Shweta Taneja

December 12, 2011September 28, 2018

Me and Fart: On IITians and making a movie

Fart, my imaginary dumb friend, and me were drinking beers and sitting at my home surfing on my telly when we saw a movie trailer of the film With Love, Delhi on one of the channels. A low-budget thriller with a rather dark Tom Alter in the role of a villain. The trailer ended with these bylines:

‘When the best brains of the country, meet the Bollywood veterans, you get Wild.’

‘An intelligent thriller by IITians’.

This film has been made by an IITian! In my excitement, I started to jump up and down on the couch. Fart, who is rather slow in catching up, looked at me confused. I told Fart that the IITians are really smart people. If they have made a thriller movie, it would be really, really smart! After all, they have written smart books, smart songs, say really smart things, get married with a huge dowry, get plush jobs reserved for smart people and do other rather very, very smart things. So Fart, who you can guessed by now is not very smart since he comes from another country (or another planet, it’s not polite to ask) looked at me with his forehead puckered with fifteen wrinkle lines and asked:

FART (his forehead puckered): Who are these IITians?

ME (with a snicker, forgetting that it’s impolite to ask): You don’t know who IITians are? Which planet do you belong to?

FART (still puckered): Not this one.

ME (continuing my tirade): IIT stands for Indian Institute of Technology. It is one of the more premier institutes in India that teaches engineering courses. IITians are people who graduate from these premier institutes. They are like really, really, really smart, Fart!

FART (empty expression): Oh. So this institute teaches them how to become actors or movie directors?

ME (haughty expression): Of course not!

FART: So it has nothing to do with making movies or writing books whatsoever?

ME (angry at this dumb ass): You think an IITian would have time to learn how to make a movie or write a book? He (or she) is too busy studying for exams! Do you know how many people apply for IITs in India? A few lakh every year and only a few thousand get selected. That’s how smart IITians are. They are the most intelligent people in India. Hell, they are the smartest on the planet!

FART (confused): If they are so smart, why do they learn engineering instead of learning how to make a movie?

ME (haughty expression): You are so silly, Fart! That’s because if they learn how to make a movie, they won’t be respected for their intellectual prowess. But if they become an IITian, they automatically become really smart. Because you see as soon as one clears the entrance exam of IIT, one’s genes are rewired and one gets to know everything that is there to know in this universe. IITians are so smart that they don’t need to learn how to make a movie or write a book. From reading, mugging, working, getting married, having sex, writing a book, earning money, drinking the right wine, dancing, singing, they know everything.

FART (realisation dawning, glugging a beer): Oh! So they are Indian sadhus right? Those enlightened beings who can fly in the sky or walk on water or stand on thorns or something.

ME (laughing out loud): Fart you are such a tart! They are better than sadhus! They are engineers! You see, in India we value engineers because we have such bad roads and bad internet connections and dicey buildings. These engineers are our saviors. You would understand their value if you know how much dowry an engineer can get in marriage. It’s in crores of rupees. That’s because they get really cool jobs in Amreeka and other countries and come back with oodles of dollars and then can buy plush houses in fancy gated communities with smooth roads. They are the dollar earners of this country.

FART (condescending): So it has nothing to do with making roads or making movies? They are smart because they earn lots of money?

ME (angry): You know, you foreigners are so condescending to us Indians. If we serve you, you are fine. When we become your equals, you think we are all after money. Forget it, you just won’t get it. We are who we are in this world because of IITians. They will save us from all your smirks! They are our superheroes! Every child of this country aims to become an IITian and earn in crores of rupees and marry a virgin with a huge dowry. Every parent wants their child to become an IITian. They are our new gods! You will understand when you meet some of them. They are intellectual and smart. Did I tell you how smart they are? They —

(The conversation fell through midway due to excessive intoxication.)

December 1, 2011June 16, 2016

Stream home the cinema

Better Internet connections and increased video content are making it easier than ever to order or watch Indian and Hollywood movies online, legally

It was a weekend and instead of going to a mall to watch an expensive movie, Uttara Narayanan, 29, a social activist, decided to rent the latest Bollywood flick and watch it at home. She was surprised to see that she couldn’t find any movie rental shops in her Bangalore neighbourhood. “I didn’t want to buy a pirated cheap DVD or download a pirated version of the movie, so I went online to search for a video rental around my home,” she says. Her search led her to YouTube. “I couldn’t believe that YouTube is streaming some of the latest Bollywood movies which I wanted to see online for free!”

