Thoughts @ Amit Gupta

I am a club hopper now

Just other day while checking mails on my Nokia E63, I noticed an invitation to a B’day bash of my dear friend Vivek Bhatia . I replied promptly for two reasons :

a)  I was too excited to meet old bunch of friends from Time of India after a really long time. 
b) Wanted to check , how does ‘send from my mobile device’ appears in my mail signature

So on the D day, we (me and wify) found ourselves the first one to turn out at Turquoise Cottage, Vasant Vihar as usual following the date and time on the invitation (9 PM on July 04). God knows how many more invitations would it take for me to understand that the time mentioned on invitation is only indicative and not to be taken seriously.

Our guest of honor B’day boy arrived the last and got well deserved bumps on right place :). Party continued well past midnight and it was time us all to say goodbye to TC (Bouncers reminded us politely to leave by first stopping to play music and then switching off the room AC and television). We have made up our mind to head back to Gurgaon and were exchanging goodbye greeting in haste (Stories of bouncers treating guest at gurgaon disco flashed in front of me).

And then, Vivek suddenly decides that before he turns too old to dance by next year, he want to party harder. For me any dance party beyond midnight is generally at marriage function or a jagaran. So the moment of my life arrived (I have to hop clubs remember) , when we all headed for Capitol the Disc @ The Ashoka at 2:00 AM.

My first hand experience of Delhi party crowd begins right from the entry date to the Hotel Ashoka. God! it seems I was stranded at Delhi-Gurgaon expressway in the morning office hours. Every one was jostling for the precious parking space. Like a true Indian, I parked my car on the road outside without wasting any more time. The scene at the entry to the disc was no better, it seems ration shops are distributing kerosene to BPL card holders. And very true to market scenario our group sneaked into the disc surpassing the all other needy thanks to our friend Gagan Myne .

The disc was full and over flowing with maddening crowd. We also shaked our legs to the deafening DJ music for an hour and so. This was when middle class traits of m and wify made us realize we should be back home before the first light of the daybreak. This marks ends to my first experience of club hopping.

BTW entry back to gurgaon via the toll plaza was a breeze at that hour.

Tags: capitol, Dance, Disc, DJ, India Insight & Beyond, Party

My new mobile Nokia E63

It has been now three days, and initial euphoria has died down. I feel this is a good time to write about my new possession a Nokia E63. 

There are three small stories behind my new mobile.

  - Deciding on the mobile

  - Moving from Touch screen to Keyboard based phone

  - Joy of learning

Deciding the mobile: This is the most difficult part of the complete process. My previous mobile, good old pal for close to 3 years was a Windows based iMate Jam (Now this model is discontinued). A touch screen based yet very sturdy device. I bought this from US (no, it was not company sponsored trip, I went there on self paid family holidays). Few pics of that memorable trip are posted here. I seem to be drifting too much, so coming back to my mobile. Now this mobile of mine was in very bad shape, so much so that it can’t even handle meager 9 calls I received daily (2 Business calls, 4 Marketing calls and 3  missed calls from my wife ). So finally I gave into the business pressure.. On second thought peer pressure I decided to move on and buy a new handset for myself.

The hunt was spread evenly on online media (google, gsmarena, gadetsguru, compareindia), peer discussion, online reviews cutting across brands like (htc, Nokia, Samsung, Asus, iMate). The last round was between Asus 522w (better processor), htc touch viva (Full touch windows mobile) and Nokia E63 (Non touch but my trusted brand for 4 initial years 5110 & 6110) and this was also the order of personal preference. Asus 522w and HTC touch are windows 6.1 touch based mobiles and Nokia use Symbian platform. In this round Asus lost, as this cool gadget was way over my budget (Cost approx INR 19000 in Delhi).

So the final round was played between HTC and Nokia (INR12-13K), wherein Nokia won by overwhelming majority on features and trustworthiness (Thanks friends, and a special thanks to facebook which fasten the process of feedback). The next dilemma was to choose from the three stunning color offered by Nokia (Red, Blue and Black), so I went back to facebook and asked friends. The winner turned out to be Nokia E63 Ruby Red (BTW if you notice the poll was hacked by my wife, she has ordered err…voted for RED. )

Moving from Touch screen to Keyboard based phone : Before that I forgot to mention the features of E63. This is primary a form based business phone and pack most of the essential features. Some of the highlights being ;
-        QWERT keyboard
-        EGPRS and GPRS
-        110 MB internal memory
-        1GB Micro SD card (Included in the box)
-        USB Cable  (Included in the box, wonder why don’t they use standard mini USB port)
-        WLAN/WIFI support (Work well with my Linksys WiFi @ home)
-        Open office & Acrobat reader
-        2 MP fixed focus camera with flash

For more detailed specifications check out Nokia’s official site.

