HP

How many of us realize we have two HP's in India? Heh. This could be a good question for a geekiness index :-)

Cybersquatting in India

Spicy IP informs us that the domain gmail.co.in was squatted over by a fellow named "Chen Zhaoyang". Google ultimately got it back after filing a complaint with the "National Internet Exchange of India" (NIXI)
I never knew something like that even existed. Apparently the NIXI has a Wikipedia page as well.

Google seems to have won the arbitration but it doesn't look like they've got control of the domain yet.


Surprisingly, a WHOIS query on gmail.co.in thre up the name of "Sukumaran Pillai" based in Alabama!

Domain ID:D2507759-AFIN
Domain Name:GMAIL.CO.IN
Created On:03-May-2007 20:02:52 UTC
Last Updated On:08-May-2007 15:10:14 UTC
Expiration Date:03-May-2008 20:02:52 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Direct Information Pvt. Ltd. dba PublicDomainRegistry.com (R5-AFIN)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:DI_6367931
Registrant Name:Sukumaran Pillai
Registrant Organization:N/A
Registrant Street1:978 Henderson Rd NW
Registrant City:Auburn
Registrant State/Province:Alabama
Registrant Postal Code:36832
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.3170939374
Registrant Email:skumaranp@yahoo.com
Admin ID:DI_6367931
Admin Name:Sukumaran Pillai
Admin Organization:N/A
Admin Street1:978 Henderson Rd NW
Admin City:Auburn
Admin State/Province:Alabama
Admin Postal Code:36832
Admin Country:US
Admin Phone:+1.3170939374
Admin Email:skumaranp@yahoo.com
Tech ID:DI_6367931
Tech Name:Sukumaran Pillai
Tech Organization:N/A
Tech Street1:978 Henderson Rd NW
Tech City:Auburn
Tech State/Province:Alabama
Tech Postal Code:36832
Tech Country:US
Tech Phone:+1.3170939374
Tech Email:skumaranp@yahoo.com
Name Server:NS1.SEDOPARKING.COM
Name Server:NS2.SEDOPARKING.COM

Incidentally microsoft.co.in has also been squatted! Let's see what happens here.

Domain ID:D490943-AFIN
Domain Name:MICROSOFT.CO.IN
Created On:16-Feb-2005 06:40:20 UTC
Last Updated On:02-Aug-2006 09:31:44 UTC
Expiration Date:16-Feb-2008 06:40:20 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Direct Information Pvt. Ltd. dba PublicDomainRegistry.com (R5-AFIN)
Status:CLIENT DELETE PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT RENEW PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Status:CLIENT UPDATE PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:DI_1138221
Registrant Name:Piyush Somani
Registrant Organization:eTechSupport.net
Registrant Street1:303, Rohan Heights, Model Colony
Registrant City:Nashik
Registrant State/Province:Maharashtra
Registrant Postal Code:IN
Registrant Country:IN
Registrant Phone:+91.9850552225
Registrant Phone Ext.:91
Registrant Email:piyush@etechsupport.net
Admin ID:DI_1138221
Admin Name:Piyush Somani
Admin Organization:eTechSupport.net
Admin Street1:303, Rohan Heights, Model Colony
Admin City:Nashik
Admin State/Province:Maharashtra
Admin Postal Code:IN
Admin Country:IN
Admin Phone:+91.9850552225
Admin Phone Ext.:91
Admin Email:piyush@etechsupport.net
Tech ID:DI_1138221
Tech Name:Piyush Somani
Tech Organization:eTechSupport.net
Tech Street1:303, Rohan Heights, Model Colony
Tech City:Nashik
Tech State/Province:Maharashtra
Tech Postal Code:IN
Tech Country:IN
Tech Phone:+91.9850552225
Tech Phone Ext.:91
Tech Email:piyush@etechsupport.net
Name Server:NS1.NETTOOLZ.NET
Name Server:NS2.NETTOOLZ.NET

Mumbai Blogger Meet at Seijo

[...]
Male 1: Never seen yours. Will surely check it out tonight.
Male 2: Yeah me too!
[...]