In October, actor Shah Rukh Khan partnered with Google India to promote his film Ra.One on YouTube. The site celebrated a month-long festival of his movies, which included superhits like Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, Chak De! India, Kal Ho Na Ho, Om Shanti Om and Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, through October.

Free and easy: In several cases, there are no charges for movies online.

The model of streaming movies online seems to be working quite well with the Indian audience. Since the launch of YouTube Box Office in June, the website has already garnered over 18 million views and has about 1,500 movie titles.

Yahoo India launched Movieplex, its online free movie streaming platform, in August, but has uploaded only 30 movies. The company is in talks with both film and television studios for large distribution deals though, and is expected to increase that number greatly.

People who would rather not see pirated movies, and don’t want to shell out huge amounts at cinema halls, now have a number of options. Some of the best ones are:

YouTube’s Box Office

YouTube has created a microsite with ad-supported free movies. There are around 1,500 titles on the site as of now, and most of the collection is made up of older movies from the black and white era onwards. There are many regional language films on the site, along with Hindi movies. If you want to watch Hollywood or world cinema, check the complete listing of the movies on www.youtube.com/movies. Depending on the rights YouTube has, some of them might not play in India.

Upside: There are no delivery delays either.

Downside: Buffering happens fairly often. The films are also being streamed at a lower resolution, and don’t look great on full screen.

Cost: Free

Where: Youtube.com/boxoffice for the latest Indian movies. For the complete list of movies on YouTube, go to Youtube.com/movies

Yahoo Movieplex

Launched at the same time as YouTube’s Box Office, Yahoo’s Movieplex is also a free streaming site for legal movies.

Continue reading “Stream home the cinema”

November 24, 2011June 16, 2016

Of writing, language and search for muses

I have just finished the fourth story of The Skull Rosary, a graphic novel which if all goes well, would be out in mid 2013 in the market. This particular story was about a blind demon , but ironically it was I who was blind to him. I couldn’t see what he wanted to tell me, what he wanted me to discover, who he really was. For days I wandered alone in deserts (that’s what I name my panicked mind). Nothing came out on the paper. This was a particularly difficult one to exorcise out of me. I hope I have done you some justice, my blind demon. I know I haven’t completely written down what you could have become and what you are, but this was all I could do. I am after all a mortal and have my limits.

Now I have moved on to the fifth and final story of the graphic novel. This is about a mad woman. I think I know her but I don’t know how to write of her. How does madness speak in a logical human language? So I search for answers in various muses I know will tell me which path to start. I read the lines that Neil Gaiman scribed in The Sandman series. I scrounge the delicate, heart wrenching poetry of Kahlil Gibran who wrote The Madman which I downloaded from Gutenberg. And I reread my two favourites which talk about this particular madness: Shakespeare’s Macbeth and The Eumenides by Aeschylus. Shakespeare was inspired by Aeschylus’s lines to create his crazy three weird witches. I hope I can recreate the mad witches in some form.

I knew I wanted to read these to remember what I would have liked to write for the final story. Did the muse in me speak or did she show the way? I don’t know.

Some days writing comes to me like my neighbour’s Labrador. It laps it’s salivating tongue and wags its furry tail, desperate to be touched and loved and hugged. That day I write straight for an hour or many hours, without a break. That day I continue to write in my head, even when I am walking, drinking a coffee with my husband or watching the sky. Those are the happy days. The days when the sun shines brightly on me and my smile is for all to see.

Most of the days though, writing is a demon I need to exorcise from my mind and heart. It haunts spaces in my head I didn’t know existed. But I cannot see it or touch it, at least through logic and human language. It shows itself to me in smoky silhouettes, in corners just out of my eye’s view. It plays hide and seek with me but not to make me smile. I don’t know why it plays and why I constantly search for it. I keep looking and looking and looking and never really see it. At the end what I write, is a part of the demon that in me resides.

Not the whole, never the whole.

For the whole is but a myth, much like a rainbow’s end. You can stare at the ocean for millions of years, but at the end, you will but see just the part your eyes can.

