Nonsense Rhymes - XII (Hindi Edition)

After a lot of English poems, here comes my first attempt at Hindi poetry.. Beware !!

मुझे ना जाने क्यों ऐसा लगता है..
की ख़ुशी की "density" गम से ज्यादा है ॥
गम को जितना भी ख़ुशी में दफन करों..
कम्बक्त हर बार उभर आता है..
कम्बक्त हर बार उभर आता है॥

वैधानिक चेतावनी :- अर्थ हीन कवितायेँ सुनना स्वास्थ्य के लिये हानिकारक है॥

The Evolution of MastishK

MastishK 2007- India's 1st Fully Online Business Simulation Games Challenge is currently live. This is the 4th edition of the annual event, 1st started in 2004. For someone who had the privilage of being part of the the core team who conceptualised and created the event in 2004, it gives me immense pleasure to see the event go from strength to strength every year.

Arbit Choudhury, who was 1st launched during MastishK 2004, has also been part of each subsequent edition of the event, in the form of MAFIC (MastishK Arbit Fresh Ideas Contest), were participants are invited to send in their funny ideas, and the best ones being converted into Arbit Choudhury Comic Strips. This year's MAFIC is slightly different, with people given specific themes on which ideas are invited. To participate in MAFIC, do visit www.mastishk.nitie.net

Apart from all the wonderful business simulation games that attract folks to MastishK, the innovative web interface has also been a big hit among participants over the years.

Today, let me take a walk down memory lane, and share with our the "different" MastishK interfaces over the years.

So here is.. the changing face of MastishK :-)

MastishK 2004

MastishK 2005

MastishK 2006

MastishK 2007

History repeats itself !!

October 21st, 1996

Australia vs. India, a Day-Night ODI at Chinnaswami Stadium in Bangalore.

Australia score 215 batting 1st. Chasing, India are 164 for 8.

Srinath and Kumble come together, as Kumble's mother watches from the stands.

They add an unbeaten 52 runs together, taking India to a memorable victory.

October 17th, 2007

Australia vs. India, a Day-Night ODI at Wankhade Stadium in Mumbai.

Australia score 193 batting 1st. Chasing, India are 143 for 8.

Zaheer and Murli Kartik come together, as Zaheer's parents watch from the stands.

They add an unbeaten 52 runs together, taking India to another memorable triumph.

The edge of reason

.....Continued from here.

The Reasonable Man:- “All life works on reason.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

The Reasonable Man:- “A reasonable man is respected by one and all.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “Reason is a personal opinion. No one likes to believe he is unreasonable.”

The Reasonable Man:- “I can convince anyone with reason.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “Reason cannot convince one who does not appreciate or understand it.”

The Reasonable Man:- “A reasonable man can adjust to people and situations.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “Adjustment is a weakness which makes you give up your ideas and convictions.”

The Reasonable Man:- “He who does not adjust to situations, is stubborn.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “Only the stubborn get their way in life.”

The Reasonable Man:- “Reason always wins.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “A reasonable man is bound to loose to an obstinate one.”

The Reasonable Man:- “Reason helps you understand others.”

The Unreasonable Man:- “You understand others. But do others understand you?”

to be continued......

Blogging 2.0 has arrived !!

Bloozler , the next wave in Blogging, was launched at BarCampMumbai two days back.

Bloozler is the ‘Tool’ from bloozle which enables anyone to read all the blogs / news feeds etc in his/her reading list at one single place. No more going to each blog individually and checking for updates. No more missing out on the latest post. No more keeping track of your (blog / rss feeds) reading list by maintaining it in favourites or in document files.

So whats the Big Deal !! There are already some good blog aggregators / feed readers available. Whats with bloozle’s bloozler !!

Well, Bloozler tries to transform the simple act of blog reading and the attempt is to take it to the next level of maturity. Blogging is a phenomenon which has given netizens the ultimate freedom of expression. Simultaneously, it has become a nice source of latest happenings, news, views and reviews. In this Web 2.0 age of User Generated Content; people just don’t want to read some blogs out of plain interest to spend leisure time. They want more. They want to know more and more about the best blogs around, they want to increase the width as well as the depth of their reading. People not only want to read some blogs they already know of, they also want to read the ‘best’ blogs around (but usually don’t do so since they do not know the best ones around). Also the quality in these best blogs may not be consistent.

