Blogging from India

Dad’s Taxi is taking a road trip to India for the next few weeks. All my posts will be from there. I’ll be giving my unique perspective on my travels as I make my way through the land where I was hatched.

This blog entries will be interesting in that I will be reporting the trip from the eyes of my 10 yr old child.. I will ask her to give me some feedback on what she observes on her trip. NM has been to India only once and I know her fresh eyes will truly observe and report back on the trip from a wide eyed innocence of youth.  One of her assignments from school is to keep a daily diary of her trip.. hopefully she’ll share this with us!

First stop will be the nation’s capital New Delhi. The field hockey world championship is currently going on, I’m going to try to get tickets to see at least one game, but I won’t hold up high hopes of that happening.

My better half is already there and she already has experienced first hand the smog and dirt which has caused her to head to the doctors with a throat infection.

We get a daily blow by blow activity of her  (mis) adventures as we speak to her every night. Thank god for Vonage.

Kids are so excited for their trip. I’m just queasy and kind of leery of the whole trip. Went there few years  ago and was both impressed/unimpressed with progress in India. No doubt technology is everywhere, but the infrastructure to support the technology still has gaps.  Inflation and corruption is rampant.. Yes the outsourcing has made the country wealthier, yet the gap between classes has gotten wider. I could go on and on.. but I won’t as this article will turn more negative than shine on the accomplishments of the “World’s largest democracy”.

Where else can you go to where the beggers can afford cell phones,  yet still live in cities within cities.

To get a true picture of life in India for the lower class a must see movie is  Slumdog Millionaire. It depicts the life of the lower class (hut dwellers) of Mumbai in it’s harshest of realities. Many Mumbaites will disagree with what is depicted in this movie, but what you see is reality.

If you want to get an really good view of the diversity and the Indian diaspora, you should visit our sister site BharatBeat, where we share insights on Bollywood and various links related to the India.

New links: iPhone

I keep seeing some great sites related to Free (which is my favorite word) iPhone applications. See the Sidebar for this new category of links.  Let’s start with 6 iPhone apps that will save you a bundle.

Facebook Addiction Anonymous

I’ve been thinking over the last few days with my addiction to Facebook.  Is there a therapy group that can help me with this addiction?

Here are some of the top ten  symptoms of a Facebook Addict:

1. You are constantly thinking of what your next status update is going to be.
2. You find yourself looking at your iPhone, to see whether anyone has responded to your last posting.
3. Before you say hello to your family, you race to the laptop/desktop, to get on facebook when you get home
4. Your Facebook personna and your real personna blend into one.
5. You yell at your child to get off  Facebook, so you can use their computer to get on.
6. You tag pictures of strangers on Facebook, just so you get some responses.
7. Just to increase your network, you invite people to be your “friend”, even the ones  that you can’t really stand.
8. You take pictures of yourself and post them, just to get attention
9. You make sure all your Other social networking sites, get RSS feeds from your account
10. You look at this list and nod your head, saying, yes been there done that.

I find myself dying to get on Facebook just to see if anyone has “poked me back”. A few of my friends and relatives have been poking me and I’ve been “poking” them back for the past few months.. I guess that’s the same type of pleasure you get when you “ping” a friend for no other reason than to just “ping” them.. Don’t ask me what that means.. It sounded good when I typed it.

Fortunately at work, we are restricted from getting a FB fix. At first this annoyed me but after reading the article in Mashable, I kind of appreciate it. Mashable’s stats reflected and documented that Facebook is “the Web’s ultimate TimeSink”.

The excerpt below tells it all.

The average U.S. Internet user spends more time on Facebook than on Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Microsoft, Wikipedia, and Amazon combined. Think about that for a moment.

I get on my teen’s case for racing to her computer day and night for her Facebook updates, but what about me? I find that my fingers start twitching for my fix, if I don’t check Facebook at least once a day for MY status updates and pokes from family and friends.

Now with Facebook’s integration with Google Gmail, you can get your RSS feeds directly into your Buzz screen in Gmail account.