November 24, 2011June 16, 2016

The battle of the smartphones

Apple’s iPhone 4S or the Samsung Galaxy Nexus – which smartphone is smarter?

The two most hyped phones of 2011 are about to enter the Indian market. There’s the iPhone 4S with its magical personal assistant Siri, who listens to you and finds what you are looking for as soon as you ask for it. Then there is the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, the first smartphone running Android 4, Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS). While the iPhone 4S is scheduled to be launched on 25 November, the Nexus will be launched early next month. As the Indian smartphone market readies for the launch of these phones, we send them out into the battlefield to find the smartest choice.

The contenders

iPhone 4S

iPhone 4S: It comes with a personal assistant, Siri

An update to the iPhone 4, the iPhone 4S comes loaded with a powerful A5 processor, iOS 5, Siri and a whopping 8-megapixel camera. When it launched in the US last month, sales within a month broke all records at four million handsets and saw long lines of customers waiting to get their hands on one. The phone is already out for pre-order with a tie-up with Aircel and will launch in India later this month.

Price: 16 GB at Rs. 44,500 and the 32 GB variant at Rs. 50,900. No information available on the 64 GB variant.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Galaxy Nexus: Samsung’s latest Android flagship

The latest Android flagship, the Galaxy Nexus combines Samsung’s ever-improving hardware in a massive high-resolution, 4.65-inch screen with the latest Android 4.0. It hasn’t reached any customer yet, but is raking up a storm of anticipation. The phone is up for pre-order in countries like the US and UK and will be coming to India soon.

Price: The company has not released any information on price, though industry sources claim that it will be in the Rs. 35,000-40,000 price band.

Let the battle begin

Round 1: Display

The Galaxy Nexus comes with a whopping 4.65-inch of Samsung Super AMOLED HD curved display. With such a huge size for a screen, it walks a thin line between a tablet and smartphone and does it well (if you have rather large hands, that is). To pack a punch, it has a tempting 1280×720 resolution, which is the highest ever in a smartphone. It gives a new meaning to clarity and makes Web browsing, movie watching and gaming experience a breeze. It also eats up battery life.

Continue reading “The battle of the smartphones”

November 16, 2011June 16, 2016

In the right direction

These GPS navigators are custom-made for Indian streets, so you won’t need to stop and ask about the route any more

A map in hand is worth two on line when you are driving, says Amit Prasad, founder and CEO, SatNav Technologies, a Hyderabad-based GPS map-making company.

“You don’t need a phone GPRS connection, and re-routing is much faster in on-board systems,” he says. After all, cars honking behind you in traffic will not wait for the map to buffer on your smartphone. “A good GPS system talks to you and says ‘turn right’ at exactly the point where you need to take a turn,” explains Prasad. And since the maps are updated every six months, the very latest constructions are included in your map.

According to a report published last year by IE Market Research Corp., a Canada-based market intelligence and business strategy research and consulting firm, the navigation industry in India will be worth $158.4 million (around Rs. 793.58 crore) by 2014. New Delhi-based navigation company MapmyIndia’s director Rohan Verma claims his company has grown 600% in the last three years. “This is a testament to the significantly growing demand for GPS navigators,” he says, adding that guidance, turn-by-turn instructions, ease of use and detailed maps are the main advantages GPS navigators have over smartphone maps.

Some GPS services available in India are:

Via by TomTom

Via by TomTom. Guidance, turn-by-turn instructions, ease of use and detailed maps are areas where GPS navigators score over smartphone options.

The Dutch navigation-system makers entered the Indian market in September with their Via series. The maps come loaded with TomTom’s unique Landmark Navigation functionality, wherein you can search for a specific place by a landmark around it, be it a famous monument, temple or park. The console also includes a “Help Me!” emergency menu that provides information about hospitals and other emergency services on the road. Of the three models available for India, Via LIVE 120 and Via 125 have voice controls, so you don’t have to stop or take your hands off the wheel. These two models also come with a mobile car-kit feature that can convert this device into a hands-free Bluetooth speaker. The mount which comes with the device attaches to the windscreen and can be turned up to 180 degrees. It comes with an 11cm or 13cm touch screen, depending on the model.

