The parched earth seeks solace
From the dry wind and burning sun
You can feel the heat on your face
And thirst plagues all, bar none.

And then the rains come over
First mild showers and then downpours
Relief for the sower and the office goer
The greenery shows, the monsoon’s set in its course

And then it refuses to stop
Swinging to the other extreme
Rain, from the hit, it’s turned flop
All the lakes and rivers now full to the brim.

And with most things we wish for and want
We’re never prepared to receive
Consider the giver’s largesse a taunt
And we’re always ready to grieve.

Written on a boring rainy afternoon.

As always, a hat-tip to Compulsive Writer for the push.

Image courtesy Paavani.

The dogs start barking
And on comes the light
There’s no escaping questions
However hard you might

The best options that are
Answer, fight or flight
But it could all have been
Avoided, this folly of the night.

Written to while away time while not really sleepy

I looked at you
And you were busy,
Many pots to make,
They were turning out
just right, you said,
But your eyes,
They gave you away.

Ever the perfectionist,
Forever absorbed,
To hide that sadness.
You said you were happy
But your eyes,
They gave you away.

You seemed hesitant
To ask for help, as always,
You needed support,
I could see, for
Your eyes,
They gave you away

Always on the move,
Looking for that place
Where you’d find peace
The search unsuccesful,
Your eyes,
They gave you away

Always absorbed in
The cares of others
Never a moment for
Yourself, you attract
The helpless, your eyes
They give you away.

I’m really thankful (and I keep mentioning this time and again) to twitter that I could meet wonderful people and that I’ve managed to keep in touch with a lot of them (on twitter or otherwise).
I’ve met people who I can share the best and worst days of my life with. I’ve met people who have introduced me to new ideas, who have inspired me to do things I wouldn’t have thought of doing. And I’ve met people who’ve helped me change my view of life.

I’ve been through the phase where I have spent days conversing with many people on random topics of mutual interest, where I’ve bombarded people’s timelines with inane updates, random twitpics and rants. I’ve participated in hashtag trending, some good some inane, all in good humour.

But twitter is not the same any longer.
The traffic has increased tremendously, and I’m guessing atleast a thousand new Indians sign up each day.
There has been a distinct souring of conversations, cheerful banter has been upstaged by moralistic conversations. Some are good valid discussions, others are just intended to put down people for what they say and what they do.

Some of us took a “detox” break from the 1st to the 15th of June and it has helped us to now view things from 10000 feet above ground. Now I can claim to see clearer, things that I just rushed into before. I find it comforting to stay away from them and not get myself into a tizzy over inane things. It has also helped me put twitter relationships into perspective like ShaaqT describes in a very good post . And lastly, I was going to write about the numbers game, but B50 has put it better than I ever could.

So I’ll be on twitter for the people I love and admire and for some good discussions, to participate and to follow. I’ll be on twitter to get to meet new interesting people (who I haven’t followed or haven’t discovered twitter yet). But twitter has changed, and not for the best.

How beautiful it looks
So many it feeds
These scars are fleeting
But I treasure these scars

Man, he rends my body
With claws of steel
He can’t hear my screams
Painful it is, still.

It marks a path
To his own destruction
These bare hills and land
I do not treasure.

At close to 39K tweets, I have wasted13 days or so in a period of 2.75 years.

Time Sink

Add to this the time spent reading the tweets in my timeline, and that goes up to atleast 65 days (5X). More than the number of Sundays in a year. All in all, a significant amount of time.

During a short vacation to Goa (the pictures from which I’m yet to post), I did go off twitter for close to 10 days. It was quite refreshing. Then the tweeting restarted in earnest and coupled with a lull at work, it really took off.

May has seen too many tweets (100+ per day, on an average)

Mad graph!

So when @surekhapillai tweeted this:

#detox was born. As usual @b50 took the lead and we followed it. Each one had a vested interest (which they might want to write about).

So as of now people involved in #detox are:

• @b50
• @netra
• @shaaqt
• @nomadwanderer
• @suddentwilight
• @aparnaandhare
• me

Others are welcome to join in too. If you’re following all of us, this means you’ll be seeing close to 200 tweets less in your timeline everyday. Easier on you too.

So how will I gainfully spend the time that I’ll save on tweeting?

• Spend more time crafting (yeah) blogposts
• Read more books as compared to links
• Do my taxes – the deadline is near
• Watch more movies (in cinema halls)
• Get reacquainted with music
• Meet more people physically
• Talk to friends who I haven’t talked to in a while

Like we were discussing the other day, there isn’t much value that twitter is adding to us now. We’ve forged the relationships that we wanted to on twitter, we have our own closed groups now and we’re satisfied with it. One of my long overdue posts is on how twitter has helped me.

