A scribble review of iPad

Well, the iPad is here in India - in exclusivity at least. For those of you who think its an oversized iPhone or iPod touch, you may have had your share of finding worms in the Apple. For those of you who are more than impatient to lay your hands on it, well, there is no denying that this device has design and a user interface that is unmatched to date. You may have read better reviews earlier, but this is completely user-generated so I hope you find something of use in here. I'll just go through the basic specs and my take on them -

Pros -

Size and weight

Height: 9.56 inches (242.8 mm)

Width: 7.47 inches (189.7 mm)

Depth:0.5 inch (13.4 mm)

Weight:1.5 pounds (0.68 kg) Wi-Fi model;1.6 pounds (0.73 kg) Wi-Fi + 3G model

My take: This is a big plus for those who like to carry their e-world with them. Big thumbs up.

Display

• 9.7-inch (diagonal) LED-backlit glossy widescreen Multi-Touch display with IPS technology


• 1024-by-768-pixel resolution at 132 pixels per inch (ppi)


• Fingerprint-resistant oleophobic coating


• Support for display of multiple languages and characters simultaneously

My take: Brings forward the iPhone & iPod rich display experience. Another thumbs up.

Sensors

• Accelerometer


• Ambient light sensor

My take: Not something to rave about but relief for those who like to read their news lying on the bed or play motion games.

Cons -

Capacity

• 16GB, 32GB, or 64GB flash drive

My take: Isn't it a computer we are talking about? I know iTunes can sing so much but if software is not your thing then why skip the basic hardware Mr Jobs? Thumbs down

Input and output

• Dock connector port

My take: I chose this feature only as this is the most glaring, and as Tina Fey would say in Date Night - 'the computer sticky thing' aka the USB port gets short shrift here with undue bias for the 30-pin dock connector port that Apple is so fond of, like iTunes. Great, but surely something as basic as this deserves your attention again Mr Jobs?

So, to sum it up, for the Mac, iPhone and iPod lovers, this is surely something to die for. For those who are gradually soaking in the Apple experience, well the jury is still out. With a number of cheaper alternatives in the tablet PC as well as netbook segment, the price-conscious Indian consumer does need a lot more convincing. Besides, on the software front, there are so many open-source projects competing for your attention which make you think twice before settling for style & design over utility. Even then, the product could turn out to be a gamechanger in ways more than one - as it does eliminate the need (so I feel) to go in for a separate ebook reader, gaming console and music player (even if the sceptics point out the  frequent bugs in iTunes) - which makes for an enriching multimedia experience. This comes from someone who enjoys watching his videos in superior format while commuting to work.  But, don't expect the iPad to replace your BlackBerry or high-power laptop anytime soon. And this comes from someone who enjoys his productivity with those mails flowing in seamlessly while on the move.

India price: (inclusive of taxes) 16GB : Rs 40,000, 32GB: Rs 50,000, 64GB: Rs 58,000

(all tech specs courtesy www.apple.com)

(bottom pic courtesy Aarti Krishnakumar)

