Iphone 3G makes its Indian Debut

Its been quite a while since many here have been waiting for the official launch of the iPhone. After over an year, the iPhone made its way to the Indian market on the 22th of August. There was quite a fuss even before its pricing was announced due to Apple's strategy to tie-up with Vodafone and Airtel, whether they were actually trying to come up with a similar plan as with AT&T, would it be subsidised?, its operator specific carrier lock and many more doubts prevailed.

Finally when the price was announced just a couple of days before the launch, many people who were serious of buying the iPhone were terribly disappointed to say the least. Mainly, because Apple had famously launched the 3G version with advertisements saying 'Half the price, double the speed'. Iphone which was considered to be expensive for $199 itself, for the fact that AT&T's plan for many was a rip off. People here had no idea about how plans work there were expecting a similar pricing for the Indian market as well, but it came as a shock that it was almost 3 times the price they claimed the 3G to be.

There were people even trying to justify the price . One article I read, Iphoneindiablog.com has come up with a detailed explanation as to why its better to buy the iPhone in India. Even if it makes sense that after a couple of years we might eventually end up paying the same price, we are quite acquainted paying monthly rentals rather than paying it all in one go. I am not sure if Apple's got any intentions of reducing the price, but for sure once the initial excitement is gone, the iPhone would definitely not become as popular as the iPod. With several competitors pushing their R&D's hard to compete with the iPhone, its going to be tough atleast here in India when people look for phones with maximum utilities.

Atleast for me who was waiting so long for the iPhone, am in two minds just because of the price, not about affordability, but just hoping Apple to change the way the go about things. The entire concept of iTunes, Appstore et all will take time to get used to, to make full use of the features the phone has to offer, no point having a pen when there's nothing to write on....

Google's new Browser -- Finally !!

Google have finally launched their Web browser called 'Chrome', there have been rumours for a long time now about Google's browser, their OS and a so called Google Phone. Not sure, how true the other two are but am sure that Google are coming up in a huge way particularly targeting the likes of Microsoft.

For people who use a lot of internet, the browser is so important. You look for simple things in a browser which can help you in your browsing experience, I am sure a lot of people switched to firefox for its ease and for the Add-ons available for almost anything to do with a browser. Google has certainly lived up to its hype in creating a browser.

The Chrome has a lots of simple yet powerful features.

First of all its open source and it has a embedded JVM.

Other notable features are its entire new look tabs, a feel of a bigger page (no menu bar), theres something what Google calls the Omnibox, which is an Address bar, but does much more than what a FireFox or an IE address bar does, it is like the 'Auto-suggest' feature in Google search, it will literally suggest you a large quantity of things, making your browsing experience even better. As a matter of fact it will suggest you: sites you have not visited yet, sites you have already visited, popular website and more. It also lets you type keywords which will be associated to specific websites speaking about the topic you wish to read.

The Home Page of the Chrome is something which is very useful, well thought of feature, it lists your most frequently visited pages as a 9 screenshot thumbnail, more likely than not you might click one of them, and the best part is all your bookmarks are also part if the home screen, your bookmarks are displayed as a list in the right of the page.

Theres something called the 'Incognito' mode in the Chrome, meaning ultra safe browsing, you no longer have to worry about any cookies, harmful websites, etc. Your computer will be left untouched in this mode.

Also the browser speed seems to be faster than Firefox, downloading is integrated within the browser, which makes browsing really simple.

People used to Google will love the browser for its ease of use, some exciting features and of course the Google factor. In days to come I am sure the Chrome will provide stiff competition to Firefox and IE. I somehow like the Safari as well, but it took sometime to get used to the browser as there are some basic differences which makes you uncomfortable for a while, but I should say Chrome is something anyone can figure out the first time they use it.

People running on windows, do give it a try...Mac users got to wait for some more time

Download Chrome here

Soo true....

Thailaivar Esshhttlyyee!!!

Comfort today, lazy tomorrow??