Bloozle takes into account all these current and future needs of the global blogging community. Conceptually, Bloozle is the platform which brings together the blogs you read, your friends read and everybody (using bloozler) reads. It then brings in a mechanism for ‘organizing’ the complex world of blogging information. Rating and tagging features form the foundation for organizing and filtering the huge abundance of user generated content resulting in ‘blog float’, the best blog posts or feeds automatically floating to the surface for everyone to read.

Bloozler is the web-based tool at your disposal for taking advantage of the revolutionary concept called bloozle. This web based tool will enable you to access your reading list from any internet connected computer terminal in the world and deliver the hottest blogs and posts right onto your screen.

Do check out Bloozler

Nonsense Rhymes - XI (Alone vs. Lonely)

At times, I would rather be alone..
To ponder dispassionately..
To look back around the mental alley..
To evaluate each success and failure..
To wonder what future has in store..
To envision where I want to be..
To set each goal and priority..

Yet, I would rather not be lonely..
Lest the past comes back to haunt..
Lest memories bring pain along..
Lest old wounds re-surface..
Lest old feelings show up on the face..
Lest I go back to my shell..
Lest I cry, in sorrows I can’t dispel..

At times I would rather be alone..
At times I need some personal space.
Yet, I fear memories coming out of the closet..
Yet, I fear loneliness.

Statutory Warning:- Reading nonsense poetry is injurious to mental health.

Arbit Choudhury wins the Manthan Award !!

I would like to announce with great pleasure that Arbit Choudhury has been awarded the prestigious Manthan Award under the e-Entertainment category, for its contribution to developing the concept of micro-distribution. The Manthan Award is an initiative by Digital Empowerment Foundation , India as the National initiative of World Summit Award, to select and promote the best practices in e-Content and Creativity in India.

As the Award Jury put it – “Comic characters and ICT [Information Communication Technologies] offer immense possibilities for communicating serious thoughts quickly and to a large audience and in an interactive mode. [Others] could adopt Arbit's strategy of micro-distribution over a large geographical area to reach the target audience.”

You can read more about Arbit Choudhury's contribution on the Manthan Award website here

The list of all winners of the Manthan Award can be found here

We would wish to thank all our fans for their support which has kept us going and has brought us to this day when Arbit has been recognized as a concept with an impact farther than Management and B-schools.

Sabyasachi Ghosh, a close friend of mine, who was present in New Delhi, accepted the Manthan Award on our behalf.

Do send your messages in relation to the award along with feedback, suggestions and Arbit ideas to arbit.mba@gmail.com You can also join the Arbit Choudhury Mailing List by visiting this link, and clicking on the “Join This Group” button, or writing a mail to arbit.mba@gmail.com with the subject “Join”.

Arbit turns 3 today..

Today is a very special day for me as Arbit Choudhury celebrates his 3rd birthday!!

Arbit Choudhury opened his eyes to the world on 5th September 2004, and the world has embraced him with open arms since then. Over the last 3 years, Arbit Choudhury has reached out to fans across the world, captured multiple media credits and been appreciated by international experts in the creative sector. The future will hopefully see Arbit Choudhury appearing in multiple online and offline publications.

On this special occasion, we would like to share two very special things with all Arbit fans.

An interview with the creators of Arbit Choudhury was published on the management blog Management Informatika.

We also bring to you a special Arbit Choudhury Quiz to mark Arbit's 3rd birthday. You can test your knowledge about Arbit Choudhury by taking the quiz by visiting http://www.arbitmba.com/ . The quiz closes on 15th September 2007.

Hint:- Answers to all the quiz questions can be found in various sections of http://www.arbitmba.com/

e-breakup !!

They say you learn something new everyday. Here is what I learnt today.

A significant number of young people like to save their girlfriend/boyfriend’s number with the letter “A” in their cell phone address books. They do this not because they want to hide the names from anyone, but because the letter “A” is the easiest to select while typing an SMS !!!

