Punch the keys

I wish the India Vs Pakistan cricket semifinals were today. I mean I want it over with as soon as possible. Getting irritated with all the junk that people are coming up with. The rest time in between is really getting to be the Devil's workshop for many. There are morphed photos doing the rounds. Comments without abusing one others team's are hard to find. This one takes the cake! Today I got this video on facebook. https://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10150172366125325 The video is that of a Hindi News channel reporting that India is going to lose the match on 30th since its all pre-arranged because of the betting. But hold on. Since there is still time till 30th, I am sure someone else could come up with something that could beat this one for the top crap slot.

Blackberry, iPhone and Android. A few months back I got to handle the  Blackberry Bold ,  Motorola Milestone  and the iPhone 3GS on the same day, thanks to my bro-in-law visiting us. I had been wanting to put in this blog since, but never worked out. Anyways, the experience was superb. I am used to Android on my Samsung Galaxy 3 mobile and had used a Blackberry 8700 couple of years earlier. But I was always interested in the iPhone's usability and wanted to have a go at it. The Bold was way ahead of the 8700 that I had used. So were the specs of the Milestone from my own Galaxy. Getting to play around with three of the leading mobile platforms was cool. The best thing was that I got to try out all the three different mobile versions simultaneously. I really liked all the three models. Loved Blackberry's keypad and the typing experience best of the three. iPhone's fluid feel and superb touch experience. I liked it better than Android's for the sheer experience.

Sometime in the end of Dec last year, I used a Facebook app called profile-maker . Was really impressed with the simple interface and usability of the app. I changed my own profile using the app. The look did not come out as cool as the one that was put up on the profile-maker site, but still liked it enough to go ahead with the publish. Here is a screenshot that I took at that time. The profile has changed with other entries since. Edited out the ads and blurred some portions. Also have a look at the creative ways people have been using the new Facebook profile interface here . Anyways, came across this now cause I happened to look at my profile on Facebook after a long time. Haven't been all that active on FB this year for that matter.

Here is a video of Mr. George Galloway and his view of the 19 March 2011 attack on Libya.  A nice name, Operation odyssey dawn, has been given to the military action so that the media can write nice stories and have good material presented to its readers.

I read this great news about the Medical Council of India deciding to include topics of medical professionalism such as Ethics etc in the course curriculum. This is a welcome move, given the number of cases that come up in the news paper about malpractices in the medical profession. I would say all professional courses should have such kind of topics taught. Although it is definitely up to each individual to practice what they have learned, either in school or in their own homes, it does not help that these topics are totally avoided in the mainstream of education. Topics on ethics, time management, stress management are topics which would be helpful in any professional's life. As it is today, these topics are all swept under the carpet. Is it a cultural thing? Or is India just late into creating genuine professionals via its education system? Whatever it be, we must get started somewhere. I am afraid very few rotten scoundrels are enough to spoil a majority of the nice folks

I have always been a sucker for statistics. I really don't know why. I hated statistics as a subject when I had it in school. I felt the standard deviation and all the mean were knowingly named such. Anyways I like to read about statistics and comparisons. Love infographics the most. However, I have never liked the way statistics were used to report news. Although I like to read about these, I firmly believe that statistics can be used to prove anything. It just depends on what you want to prove and in which direction you want your argument to go. By definition, statisticians need to be extremely unbiased and detached from the topic they research else the reading are definitely going to end up skewed whether they like it or not. It is even more difficult for readers since we definitely have a preconceived notion of the topic and our bias get in the way of interpreting the data. Unconciously, we choose to derive from it what we want else we trash the whole idea as bogus! Anyways

Internet Explorer version 9 is out. The last release of IE was version 8 on March 19, 2009. I had been waiting for this release to see what innovations Microsoft would have brought in. I use all the three browsers, Firefox, Chrome and IE, for different purposes. Its always good to see a new software release and get to see new innovation. I guess there are a lot of features that IE9 has and definitely feels fast in the first impression. Also like the way the browser interacts with Windows 7 features or pin etc. 

The day before I noticed an application named " ON smarter address book " showing up in my notifications as finished installing. I have no clue how this application got installed on my mobile. This was the first time I was seeing this app in the market place. Not sure if my tinkering with the android caused this, but I was very puzzled. Surely, the tinkering my 5 yr old daughter does on my phone would not have done the install?!! I had read about google using the "kill switch"  on some applications but is it possible to install any remotely? Yes, but that was only possible if someone used my online google account and installed some application on my mobile. This was getting weirder by the minute. On top of this, I realized that a couple of applications, mainly free trial kids games, were missing from my phone. Ok. that would surely have been the kill switch. But there was no way of finding out. I can probably understand Google's decision to quickly remove any

I recently came across this interview on the flipkart blog. An interview with Mr. Subroto Bagchi, where he puts across what he thinks is the difference between a true professional and being professionally qualified. A highlight of the interview that I found quite interesting is given below.  http://blog.flipkart.com/interview-subroto-bagchi-the-professional-mindtree-go-kiss-the-world In The Professional - you highlight the difference between the true professional versus one who is professionally qualified, what exactly is the difference? The fundamental difference is that professional qualification and professional experience can make you very competent. Let’s say you are a first rate nephrologist and you do a surgical procedure brilliantly, but you know what? You’re in the kidney racket. So, are you professionally qualified? Of course, you are. Are you being a professional? No, you’re not. The book deals with a situation where Supreme Court lawyers in the  ‘BMW Case’, a famous