September 2008 - Posts - Play Things

September 2008 - Posts

Google heart Infosys. Infosys heart employees.

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
There has seldom been a sadder time to be friends with people in the banking and finance industries. Half of them sit at home jobless and the other half sit paranoid in the office while their retail consumers empty the cash boxes. Gone were the days when a new restaurant opening in Mumbai meant conning the nearest banker into paying for everyone's...

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A Stitch in Time Saves... err... Photoshopping

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
The rather grimly named Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor is a neat, fun little tool that stitches together several images to form a single panorama.Sort of like Photosynth , but without all the cumbersome installs and long loading times. All you need is a digital camera, the 3 mb download from here , and a panaroma to panaromise. The process...

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More power to the blogosphere!

Posted by Ayeshea Perera at 
Bloggers are not going anywhere. They're getting stronger, more influential, and what's more, earning both recognition and cold hard cash for their efforts. And though this is a phenomenon many of us are aware of, there is now some nice strong statistical data to back it up. Blog aggregator Technorati, which released the first part of its regular...

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Star Struck

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
It's not often that your humble mouse cursor turns into a valiant, puzzle-solving adventurer. Hoshi's Saga , a continuing series of games (The third was released yesterday) from the mysterious Japanese game designer Yoshio Ishii , is your mouse cursor's secret life - watch it punch out metal blocks, summon mysterious winds, harrass trapeze...

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Facebook demographics revelation: Indian men like Sex And The City

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Well around a thousand of them at least. Facebook boffins will do well to check out the Facebook Demographics analysis tool that is available hidden deep inside the ubiquitous social networking website. While reaching the tool is a pain, it is well worthwhile as hours of fun and frolic proceed forthwith. These are some of the key learnings this blog...

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Gravity Hooked

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
In the cheerfully bizarre multiverse that is online Flash Gaming, you often find games that are deliberately impossible - designed to twitch those little competitive neurons that gamers undoubtedly possess. Level design that relies on unfair traps and hidden surprises, but placed with the deliberate care of an evil mastermind to make unsuspecting players...

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Economic slow down for...err...MBA dummies

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
It is a sad time indeed for business schools all over the country. I have nothing more than oral history to go by, but Lehman Brothers, in the mid-90s, it appears were the first big investment bank to hire from Indian business schools. I have heard alumni talk of the time when the bank came to India and in quintessential-Wall Street style made 200,000...

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McCain versus Obama for geeks

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
When it comes to grandstand politics I am a total sucker for the soaring rhetoric and restrained gesticulation. Yet the more I see the Obama-McCain race hotting up the more I am beginning to notice one eye-catching aspect: Sarah Palin. When a former beauty queen can run for the Vice-President of your country you know, at some level, that your democracy...

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Finally, a multi-PC file management solution that works

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Ask any part-time writer/blogger how they manage their drafts, half-written blog posts and manadatory first chapters of half a dozen books and you will hear a familiar sob story. Pen drives are most popular when you try to carry around drafts that you can work on from everywhere. (Well mostly the office when the boss is not around.) But they can get...

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Chrome Sweet Chrome - The rapid review

Posted by Sidin Vadukut at 
Yes, yes Google has brought out a new browser. Yes, yes everyone and their mothers-in-law has downloaded, tested and blogged about it . No we will not let that stop us from sharing our two cents (approx. Rs0.9) about the new wonder browser. So here is a quick, no-nonsense review of the browser that should help you decide whether it is worth the download...

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Mozilla's Ubiquity is Uber Cool - and Speaking of Uber-Cool...

Posted by Krish Raghav at 
I'm going to have a bit of trouble explaining this post. This is Wolfenflickr , a rather bewildering combination of Flickr , the online photo service, and umm... Wolfenstein 3d , the seminal first-person shooter featuring a large minigun (pixellatedly pictured on right) that everyone back then, for some reason, used to call a 'Bazooka'....

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