Sunday, August 9, 2009

Are News channels = Rubbish?

Todays headlines Shruti Hassan wears a Bikini her movie luck. Aishwarya Rai claps with one hand in an awards function

Have Indian news channels lost its sanity or is the news of 21st century. This post of mine is centered around the quality of news which we viewers get to see these days . The top English new channels in India are NDTV, CNN IBN, TIMES NOW, HEADLINES TODAY and all of them seem to be following the same path in destroying the sanity of news.

When in comes to news we always think of NDTV and Pranoy Roy. He has been the brain child behind NDTV's success and with his band wagon of best journalists in India his channel had reached new heights and set standard when i came to news viewing. Sadly NDTV now has lost quite a few of his best journos as they moved out to start channels of their own and in the process the quality of NDTV's news has dropped.

Today an Indian TV viewer has a range of almost 20-30 news channels (including regional languages) to chose from. 1st Times of India newspaper set the trend by going Tabloid and now all the new channels seen to be following that path rather than broadcasting news or useful stuff. Thanks to the Saas bahu serials every news channels wants to sensationalize it by showing the same video 10 times giving it fancy jargons and news reports shouting at top of their voices.

The other day when i was watching breakfast news on Headlines today it was full of entertainment news and they repeated the same shit 4 -5 times in 20 min. Nowadays a news bulletin of 30 min contains 10 min of ads, 15 mins of shit news and 5 min of meaningful and sports news. News channels have become a platform for people to market their products, movies, shows and what not.

I find it difficult to understand if news itself has changed these days of the mass crowd prefers to see tabloid news in a sensational manner rather than watching something informative. I just hope the best journos of India understand that people just dont want to see only tabloid stuff and bring back the quality which was present in NEWS 5-6 years back.

Also look into www.noiseofindia.com. Its really funny take on our best journos of India

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Chennai Traffic - A Menace

This blog of mine brings out my frustration about chennai traffic. I have stayed in chennai for 25 years now and have seen as the city develop progressively. We have developed slowly compared to other metros of India. As city seems to grow the traffic increasing at pace of 3x and traffic sense of people is fading at higher rate. Yes this city has completely lost it traffic sense and people take joy in breaking traffic rules.

In Chennai city people overtake only from the left, love to break signals and I doubt if people even know there is something called the stop line at signals. Driving in Chennai has now become an adventure ride and chances that someone will damage your car or bike while waiting in the signal are close to 90%. In Chennai no one cares about the traffic lights, they jump signals evade cops and get going. People of Chennai must have mastered this art of jumping signals.

Chennai city has one of the best public transport facilties in India, it has got trains, Buses, Autos, Rickshaw's and the latest addition to the list is SHARE AUTO. I really dont know who brought this concept of share autos and we may be the only city in India to have share autos. These share autos are the biggest menace on Chennai roads and have the most annoying drivers who stop in any part of the road to pick up people. They are the TATA nano's of Chennai public transport.

The James Bond of Chennai roads are the Bus Drivers (Includes Public and private buses) who have the license to thrill and kill while driving. They switch lanes at their will, break signals like it never existed and never stop by the bus stop and swear people who follow traffic rules.

As time goes by i fear if traffic in my city will be become like that Bihar. I cant blame the police completeley for the current state of traffic, as the citizens of Chennai show no interest to follow any rules and they also know that they can bribe the cops if caught for breaking rules.

I hope one day people learn to follow rules and driving becomes a pleasure in Chennai.

Thursday, May 28, 2009

Aussie Power

IPL 2 is over and the evenings now seem to be a big bore, I really dont know which channel to watch when I return from office. I am just waiting for the T20 world cup 2009 to start but i doubt if it will it have the thrills and frills of an IPL. This time round my blog is more on Aussie Power in IPL and world cricket.

IPL 2 ended with a winning team again being led by another Aussie great "Gilli". Now we have 2 aussies holding back to back IPL trophies. The question to be asked is when will an Indian captain ever win an INDIAN PREMIER LEAGUE??. This is something for us to ponder. IPL teams have 7 Indian player's but all of them depend on the 4 foreign players to always perform and as usual they always do. Hayden is best example of an aussie depedency.

If we look the awards and accolades except for the purple cap winner "R.P. Singh" and under 23 years player "Rohit Sharma" the rest of the awards have been bagged by Aussies. So the Question to be asked is what special do these Aussies have which Indians or other cricketing nations seems to lack??. I think it is just the commitment, fire power and the never say die attitude.

The way Gilli played against Delhi showed us what world cricket seems to be missing and he left Viru scratching his bald head for ideas.I am die hard supporter of CSK and M.S Dhoni's captaincy in semi's was below par, which i would say was the main reason for CSK not making it to the final. But nothing can be taken away for Gilli's team which won the tournament after finishing last in IPL-1.

If fake IPL player is to be believed KKR will have a new captain in the form of RICKY PONTING and who knows he mite change KKR's fortunes and win the IPL -3 for them. Hope INDIAN captain can learn a trick or 2 from aussies and lift IPL-3.

Sunday, May 10, 2009

Joined the Touch Generation

Yes folks i have joined the touch the generation of cell phones and my post this time is more on my phone new Samsung Touch Wiz F-480. I know many people have written blogs and reviews around touch phones and most importantly people relate touch phones to the mother of all phones  the iPhone. I have not used iPhone extensivley just had a look at my collegues IPhone and yes it is amazing, but it also has it own drawbacks.