Arrhyming Verse

It was early evening - the light of a warm yet soothing afternoon had started seeping out and the misty clime was setting in - the twilight of autumn. I sat in my room - watching a romantic-comedy movie on my laptop and punching away SMSes to glory on my mobile phone. It was my off day from work and and I had taken a resolve not to laze around, so I had spent half the morning downloading a couple of movies using my newly-installed high speed net connection (!) So, as I sat enjoying the fruits of my labour, father came back from work, shortly followed by mother. It was time to catch up on a whole week of missed out family interactions, thanks to my inverted working hours. In the midst of all this, the light brown envelope lay on my envelope. I had almost forgotten, but as the evening progressed, I decided to steal a glance at the contents of the envelope - it contained the reports from a medical examination I had undergone earlier. As I opened it, I could feel a wave of thoughts rushing on to my mind's coastline. And when I read the report, most of which contained medical jargon could not understand, I could feel it - yes, my heart had betrayed me. The doctors call it arrhythmia, where the heart beats a tad slowly. I call it arrhyming verse - which painted a vivid picture of the poetry that I had wanted my life to be - a slow recourse to the other world. I had no clue whether I would die in a heartbeat or continue to trudge the path of existence. Yet, I had realised it, and I know it now - my happiness has never been above the joy which I have willingly imparted to others, and my dejection has been more than the pain I have caused to others unwillingly. I don't know if this sounds like a confession, but I'm sure that as I have progressed along the journey of life, I have met so many of you, and I have felt so many of your emotions, seen or unseen. I may have endeared some of you more than others, but none of you have been my nemesis. You have given me which most desire - unquestioning faith and happiness. I may not have reciprocated to some of you in equal measure, and I may have overdone it with some of you, and now I know the reason why - my heart was too slow to respond, and my pulse never raced to gauge the depth of a healthy relationship. If you have managed to reach the end of the dreary passage by now, I can only wish you more happiness that you desire, and pray that you let me come after you with more mirth than ever before!

Ali Baba & The 140 Thieves

Ali Baba found a treasure trove,

In the depths of the microblogging web,

But he had a problem,

He had to escape 140 thieves, to keep the treasure safe with him,

As he sat and thought,

He could hear the RT horses trotting up,

The 140 thieves were ghosts - their DPs were too blurred,

They came from all possible directions - from far & wide,

They had set their eyes on riches of sanity, and had plundered the timelines of many a star,

Hashtags and memes they could use lethally,

To unsettle an emperor of a sporting harem even,

To unnerve the minion in an empire even,

They had their bands of followers,

Who were their footsoldiers of anarchy,

'But, I will start with the followers,' thought Ali Baba,

And he set out on a journey,

At the end of which lay - @Baba140

On A Sense

Touch - ever present, yet so subtle
To die for or to snatch life away
To cause pain or to soothe frayed nerves
Touch - you feel it, yet you don't see it
Not a drop of blood, not a pint of dew
A depth so vast, yet fathomable
Touch - created by humans, perfected by machines
Despised by the creed of hatred, embraced by the fraternity of love
The touch that heals creates the aura of miracle
The touch that warms is a promise of love
Be it an iPod or a copper wire
Touch can bind, touch can break
So powerful, yet so easy to hold
Touch - your, mine or everyone's - and evolving...

Let's play the word play

Sugar, spice & everything nice - and don't forget the Johnny Walker on ice

Don't scoff, it's Absolut-ly a Smirnoff

There is Love, there is Sex, there is Dhoka - for Dawood bhai - it's all about Love, Hex & Khoka

My Name Is Khan, His Name is Toofan

Don't say Mayawati, say Malawati

Sonia Gandhi is no Indira Aandhi

Can you spot the Tiger hiding in the Woods?

Or would you rather settle for Sach who's still In?

Think of Stephen Court, and all that you see is Nightmare on Park Street

Want Youngistan to teach you Fizzics?

Or are you more interested in the KE2RNA+SA1F chemistry?

There is Malice in Thunderland; but don't forget the Hurt Hawker

Still, I find BlackBerries juicier than Apples

Because I'm too Bold, still iHope, that the Buzz of a tweet aint too loud,

or is it?

Know Me?

Know me, heard me or ever seen me?

Chances are you have, each and every moment,

Blog me, tweet me or post me on the wall,

You can hate me, but you can't ignore me,

You can love me, but you can't be obsessed with me,

I can be with You, but you have to let me Go sometime,

I die a silent death everyday - in the barrel of a madman's gun or the bomb of a soldier,

I am suffocated, stifled and suppressed at will - by those who think I'm a mere speck in a sandstorm, or a drop in the ocean,

But, have You ever wondered, that I'm the needle in the haystack which You have always been looking for?

Or the glimmer of light through a peephole?

I get crushed under the wheels of a bus, or am ripped apart by a mob,

Yet I don't give up, Yet I survive,

Because when I creep in through an oxygen mask, or the droplet of water on parched earth,

You are overjoyed to see me, You embrace me and cry out my name,

To which, I always reply: "Yes, I am Life!"

