The Triple Turtle Point

I got Subu's message yesterday to Wish Kama, Pramthya and all the others who were involved in the TTT incident a happy birthday. He considered that as a new life for them and hence asked me to wish them happy bday.

In the evening I met Anu and told her about this. We started reminiscing the incident immediately and had a great laugh. All the memories just flooded back in the head. In fact I feel that we should be paying a homage to Pramthya's Maruti which got Martyred that day saving their lives. May her metallic soul rest in peace.

(I am going to write the whole TTT incident here when I get time)

Remember, I and subu were on the Kinetic (that was the first time Subu ever got his Kinetic out of the 5 km radius from his house) and were mere spectators of the incident. By the time we reached the spot (maybe 2 mins after it happened) the world had turned over. Anu was badly hurt in her head and was acting dizzy. Kama was completely rattled. Was Saini there? I don't quite remember.

I can visualize Pramthya still leaning by the Pole (maybe electric) and looking up to the sky trying to think what just happened and what will be the repercussions back home.


(Need to complete this post)

Recommend/Review Doctors/Clinics/Hospitals across India

Taking a cue from the success of Goolti.com I started realizing that there are many spaces where Public reviews/opinions will be very useful.

Hence, I've launched docstock.in, a review site very similar to goolti.com. Its intended at finding the right doctors, clinics or hospitals across India for satisfactory medical treatment.

Please visit the site and contribute for public good.

Thanks,
Harshal Vaidya

del.icio.us becoming a frail website

Look at the pic. I logged into del.icio.us and it says that you've been blocked since you accessed the website too quickly. Whom are they trying to fool? Its a public website and why the fuck should we users be bothered as to what speed we access it with?
Time to switch to a new bookmarking service.

Osho Gem

The intelligent person hesitates, ponders, wavers.
The unintelligent never wavers, never hesitates.
Where the wise will whisper, the fool simply declares from the housetops.

Why don't I start an ISP in my own colony?

This question has been on my mind for last couple of weeks. My colony, Amrapali Society , lies in a tight spot as far as location is concerned. It exactly doesn't come into Kalyani Nagar, where internet connectivity is available from most of the well-known providers. Nor, does it comes into Ramvadi etc where connectivity will probably be present as well.

Even BSNL says that the landline infrastructure in my colony is too old to support broadband and hence they can't provide connectivity there. Hence, unfortunately it lies neglected by most of the providers except Tata Indicom.

Now Indicom is supposed to be providing good connectivity in Kalyani Nagar as well as other areas of Pune. I know a bunch of friends of mine who are satisfied with the service. However, their service in our colony has no words to describe. Pathetic is the closest i can get. I log a complaint with Indicom customer care center almost every alternate day.

Tired with all this, a thought came to my mind that why not I myself start a broadband ISP for my colony itself. I could purchase a commercial connection from Tiger Telecom which I contacted long time before and then distribute it through a wireless network established through Meraki routers.

Dunno what to do with this but the idea sounds pretty convincing to me.

Why I rejected Manas Webhosting

During my search for hosting providers in India, I seriously considered Manashosting.

The offer of unlimited web space and unlimited bandwidth was very attractive. However, surprisingly these folks have all these plans for Windows hosting only! I couldn't believe it at first. Who on earth will host over Windows? Especially startup folks who are generally cash-strapped.

Unfortunately I had to drop my plans to sign up with them since I needed a LAMP stack.

Why I chose ixWebhosting over ipower and rackspace

I've been running Goolti.com out of ipower's servers for quite a while. Although the service is great there are some potential problems with the service.

1) I can't get subdomain level traffic stats.
2) The number of subdomains are restricted.
3) I can't get an email like sales@mydomain.com for all the domains I host over the hosting account. I can get those kind of email addresses only for the domain that I signup with when I buy the account.

I got all these services at ixWebHosting.com hence I am going with them. I just want to document this down here so that someone searching on google for the same reason gets this and this probably helps him out to make a decision.

Google suddently blocks my Adsense Account

Out of the blue I got a mail last week that my Addsense account was blocked. I had started earning a decent amount through it lately as my website started getting some popularity. Supposedly this was due to click fraud. This site is running from a year. If I really wanted to indulge into click fraud I would have done this long time ago. I went ahead and filled in their online appeal form to re-instate my account, but there has been no response from Google Adsense.

Its really unprofessional on Goolge's part to block account without giving any explanation or any statistics. I am sure I didn't click my advertises over and over, so I desperately want to know who did and what was done ? However, there is no way to know since Adsense team won't co-operate.

Reading about this issue over the web it seems like there are many many webmasters who have gone through this and have eventually switched to a different ad network. This unprofessionalism is the usual arrogance from Google. I have really no other choice but to switch over to either MSN or Yahoo Publisher Network .

US mobile industry shows signs of growing up

One of the most startling surprises for an Indian guy when he lands into US is that for getting a cellphone along with a SIM you need to sign a contract of 1 or 2 years. This seems ridiculous but thats how the US mobile industry was. They were still in 1960's while the world had moved ahead.

I read at GigaOm today that Cingular has finally grown up and realized this mistake and has started offering SIM cards at $25 without any commitment from the customer. This will start a revolution across the US I believe. Most people will switch out of their contracts immediately or after their current contracts expire.

This is a great releif. At least someone in the industry grew up. Hope that others follow AT&T.