the pulse of the crowd and since he is already qualified to move further, should be a tough competitor to others.

Here are the videos of Sarika (I wanted to post the way she asked for votes!) and Raja Hassan :

• “It doesn’t matter how slow you go as long as you do not stop” - Confucius #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Popular Science- new machine converts any blood type to O (universal)
  Their solution is a device that converts all blood into type O, the most coveted of the four major blood types because it can be safely transfused into nearly any patient. “Press ’start,’ and the machine does everything else,” says Douglas Clibourn
  (tags: health innovation)

• Character is what you know you are, not what others think you have. Marva Collins #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Taiwan market: Traffic lights reportedly to be all LED-based in three years
  Taiwan now has 350,000 traffic lights using LEDs as a lighting source, with the remaining 420,000 traffic lights to also use LED lighting in the next three years for a total savings in power consumption estimated to be 85%
  (tags: energy)
• IPhone.com has been acquired by Apple
  His seven digit sale goes down in History as one of the biggest sales for a domain name.
  (tags: iphone)
• SmugBlog: Don MacAskill » Blog Archive » iGot iPhone Part 1: The Event
  Nice write-up of events unfolding in front of Apple store by SmugBlog Ceo
• Clive Thompson on How Twitter Creates a Social Sixth Sense
  So why has Twitter been so misunderstood? Because it’s experiential. Scrolling through random Twitter messages can’t explain the appeal. You have to do it — and, more important, do it with friends.
  (tags: twitter)
• Swarm Behavior - National Geographic Magazine
  A single ant or bee isn’t smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots
  (tags: interesting)

• “The one serious conviction that a man should have is that nothing is to be taken too seriously.”
  Nicolas Butler #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Your Guide to Never Feeling Tired Again
  (tags: Health)
• Instructables - How to make cool DIY projects
  Share what you make and how others can make it.
  “This is a great place to start if you’re looking to find a cool DIY project to try out” - Lifehacker
  (tags: Projects)
• Google: You ain’t seen nothin’ yet
  //Forget iPhone, BlackBerry, Bell and Telus. Google is preparing to be the next giant of telecommunications// Can’t say if this remains just a goodwill prediction or a reality. Lets wait and watch. Btw, the headline is wrong English, no? It should be “any
  (tags: Google Business iphone telecom)

This is a software very close to my heart. Because this is the very type of program I wished I had or I wished I wrote/developed for my own use¹ There is a personal reason for this.

My father has, many say, the best memory and knowledge about the relatives in our entire circle of relatives that I have encountered. He not only remembers who is related to whom, his brain has, most often than not, other details like their names, their order in the children’s queue, their education, their occupation and in some cases their history of places lived. This is huge and complex data considering that he would not have met/seen them at all - for me, unless there is a face I can not associate a name to it and remember it. And when he talks with his father-in-law (my grand father) another power house of information of his generation, the observers of the conversation not only struggle to keep pace connecting the dots but gasp in awe at the knowledge present and ease with which that is recalled. Many times it has so happened that a person meeting my father for the first time would introduce himself & within minutes from my father he would be enlightened with new knowledge of his family tree and how they are related to someone else.

As for me, I struggle to recall the name and the way they are related even though I would have met them in a function just an year ago. And those I haven’t met are hardly remembered by me. Memory, visualization and ability to recall - I am average, if not bad, at all the three.
So I had this plan of making my father fill out the tree for my reference. And the best way to do it would be on computer so that it would be easy to search, distribute, add/edit contents and most importantly to visualize. I tried using freemind, a mindmapping software, but I alone doing everything would be hugely time consuming and I dropped the idea.

Now comes Geni - a super cool application - with a very easy user interface and features. Since it is a web application, now I can get my other relatives to contribute and finally realize my wish.

Geni promises to be more than just building family tree and few social-networking features are quite fun. And that makes it sort of family-networking site. There are few issues but I hope they get resolved over time. Very prompt and helpful team responds to queries. They have an option to export the content ( which might come handy if they wish to shut down or if they wish to stop free usage - I wish neither happens), printing option - both of which I have not tried out. They have even won Webware 100 awards. Some of the improvements that are almost necessary are - making it work offline with the help of google-gears or suchlike, easy merging of two people, mail-to-all email holders/ mail to those who are editing the trees, import of the tree etc

If you are interested check the site out and let me know what do you think.

And by the way, in their forums, there is a fun topic to list which celebrity are they related to and I found one related to Ralph Waldo Emerson!! Hi there! And another topic tries to find out about the biggest family tree owner and one replies 1800 and 33000 to go !! I was pleasantly surprised to know they were researching from 1990, and that many like them are interested in family tree and archiving that in software. And I had thought there would be no takers for my program and only I had such interests!

