Qwerty Fingers // Sidharth Rao

Love lost

This song was on my playlist for a while, until I saw the video... we sure can do better than this..

Shit! I thought those Google guys were smarter than that...

Lol!

Valleywag goes after the story about Google announcing that its going to invest a couple of million in a personal genetics project, 23 and Me. The twist (or a disappointing  no-brainer) is that the company is owned by Anne Wojcicki, Sergey Brins wife. Google went all over the place explaining that Sergey Brin had nothing to do with the decision, directly. And just then, New York Times reports that the Google founder lent Anne a couple of million dollars. NYT is speculating that cash is being paid back, with a part of the investment Google is making.

As Valleywag puts it "Even if Mountain View execs invested in 23 and Me on business grounds, they should have been aware of the inevitable appearance of impropriety. Sergey Brin, who famously mandated Google to avoid evil, is anything but corrupt. Worth $14bn, he really doesn't need to be. But, in entangling Google's affairs, with those of his wife, he's demonstrated naivete that, at this stage in the search giant's evolution, is no longer cute. It's simply naive."

And yes shabby.

Wine, Women and Work

  "I am ok without a woman in my life, then i can check out hot women and that makes me work harder"

- Dr. K Bareja, Part Time Philosopher at Totos Garage Pub, Bandra (W), Mumbai, 27th May 2007, 23:47 IST.

Meet the WindFuckers

Funnily, a bird from the falcon family was called 'windfucker' till about the 16th century.

"Look Maa! A windfucker!"
"Errr.. I think its a Kestrel, Charlie"

When the word became a taboo, i guess the linguists, historians, the dictionary keepers, everyone of these guys had a tough time redoing their stuff. Abridged Version of literature would be a bad scene, assuming there was no "Find and Replace All" then.

While i am at it - true etymology of the word 'fuck' is still not confirmed but what has been put to rest is what i had heard once from a senior in my school in Bangalore - He said the word came from a british law - if you were caught fooling around with someone in public, you got arrested for "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge In the Nude". So you had an IPC thing titled FUCKIN.. I know it sounds lame, but then heck, i was just 12 then.

And yes - Kestrels are in the 'least concern' category for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Looks like they dont fuckin care...

Indian Publishers Have The Shittiest User Interfaces For Sure

For all the silly money thats going into the online business in india, most people dont get some basics right inspite that truck loads of cash - Designing User friendly interfaces and navigation is one such thing.

Any guy with 3500 Rs takes up a course in Galgotia Computer learning and claims to be a web designer. And anyone with a English Hons from Uthkal University becomes a content editor or even worse information architect.

Anyway, to put forward my case - check out attempts by Sify to get its so called 'content' act right by diving into city specific content. Then to get a hang of what Sify should attempt to grow upto, check out Burrp a startup with considerably limited resources (surely much lesser than sify) but with UI that works brilliantly for users and clearly is not out there trying to sell homepage ad-inventory to some silly marketers who think 'buying homepage inventory means great visibility for my brand'.

User Interface design mission statements should be simple - Give users the shit they need and give it fast.

Which is surely not that silly girl infront of the camera who perhaps came 67th in her Mass Communication course reporting from a joint in Koramangla that sells boiled corn because the channel editor thinks should be cool because users can surely watch videos in high broadband cybercafes from Sify iWay.

(i know this is a long sentence with grammer issues, but i hope you get my point..)

I think it was Hrush Bhatts blog where i first bumped into something called the Featuritis Curve (i cant find the link now)...  i guess NIIT should consider as chapter 1 before opening up minds of designers with that heavenly thing called dreamweaver.

btw,  I run a interactive shop, we do web design work as well, some of which is worthy of a mention and some that i personally have hated..., but lets leave that for right now... also, disclaimer - our shop has been trying really hard to work with burrp recently. and you wld be really silly if you thought i am posting this to get my estimates signed from them..

Raging Bull

I don't know whether to fight him or fuck him - Jake LaMotta

Thank you Andy!

what a way to thank Andy Warhol!

Joost raises cash

Joost (the venice project) raised 45 million dollars today, Woohoo!

CBS and Viacom as investors, obviously wanting the web media to be "not so much about Youtube" or Google controlled properties.

I just love this guy.