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To think or to google

Just came back today from Mumbai after a really eventful weekend. Lots of development on the personal and the professional front. Anyways that comes later.

On my way back I read an interesting article by Andrew Sullivan in the Times of India, something which talks about how Internet has been effecting our thinking and reading habits. It was a great read, especially when I had no Internet connection handy and I had deliberately left my cell phone switched off.

Some things to ponder upon

• How many times do you really go watch a movie or read a book before you have read its review somewhere on the net?
• How many times do you bother to pick up a book to research a topic
• Do you read a restaurant review before you head out there for a dinner
• Do you also keep clicking on every link you come across a web page before you reach the end of the page

Internet has been one of the greatest tools for disseminating information but also at the same time we are becoming used to a kind of life where we hit the Internet for any curious thought. We are unknowingly becoming more and more impatient when it comes to reading or applying some original thought to any event or occurrence.

Andrew Sullivan writes in the article ” The experience of reading only one good book for a while, and allowing its themes to resonate in the mind, is what we risk losing. I would carry a single book around with me for days when younger, letting its ideas splash around in my head, not forming an instant judgment (for or against) but allowing the book to sit for a while, as the rest of the world had its say — the countryside or pavement, the crowd or train carriage, the armchair or lunch counter. Sometimes, human beings need time to think things through, to allow themselves to entertain a thought before committing to it.“

With a deluge of information we are slowly building up enormous capability to scour through it but at the same time we remain detached and quite often unaffected.

Quoting from the article again “Right now, we may be maximally overwhelmed by all this accessible information, but the time may come when our mastery of the new world allows us to gain more perspective on it. Here’s hoping. Shallowness, after all, does not necessarily preclude depth. We just have to find a new equilibrium between the two. We need to be both pond-skaters and scuba divers. We need to master the ability to access facts while reserving time and space to do something meaningful with them“

To the questions I have listed above, I do all of it. I read reviews of books before I buy them, the same goes for visiting a restaurant or going for a movie. And quite often while browsing I end up at pages totally unrelated to what I had started from, all because I clicked on most of the links I came across on the page.  And when I have an opinion, I go online to check what others feel about it and I do get influenced by  the opinions of some unknown people out there. I sometimes wonder if so much of information available so easily will take the fun out of the small surprises life has in store for us. Quite often before I visit a place I know which restaurant to go , which route to take, what to buy and what all places are there for sightseeing. Because  I had googled for it the previous night.

Yes, I Google quite often then I think or explore anything…..what do you do?

Off and on

Last couple of days have been a mixed bag for me. After a lot of planning I could finally take a break from my not so hectic schedule( I have seen worser days) and what a break it has been. I first decided to take a train to Mumbai. Bangalore to Mumbai is a full 24 hours train journey. It took me back to my college days where I would travel for 52 hours to reach home from college.The  only thing you could do was sleep ,eat and sleep again. Well hats off to Laloo ( and his team at rail mantralaya) trains are comfortable and cleaner. And with functional charging points available in plenty, I could very well enjoy long stored movies on my laptop, a good amount of sleep and treat myself to some greasy but tasty grub which they sell in the trains .

With crude hitting new highs every other day , the airlines tickets are becoming more and more expensive by day. That’s still OK when you compare the time taken to travel but when it comes to flying out of Bangalore I would prefer taking a train for shorter journeys. It takes approximately two and half hours from my place to the airport. It makes no sense to fly to places like Chennai, Hyderabad and Mangalore .I was wondering why can’t we have a dedicated rail track to Airport from the City railway station. We can have check in counters at the railway station itself. Imagine you can go to the railway station, check in there, hop on to a train and reach the airport in less then an hour. And also imagine the amount of fuel saving possible.

Anyway before I digress further, the main reason why I am off blogging is the painfully slow and intermittent connectivity offered by my reliance data card. This is the second time I got taken in by this piece of s*** sold by Reliance under the garb uninterrupted connectivity. Couple of things which I have observed with Reliance. They are very prompt when it comes to reminding you to pay your bill. They will never mail you the bills and expect you to pay on time.Its only when the due date is over they will inundate you with reminder calls and SMSes. It has the worst customer care you will ever come across. Nothing gets resolved there ,its just that you end up wasting your time and keep talking to some ten different people every-time you call them.

Well till I get back to my regular broadband, I will have to bear with this and so will I be (Off and On)-line , at the mercy of datacard.So before I get disconnected again, I am hitting the publish button.

Reviewing employers

Somebody just sent me a link to a site called workexp.com , a place where you can share your opinion with others about your employer. I have seen a few more like jobgypsy.com and criticat . Something useful , I would say. Here’s my take on these sites.