[1] I had started doing a stand alone app but what I am going to talk is revolutionary compared to my idea. I even tried to use freemindmap for family tree purpose!

• Good Morning: We easily pardon an offense we had part in. Juoy #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

First this:

‘The all-India cycle, scooter and car parking collections at theatres screening Sivaji have exceeded the box office collections of Jhoom Barabar Jhoom’.

Then this:

Himesh Reshammiya’s Aap Kaa Surroor has got the biggest opening of the year at the box office.

The critics had panned the film and wrote it off, but the moviegoers had something else in mind. AKS beat down Awarapan and Apne at the box office by getting a bumper opening in the first 3 days.

Earth shattering opening. Box office will sing glorious tune in the final tally. Distributors will laugh all the way to the bank. Critics be damned. This one’s for the masses

The opening response is mindblowing. It has surpassed Dhoom-2 & Krrish! It is like the response to Rajnikant starrer Sivaji-The Boss, with the big difference that Rajnikant is the superstar of the South & Himesh is only a debutant actor
Vikas Mohan, Supercinema

And from a very insightful article that I liked instantly: Why we should pray for Himesh’s movieeeeeeeeeeeee, the article wants AKS to succeed, for the reasons to which I completely agree.

YR Films believe packaging is what our educated metropolitan youth and Indian Diaspora demand. So they shove the repetitive silliness down our throats, packing enough first-weekend shows to ensure some sort of profit

Dig dig dig!!

Because…

Because it’s been a mad year, awful for the box office. Two high-profile Yash Raj Films have bombed. Amitabh Bachchan’s [Images] had three of his career’s best performances — Eklavya, Nishabd and Cheeni Kum — and only one of the three (CK) has managed to salvage its budget. The biggest hit of the year so far is Bheja Fry, a film costing Rs 55 lakhs going on to make about 7 crores.

Imagine then, a film coming out from a new banner, starring a new actor — and trumping the industry.

There will be complete chaos. The star-system will be rattled, the producers will be shaken, distributors won’t know what hit them and there will be complete unpredictability in the industry, giving independent cinema a tremendous boost — for if no one knows what’ll work, anything could!

Himesh has the opportunity to upset the Bollywood apple-cart. And that’s a delicious thought.

And finally why Himesh has it to become Bollywood’s Rajini ( I know I am exaggerating to Mars ) :

It’s a film aiming at the auto-rickshawwallahs — with a whole promo going blissfully over the top declaring that intention — and at the janta theatres that burst into mad applause the minute the nasal voice screeches over the speakers. If you’ve never been there, it’s a riot. Forget the Amitabhs and Akshays and those ubiquitous Khans, the crowds respond insanely as soon as a Himesh promo comes on.

• Creations of an unbridled mind: The case of the stolen banians
  What to do when you find out your banians are being stolen by your landlord ?
  (tags: humour blogmela)
• Silicon Valley Diary
  Difference between iPhone and myPhone. So true ! I have a myPhone from Nokia
  (tags: fun humour blogmela)

The starter homepage is one of things that I never used to get. Long back when I was learning html, I had created a starter page that was just putting all the frequently visited sites at one place (with their logo) so that I need not type out the url and also I can keep track of the sites visited in that session (the clicked link would change its colour). Making this as the default homepage was all about it.

The last time I tried starter homepage was while trying out web2.0 ( netvibes/pageflakes) starter pages. Full of bright colour, with drag and drop features, ajaxy stuff, yet my usage did not extend beyond signing up and trying out once. And having to remember one more account was making it difficult. I still did not get it.

Finally came google homepage. It should be one of the most underrated services by Google (or I might not have heard about it). Though I initially tried homepage only because I could check if there were new mails in gmail without logging into gmail ( logging into gmail is time limited & restricted in office - but no such restriction for homepage )

But now I have added enough stuff to homepage that it makes sense to open one page rather - both to get different content at one place and to login only once.

Most important components are of course gmail, news, reader -which contains digg, delicious etc, game, twitter, clock so on and so forth. With reader embedded on starter page, finally I get the feel of riverofnews concept - easy, simple yet very meaningful, useful for a google-reader freak like me.

To get around the email restriction in office I tried out some back door tactics but did not succeed completely. If I could get hold of one good email to rss converter, I can subscribe to that feed in reader which now embeds the mailing feature. That would have completed the loop without logging on to gmail, but alas.