Now to the Samsung Touch Wiz or Tocco as it called in UK and USA seems to be a very good buy for its price Rs. 15k ($300). The UI and navigaton is really  cool and its packed with a 5 MP camera. I must say that the camera does not live up to the expectations of 5MP. The display is good and pretty sharp. The main drawback of the phone is that it does have a wi-fi but its 3.5G connectivity with speed upto 7.2Mpbs helps make browsing experience pretty good. This phone also does not have an accelerometer which i think is a must have feature on touch phones. 

The navigation and messaging is pretty cool and easy as well. I have always been used to keypads when it comes to txting, but this one seems to easier than a keypad. When compared to an LG cookie this seems to be a better buy and value for money. I would call this phone as POOR Man's IPHONE

Samsung seems to have caught up on the Touch generation phones and have brough out a series of touch phones like Ultra touch, Pixon, Omnia HD and Star.For Android Lovers samsung has annouced I7500 which will be released in June 2009 in Europe. 

The next touch phone i am looking forward to is the toshiba TG01 which  comes with the biggest display panel in world of touch phones, but it is a windows mobile :(. I hope they bring this phone to India and if they do it will be toshiba's frst mobile in India

Compared to my previous mobile Asus P527 windows mobile phone i have been really satisfed with F480 and would recommend it for people who want to use touch phones but not spend a fortune. 


Video Links
Samsung F480

Toshiba TG01

Wednesday, April 29, 2009

VOTE POWER

Hi folks this is my 2nd post and this time around it is more on INDIAN election 2009. As we all know we are the biggest democracy of all times and our country is going into an election which would define INDIA's Image as a developing nation.

We have done well in the last 5 years to change the face of our nation by creating more jobs, more FDI invenstments, and SENSEX touching 21k but in the process we have been affected by number of attacks by terrorists, anti social elements like Raj Thackrey and Muthalik. All these things have dented our nations image and we have been tagged "NOT SAFE COUNTRY". Tournaments like Davis Cup and champioons league have been called off which is a shame for hospitable country like ours.

As we enter into the Phase 3 of elections Polling moves into important cities like mumbai, ahmedabad and many others. We all wish if INDIA can have a PM candidate like OBAMA who has brought about the change which USA needed for quite sometime. Not that he has turned the tables around but yes he has brought positve vibes not only to USA but also to the whole world.

The 15th Lok sabaha elections has 35% of its eligible voters categorised as "Youth" and this youth can make the difference in elections 2009. We as Youth of the nation need to vote and vote for the person who we think can bring the change and think like the common man.


We as country have suffered enough from terror attacks and it our duty now to see that we elect a PM who will put an end to such attacks and get our security beefed up to max and make our county non- penetrateable. What we need now is not anymore of Masjid's ,churches, temples or terrorist attacks. What we need is better education system, easier access to government systems, better roads, Platforms for the public, better public transport ,better drainage systems in cities so that cities are not submerged when we have torrential rainfall and most important of all what we need is NUCLEAR ENERGY sot that every part of our country can recieve electricity.

Our list of demands can go on and on but i would like to stop here for now. I urge every single eligible voter to exercise his VOTE POWER and help in bringing about the change which we need as a nation. Do not vote based on caste, creed or religion, VOTE for the person who you think can give our nation a btter future.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Why work at Thoughtworks

Now that is the question I had asked a lot of people when i got an offer from Thoughtworks India to join their organization as a Business Analyst. I was very skeptical to leave Satyam Computer ServicesLtd., and join TW india as it is a small company with just $150 million dollar revenue. But if i look at my decision now after 5 months in TW I have made the right decision to join TW. The offer came at a very Important time in career when i was looking out a job which will help me grow and gain knowledge in the field of business analysis.

I work as a Busineess analyst for a e-commerce, shopping cart stuff project. This is my 1st e-comm project and also the first time i am working in Agile software development environment.The culture at TW is so differnent from other BIG IT services industry and the knowledge that people have here is just amazing, which makes you think god does such a IT environment exist in Indian IT industry

I am not going into the details as what kind of work the BA does in TW but yes, if you want to learn and have a broader vision of how good software is to be developed then Thoughtworks is the place. This place makes you feel good and challenges you everytime to get the best out of you. We dont have any cabin culture here at TW, we follow a dining table format where everyone works together and all your team members are visible across the table. You may feel there is nothing special in dining table format but beleive me it improves communication within the team and gives a different feel all togehter.

For me all this was so different as i was used to working in a heirracial organisation with cabin or workstation culture and coming in formals to office, but this was completely different atmosphere.

TW is very transparent in all its process right from the time of your interiew. The interviews for BA is pretty challenging. You are given a case study to solve and you need to come out with a good solution for the given case study. This basically tests your analysis, visualiazation, negotiation and other BA skills. If you are successfull in clearing the 1st round, then you have 2 written tests which is common for all roles in TW. Last you have one final interview round with a senior member of the office like the general manager. Here you may again get tested on your BA skill set and also the reason why you want to work at Thougtworks and what is expected out of if you join the organization.

Coming to the Fun at work, there is a lot fun compared to other organisation, fun events vary for each locations, you can chill in the evening by playing Nintedo Wii or orgnaise Age of empires Gaming hours. There is a lot to look forward when it comes to fun at TW. TW provides lunch and snacks for all its employee at no extra cost. Last thing i would like to say which i hate in TW is lotus notes as a e-mail client. If you want to have an exciting career in IT come join us.

Visit us at www.thoughtworker.com for more information on India Hiring.