Oh wait, did I tweet this already?? OMG, I just realized that my addiction goes beyond Facebook.. Now I need to get my tweet fix for today. Of course you can get both fixes with your Buzz.. Now doesn’t that sound like some kind of high you get when you take some illegal narcotics or drink too much?

Ok, I’m going to start my own anonymous addiction group on Facebook (for Facebook and Twitter addicts).. Let’s call it… Are you ready…drum roll please..

FaceTweet Anonymous (FA). Will you join?

Blogging For Gifts – A teenager’s Lesson

As I was sitting this morning watching the snow accumulate from my office window, I came across this article that made me think.. “Is it bribery or is it capitalism to get compensation to Blog as an intern?”

Techcrunch (Excellent covering technology news, Web 2.0 )is a well respected blog that I subscribe to and I was reading the aplology they  issued issued about the teenager (I will only use the intern’s initials here (DB)) they fired when DB admitted to taking compensation  (gifts) for blogging about a startup he was doing a write up on.. The intern in question was of course suspended and terminated, but it raised for me a moral dilemma.

Question: Are we as  bloggers are morally obligated to NOT accept compensation in any form, or is it acceptable get compensated for our write ups?

When I used to blog on Blogger, earning money from my blog was encouraged.  I know here at WordPress this against the “rules of usage”.  I totally respect this principle

DB was wrong with what he did, but have you googled, blogging for revenue? You will get thousands of ideas on how you can make money from blogging. I think DB took this idea to an extreme and as I can see from his posting, he truly apologetic for his error in judgement. Yet, for me as a teenager (I’m role playing here) being offered (requesting) compensation, I think the temptation to be compensated for my writing would be too great.

As parents we teach our children “to do the right thing” yet we also encourage them “to reach for the stars”,  be it via achievements,  financially or  socio-economicallly.

Yes what DB did was wrong.. Yet, I would think that society’s morals need to be questioned here. What would you do?  When I sit back and think, this answer is hard for me to answer.

On one hand I applaud DB for making the most of his opportunity. On the other hand, I think what DB did was reprehensible. I’m actually torn between these two emotions.

Have I gone off my moral compass? I probably have, but after what I see in the corporate world on a day by day basis, the rewards for being diligent and hard work is at times highly suspect.  In many corporation, it’s not what you know or how you do it, it ’s the perception of what you do to reach your objectives.. Yet this is a topic for another day.

DB’ s apology on his site is genuine no doubt. Yet in this capitilistic society, did the punishment fit the crime?

From DB’s Blog entry:

This is the first day of the next learning stage for me. Yes, I am young, but from here, I can only learn more. To my family, friends, colleagues and especially, TechCrunch, I am sorry. I am taking this entire experience, learning and moving on.

I’m sure that this is one of the most controversial postings I’ve made AND I’m leaving myself open to flames from my readers..

Airplane Free Fall – Survival Techniques

I was going to write today about the Apple introduction of the iPad, but of course that’s already been beaten to death by almost all the techies on Web 2.0. I even got into a flame ”situation” on my Facebook .. but that is a story for another day..

So I was thinking (yes I do that on occassion), and just skimming My Yahoo Page for steals and deals and I came across a heading that reall got me thinking…

The heading just struck me as too good to pass up to write about: Free falling from an airplane at 35,000 and how to survive.. Knowing this could really save your life, or may just make you want to shake your head… For me, it was a little of both 

Today I saw this article from Popular Mechanics on how to survive a free fall from 35, 000 feet.  Well I know that I won’t go to sleep tonight without thinking about this kind of event.. Gives me the warm fuzzies.  Since I’ll be doing some traveling across the world in a few months, just knowing that someone cares enough to tell me how to survive, in case I wake up on the plane and I’m free falling at 35K.

Needless to say, this article is informational with a capital I..  Personally, I know that if I’m conscious as I free fall, I will reach for my iPhone (if it’s still on my person) and try to get a signal so I can surf over to the Popular Mechanics site and try to survive this horrific situation.