After this incredible revelation, I began wondering what would the consequences of a break-up between two Gen-X love-birds be like? What would the Gen-X equivalents of traditional post break-up activities like tearing apart your ex-fling’s letters, throwing away gifts, and burning his/her photos be like?

Well, here is what I can think of..

- Deleting all e-mails from your ex-love

- Deleting his/her number from the cell phone and e-mail address books

- Deleting Orkut scraps and testimonials from him/her

- Deleting all his /her photos from your PC, cell phone, flickr, picassa etc.

- Deleting all romantic SMSes

If someone with a real-life experience of an e-breakup is reading this post, I request him/her to add to this list, in case I have missed out on any key activity. :-)

Nonsense Rhymes - X (When the enemy is ME)

Man’s greatest battle,
Is not against an external entity..
But against someone,
Who shares his identity..

I can easily fight,
A foe I can see..
But how do I wage a war,
When the enemy is ME..

How do I win,
My battle against my vices..
How do I remove,
The cob-webs off mental crevices..

When I try to break free,
My fears clog the way..
When I venture into the unknown,
Apprehensions keep me at bay..

Inhibitions, Insecurities, Inabilities,
Attack me from within..
How do I CHANGE myself,
And rise above the chagrin..

I crave to challenge my limitations,
Break out of my shell..
Severing the barriers of self-doubt,
I want to rebel..

If I can beat myself,
If I can change for the better..
I would achieve what few do,
And unshackle my mind of every fetter..

Disclaimer:- These Nonsense Rhymes are not based on personal experiences, but emanate from my reflections on discussions I have had with a cross-section of friends, batch mates and colleagues. These rhymes are a way of expressing the variety of thought processes experienced by a disparate set of people.

Arbit features in Indian Express !!

Ever since inception in 2004, Arbit Choudhury has received frequent mentions in the print and online media.

Arbit Choudhury's latest media appearance happened on 15th June 2007, as part of a feature article on web-comics, published in Chennai edition of Indian Express.

Arbit Choudhury fans would recall that this is the 2nd time that Arbit Choudhury has appeared in Indian Express. Apart from this, Arbit has also appeared 3 times in Times of India and once in Business World, over the last 3 years.

Nonsense Rhymes- IX (Changing Chapters)

Another bout of nonsense hitting me.. Here goes..

I have..
Closed the chapter,
Crossed the bridge,
Extinguished the flame,
Purged my emotions,
Cleared the cob-webs,
Erased the memories,
Cleaned the slate..

I want..
To start a new journey,
Chart a new course,
Walk a new road,
Think new ideas,
Draw a new picture,
Write a new poem,
Live a new life..

Living with purpose

I was born in a middle class household.

My parents gave me the best education they could afford.

After schooling, I choose a stream of graduation, that most of my classmates did.

After completing my higher studies, I joined a respectable company.

After working for a few years, I got married; and my responsibilities increased.

Within a couple of years, my 1st child was born. A second one followed soon afterwards.

The foremost aim of my life now was to provide a good upbringing to my children.

I gave them the best education and values that I could, just like my parents had done to me. I saw them grow up and become self reliant.

The years passed by, I retired from my job, retreated to my hometown, and spent the rest of my days in peace.

Then one fine day, I had an heart-attack, and died.

Isn’t this the story of most of our lives?

Don’t most of us live our lives along predictable lines?

Aren’t most of the decisions we take during our lives dictated by what our peers are doing?

Have we ever sat back and wondered, if the decisions we make all our lives, are dictated by what we want, or what we have been told is the right thing to do?

Have we ever asked ourselves the questions,

Why have I been born?

What is the purpose of my life?

How is my life different from the billions around me?

Am I not wasting the life God has given me, by just going through the motions?

How will people remember me when I am gone? Or will people remember me at all?

Do I want to sit back at the fag end of my days, and be at a loss to figure out what I achieved in life?

Do I want to live an unknown life, and die and unknown death, like the hundreds of generations before me?

Or do I want to do something different, be someone different, make a difference.

You may say,

Studying well, working hard, fulfilling my parents’ ambitions, and looking after my children, in the very purpose of my life.

If I can do all this well, I will feel I have been succeeded in my life.

After all, how many people can claim to have done all these things well?

