Amitabh Jotwani

Amid all the “Come on you gotta see it” and “Are you kidding me?…you don’t wanna see the film that has created records at the Golden Globe”,I finally succumbed and watched the much “raved for” Slumdog Millionaire

To be honest, I didn’t have too many expectations from the film even though the whole world was gushing about a film made by an American director with a boy from the Indian slums as the protagonist. The basic premise of the film however sounded interesting. A slum boy from Mumbai wins the “Who wants to be a millionaire” show by using all the real life experiences he has gone through. Brilliant idea I thought.

So I said to myself “It’s a film about India with a bloody good concept and it’s creating sensation all over the world…what the hell..I should watch it” – BLUNDER!

After watching the film, I see where Mr.Amitabh Bachchan was coming from and I totally relate to his sentiments.

Let me explain. Read the rest of this article »

Just realized how much distraction the dock, the desktop clutter (icons and the wallpaper) and the menu bar can cause. The weekend got a lot more productive with all that taken care of with little help from Menushade (Hides the menu bar) & Backdrop (hides the desktop icons and fills the background with a color of your choice) Highly recommended both…

related: MacBreak: Minimize distractions on your Mac (via 43folders)

The new Nursery Rhyme doing the rounds after the “Satyam fiasco” -

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Raju Raju? Yes baba.

Cheating us? No baba.

Telling Lies ? No baba.

Open the balance sheet! HA HA HA!

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Background: http://bit.ly/2IZzHk

If you have a few active friends on Facebook and you have email notifications turned on, you are probably familiar with the phrase “Facebook is f***ing spamming me” .

Long story short, I try to practice Inbox Zero and having Facebook send me emails on every comment, tag added, tag removed, friend added, friend removed and every other permutation and combination possible..phewww…is simply not acceptable.

(To prove my case, at one point I received 28 emails in 23 minutes Update: 44 emails in 31 minutes from Facebook, that’s more than an email per minute! – See below!)

So I set upon the task of finding a less invasive & distractive way of receiving these notifications. Now I could have created a smart folder and have everything from Facebook go in there automatically but that would still not solve the purpose. I would still be looking at these emails at some point to know what’s going on. Enter RSS feeds. Here’s what I ended up doing: Read the rest of this article »

After a few dozen invitations and daily dozes of “come on already” by the beloved early adopters, I have finally boarded the Facebook wagon. As much as I would like to debate that I have been pushed in to it by forces beyond my control, the experience actually hasn’t been too bad. Took me a little while to understand it’s intricacies, but I think I am now up to speed with it. It’s been fun really.

I had read some time back that Facebook is fast turning out primarily to be a photo sharing website rather than just another social site. And if you look at the thousands and thousands of pictures being uploaded and shared everyday, it’s not hard to believe.

Now as much as the internet community would like us to think that keeping photos online is the way to go and that it has replaced the local storage of your precious photos, I am still one of those who likes to keep a copy of a few good ones in iPhoto as well (the satisfaction of having local copies of your photos has been proven to give you a better sleep, even better than the sleep number mattresses). Hence the argument, that if I would be using Facebook to view shared pictures, I must find an easy way to be able to download them as well.

So when my cousin Kareena sent me the New Year pics on FaceBook, the quest to find an easy way to download them became stronger and eager and it led me to the discovery or rediscovery of this really slick piece of software called the PhotoBook (Mac Only) which does something really cool. It lets you browse all your friends’ albums and with one-click lets you import them into iPhoto on your Mac. And the best part – it’s free! I am pretty sure that there is a PC equivalent available, but am not motivated enough currently to go dig for it. Maybe sometime later this year

On that note, here’s wishing everybody a very Happy New Year 2009!