When Social Becomes Anti-Social

Speech is silver, silence is gold.

If you are reading this (including the cliche above), chances are that you are one of those who have lost faith in healthy social networking or are on the verge of doing so. But, all is not lost yet on the social media horizon. It's just that things are going a bit haywire in Web 2.0 (or 2.5 shall I say?). To evaluate social media in its true sense, one needs to trace its origin properly. I won't trace a detailed timeline here but what started with blogs and instant messenger clients is now down to 140 characters aka microblogging. In an era when having a mobile phone is passe, you are apparently 'nothing' if you don't 'tweet', as many social media analysts will have us believe. If you have a presence on Facebook or Orkut, maybe you are 'something'. But, is it 'everything.'

To look at some recent examples, what the Stephen Fry furore meant to the West was the Shashi Tharoor drama in India (albeit on different levels). If Mr Fry was 'boring', Mr Tharoor made it up in ways more than one by tweeting away to glory with his 'cattle class' and 'interlocutor' punchlines. On the face of it, the topics may have died a natural death in most discussion forums, but on a macro level, the debate has just started. What the Twitterati and Facebook superstars have shown us (maybe unwittingly) is that it's no longer politically incorrect to rant your heart out  in public against even those whom you consider your closest. Alright, this may have been more of a Google Talk phenomenon but take a look at any average Indian's (and I don't want to sound demeaning here) Twitter timeline and you will easily figure out what I mean. From what you eat for breakfast to what you should wear for your cousin's wedding - you have to share it in your 140-characters of fame space, otherwise, you are just a 'nobody.' Interestingly, when Google tried to replicate this with Buzz, it had to take on the ire of users for exposing privacy and so on. True, just because the company is a pioneer in its own right does not mean it has the liberty to play around with people's personal lives.

But if that was the death knell for Buzz, wonder what is keeping Twitter alive. Apparently, the company has been monitoring some users who have been using it extensively as a public chatroom (the official version being that this is related to the phishing attack). But, monitoring or no monitoring, a silent evolution has already occurred. At the same time, this evolution is not without its share of bloodbath - something that the Twiteroor controversy kicked off. It is another matter for a minister to go on record in a social media platform, but it is not the when you see a personal conversation being read by hundreds of other people who will merrily concoct their own interpretations of it. This is where the 'retweet' feature comes in - to put it simply, you simply prefix an 'RT' before some post you like and then pass it on to your set of followers. But, is RTing a quote by Mahatma Gandhi the same as revealing someone's nickname? (Interestingly, the RTI Act has a near namesake in RT, with the first 2 letters). Well, big deal - you may say? But, think about it just once - considering you met someone on Twitter or someone you already know retweets what you would not what the whole world to know, what would you think about it? Well then, you may ask again - why do people flash custom status messages on Google Talk for their contacts to know? Right - they do, but there is an in-built privacy there where trust is also a big factor, which is the reason why Buzz got so much flak. But, when it comes to Twitter, such a concern goes for a toss...does it? It may not be ok for Stephen Fry to be boring, but it is ok for mere mortals like us to tell the whole world how much weight we are putting on everyday.

Besides, a big chunk of Twitter users are fond of putting inspirational quotes on their timeline. No harm with that - in fact - a nice quote has the power to always turn a dull moment into a bright one (the author of this piece himself, follows many users who put interesting quotes on their timelines). But, some users deliberately leave out the part of attributing the quote. If the words did not originally come from your mouth, is it wrong to say that somebody else said it? Some have raised a hue and cry over 'copyrighting tweets' and the general consensus seems to be that tweets cannot be copyrighted. But, a quote is a quote after all, even if it is shrink-wrapped into 140 characters.

If you have reached this paragraph, maybe you have changed your mind and are wondering if this issue is worth wasting so many words at all. Maybe it is not, but surely, if you are an observer of social media (and I have no qualms in admitting that I'm still learning this), then maybe you could think about it at least once...