So how can you reach me?

• Email: Its p at this domain. (p@…).
• Comment on my blog, maybe have a look at some posts from the past.
• Visit my Flickr account, I’ll be uploading pics soon.
• Visit my Tumblelog. This is where I’ll post links with short descriptions. Interestingness that I find, as I trawl the internet thoughts as they occur to me and quick reviews. Email posting makes it easier.
• Call me, if you have either of my phone numbers. No I’m not posting them here. Ask for it from someone you know, if you really need to reach me.
• A DM to me (that is, if I follow you) between 8 am and 10 pm will result in a text notification. A quick way to reach me during that time.
• Plancast. I use it to notify/be notified of events (in lieu of Facebook).

Where you won’t find me:

• Twitter. On any of my accounts.
• Facebook. I am also taking a holiday from Facebook .
• Foursquare. Yes, that too. Sorry, you won’t be able to stalk me for a while.
• Friendfeed. FF might cross post an occasional tumble/blog link to twitter, I can’t quite figure out those settings that exist. But they’re all automated.
• Google Buzz. Yeah that weird service that I use from Google Maps sometimes.

That’s pretty much it, I think.

What if you’re addicted to twitter and still want to find me there? Ummm… I’m sticking to the 15 day thing, so you won’t. I recommend you follow some of these wonderful people instead:

• @surekhapillai, who triggered the whole thing off.
• @anaggh, who is God.
• @aparanjape, a fellow citizen from Pune who is very well informed.
• @hemantmmehta, who tweets the most interesting links.
• @mumbaicentral, who has a razor sharp wit.
• @angadc, who is by far the most random person on twitter.
• @adityab, who writes wonderful short stories.
• @jun6lee, our friend from overseas who devours all sorts of interesting food that will make you jealous.

Consider this my followfriday or whatever. And then you can dig into my “Following” list and follow whoever you want to.

So that’s it from me. After midnight, you won’t see another tweet from me till the 15th of June. It’s become sort of high profile now.

See you (and your comments) around on this blog and flickr. Give me a call, let’s meet up. Have fun.

Cheers!

Twitter’s logic behind this is interesting. This also complements what the Korean researchers recently presented.

A hat tip to @kazimor for this info.

Looks pretty to me.

One downside. I use the https: protocol instead of http: for using twitter. That doesn’t work with this tool. I hope someone has a workaround for that.

Update:
https: now works.

Thanks Xavier!

It all started when @shadez tweeted that Buzz could be accessed via Google Maps for Symbian.

I wasn’t too clear about what I could do with it, especially with the whole app working very slowly.

So while I was waiting to meet a friend I was trying out Buzz on Maps. Here are the preliminary tweets:

First look at Buzz. Great for clusters of UGC. Linked images/media w/ text. Geotagged. On google. Hence powers local search. looks 2 be #win
And when I activate the #buzz layer on maps for mobile, it’s a mobile wikimapia. With a lot more UGC
the way i see it, if buzz remains light, and google executes it well (unlike wave) this will be great. Add goggles to the mix and its #win

So then I got down to do some more experimentation. And found out the following.

Buzz is a public feed. This means that I can locate other people’s updates on the map with location.

This screen shot tells me about where some random person is and what he’s “buzzing” about. Now integration with google, and the fact that this is a public feed means that it will show up in google search pretty soon. So this person is talking about food at a particular place (that an unfortunate event happened here is completely coincidental)

Similarly, this “buzz” below tells me about a tourist destination:

Like it happened with me and @ekalavyab when I was checking my location on the map and he happened to buzz that he was at ESquare. Makes for an interesting LBS app. In some ways, I would think it better than a foursquare.

At a glance, I can discover a lot of information:

By hovering over any of these I can see a lot of information. Added to that, I could drill down to what people in my vicinity (as I can see from the blue GPS dot – not visible here) are saying.

I can also upload information:

As you see here, what I am doing is creating content. Public content that is searchable. This is exactly what Google wants.
Now two scenarios can happen here.

1. Lets say, there is someone in the area looking for a good meal. Does a google search and this “buzz” comes up. Quite like a review. Maybe she decides to go for a meal. Now she can leave a (hopefully, positive) comment on my buzz and adds to the UGC.

2. Some hungry soul is passing by. He sees a the board, but not sure what it is, starts the goggles app on his mobile and he sees my buzz and possibly the previous user’s comment too.

Both these scenarios are set somewhere in the near future. This article on the San Francisco Chronicle is very relevant in the context of “social search”

“People are spending less time navigating the Internet on their own and are now navigating the Internet based on their friends’ recommendations or their friends’ activities,” said Dave Yovanno, chief executive of Gigya Inc., a Palo Alto firm that offers social-media services. “That’s one of the big trends we started picking up on probably four or five months ago.”