So what’s the trick to surviving?

• You will be on the ground within 3 minutes.. whether you want to or not. Always remember, it’s the trip that matters, not the planning.
• Become a Zen master… accept your situation and use the next few minutes of life to plan your descent and “landing”.  Basically become one with yourself (because within minutes there will be multiple pieces of you scattered) AND be prepared for impact… Of course if you know you are going into water.. You might want to be a “Pencil” and go straight down.. I love this: if a feet-first entry is inevitable, the most important piece of advice, for reasons both unmentionable and easily understood, is to clench your butt. According to the article, the probability of survival increases as you will come back up after hitting the water and not drowning..
• Try to make sure you don’t land on your head (for obvious reasons).  I surely don’t want to make a mess with brain matter splatter… what a visual!
• Know what terminal velocity means..as you approach the surface you will go faster…
• If you are heavier, you will go faster as weight determines how fast you are going to fall. This means, my attempt at weight loss will be beneficial in case I’m in this situation. Heavier people hurtle to earth faster…
• If you are strapped into your seat, you might have a better chance of survival..the article talks about a miracle survivor of a plane crash into the Amazon and how she survived… If you are not, you are pretty much on your own.

Of course,  by the time I finished reading this article, I was pumped and ready to try out this scenario. Not!

The article does provide links to another articles on the safest seats on an  airplane.

I’m sitting here thinking… If I’m free falling from 35K, what would I do and what would I be thinking of.. I surely would not be thinking of techniqus for landing….

Now I know how the passengers on  my favority TV show (which is returning next week for it’s final season) —> Lost, survived their 30K fall from Oceanic flight 815 onto the beach of  The Islan! They fell with the plane and survived the impact..

Hope you enjoyed this humorous interlude of dad’s taxi.  I think the probability of falling out of a plane and surviving is about the same as my chances of winning the Mega Millions Jackpot tonite which is $144 Million!

Dad

Kids and On-Line Usage

I heard about this yesterday and as a parent of a Tween and a Teenager, I absolutely couldn’t wait to comment on this.

From the NY Times:

The average young American now spends practically every waking minute — except for the time in school — using a smart phone, computer, television or other electronic device, according to a new study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. Those ages 8 to 18 spend more than seven and a half hours a day with such devices, compared with less than six and a half hours five years ago, when the study was last conducted. And that does not count the hour and a half that youths spend texting, or the half-hour they talk on their cellphones. And because so many of them are multitasking — say, surfing the Internet while listening to music — they pack on average nearly 11 hours of media content into that seven and a half hours. The study’s findings shocked its authors, who had concluded in 2005 that use could not possibly grow further, and confirmed the fears of many parents whose children are constantly tethered to media devices. It found, moreover, that heavy media use is associated with several negatives, including behavior problems and lower grades. Dr. Michael Rich, a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital Boston who directs the Center on Media and Child Health, said that with media use so ubiquitous, it was time to stop arguing over whether it was good or bad and accept it as part of children’s environment, “like the air they breathe, the water they drink and the food they eat.” While most of the young people in the study got good grades, 47 percent of the heaviest media users — those who consumed at least 16 hours a day — had mostly C’s or lower, compared with 23 percent of those who typically consumed media three hours a day or less. The heaviest media users were also more likely than the lightest users to report that they were bored or sad, or that they got into trouble, did not get along well with their parents and were not happy at school. The study could not say whether the media use causes problems, or, rather, whether troubled youths turn to heavy media use.
…On average, young people spend about two hours a day consuming media on a mobile device, the study found. They spend almost another hour on “old” content like television or music delivered through newer pathways like the Web site Hulu or iTunes. Youths now spend more time listening to or watching media on their cellphones, or playing games, than talking on them. …The heaviest media users, the study found, are black and Hispanic youths and “tweens,” or those ages 11 to 14.