But I say,

Though not many succeed, but everyone tries to achieve the above.

What are you doing in your life which others are not?

What is your distinct identity?

Are you one among a million, or one in a million?

Not everyone can become a Gandhi or a Gates.

Not everyone has the ability, or the opportunity, to change the world.

But that does not mean each of us cannot make a difference in our own little worlds.

Each one of us can pursue a unique passion, follow a novel hobby, help the society, protect the environment, raise awareness, oppose injustice, read, write, play, sing, speak.

Why not do something that makes us unique, something that people appreciate, something that people remember.

No matter how small the contribution, no matter how few it impacts, it is better than living without a purpose.

Kabeera jab hum paida hue, jag hanse hum roye..

Aisi karni kar chalo, hum hanse jag roye..

(When you were born.. you wept, while the world smiled..

Live such a life, that when you die.. you smile, while the world weeps..)

Road Trip

Dictionary.com defines a "Road" as:-

Road –noun

1.a long, narrow stretch with a smoothed or paved surface, made for traveling by motor vehicle, carriage, etc., between two or more points; street or highway.

In an Indian context, this definition should be reworded as:-

1.a long, narrow stretch with a smoothed or paved surface, made for traveling by motor vehicle, celebration of events (ex. marriages), funeral processions, religious processions, advertisement, herding of animals, worshiping of deities, buying and selling of goods, playing cricket, parking, begging, sleeping, assembling, arguing, protesting, spitting, urinating, loitering, rioting etc.

P.S.:- My Blog celebrates it's 3rd Birthday today. Happy Birthday to my Blog :-)

Indi-Wah !!

Here is the text of Shashi Tharoor's fantastic speech at PanIIT 2006.

Must read for all who care for India.

America Runs On Tips!!

One often hears stories of how cultural and behavioral differences in different countries create comical situations. The following anecdote narrated by a colleague of mine, during my stay in the U.S., is another example of the same.

As my colleague entered a Cab on his way back from office one day, the Cab driver asked him, "Where do you want to go, sir?"

"Hotel XXX, Stanford Blvd." My colleague replied.

"OK. But let me tell you well in advance. I will not accept any tip less than 1 dollar!!" said the Cab driver, in a somewhat agitated manner.

"OK!! OK!! I will give you the tip you want. No need to get so agitated, my friend."

"Sorry for that, sir. But the other day I took a guy to the same place, and on asking for a tip, he handed over 5 cents to me!!" the Cabbie expressed his grievance, "Can you believe that!! 5 cents!! Doesn't he know, America runs on tips!!"

My colleague could not help but let a small chuckle out, as he thought to himself, "I bet that passenger was a Desi"

Black Is Beautiful

I have been deeply interested in Astronomy since my early childhood. Those wonderful tales about distant stars, planets and galaxies, that my dad used to narrate to me at bed time every day, never ceased to amaze me. Such was my fascination with the subject, that I my first childhood ambition was to become an Astronaut one day.

Black Holes are one of the most intriguing astronomical entities. The very concept of a piece of matter, with infinite mass concentrated at an infinitesimally small area, powered by such gravity that even light cannot escape, presents the most unbelievable natural wonder. When you couple all this with the fact that Black Holes are also related to other fantastic phenomena like Worm Holes and Time Travel, make them an Astronomy Lover's delight.

When this beautiful piece of animation, explaining some complex theories related to Black Holes with great simplicity, was forwarded to me by a colleague of mine today, I was almost teleported back to my childhood days, when talk of a Black Hole used to fill my eyes with wonder.

The Dravidian Divide

As I have remarked before, India is not a country, it is a continent. No other country in the world comes remotely close to us, in terms of diversity in culture, language, religion, ethnicity and mentality. It is indeed a miracle that India continues to exist as a unified entity, in spite of the myriad incongruences amidst it's populace. Any other country with so many divergences, would have broken into smaller fragments long time back. Perhaps it is the inherently non-aggressive nature of most Indians [I], along with the culture of assimilating all disparities, that comes to India's rescue here.