It was fun! Met some interesting people (Moksh Juneja, Kapil B, Gaurav Mishra, Mohit, Shiju Thomas, Amit Varma, and an M$ editor dude -- sorry I couldn't get your name over the loud music and heavy accent!) And of course, our lovely hostesses Melody and Sakshi.

Some pics at Sakshi's blog and at Melody's. The only publicly available pic of mine (waving in the background towards the right):

Cheeni Kum: Review

Executive summary :-)

• "Cheeni Kum - A sugar free romance", that's what the movie adverts want you to believe. It's not. It's full of sugar coated dialogues and oh-so-irritatingly-sweet-if-I-were-a-diabetic-I-would-die kind of scenes.
• 5 out of the 7 truly funny scenes are shown in the movie trailers. You won't be missing much, trust me!
• Amitabh and Tabu share absolutely no on-screen chemistry. Every frame they share seems artificial. How can you have a romance without a sizzling chemistry between the leads?
• Amitabh is getting too repetitive with his loud monologues. You know, where he spurts out a long lecture, pausing in the end, almost cueing the audience for an applause. I'm sick of them. The movie starts off with one of those, "Khaana banaana duniya ki sabsi badi kala hai..." -- you've probably seen it in the adverts.
• The excruciatingly irritating kid, called "Sexy" in the movie will make you want to pull your hair out. Or stab her to death (in my case). I usually don't like the stupid kids that are there just for adding the cute element to the movie. And to voice heavily philosophical dialogues sugar-coated by their ostensible innocence and irritating lisp. For example, Ta Ra Rum Pum, Kucch Kucch Hota Hai, (insert any Karan Johar/Aditya Chopra/Yash Raj movie here)
• The movie is bloody long. In Bollywood, there is no excuse for making a three hour boring movie without songs.
  
• Delhi is NOT situated between Qutub Minar and India Gate.
  
• The plot had a lot of potential. The starcast was amazing. But surprisingly, the movie was a total fuck-up!

I had been waiting for Cheeni Kum, only to get disappointed. I'm sure people will still queue up to watch it, but atleast you'll end up lowering your expectations.

Zapak: How lame can you get?

Verbatim from an eDM (that's an electronic direct mailer for all your non-marketing and non-advertising folks, aka SPAM) by Zapak.com which landed up in my inbox today:

World's No. 1 Casual Game -- ZUMA

It's time to do the unthinkable
Beat the Sun God himself! Shoot the magical balls and stop the deadly chain from reaching the golden skull. Be quick, be smart. You gotta fight with your brains.
[...]
It's time to get tribal!
[...]

Hmmm, casual games. Never heard of those before. From the Wikipedia entry:

The term casual game is used to refer to a category of electronic or computer games targeted at a mass audience. Casual games usually have a few simple rules and an engaging game design, making it easy for a new player to begin playing the game in just minutes.

Right. And I get the beat the Sun God himself?! Whoa! Awesome! I'm just dying to do that. Especially with graphics like this:

And talk about "magic balls" and the "deadly chain". Preposterous. Sexually offending!

I just hope some random Surya Devtaa Bhakt Samiti finds this offensive and files a suit in some Rajasthan or Ghaziabad court against Zapak. At least the rest of us will be saved from having to go "tribal"!

Priorities?

Although most SEO tips out there need to be taken with a pinch of salt, most search engines (and people) think of your page title as a one line summary of your page. It's amusing to see our "national" dailies scrambling over to primarily associate themselves with cricket, Bollywood, and suchlike. Sample it for yourself...

Hindustan Times wants to associate itself with the "Latest news on India,Cricket,Bollywood & Business"

Times of India wants to associate itself with "Breaking news, views, reviews, cricket from across India."

View the source and look at the meta tags...

Hindustan Times has "Vir Sanghvi" up there in the list of it's meta tags! WTF?

And, as expected: "ht,hindustan times, aaj tak, rediff, indian express, zee, ndtv, indya, star tv" in the meta tags of the Times of India!