This comment is interesting. This is one of the reasons why Buzz could be the future for Google.

Then there’s Foursquare to contend with. From my usage of Foursquare, it’s still a game and people are more focused on checking-in rather than creating any useful content. There are deals and discounts, but they’ll have to scale up faster.

The other advantage Google has is the ability to link other properties it owns. Picasa, Blogger, Youtube, etc. Of course, we have Maps as an integral component. And there is the (in)famous launch of Buzz via GMail. Again, a bad decision on Google’s part. Karthik S on his website has written why Buzz is pointless.

But, here’s my biggest grouse with Google Buzz – it has the audacity to assume that my email contacts are the same ones that I want to socialize with, online.

I agree totally with what he says here. This has been a major mistake. Google did delink the auto follow quite fast as per reports. Search Engine Land also has a good article on Buzz here.

Some other tweets (not mentioning them here) talk about non-twitter users taking to Buzz quite well. Maybe that intial push through GMail did help. I have seen tweets that family members are on twitter, and so are colleagues.

I’ll leave you with one interesting use-case.

Let’s say that there is an emergency, maybe riots in multiple areas of a city. People can buzz with pictures and live reports. Of course they can be pinned to a particular location. Something like Ushahidi. They will also have the functionality to add images and videos, tag them and make them visible to a large audience in a lot of ways. In some ways, upgraded citizen journalists. It also has good potential for search-and-rescue over large areas.

There’s scope for local retailers to communicate to customers and offer them deals. It remains to be seen how they can push information on a real-time basis.

In closing: I think Buzz is the future for Google. Combined with maps and tools like goggles it builds a platform for next-generation search. Ideal places for rolling out such services would be places which have fast mobile internet (3G) and a large proportion of population with smartphones.

Comments welcome.

One of the reasons I’ve been unable to post to this blog is that I’ve been travelling. Others include pure laziness. Starting with Hyderabad and ending in Pune. Will put up a separate post on my travels, including one on the Fosters event at Hyderabad.

It’s been crazy moving around. First living in a suitcase, then shifting houses and once I’ve shifted, having to pack up and move to Pune in a week. Vacating places, uprooting myself, more living out of a suitcase. Though it hasn’t been traumatic, it’s been quite hectic – more than ever.

So, now I’m stationed in Pune for three months on work. No, I haven’t switched jobs. This is part contingency management, part training. New place, but somewhat familiar. Most importantly closer to Bombay, closer to home.

It should be good. Let’s see.

1. The Diwali breakfast spread. 5 kinds of Poha: Dry, in Milk, in Coconut Milk, in Curd, with Jaggery. Banana Halwa. Usal. Spicy Cucumber Raita. And we all get up really early to make it. (sorry, no pics).
   [Mini-update]: I missed out Ambadyachi Karam. Chutney made of some raw mango-like thing.
2. Meeting people: Friends and relatives. It isn’t the same here in Gurgaon, because the ties aren’t the same.
3. Puja. This one’s a comfort zone because you don’t feel awkward at other people’s houses. I’m not orthodox, just clumsy and I wouldn’t want to offend people by doing or saying something inappropriate.

And three things I don’t

1. Pollution. The firecrackers add to the notoriously polluted Bombay weather. That coupled with closely spaced buildings makes it worse. Not to mention the noise that reverberates. There’s more open space here.
2. Narkasur. Reenacting the tale symbolically is fine. But waking people, who want to sleep an extra hour, is just criminal. I prefer the way they do it in Goa. Collectively. Not individually.
3. Crowds. The maddening rush to get away from Gurgaon. Or the crowds at the airport. In the trains. Staying back is comfortable.

And on a totally different note. Here’s something to share the Diwali cheer. Anaggh has posted on his blog about contributing to Charity via blog comments, tweets, texts, gifts. As of yesterday evening and today morning more people have come forward. Wish us (@anaggh, @b50, @nichetechie, @atulkarmarkar, @prolificd @sizzler_chetan, @sudhiru, @shayonpal and we collectively contribute Rs. 11.50 to charity (Educating the girl child). You can also use the #deepwish tag

Additionally, I’m contributing Rs. 2 to the same charity, for every comment on my blog.

Have a great Diwali. And a happy new year to  all those celebrating it

[UPDATE 1]: @hp_lifelive has added Rs. 2. So now we’re at Rs. 13.50. Keep the tweets coming.

[UPDATE 2]: @iamshishir is contributing Rs. 2. That makes it Rs. 15.50. Update via Bombay Addict’s post (@b50)

[UPDATE 3]: Anaggh’s blog post is now updated to reflect status of #deepwish. Collection strategy is in progress. Keep checking tweets.