Continue reading “In the right direction”

November 2, 2011June 16, 2016

Pinch and swipe

Looking for a tablet? Here is how you can go the touch-screen way with devices that cost less than Rs. 15,000

Touch screens have transformed the way we browse the Internet and entertain ourselves. In fact, now we don’t click and type, but pinch, zoom and swipe. It has been almost a year since the first tablet was launched in India in November 2010. And by the look of it the craze for tablets is just on the rise.

However, not all of us can afford the swanky top-of-the-line versions. If you can’t imagine buying the iPad 2, Samsung Galaxy Tab, Motorola Xoom or HTC Flyer right now, but still want to experience how a tablet works, you need not wait any more. To help you make the right choice, we waded through the Android-based affordable tablets out there to bring you six we think you can try out.

iBall Slide

The Slide is a 1 GHz, Android 2.3 tablet with a bright 7-inch capacitive display.

It comes with 8 GB storage that can be extended up to 32 GB with an SD memory card. To cut costs, iBall has gone with only one front-facing camera, and no rear camera. As a result, it has a good 2 MP camera for videoconference calls, and it also comes with an HDMI out, mini USB and SD card slots. The device supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, but lacks built-in 3G.

Upside: The iBall Slide has a USB port with which you can connect it to your PC or attach extra memory, keyboard, data dongle, etc., making it easy to connect and work on. The HDMI allows you to connect it to your TV to watch videos easily. It also comes with 8 GB internal memory built in, so the majority of users will not need to buy more storage.

Downside: There’s no rear camera and no SIM card support for data connectivity. Connecting to 3G requires a USB data dongle, an added expense of around Rs. 2,500. Audio quality on the iBall is terrible.

Money matters: Rs. 13,995 *

*Prices are subject to variations.

Continue reading “Pinch and swipe”

October 20, 2011September 28, 2018

Kolkata during Durga’s reign

And lo! Durga falls down

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Made a recent trip to Kolkata during Durga Pooja. I planned to write a blog on the travel (before I went there) but after experiencing the whole city during the throngs of art, aesthetic, stories, religiosity, happiness and sheer sublimity, I am kind of out of words. Hence I have decided to share with you a poem I wrote on the airplane while I was coming back from the trip. My head was clogged with sinus and my heart heavy with what I had just witnessed. As is the way of emotion and words, I hope to give you an essence of the transformation I went through seeing the beautiful idols on display and being immersed.

And lo! Durga falls down

Durga!
The fire of right
Shines through your starry sari
As you stand slightly staring
With those big, diamond-shaped eyes
On to the little girl with oiled pigtails
Black lips sucking on an ice lolly.

Durga!
In red and white
And purple and silver
With necklaces wound delicately
Like slumbering snakes
You merge burning desire and danger
In everlasting serpentine curves.
You ethereal mystery, you.
How you smile slightly, almost ironically
Moist clay corners of your lips tilted upwards
As she stares at you
Hoping to find
Some solace
For her broken tears.

Durga!
You float freely
Hailed by harnesses
In the bright light falling
On your bejeweled bosom.
Your calm, cushioned cheeks
Plush like apples.
He looks up, his belly stirring
With a rush of guilt and desire
As he takes off his black glasses
Carefully wiping off the sweaty dust
That has gathered
Standing in the sweaty crowd.

Durga!
Your feet play hide and seek
In your bridal sari.
One delicate foot
Crushes the demon’s arrogant neck
Suffocating him to death
Your spear tears off his chest
Spurting a stream of blood
A new coloured river.
We look at the blood
And thank you
It’s not us.

Durga!
You coy, shy bride!
Your hands and feet
Stained with crimson red.
Delicate wrists
Hold the sword and spear
And move with a tinkle
Of green glass bangles
Awaiting a love, long lost.
I look at you and think
Your job’s almost done
Tomorrow you will be gone too.
I know but don’t know
How and why
You would go.

Durga!
In the dark, sultry night,
Your million hands and arms
Spread like the sun’s last rays
A magician’s card trick
About to be played.
The drums beat tireless
As palpitating excitement burns
Under the orange flood lights.
This is the moment they were all waiting for!
In the truck’s shadow you stand
Silent, waiting for the policeman
To flick his final hand.
The drums beat into a frenzy
Fleshy feet and hands and arms and breasts and hips
All jive and twist and turn and swirl and dance
As the drums beat and beat and beat and beat.
The artificial lights sparkle like stars
On her shining waters
As her soft, clingy, fine mud
Beckons you to come.

Durga!
She waits for you
Her dirty arms stretched
Her body covered
With centuries of filthy flesh dips
And carcasses and mellowed flowers and broken ceramic cups
And shiny plastic packets.
Sins of flesh and heart and mind and greed
All churn and mix and become one
In her accepting waters.
She is bejeweled too
Her boils ooze plastic like
Her blackened skin moistened with electric lights.
Her brown blood oozes
Onto the shores
With silt and sweat and tears and piss
Her waters call out in anticipation.
They look at you
They look at her
With cultivated disinterest.
From their vantage point
On a small luxury cruiser
Nursing a glass of wine.
Fashionably crinkling their noses
As the slight moldy smell of retch
That rises up to the deck.

Durga!
You look at her
Your deep, dark eyes
Marked red in corners
And maybe your heart heaves
Becomes so heavy
That the fleshy men carrying you
Slip on her fine muds
One almost being crushed.
He mumbles a quick thank you
As he pushes you again
Towards her.

Durga!
For just a moment
You stand in all your regalia
Your dress resplendent
Like a thousand suns
Your hand raised in blessing.
And maybe you are slightly perplexed
As to why?
But then, splash!
You fall
Into her.
Your face looks upwards
At the heavy stars
Hanging low, like overripe jewels
In a dungeon sky.
Her cooling waters
Takes your paint away.
Black eyes and small red pout and cushy cheeks and double chin
Is all ripped off by its skin.

Durga!
You cannot see or hear or smell or taste.
As she sucks you further into her womb.
Like she sucked centuries of flesh and blood and sweat and piss.
They turn you upside,
And the cold, murky waters
Set to work,
Calmly licking
Your skin and bones and veins and blood.

Durga!
You float and feel
The million others like you.
Your bones softly bumping
Into another you, then another, then another
And then another.
You cannot see or hear or taste or smell
Only feel, only feel
The cold, weathered snake-like hand
That coils on your now empty breast
Pulling, pushing, peeling, pushing.
He grips your bared bones
Sweat mingles with forgiving waters
His dhoti stuck stubbornly to his innards.
He hauls you and thinks of home
His plate of rice and hot fish curry
His empty stomach rumbles as he sees
An endless assembly line yet to heave
Of you and you and you and you.

Durga!
Maybe you cannot feel now.
I hope you cannot feel anymore.
The rusted crane clutches your innards
With her big, metallic claws
Away from her cold, murky womb.
For a moment
One of your arms
Still white with green bangles
Shines in protest
In the darked up night
Trying to reach to the skies.
But then the crane heaves
Dashing your brittle bones
On a hill of empty
Wooden carcasses.

Durga!
Maybe you wondered why.
Maybe you knew.
What is born and made
Will crumble to down to dust.
Your holocaust of carcasses
Stands tall as a reminder
Silent, nursing, resting, tired.
Waiting to rise
When time turns
And yet another demon
Needs to burn.

Durga!
For one moment
My painful heart sinks and cries out
And maybe my soul sours
Up in the dark, murky sky
Calling you,
Grieving for you,
Remembering you,
Becoming you.
I trip and fall backwards
On the deck of the civilized carcass
Floating, for now,
On the balmy river bed.

Check out some of the videos from my travel to Kolkata.

A heartfelt thanks to my friends K and R for their hospitality, company and thoughts. You can continue to read my other poems here.

October 12, 2011June 16, 2016

Bye, Bye my 1st baby!

It’s a rather pretty day today, have you noticed? I did, after a long, long time!

If any of you avid readers of my blog wondered what I have been up for almost a month of my absence from the online world, it’s editing. Two of my biggest projects which I had set out to do in the last eight months, have finally come to an end. I suddenly feel kind of empty. Nice empty Smile

The first mammoth one was the Digital Natives project. I edited two books for the NGO Centre for Internet and Society which were a culmination of three years of research. The books are out now in the world and fending for themselves now. I send them hugs. You can view the research book for free online or order one for yourself. Hear more about them on the dedicated page.

