SF Marathon

Heard about this from a friend the other day: The San Francisco Marathon. I am thinking about giving this a try - if not this year then definitely the next one (still recovering from my ACL tear). I went biking along the top third of the course last weekend, from Embarcadero to Golden Gate, and the course is pretty fun. The views are pretty good all along though still not enough to distract from the steep hills just before the GGB. There are still 17 weeks to tame those hills though - doing my best to see you guys on 25th July, 2010. You can follow updates on the SF Marathon on Facebook.

Sky Diving

5 adrenaline rich minutes of my life.

Your web persona

We all have googled our name one time or the other---trying to find our online footprint or just for the kicks. The Personas project from MIT Media Labs goes one step further by assimilating information about you on the web and defining your 'web character' [Click the image for a clearer version]. It provides another dimension to the people search space although it may be a work in progress still (medical,illegal-me???).

Google is of course synonymous with search but specialized search engines focusing on singular verticals are slowly slicing my search time. For instance, I now use Pipl for people search and Tinyeye for reverse image search. Both are pretty good at what they claim to do. For example, Pipl searches the web for a given name and tabulates all information it can find about that person---personal websites, blog entries, social networking profiles--in a profile page like layout. Similarly, Tinyeye is trying to solve one of the long standing problems in computer vision---image matching. You upload an image and tinyeye tries to find images 'similar' to the uploaded image by identifying the objects in the image. It is great to see startups trying to carve their presence in a space already saturated by many big shots.

Damn Facebook Quizzes

1 status update, 1 photo gallery update, 29 quiz results: that's what my Facebook news feed looks like these days. Thankfully, we have the cure:

Door 1:
A nifty javascript snippet written by a friend of mine that you can use as a bookmark or run through GreaseMonkey on Firefox: Instructions here.

Door 2:
Install GreaseMonkey to your Firefox (GreaseMetal for Chrome) and install the Facebook Purity GreaseMonkey script from here.

Door 3:
IE users, enjoy the pain.

YouTwitFace, I Digg your Friendfeed on Reader and Reddit all

In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates revealed that he has quit Facebook for good and I am sure he is not the only one overwhelmed by the deluge of information being pushed to us these days on the web. We are logging on to YouTube and iReport for our news, Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook for real-time updates from friends and strangers, apart from the dozens of blogs we peruse through Reader, Digg and Reddit to absorb as much information as we can. Web2.0 is fueling our addiction to know everything!

Humans are inquisitive beings, or at least beings who need to resolve a dispute about the number of grand slams Roger Federer has won at that very instant. We want to know everything about anything instantly. I remember the days when I actually used the library, usually after trying to find something unsuccessfully for hours on Altavista and Lycos; and then Google came along, all flashy with its optimized webpages and smart and efficient algorithms. And that's when I got hooked.

An article in slate magazine reveals a scary hypothesis - we are literally addicted to information. From the article, whenever we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the knowledge seeking circuits in our brain that are firing. The juice that fuels the seeking system is the neurotransmitter dopamine. The dopamine circuits "promote states of eagerness and directed purpose" and it's a state humans love to be in. So good does it feel that we seek out activities, or substances, that keep this system aroused—cocaine and amphetamines, drugs of stimulation, are particularly effective at stirring it. Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem. For them even small stretches of time seem to drag. Another article in the Atlantic last year, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting "enter" to get our next fix.

So there you have it, reading tweets and YouTube comments is the same as doing cocaine. I wonder if there are detox clinics for us poor souls.

Of Merit, Reservation and Merits of Reservation

I felt a little disappointed after reading the following article in Times of India the other day: IITs can't expel students on merit excuse: SC (emphasis mine). The Supreme Court directed IIT Delhi to reconsider its decision to expel 5 students after their grades did not meet the minimum requirements. Although, the SC acknowledged that "the petitioners were not able to secure the required credits as against the stipulated minimum requirement for continuation of their studies”, yet it ordered IIT Delhi to re-enroll the students.

The whole paragraph looks unbelievable until you add the "missing piece"---the students belonged to SC/ST category. Some people would now find the puzzle cohesively complete and argue that the decision was correct. I have been against the dilution of IIT as an institution and as a brand since the proposed expansion as well as the subsequent dropping cutoffs in the entrance examination. Reservations are needed and make more sense at the basic levels of education---making primary and secondary school education more accessible and widely available---but should have no place at graduate level where according to me, only merit and performance should prevail. Tripling the number of IITs without any resources and slashing down passing marks to merely 18% for the entrance examination is unjust both towards the IIT system and the students.

Marketing students are taught case studies about brand dilution of Pierre Cardin, a popular fashion designer. From the article, the Pierre Cardin name was licensed to appear on over 900 marginal products such as push chairs, olive oil, frying pans, floor tiles, sardines, orthopedic mattresses, socks, ‘Memory' pillows, phone holders, pens, coffee pots and thermoses. Pierre Cardin products were retailing at knock down prices in discount shops and the brand was seen on paraphernalia that detracted from the brand's core values. Pierre Cardin himself, though, defends his licensing position by stating, the €30m profits it generates for him a year aside, that why shouldn't his brand be accessible to everyone? He even adds: "If someone asked me to do toilet paper, I'd do it. Why not?"

It is sad to see IITs being pushed down the same path whereby quantity is promoted over quality and merit is considered an excuse. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India---too bad our focus is shifting from skilled to workforce.

Best Buy sells HDTVs for $9.99 (almost)

This one is pretty good: Best Buy was offering 52in 120 Hz Samsung 1080p HDTV for $9.99 on its website since evening yesterday to about 11 AM in the morning today (the normal price is $1699.99). The news of the "deal" spread around the web quite fast through blogosphere appearing on Gizmodo, Reddit, Digg and shared through Facebook. I ordered one as well to see if Best Buy would actually go through with their posted price; will they take this hit for the subsequent PR boost and potential customer loyalty. Unfortunately, the following mail from Best Buy dashed my hopes: