I resisted but finally gave in to self-induced pressure to blog about a year ago. And, I remember trying hard to stay convinced of the view that I didn’t know enough to actually say anything of consequence. One year down the road, I’m still unsure if anything I write actually matters tremendously, but I’m still glad that I overcame the fear of seeing my words ‘published.’ In the process I seem to have inspired some visitors to acquire the title of a birdwatcher as through my posts they got to know of places to go watch birds and connect with other birders.

Then came the switch to free and open source software only about four months ago. I’d been up to my head into the reasons for moving to FOSS, but there was a huge hesitation to let go of the familiar. Especially, my beloved Fireworks that I’ve used for years for image editing. But am I glad that I decided to make a clean start when this neat and compact Netbook came into my hands. And, in retrospect, it hasn’t really been an earth-shaking move. It’s just been a learning process and hopefully will stay that way as I’m going about my computing business.

Then, I’ve been a big time advocate of real time learning and have been engaged in advancing my human resources management thought process for a couple of years. That has meant reading several blogs on a regular basis, and in any case online reading for me has gone beyond HRM and included other interests. I’d been somehow coping with this diverse reading in an arbitrary manner but about a month ago, I moved to Google Reader to thread together most of my frequently visited websites. And, oh, what a total luxury it is now to just open the Reader instead of navigating through several bookmarks.

Recently, I also decided to make more determined efforts to connect with online communities and the result has been encouraging when I’ve had useful discussions going among the Kendriya Vidyalaya alumni group on LinkedIn – some recounting early experiences but most looking at present and future. A group of alumni had been working on the design of a global alumni website that I’m getting to help refine. Delhi based members have even managed two small meets where we’ve had students with a difference of 30+ years in their passout years. Then, a new group that I’ve started on LinkedIn envisions knowledge exchange and mentoring among KV originated human resources professionals. I’ve to see if I’ve the patience to help people stay connected there when, interestingly, now I find scores of people who’re more shy than me to speak up…

A new experiment has been with Twitter. Kishore has been on Twitter for over 2 years so that tells me the will power I’ve exercised to stay off it Well, I gave in to the lure last evening and today have had Vir Sanghvi respond to my view on the private airlines’ confrontation with the government. How cool is that?

It’s sheer delight.

And, I hope this tech journey continues!

About four years ago, when I managed to successfully pay for a set of Tintin comics on Indiatimes, and saw them getting delivered well wrapped, my faith in man-created mechanisms increased manifold. I made a few more book purchases through the site but after several unsuccessful searches, I felt compelled to revert to my trusted Oxford bookstore in Qutab Plaza or Midland in the Shopping Mall in Gurgaon.

Then, about a year ago, I got conned into paying India Today for a set of Britannica cds that was supposedly bundled with a free kit-bag. More than a year and several reminders later, I haven’t got either. What I did get in abundance were their colourful paper catalogues that attempted to entice me to lose more and more of my money to them, but the company didn’t realise that they had lost a kind-hearted customer for good! Now they spam my mobile relentlessly and earn my wrath even more, and I’m so upset with the brand itself that I don’t consider it deserving of any more business from me.

More recently though my trust in online shopping skyrocketed when I managed to procure a good brand of 4GB MP3 player from Ebay. At a little over Rs2400, the gadget was priced very competitively, and using a discount coupon from one of their mailers, I couldn’t believe my luck for getting it for some Rs1800 or thereabouts. This well-packed hardware arrived a few days later and worked smoothly. Since then, Ebay’s regular mailers have uplifted my spirits further and I’m sure glad they’re around despite several online businesses having disappeared. They will continue to find me as their faithful customer provided the same service continues.

And yesterday, while browsing one of the blogs at MINT, I was happy to know of more options for buying books. The one that appears to top that list is flipkart. On a test of their collection, searching for books by a photographer author that Kishore thinks highly of — Bryan Peterson, I saw at least 10 titles whereas other sites showed only a couple. Shipping was said to be free for orders above Rs100 and the time required for most books was 18-20 days — but also 2-3 months in some cases. I know that’s long but at least one can now sit tight and get these books delivered at home instead of making a trip to Singapore or the U.S to buy them.

Aren’t we glad to be living in times when we can experience the technology (and trade) affecting our lives so positively?

]]> http://jdesignlab.com/technology/online-shopping.html/feed 0 http://jdesignlab.com/technology/easy-computing.html http://jdesignlab.com/technology/easy-computing.html#comments Thu, 12 Mar 2009 07:07:30 +0000 jyoti http://jdesignlab.com/?p=406

After much thought over the last few months, I bought myself an Eee PC 1000H. It’s tiny, shiny black, clad in a nice neoprene cover and it works. My specs of a small sized machine that slips into a shoulder bag; enables wordprocessing, browsing, emailing; and looks presentable without burning a hole in my pocket are closely met by this Netbook. And, boy am I excited about owning it? I’ve named it Chotu. Lillipute was a close contender but Chotu would come to mind quicker so won the contest.

With Gurgaon’s electricity nightmares continuing unabated, having a long battery life portable machine with wifi felt more like a necessity than an option for a compulsive surfer and emailer like me. And, even when this last week has been haphazard and busy, each time I’ve looked at Chotu, it’s brought a smile to my face. A relief too that now I’ll remain connected to the world with or without electricity from DHBVN. Asus claims to give 7 hours of backup in this 2-cell battery model in Windows and surprisingly less in Linux. But this less is more in Gurgaon.

The machine has come loaded with Windows XP Home at its price of Rs20,400 from a dealer in Nehru Place but being determined to do it right and go the open source route this time around, with Kishore’s hands-on help, I’m running the Ubuntu based Easy Peasy as the OS, Openoffice for wordprocessing, Evolution for email/calendar/task management and Firefox for browsing. For now, I’m missing Photoshop and Fireworks but hoping to get used to Gimpshop that I still have to install. I find Pidgin a very sensible way to manage various IM accounts. And, the  machine’s 80GB hdd comforts me that it’ll easily hold my current and future data and applications. A missing cdrom hasn’t been a problem till now but I may look at an external drive at some point. Its wifi takes rather long to connect but when it does establish the connection, it remains rock solid on and I can seek any corner of the house to crouch and surf.

There are some issues though. The keyboard, with its right shift key way too right for my reach, poses a learning curve that I’m trying hard to cover. Its mouse pad is giving me some grief but I’m determined to win over its affection. Evolution is playing strange tricks on me by sending off my messages half way through, but now I’m mindful of keeping my mouse cursor away from the Send button after some goofups. I wish it behaved respectfully like Outlook and queued up my mail in the Outbox to wait for a forced Send/Receive but well, life could be worse. After all, picking up email straight through an email client has been a liberating experience after worrying about viruses in Windows – it’s amazing to know that virus infected mail needn’t be a huge concern as long as I keep teaching Evolution to separate clean mail from spam.

My music is on it but the soothing sound of BBC Radio or last.fm is keeping me amply happy and away from Worldspace or my personal library. Am sure enjoying this journey from a desktop to computing anytime, anywhere. Thanks to Amit Kalra for accompanying me through a breezy scan of various Netbooks in Nehru Place, Kishore for showing his magic with machine configuration and data transfer to appease my computing needs, and Supreet Sethi for endorsing Eee PC by showing off his own on the visit to KNMIET.