Actually this is not something new -- lots of companies bid for it's competitor's AdWords. Till some time back, a Google search on MakeMyTrip would give a Yatra ad on the top, a search on Yatra would give a Cleartrip ad on top, and a search on Cleartrip would give a Yatra ad on top (or some other combination like that)!

Runaway Alarm Clocks

It seems my long lost "mad scientist" twin brother has been inventing gadgets that I desperately need. He also seems to be getting a lot of Slashdot coverage, somethingh which I can only dream of. What a pity!

With alarm clocks running all over the place they would soon need "toll" booths for them. Heh!

Btw -- is there a patent for this thing?

Crossword-Ware

Last night I was solving day before yesterday's crossword (can't wait for a day to see the solution!) and figured out a 7 letter uber cool "across" word. The next 60 minutes were spent trying to force fit a whole bunch of "down" clues to the 7 letters I had already put in there.

Frustrated, I picked up yesterday's newspaper (I was solving day before yesterday's crossword, remember?) to glance through the solution, only to realize how completely wrong I was with my uber cool word.

It just reminded me how often we do this in software. Get one big module/component of the entire solution working and try to force fit all the other pieces around it. Gleefully ignoring the fact that the central piece, though ostensibly correct, may be the culprit holding up the entire process.

Thus, I coin a new term "Crossword-Ware". You heard it here, first.

Review: Bheja Fry

I was going to write a glowing review about Bheja Fry, but then I read Rashmi's post , and came to know that it's been copied from a French film - "Le Dîner de cons"

Now, I'm a sucker for originality. When people were raving about Chachi 420 (Kamal Hasan's take on Mrs. Doubtfire), I was pissed that it was "inspired" from a Hollywood flick.

And after laughing my ass off for two hours last night, I don't like the fact that Bheja Fry is a "remake."

Anyways, that doesn't take away the fact that everyone's acted amazingly well. Vinay Pathak steals the show, but Rajat Kapoor also rocks. However, Ranveer Shorey was a tad wasted with that forced look on his face. What was the director thinking?

I'm sure no one will be able to pull off such a good comic character in the coming year. If Vinay Pathak doesn't get an award for this role, film awards pe jo thoda vishwaas hai, woh bhi uth jaayega!

"Dauda Dauda Bhaga Bhaga Sa" by Juhi Babbar

Went to see this play yesterday at Prithvi Theater. Hilarious! And the most interesting part was, even when I was laughing to the comic stuff going on in front of me, I was well aware of the fact that had this been in a movie, I would be pulling my hair out in sheer frustration. But the spontaneity and "liveness" (just invented this for the want of a better word) -- was keeping the audience in splits.

And not to forget a freak incident at the beginning of the play. A lively Juhi Babbar comes hopping (literally) on to the stage and greets the people with an irritably lively hello, and all. She repeatedly asks the audience to switch off their mobile phones and leaves. Suddenly a phone whimpers a stupid ring tone from somewhere. Juhi comes stomping back shouting

Juhi: Who was that?
The lights are switched back on rudely. She points out a lady who's trying to switch off her cellphone.
Lady: I'm putting it on vibration.
Juhi: No ma'am. Please switch it off.
Lady (visibly irritated): I'm putting it on vibration!
Juhi: Can you guarantee that when it vibrates inside your bag and makes a buzzing sound it won't disturb others in my audience?
Lady (shouting now): What do you mean? You want me to write it on a stamp paper or something?
Her friends start getting up with murmurs of "how rude" and "what the fuck" and related stuff.
Juhi: Yes. If you can do that.
Lady: This is shit! (etc.etc.)
Juhi: Please leave the hall RIGHT NOW!
Lady (now leaving the hall): I don't want to watch your play. I want my money back.
Juhi (shouting out to the staff): Ramu Kaka (that's not what she said -- but what the heck!) Inke paise abhi waapas kar do!

And the lady with her two friends leave the hall only to appear on the stage! One of the best April Fool jokes I've seen in the recent past! And what a way to liven up the audience and start a laugh riot of a play!

And talking of April Fool pranks, GMail Paper from the gods! The "it's not even funny" part is that Google is a company which can actually pull off something like that! Rock on!