“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, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” –Steve Jobs
The Khan Academy
This is simply too awesome not to blog about! 
Prepare to be stunned. If you are a student, or have kids who are students, or (like me) are a student for life, you will find this site to be an unbelievably rich resource for anyone who wants to learn about topics like Math, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, History and many other subjects.
Watch the video below: Continue reading…
Two TEDx Events and a Vacation
I have been invited to speak at not one, but two TEDx events in February – at TEDxBITSGOA, in Goa on February 6th, and TEDxSSN, in Chennai on February 9th.
Why I came back…
This is a long overdue post, but life has been kind of busy for me since December last year…
Saying goodbye to your baby…
At the end of FOSS.IN/2009, I announced that I was stepping down as the project lead of Team FOSS.IN.
It was really hard for me to do – FOSS.IN is one of the most important things I have done in my life, right up there with my BBS CiX (India’s first online service of any sort), my column for PCQuest, getting married to my college sweetheart, becoming a father, and learning to sing and play “Let It Be” on my guitar.
Continue reading…
Location Based Services should service Needs, not Opportunities
(I get yelled at a lot when I post something more than a couple of tweets long on Twitter, with people asking for a blog post that consolidates the thoughts. So here is one – let’s see how this goes…)
Location Based Services (LBS) are services that take into account the user’s current location (determined by GPS or similar technologies), and provide information based on this information. They are seen as the next big thing in the mobile applications world, but have so far failed to take off, other than a few check-in services (e.g. those obnoxious Foursquare tweets you see on Twitter).
Location based services haven’t failed so far because they don’t work – there just aren’t any useful LBS offerings that solve any real problem.
Continue reading…
Thoughts on Criticism (Repost)
Back in 2003, I went through a particularly bad time, and was on the point of giving up on something. Then someone sent me a quote on Criticism, and I proceeded to gather a few more.
Today, I feel equally down when, after working so hard, I face a similar situation. So here’s is that post, back from 2003, to remind myself about it:
Continue reading…
Happy 19th Birthday, Linux!
Today (August 25th) is the 19th “birthday” of Linux, so I thought I’d wish everyone’s favourite computing platform a Very Happy Birthday!
Why August 25th? Well, just read up about it
How I use my iPad
Continue reading…
Ever since I got myself an Apple iPad (64GB, Wifi only) in early April, people have been asking me why I bought it, and how I use it. These questions just got more common once people saw me on the NDTV techlife awards, with the iPad glued to my hand. And since Twitter is such a “smoke puff in a hurricane” medium, people keep asking the same questions over and over again – enough for me to put together this blog post. Which has been languishing for a while now, until Kishore Bhargava, who was also putting together a rather broader post about iPad usage, pinged me and asked me for inputs. I’ll update this post and link to his when he publishes it.
Raghu Dixit Project in London
Last year, at FOSS.IN, the Raghu Dixit Project performed during the event closing ceremony. People went nuts with delight.
Sadly, no video of the show exists, but Raghu recently performed in London, as part of a wildly successful UK tour, and the BBC filmed it and put it up! And here it is, straight from the BBC site:
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video="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/emp/london-raghu-dixit.flv"
width="598"
height="370"
description="Raghu Dixit Oroject Live in London"
clickurl="http://raghudixit.com"
clicktarget="_blank"
player="3"
autoplay="false"
loop="false"
autorewind="true"
splashimage="http://www.bbc.co.uk/asiannetwork/events/melas/2010/images/london-raghu-dixit_598x370.jpg"
/]
Goodbye, TRRK! :’(
Dr.TR Rajesh Kumar
I just received a message from Mrinal‘s dad, Babu Kalakrishnan, that Dr.TR Rajesh Kumar, who was known as TRRK on the CiX BBS, passed away last week.
TRRK was effectively the Godfather of the CiX BBS, and in the nicest possible way. Many members of the BBS owed their online existence to him – which was amazing for someone who lived in far away Alleppey.
He would religiously dial into the BBS, participate in all discussions, help resolve differences, and generally maintain peace and order in what was then India’s only online service.
Over the years, he became an active participant in many online forums, and made it a point to stay in touch with as many people as possible.
Ongoing condolences can be found here.
Rest In Peace, TRRK. You will be missed.