Criticat

This site has been there for quite sometime . The first post in the criticat official blog was on Aug -07. Among the three sites I checked criticat seems to score better in terms of layout and features. It has a well defined rating mechanism for a fairly comprehensive set of parameters. You can rate your employer negative too. Something an unhappy employee would like to make good use of. You can advice your employer , discuss  and share your opinion with other users. The best feature I liked was “Shout”. Something like one thing which you would do if you were the CEO. Read it , some of the shouts are really good.

Workexp.com

This seems more like a very well managed blog actually. However the categories here are more imaginative unlike criticat, so if you are someone who enjoys your office gossip and likes sharing it ,with other folks , I think you will like it. You might come across the juiciest tidbits like layoffs , scams , frauds etc. Like one funny bit of news was some kinda strike by infy cab drivers. Overall I found this more engaging and has a more community feel to it.

Jobgypsy

Nothing much to write about. Quite ordinary actually. A few standard fields like review of work culture, and future prospects, salary and recruitment process. The review qualities are very average.

Criticat has got quite a large number of reviews on the site, but however not all very useful. The concept of asking employees to review employers sounds great in principle , but without much community participation , it doesn’t seem to be heading anywhere. We still tend to restrict our opinion about employers to ourselves and friends. Very few take the pain of sharing it an online forum.

Meanwhile if you have some time read this blog. Something to read about Microsoft India. There seem to be some folks who have a lot to share about their employer.

Indian Internet survey

I happened to read about the the Juxt consult research “India Online 2008″. The general stats go like

• The regular internet user is up by 19% to 30 million and the total Internet user population is 35 million
• 30 million are urban users and 5 million rural population
• 77% of users belong to the age group of 19 – 35 %

Some of the top activities of the internet users are

• Emailing – 91%
• Job Search – 72%
• Messaging – 70%
• Reading news – 63 %
• Sports – 57%
• Multimedia download – 54%
• Dating /friendship – 50%
• Matrimonial search – 49%
• Search engines – 49 %

Coming to what interests me most ,job boards. Naukri.com is preferred by 42% users in India , monster stands at 25 % and Timesjobs comes at 16%. So naukri seems to be way ahead of the others.

There has been a post on watblog on the juxt consult report and has put across some interesting analysis and points.

Btw another interesting piece of news ( or rumour) that Reliance ( ADAG ) seems to be planning to come with a Job portal. It would be interesting to see what they have to offer. But the fun part of things is whenever you have competition , there is a lot of poaching of staff. Whether the business works or not , there is a happy guy with a fatter pay check.

I am all inspired

I was just reading through some posts on a slew on “Me too” portals hitting the Indian web space. There is no denying the fact that once we have a seen a new concept , any new portal , it is followed by a few more similar ones. And they all claim to be “Different” and “Better” than the other.

I have compiled this list, not exhaustive, I am sure there would be many I would have missed. Secondly I have just listed down the names without accounting who came first. In fact this post had a long draft life. It has been in the making for more then three weeks. I have put the categories and then kept adding the portal names as and when I came across any names

1. Travel sites : Makemytrip , Yatra, ezeego1, cleartrip, travelguru, travelchacha ( They have the funniest TV Commercial ), flightraja ( this is called Via now )

2. Real estate : 99acres, makaan, magicbricks, indiaproperties

3. Recruitment portals : TechTribe, Reffster, Wisestepp, Toostep

4. Online Community : Minglebox , DesiMartini, BigAdda, Indyarocks, Ibibo. I have intentionally left out Orkut, facebook and few others

5. Photo Printing : Picsquare , merasnap, iTasveer

6. Movie rentals : Seventymm, bigflix, Moviemart, Clixfix, Bigflix

7. Great Indian Shaadi business : This segment seems to be going the travel site way, more sites coming up on a regular basis. After the likes of shaadi.com, simplymarry.com, bharatmatrimony, jeevansaathi.com now we have secondshaadi.com and metroshaadi.com

8. SMS advertising : MGinger, Youmint, sms2india, admad.mobi, 160by2.com

I can recall a few more in categories like video sharing, automobile, photosharing etc. If you look at sites mentioned above most of them seem to be doing quite fine. At least in terms of keeping themselves visible ( at least I remember the names ). Does this imply that the pie is big enough for everyone to survive or we need to wait for some more time to see how many survive.

There is no denying that all of the above sites are inspired ones. And quite often we have seen the “inspired sites “and so called “tried and tested” stuffs catching the interests of the money bags. I call such instances as “All inspiration and little perspiration”.

But at the same time the simple thing would be to let the market forces decide what survies and what does not. The internet space can accomodate a lot of players and finally at the end of the day the fittest will survive. for the time being I feel even I should get inspired and see if I land somewhere.