Primarily, I had to move from a full touch screen based mobile to full QWERTY format. Few initial hiccups

 - By instinct I tap on the screen to click.   

 - Look for stylus to write J

 - Have to deal with 47 buttons on Nokia instead of 4 on iMate

 - No single button to lock/unlock the screen

 - Go to webbed clicks to reach the folders

 

But But But….now I am coming with terms to this. I now able to figure out where to reach out on keyboard.

 

And finally Joy of learning : I was overwhelmed to see my mom learning how to click photo from the mobile. She tried couple of times and managed decent images. But the best part was when I clicked her. She quickly removed her spectacles and posed for the photo shoot. I have not posted the image anywhere as she has asked me not to share it.

Tags: iMate, Mobile, Nokia E63

Gayatri Mantra and meaning

ॐ भूर्भुवः स्वः । Om Bhur bhuva swaha
तत् सवितुर्वरेण्यं । Tat savitur Varenyam
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि । Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi
धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात् ॥ Dhio yo nah Prachodayat

“O God, Thou art the giver of life, the remover of pain and sorrow, the bestower of happiness; O Creator of the Universe, may we receive Thy supreme sin-destroying light; may Thou guide our intellect in the in the right direction.” – Maharshi Dayanand Saraswati

 

Why this post – God knows.

Tags: Gayatri Mantra

Google Wave – a new wave of communication

Google announced to launch Google wave later this year. This is bound to create a wave across the Internet world. So what is exactly is a wave. In a simple words Google wave is a real-time communication platform. It’s a hybrid of email, instant messaging, web chat, social networking, micro bloging, file share all build into one interface.

Features of wave :

You can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Any participant can reply anywhere in the message, edit the content and add participants at any point in the process (contextual suggestions and spelling correction).

It supports the drop and drag attachments from desktop and thus enable the real-time file sharing to anyone in the conversation.

It’s also embeddable, so you can embed Google Wave conversations on any blog.

This could very well turn into a project management tool with all concerns sharing the progress realtime.

It’s also an open-source project with a lot of API integrations. So the possibilities of growth and integration with various web products are unimaginable.

There is more information which will flow in but as a user we have to wait for some more time to swim in the wave. But this will surely bring a mega shift in the internet communication and more. So beware Twitter and FB of the world there is a strong wave coming soon….

Image Credits and official page : Google Wave you can also sign up for Google wave update here.

Tags: Google, Internet & Mobile

Grow Red Tail with Dabur India

I clicked this at a medical store market today. I was totally amused at branding of the baby product from Dabur India. Now what on the earth product called ‘Dabur Lal Tail’ from the Ayurvedic Expert for babies would convey to the parents.  It is for child growth or growing tail for your child

Dabur could have aptly named it as ‘Dabur red Oil’ and also retained the name in devnagiri ‘डाबर लाल तेल’ to appeal to the loyal base and cash on the recall value.

They have done similar excersice for ‘डाबर लाल दंत मंजन’ when it was launched as as a paste variant ‘Dabur Red toothpaste’.

Tags: baby, brands, dabur, Marketing & advertising

My nephew voted today

This election season all the non-pappu population on country got their figure marked and proved that common men (no offence to all the women out there) has the ultimate say in democracy.

 

Today is the day for generation next to go out get the mark. I am proud of my nephew (Kavya), he voted for the right choice – Polio Drops.

 

 

Kavya proudly showing his marked fingure

Thanks to the well-coordinated government campaign ‘Pulse Polio‘ to eradicate polio out of our country, there has been significant drop in the polio cases in last decade. Though goverment is doing its own bit but the success of the programm depends on the participation by the parents. 

Won’t you move few steps, so that your child can walk for life ?

Tags: health, parenting, Polio, polio drops

How to make a pizza (sinful eating)

 Final step: Indulge into the sinful act.

PS : recovered this post from google cached file. Love you google ummmaaah . And thanks @mayank for moving my blog successfully to new host.

Tags: Amit, Food, Google, indulgence, pizza

Makaan.com property survey on CNBC

Makaan.com conducted a National survey ‘My Vote. My Makaan’ in leading Metros and Tier II cities of India. The survey was conducted on the portal between 22nd to 30th April 2009 and saw participation from over 3563 property seekers nationally.

The survey results can be found at http://makaan.com/electionsurvey. The survey findings were also covered on CNBC Awaaz.

Tags: Internet & Mobile, Makaan, Real estate, survey