My second project was much tougher. I had decided to write a complete book while editing the Digital Natives books. Madness, now that I look back at it, but somehow the decision helped me bring out my first book and overcome my lack of confidence. It worked! Yes dear readers and the online universe, the first draft of my book is over!

It’s tentatively called Mystery of the Iyer Bungalow and is a children detective fiction. I thought writing it would be the biggest challenge for me, it wasn’t. It was editing that proved to be the main hurdle. It took much longer in time and was an emotional, depressing experience. Questions I didn’t have answer to hit me. Does the book work? asked the Editor in me. The Writer cringed and said she didn’t know. I had to take decisions of chopping down characters I had created with a lot of love and enjoyment. They didn’t fit into the narrative Sad smile

Finally, the first level of editing is finished. I feel a strange calm sadness. I have sent the book out (it’s going for the first time!) to some of my industry friends to read and for feedback. My heart beats fast and wonders how it will feel about it. I still don’t know if anyone would like to read this book. I don’t know how she will be treated (yes my book has feelings!) and if she will ever be published. I have lost every sense of objectivity for her. I am her mother and she’s my baby. I can’t be objective about her. As an decently good Editor, it’s a scary experience! And since it’s just a first draft and I don’t even have a publisher, I bet this is just a start to a long, long journey of my book. I wish Mystery of the Iyer Bungalow best of luck and hope that someday, a kid would read you and it would make her smile, just as it did me.

And that is the challenge that creative writing poses for me. It makes me experience the best and the worse of my talent and creative self. The highest and the lowest, both come one and again, in cycles. I had always wondered why suddenly one day, I decided to quit my journalism career and walk the thorny and painful path of fiction and fantasy writing. Now I know.

September 5, 2011June 16, 2016

Caught in the net

Try these smart ways to keep a check on your Internet addiction. By Shweta Taneja

It’s a connected world out there. So much so that most of us cannot think of life without a phone or access to the Internet—even when on holiday.

Take control: Learn how to disconnect from the online world and organize your daily Internet use.

“When I am hiking and I force myself to disconnect from the online world, I feel alone. I feel like there’s so much of the trip that I would like to share with my online friends,” says Hrish Thotaa, a 31-year-old social media professional and self-proclaimed Twitter addict who spends 8-9 hours on social networking sites and chats, and 3-4 hours on email. “I spend my entire waking time online,” explains Thotaa.

A study called A Day without Media was conducted in 2010 by the International Center for Media and the Public Agenda, University of Maryland, US. The study had asked 200 students at the university to abstain from using all media for 24 hours. They then had to blog (http://withoutmedia.wordpress.com) about their experiences. “Although I started the day feeling good, I noticed my mood started to change around noon. I started to feel isolated and lonely. I received several phone calls that I could not answer,” wrote one student on the blog after the 24-hour fast (the website did not give out names). “By 2pm, I began to feel the urgent need to check my email, and even thought of a million ideas of why I had to. I felt like a person on a deserted island… I noticed physically that I began to fidget, as if I was addicted to my iPod and other media devices, and maybe I am.”

“Most youngsters cannot imagine their lives without cellphones and the online world today,” says Jitendra Nagpal, consultant, psychiatry, Moolchand hospital, New Delhi. “They feel anxious or stressed when they lose connectivity, be it because (the) battery has run out, they are in an area with no connectivity, or they have no balance left,” he explains. Psychologists have a word for those who make it an obsession: Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD).

Addiction to the World Wide Web is a very real issue. You can see the signs everywhere around you nowadays: a fidgety colleague who needs to constantly tweet, a friend who clicks the refresh button on Facebook hoping to see something new while on a dinner date, or you realizing at the end of a day that you have been browsing the Internet for so long that the afternoon has passed and you still have a pile of work to get through.

“Procrastination is the greatest demon of being connected,” says Sasank T., a 25-year-old marketing manager based in Bangalore. Sasank scored 58 on an Internet Addiction Quiz (www.netaddiction.com), a score which suggests that he might be facing some problems at work because of the long hours he spends online.

