Mother of all CAPTCHAs

Came across this Slashdot story about a "true random number generator that relies on the unpredictable quantum process of photon emission." QRBG provides high-quality true random numbers through a web service for which you have to sign up.

I laughed my guts out at the CAPTCHA:



Nice. Makes sure you're a human AND of a certain type.

For all those who're racking their brains out yaar, sine ka differentiation kya hota tha (I did that too :-)), here are some hints:

• (d/dx) sin(x) = cos(x)


• (d/dx) cos(x) = -sin(x)


• sin(n*pi)=0 for all integer values of n


• cos(m*pi/2)=0 for all odd (integer) values of m

Is stealing users a good strategy?

Zapak seems to have caught my fancy. I'm sure everyone would've seen the irritating (and offensive) "As fast as 1-2-3" ad campaign by Zapak. Close on the heels of that, I notice another web campaign from Zapak:



The first frame of the animated GIF has a purple Spidey holding up a placard that reads, "jumping_jack@tediffmail.com" (emphasis mine, apparent spelling mistake - theirs).



The second frame has the same purple Spidey holding up a placard with "spider.man@zapak.com" written on it. Why the dot, I wonder. Wasn't it about "reclaiming your name"? It's Spiderman, not Spider-dot-man!

I just don't get it. Zapak started off as an online gaming company with excellent advertising and marketing campaigns. I remember telling everyone about the "Get to the next level" campaign I saw in Adlabs loos. Or the "Your race begins here" campaign on escalators. Then it went off to focus on girls in gaming.

And then all of a sudden - free email? Which gets delivered instantaneously? Which is as easy as "login, compose, send"? I mean, wow! No one though of that before!

And then it wants people to reclaim their names on a website called Zapak.com? What would anyone like to give out on a CV - nanda_saurabh@gmail.com OR saurabh.nanda@zapak.com? And how long can you go along with this strategy? It's self defeating. You can have only one amit.agarwal@zapak.com or amit.singh@zapak.com. Your USP goes out of the window as soon as you have enough number of people signing up.

If you can't innovate at least don't try to steal Rediffmail's users. They have a phrase for this - "splitting the pie" or "dividing the pie"...

(Oh, btw, they've also launched a YouTube clone now - Zapak.tv)

Cross blog promotion :-)

Back with a bang at my Foodie For Life blog. Two posts (a) Tavaa (Bandra, Mumbai) and (b) Monsoon Malabaar @ Mocha

It's strange to be reviving my foodie blog while desperately trying to lose weight. Any guesses on the number?

Rename Trip: Hidden goodie

Personal & business related travel is booming and the number of trips a person has to make (or book on behalf of someone else) is increasing every day. Being the "internet whiz kid" on the block, I'm sure you would've been asked by a host of uncles & aunties to book them some cheap tickets through the internet :-)

The Cleartrip account pages are packed with lots of goodies to help you manage your travel easily and more efficiently. One of the personalization features I love is the ability to rename your trips to something immediately recognizable. So, instead of identifying a trip by the travel date or from/to airports you can rename it to "Mom's trip to Mumbai". Or "Going home for vacations". Or "For pinky aunty -- still to pay". Whatever.

Here's how you do it:

Log into you Cleartrip account. You will be redirected to your trips listing page. Click on a trip to get to the trip details page. Right below the "Trips", "Profile", and "Email Preferences" link you'll see the trip name and the "Rename trip" link.

Click on the "Rename trip" link to open the trip name editor.

Change the trip name to something more recognizable and hit save. Voila! You've successfully renamed your trip.
The new name of the trip will now appear everywhere (trip listing, trip details, mail trip details, etc.)

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)!