Play Things

Michael Jackson: A brief YouTube HIStory

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Michael Jackson passed away today after a career known as much for its hugely influential music as the turmoil and allegations in Jackson's private life. Jackson's music and unique persona made him one of the most successful American exports ever. For someone with such longevity in his repertoire there will be few people who have had a chance...

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The legend of the scribblenauts: The "write" stuff

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
So another E3 has come and gone. The yearly extravaganza of fancier explosions, prettier graphics, and sequels reaching fairly ridiculous numbers (Final Fantasy XIV, anyone?). The necessary dose of violence and guns and muscle-flexing machismo to tide over the rabid gaming press for another year. Same old, same old, yeah? Well, wrong. See, something...

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How much would you pay for the iPhone 3G this August?

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
With Apple having announced the new iPhone 3Gs and that this model will be available in India in August, the first thought on my mind was: "Why did I not study software and get a green card and go to the US and settle down and buy the iPhone for a reasonable price and feel content in life?". My second thought was: "Then what could happen...

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Faster than a speeding.. Firefox?

Posted by Ayeshea Perera at 
Traveling through cyberspace is about to happen at warp speed, if one is to believe Mozilla's claims about the soon-to-be-launched Firefox 3.5 . Touted as the fasted browser ever (or so far at least given the speed at which browsers seem to be one-upping each other these days), Firefox 3.5 is reportedly twice as fast as Firefox 3 and ten times as...

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Susan Boyle and Reality tv: too fast, too furious?

Posted by Ayeshea Perera at 
What are the chances of a frumpy, middle aged woman walking into a recording studio, wooing the Tommy Mottola type producers with her voice and making it big? In 2009 baby, non - existent. The newest entrants to the commercial music scene are generally young, hep, physically beautiful, dance well, sing tolerably and can pout with the best of them in...

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The unbearable truthiness of Google Suggest

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Earlier today @rashmid sent me an image via Twitter. About Twitter: This is a grab from a simple Google Search page. Type in a term into the box and Google automatically tries to guess what you are looking for. Mostly based on content online and previous search histories. It throws up a list with a corresponding estimate of how many results are available...

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PlayStream 1: Unlock that iPod with Sharepod

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
It gives us tremendous pleasure to announce the launch of PlayStream, the weekly tech video show on livemint.com. Completing the terrific tech trio of PlayThings (blog) and PlayCast (podcast), PlayStream will showcase short--5 minutes or less is our target--videos where we will focus primarily on freeware applications, browsers and browser extensions...

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Gasp! News and pics leaks of a new PSP. To be shown at E3.

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
The Guardian , Ars Technica and Eurogamer are abuzz with news of the new PSP called the PSP GO. There are pictures galore and it appears that there was even a demo video on YouTube which was later taken down. This is, of course, great news for Sony fanboys. The PSP has been overdue an overhaul for a while now and this is could mean good things for both...

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Scandal?: Blogger discovers old designs remarkably similar to Zoozoos

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Ok I won't go all India TV all over this, but blogger Priyank Sharma has a post on his blog that goes like this: But yesterday, I came across an interesting link which changed my lookout on these Zoozoos completely. I stumbled upon a series of graphics on popular stock imagery website stockxpert by user Huebi (real name: Alexander Hübert from Wuppertal...

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Asking without really asking

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
I will let master statistician Stanley L. Warner begin this blog post. From the first few paragraphs of his landmark 1965 paper "Randomized Response: A Survey Technique for Eliminating Evasive Answer Bias": "For reasons of modesty ... or merely a reluctance to confide secrets to strangers, many individuals attempt to evade certain questions...

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CSI Dwarka: What WAS Rahul Gandhi reading?

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Merely moments ago my dear friend and colleague Samanth Subramaniam blogged about the reading habits of politicians , Indian and otherwise. His post is plenty fun to read. So please do. (You must understand that more web traffic to the livemint blogs leads to happier bosses, leads to pleasanter top-level meetings, leads to bonuses. I am just saying...

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The new Amazon Kindle is bigger and better. Pictured leaked.

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Normal 0 Nobody really thought that Amazon would make people want to drool over a boring old e-book reader when the first Kindle was unveiled in November 2007. But like other quirky successes such as the Flip video recorder and the original series of Asus netbooks, the Kindle has been a success sales wise and geek-craving wise. Tomorrow’s unveiling...

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Vodafone Zoozoos on Facebook!

Posted by Ayeshea Perera at 
Zoozoos these days it seems are everywhere. The antics of these egg headed strange white humanoids have been entertaining millions of IPL viewers during commercial breaks for some weeks now. And now, these new Vodafone ambassadors have their own facebook fanpage, which is growing (even by facebook standards) at amazing speed. At around 11 am, the page...

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Use the Delhi metro to overcome writer's block

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Ever since moving to Delhi late last year I'd made a solemn pledge to use my two hours worth of daily commute from Dwarka to Connaught Place to catch up with my reading. With a reasonable chance of getting a seat at least on the return journey I figured that I'd get at least a printed out New Yorker story or two out of the way daily. Alas I...

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Gmail, जीमेल, ಜಿಮೇಲ್, ജിമെയില്‍, ஜிமெயில், జిమెయిల్, now in five Indian languages too!

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Splendid news for all those looking to add a little ethnic spice to their emails. Gmail has just announced that : When you compose a new mail in Gmail, you should now see an icon with an Indian character, as the screenshot below shows. This feature is enabled by default for Gmail users in India. If you do not see this function enabled by default, you...

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