“I have had to work nights as I skipped deadlines since I was online for the whole day in office,” Sasank says. “There are times when many days go by doing nothing but browsing my favourite sites.” The only time Sasank disconnects is when his laptop heats up and gets switched off; and then the phone comes in. If, like Sasank, you can’t let go of the online urge, here are some tools that can help you:

Detect your time wasters

Wisdom has it that a 2-minute break on Facebook can last for hours. A second on a site can never last a second. Each one of us has sites that we love wasting our time on.

Try this tool: SelfControl (http://visitsteve.com/made/selfcontrol) is a free software that allows you to restrict the time you spend on social networking sites, gaming forums or shopping sites. Simply install the software and add any domain name to its blacklist, like Facebook.com. Then put on a timer and tell the software how long you want to use that domain in a day (from 1 minute to 12 hours). Once you have spent that much time on that particular site in a day, it will be blocked from your browser for the rest of the day. All the other sites will work just fine. SelfControl takes addictions seriously. The app was planned as an extreme measure, so use it only if you are not going to change your mind—deleting the application or rebooting your computer will not help unblock the particular site.

Continue reading “Caught in the net”

August 18, 2011June 16, 2016

Tweaks for tweets

Are endless tweets giving you a pain in the neck? We list some cool apps and websites that guide, curate and arrange the massive sea of information into bite-sized pieces for you

Time was when life was simpler. When all you had to do was reach office in the morning, check your emails, read some blogs, have a steaming cuppa and get on with your work. In the good old days, a message like “You’ve got mail!” brought a smile to your face. Heck, it even brought back the memory of a romantic movie.

Tracking tips: Who you should follow, and how to increase your popularity on Twitter.

In Twitterverse, the voices in your feeds never stop. According to the official Twitter blog (blog.twitter.com), as of June end the micro-blogging social network was generating a whopping 200 million tweets per day. That is equivalent to a 10-million-page book of tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 epic novel War and Peace. Reading this much text would take more than 31 years, the blog tells us. Here are some efficient ways to manage the information overload on the five-year-old micro-blogging site.

Find the right people to follow

There are oodles and oodles of tweeters online, but there are only a few hundred influencers. If you don’t hear them on time, you might just miss the next big thing your fellow tweeters are talking about. Find the right influencers of your industry on Twellow (www.twellow.com) by category. The website scrounges through Twitter.com every day to come up with a list of influencers tabulated on the basis of number of followers, industry or categories such as entertainment, news, society and sports. Here you will find the people who are heard by thousands of people and whose tweets are retweeted the most, etc. TweetLevel.com, on the other hand, lets you search the right people to follow by entering a word in its search box.

Tell a tweet story

Feeling creative and want to play with your and other people’s tweets? Check Storify (http://storify.com). Still in its beta stage, the website is an innovative way of telling a story using social networks and the endless information online. You can use tweets, Flickr photos, YouTube videos and articles from the online space to tell a story about a topic, idea or concept. The interface is simple, with a search button where you can search for tweets using hashtags or words and then drag and drop them in your story. The story is publicly available and can be embedded into a website or a blog.

Archive a hashtag

Hashtags were lying forgotten on the number “3” key of your keyboard before Twitter introduced them to create tweet groupings. Now, a hashtag before any word in a tweet makes it about a group, event, occurrence, meet-up or idea. But what happens a day, a week or a month after the hashtag has been used? If you want to save the tweets of a hashtag from being lost forever in the ocean of information that is Twitter, try the Twapper Keeper (http://twapperkeeper.com) free service. It lets you archive up to two trends by hashtags, keywords or fellow tweeters. Another such free service is The Archivist (http://archivist.visitmix.com), which focuses only on hashtags. Once you link the site to your Twitter account, it can track a hashtag for you on a daily basis, and analyse it by users, volume, sources and retweets, etc., in a fancy graph.

Mute the noise

Your stream is inundated with the tweet traffic of retweets, automatically generated tweets from Foursquare or Gowalla about where your friends are or those irritating “I am sleeping now” tweets. In between all this traffic, you could miss the tweets that may actually be relevant to you. Mixero (www.mixero.com) is a Twitter client developed with the idea of “reducing the noise” or information overload. It lets you collate the people you follow by groups and see tweets according to groups, user platforms or channels….

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Shweta Taneja

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