Friday, June 29, 2007

In India in July

I will be in India in July. While mostly a family and friends visit, Jambool will of course still be high on my priorities.

People whom I haven't already touched base with: I will be in Delhi for a week till about the 11th, and I will be in Bangalore for a day on the 7th and the morning of the 8th. Most of the rest of the time I will be in the beautiful city of Chandigarh.

More updates on Jambool...

In case you haven't read them yet, we released an update to the Firefox browser extension, and also rolled out some changes to the clipping dialogs. More here.

Sunday, June 24, 2007

What does Google know about me?

Awfully lot, I imagine.

Let's see -- I started on Google search. I jumped on Gmail -- the first time I created an account. I used Google news -- though I hated their personalized news stuff. And since I was always logged on in Gmail, I couldn't really turn off this personalization. Then Google bought Blogger -- the site that hosts this blog -- and went on to buy yet more stuff (You tube for one) where I may have logged in. Everywhere I turned soon, Google login was following me. And then they bought doubleclick. Now, add the two together, that covers probably an incredible amount of information about me being tracked by them over time.

In general, I've loved Google products -- just like most of the people I know. Even then, it is a little unsettling to know that people with the smartest data mining algorithms are going to have a lot of data about me to play around with.

So, what's the solution? For one, I've blocked Google.com cookies. I use Apple's iChat if I need to use Google talk (so I don't have to have Gmail in the browser). I use a POP client to get my Gmail. This also, unfortunately means I can't login to Blogger and Adsense on the same machine -- or at least that browser. So I sometimes fire up Safari if I do have the urge to write a blog, and shut it down once I am done.

On a different, unrelated note, Jambool's releasing updates to its site. If you have an account, do come back and check it out!

Saturday, June 16, 2007

Ocean's thirteen -- a joke I felt 'in' with...

All successful movies tend to become franchises of sort these days. Those involved milk it repeatedly for what it's worth. Whether it's the Pirates, the Shrek or the Ocean's teens. Back in India, movie makers are picking up on it as well -- Dhoom, Don, Koi Mil Gaya, Hera Pheri have all had or are going to have sequels.

Ocean's eleven was entertaining. Ocean's twelve kept true to its entertainment value. With Ocean's thirteen, the movie makers seem to have got rid of any pretense they may have had about making a movie. It just seems like a bunch of friends having a good time, and expecting you'll just follow along. Every other line is some sort of an inside joke that you feel left out of.

Except there was this one time, where someone walks up to Pacino in the party, and congratulates him on "the enormity of his success!" Aha! (See previous post) I think I was the only one who laughed at this one. Oh well.

Anyway -- I haven't posted for a while, and this was a good excuse to break the hiatus. Jambool is keeping me busy... but now that our beta is live, I hope to get time to do some other things once in a while too. :)