Though India is a land of a billion contradictions, two of the biggest bones of contention over the ages, have been the Hindu-Muslim divide, and the North-South polarisation. While the first topic is a lot more volatile in nature; evoking strong emotions consistently, the second one runs like an under-current; a cold-war between Indians belonging to the north and south of the Deccan. I have pondered a little on the first topic previously [II], some first hand experiences off late, have made me seriously think over the second issue.

Regular readers of this blog would know that I have been "onsite" for the last few months. And any person working in the Indian IT industry would tell you that the vast majority of Indian IT professionals in the US are South Indians. Perhaps the fact that most Indian IT companies have major bases in the south of the country, has something to do with this. While all my 30 odd colleagues here are wonderful and friendly people, I cannot help but feel like an odd-man-out, being the only non-Tamilian in the lot. Not only is it a tad frustrating to share the same space with a large group of people, all of whom internally speak a language you do not understand a word of, it is also kind of strange to think that you have to resort to a foreign language, to communicate with your own countrymen!!

Non-south indians are generally paranoid[III] that they will find communicating with locals difficult, when they visit the south of the country; with some even going to the extent of claiming that South Indians refuse to respond in Hindi, even if they know how to. Some even claim that South Indians have never accepted Hindi as a national language, and believe that their languages and culture are superior. A non-resident-tamilian colleague mentions that, even though he is a Tamilian himself, he faces problems dealing with local Tamils in Chennai, just because he does not look like an average Tamilian.

At the same time, some of my Tamil colleagues have shown me the opposite side of the coin; about people in North India not being very cooperative with them, on account of the fact that they do not speak Hindi. A section of the South believes that North India has not opened it's arms to the South as freely as it should.

I, for one, think that we, at times, get carried away with our prejudices, and attribute deep rooted meanings to simple incidents. An outsider will always find it difficult adjusting with the local population, anywhere in the world. India is no different. A non-resident-marathi friend of mine recalls instances about how traffic police in Maharashra, tend to be stricter with non-marathi speaking offenders; while another non-bengali friend working in Kolkata, laments that Bengalies prefer to promote other bengalies, rather than people from other corners of the country. Auto-rickshaws in Delhi try to cheat non-locals. People from the north-east of the country feel that they have not been included into the mainstream. The list is endless.

The North South divide is no different.

Regionalism is present in every part of the country. It would be wrong to project it as a question of North vs. South. It is perhaps the fact that Dravidian languages are so linguistically distant to any North Indian dialect, that make understanding, and hence adapting to each other so much more difficult, that is the reason for the greater distance between the North and the South. While a Punjabi might understand bits of Bengali, Marathi or Gujrati, he can never understand a word of Kannada, Tamil or Telugu by default.

We Indians are privileged to live in a country rich with such diversity in languages and traditions. We ought to try our best to learn from Indians coming from other parts of the country, and not distance ourselves from them. Every Punjabi should be willing to learn a word or two of Tamil, and every Tamilian should be ready to teach it. It is the duty of every Indian, to make a person from another part of the country feel at home, rather than treat him like an alien.

We cannot afford to be ignorant. After all, we have a billion things to learn.

I've Got Mail

26th August 2004 was a big day in my live. It was the day I opened my 1st GMail account :-)

GMail was launched on the 1st of April that year, As part of a fantastic promotion strategy, GMail was not open to all net-izans of the world, but only to a select few who received invites from existing GMail account holders. This generated unprecedented curiously, with everyone itching to have a 1GB mailbox, powered with Google’s unparalleled search capabilities, and a host of other features no other e-mail provider had ever dreamt of. By the beginning of August, some of my batchmates at B-school had acquired GMail ids, and other net-crazy students like me were bugging them incessantly, asking for GMail invites. I was personally interested in grabbing a GMail account as early as possible, as I wanted to possess the id "My first name"@gmail.com . But unfortunately, that was not to be. By the time I eventually got an invite from a batchmate, this id had been taken.

Once I had my GMail id, I was completely hooked to it. The interface, the speed, the search capability, the labels, everything was truly extra-ordinary. Soon, I embarked on a large scale migration from all my existing email accounts to GMail; sending my GMail id to all contacts, exporting all address books to GMail, changing the subscription for most of my Yahoo Groups to GMail etc. etc. Very soon, as the avalanche of Arbit Choudhury Fan Mails started descending on my GMail box, I realized that shifting to GMail was indeed a great idea, since archiving hundreds of fan mails would have been impossible in any other mailbox, given the fact that most other providers were only offering 5-10MB space at the time.