Right from our childhood we in the process of growing up, also gather a set of constricting habits- be it good ones or bad, but traps us in a zone of supposed comfort.....In some cases it becomes so predominant that we start performing well below our true potentials. Further letting them grow makes a impression in our consciousness, which will play an important role in our outlook of our life's.

These things might start off in a very insignificant manner, which we might not even think of seriously. There’s even nothing specially wrong with those habits as such. They probably worked for us in the past. But now it’s time to step over them and go into the wider world of your unused potential.

There isn't any fixed future path that one follows to lead life. Despite all the helpful advice from parents, teachers and elders, each of us must make our own way in the world, doing the best we can and quite often getting things wrong. Messing up a few times isn’t that big a deal. But if you get scared and try to avoid all mistakes by sticking with just a few “tried and true” methods, you have no idea of the number of opportunities you are letting go. Lots of people who experience boredom in life/work are probably doing this to themselves. They’re bored and frustrated because that’s what their choices have caused them to be. People who never make mistakes never make anything else either.

Some points which might help :

Success Formulas keep changing
I can't even prepare a cup of tea/coffee to taste the same consecutive times, so don't expect something to work out just because it has sometime in the past. Keep looking for better alternatives and importantly more efficient ways of doing things.
Just for a start try to do something everyday/every week which you haven't done in the past, however trivial it might be.

Self-Assessment
I think this is an important aspect in every stage you grow up. One might not be conscious of things we start doing in a regular basis, so even bad things bad seem to be right to us and it becomes really difficult to trying to refrain yourself from doing in a latter stage. Something atleast as addictive as nicotine or cocaine.

Be who you are
It’s easy to assume that you always have to fit in to get on in the world; that you must conform to be liked and respected by others or face exclusion. Because most people want to please, they try to become what they believe others expect, even if it means forcing themselves to be the kind of person they aren’t, deep down.
You need to start by putting yourself first. You’re unique. We’re all unique, so saying this doesn’t suggest that you’re better than others or deserve more than they do. You need to put yourself first because no one else has as much interest in your life as you do; and because if you don’t, no one else will. Putting others second means giving them their due respect, not ignoring them totally. Keeping up a self-image can be a burden. Hanging on to an inflated, unrealistic one is a curse. Give yourself a break.

If you’re maybe not as wonderful as you’d like to be, you aren’t nearly as bad as you fear either. The releif when you know yourself really does set you free; free to work on being better and to forgive yourself for being human; free to express your gratitude to others and recognize what you owe them; free to acknowledge your feelings without letting them dominate your life. Above all, you’ll be free to understand the truth of living: that much of what happens to you is no more than chance. It can’t be avoided and is not your fault. There’s no point in beating yourself up about it.

What is holding you in situations and actions that no longer work for you often isn’t inertia or procrastination. It’s the power of habitual ways of seeing the world and thinking about events. Until you can let go of those old, worn-out habits, they’ll continue to hold you prisoner.

If you can accept the truth about the world and yourself, change whatever is holding you back, and get on with a fresh view on life, you’ll find that single action lets you open the door of your self-imposed prison and walk free. There’s a marvelous world out there. You’ll see, if you try it.

A big salute to Jobs

Now I know why people call him a great personality....

Jobs in a speech to Stanford Grads, no wonder they turned out successful. :)



You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Good One

My name is alice smith and i was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment with a new dentist. i noticed his dds diploma,which bore his full name.

Suddenly, i remembered a tall, handsome, dark-haired boy with the same name had been in my high school class some 30-odd years ago.

Could he be the same guy that i had a secret crush on, wayback then? Upon seeing him, however, i quickly discarded any such thought.

This balding, grey-haired man with the deeply lined face was way too old tohave been my classmate. after he examined my teeth, i asked him if he hadattended morgan park high school'

Yes. yes, i did. i'm a mustang,' he gleamed with pride.

'When did you graduate?' i asked.He answered , 'in 1975. why do you ask?'

'You were in my class!', i exclaimed.

He looked at me closely. Then, ,grey-haired, decrepit son-of-a-bitch asked:'

'What did you teach ???.'