My kids do spend some quality time with us, be it between Facebook and texting or checking email (multiple accounts), or playing on-line games, or playing DS, or playing on the iPhone..

As a parent, it is our responsibility to not reward our children when they turn to technology instead of the family, but to encourage them to communicate with us as opposed to the new “boob tube” their on-line media connectivity.

We (parents) are the ones that give the kids all the devices that enable them to spend all their waking (non-school) hours on them.. Any idea on what we can do to reduce this?

Simple:

• Limit usage by establishing hours of use.. I’m sure this is easier said than done. I have not had much success with this.
• Establish family time – I don’t mean dinner time.. I mean be it 1/2 hour or one hour, this is a time, where you sit and talk.. We do this in our house every day.. I love to see my kids just sit there and say nothing much.

• Sign Contracts of Use: Sign a contract with your child on usage limits of technology. I’ve tried this and it works about 25% of the time..

• Reward a child with technology only when they deserve it: I know this is rather a reckless statement. Which parent doesn’t want to give their child a cell phone or a Wii or a computer to do “schoolwork” or for “entertainment”?.   This is very hard to implent in the technology era..

Do you have any suggestions?

4 Ways to score iPhone Apps

iPhone Apps

I came across this great article on how to find newly “Free” apps for the iPhone on CNET.

Worth the visit, since new apps are becoming free every day.. and you know my motto: “if it’s free, it’s for me”…

1. Free App a Day – this site is pretty cool. It tells you in calendar format what the free application is by day.. Very visual… I especially like the APPS hall of fame.
2. Free App Alert – Freebie Alert… paid apps that are now free.. what more can you ask for?
3. Twitter App Alert – You want ur iPhone to flip out with tweets on apps that are now free? This is for you.
4. Bargain Bin and Pandorabox are 2 applications that you MUST have on your iPhone!

CRAVE- Gadget Blog from CNET

So you CRAVE information, here’s  a CNET site that I came across that does that.. This site is for those people that are into Gadgets and latest news related to.

The name says it all.. Everything for the geek and the geek wanna be. You all know who you are…

Dad..

India Links

India

India Links on Dad’s Taxi

Today, I launched a sub-site for all things India Related.  Now you are probably asking why did I do this?

A few days ago, I was planning my trip to India I started researching sites which would help in planning this trip. Of course being the way I am, I quickly realized that this was going to be  a huge task and I wanted to develop a centralized location for all India related sites.  This quickly led to  information overload..

So today I created a site which will provide links for sites that will provide sites that I will utilize to plan my trip. Additionally, the sites I list on this page are excellent sites for anyone that wants to learn more about India.

Hope you find my finding useful.

BharatBeat – Intro

Hi everyone.. Haven’t blogged for a few weeks as I was on vacation since mid December.  Well it was great for the past few weeks, time marches forward and Dad’s taxi is ready for 2010.

Alas the new year is upon us and the End of Year Revelry is behind us.. Even though I typically utilize my end of year (annual) vacation to rest and rejuvenate, this year was anything but that, but that’s for another day.

I hope everyone had a great holiday and I wish everyone a Happy and Healthy 2010!

I want to share with everyone a new site that I’m collaborating on with a good friend of mine.  He also happens to be decent tennis player.. which is a bonus.

Bharatbeat.com – This South Asian portal  is a collaboration with a friend of mine and we will be re-launching in a few weeks.  For the South Asian Community, this will be a one stop shop for everything that is from the Indian Subcontinent.

Our goal is to be the Net-Guide for the Indian Community. In addition to providing forums for a two way communication with our members, we will offer RSS feeds from news sites related to the Indian Sub-Continent.

On this site we will have links galore, as well as administered forums for real time questions and comments.  We will also have  News, Entertainment, Blog Rolls, Forums and of course the ability to search using both Bing and Google.

Dad’s taxi and BharatBeat will be  tightly linked. You will have access to the links site from Dad’s Taxi on the BharatBeat Site.

Today we re-launched BharatBeat! Do stop by the site and take a look around..