I still remember some of my friends having initial apprehensions about GMail, worrying about the fact that GMail would “read” their personal mails for placing “relevant text ads” beside the messages. GMail enthusiasts like me disregarded such notions as trivial trepidations of technology laggards. Any radically new concept always attracts its shares of skepticism, and GMail was no different.

Over the last 3 years, GMail has virtually reached the pedestal of the best e-mail service in the world. Though Yahoo Mail supposedly has more accounts, I believe this is due to the fact that it has been around for a considerably longer time than GMail. Apart from a few old timers who have been using legacy email services like Yahoo Mail and Hotmail for years, and a few others who have deep rooted apprehensions our the privacy of their mails, GMail has become the pre-eminent mail service of the times, liked by one and all. But like most other Google products, GMail too attracts it’s fair share of controversy, which I guess is due to the radically different way in which they go about doing their stuff at Google, as compared to their conventional counterparts.

In spite of it’s enormous popularity, very few people use GMail efficiently. Many people use GMail as an e-mail attic, dumping all their low importance mails in the GMail-box. Many others, even though they use GMail regularly, do not know how “Labels” work, and use labels just like they use “Folders” in other mailboxes. And then there are those who just don’t know how to organize their GMail box, and keep thousands of unread mails in their inboxes. This is akin to owning a King Size Mansion, but keeping it in a messy and unkempt state.

Ever since I began using GMail, I have tried to follow a few basic GMail manners, so that I can make more efficient use of my mailbox. These manners might not work for everyone, since each of us like to organize ourselves differently, but give a general idea about GMail etiquette.

1. Only keep those mails in the Inbox that require further action, and archive all other mails. This helps keep the inbox clean and uncluttered, highlighting the current action items, and relegating the rest to the background.

2. Do not archive any mail without a attaching appropriate label(s) to it. If you do so, it might forever get lost amidst thousands of other mails in the "All mail" folder, and you may never be able to track it. If the mail is not significant enough to deserve a full fledge label, use the label "Miscellaneous" :-)

3. Add a filter to all the "faltu" (insignificant) mails you receive from various yahoo groups and other subscriptions, "lebel" them appropriately, and make then "skip inbox", saving your Inbox from thousands of irrelevant “unread” mails.

The danger with keeping an unclean mailbox cluttered with many "faltu" mails is that one can easily miss out on an important mail amidst all the trash.

You can always visit the label periodically and check the mails.

4. If there is a “regular” mailer that you receive that has high importance, create a filter to attach a “Label” to it, but do not add the “skip inbox” condition. You can read the mail in the inbox, and then archive it. Creating a filter to attach a “Label” helps you avoid the repetitive task to attaching a label to a certain category of mails manually every time.

5. Periodically visit the “Sent” mails folder, and attach relevant labels to all the sent items.

6. Periodically peep into the “Spam” folder to check if any important mail has landed up over there. Sometimes, some important mails get filtered by the spam guard and end up in spam folder. Hence, it makes sense to periodically browse through the spam folder to check if any important mail is stuck there. Keep emptying the spam folder at frequent intervals, so that you do not have to browse through too many spam mails at one time.

7. Though not deleting any emails is a core GMail philosophy, it makes sense to delete mails that are of absolutely no present or future use. Having a King Size Mansion does not mean that you never throw out trash, does it? :-)

Many people reading this post might wonder why I am harping on the importance of labels, when you can search and dig out virtually anything in GMail. While searching for a keyword can help you locate all the mails containing the same, all the search results might not be relevant. For example, suppose you have a bank account in ABC bank, and they send you frequent mailers about their offers and your account transactions. If you just search for the keyword “ABC”, you will not only get the mails that came from the bank, but will also end up getting all the mails that you sent or received from other sources, that contained the keyword “ABC”. Locating the mails you received from the bank, will need you to either refine your search (which is difficult since most of us are not aware of the various "query words" that can be used to refine a GMail search), or sift through all the search results manually (which is a tedious and error prone task). This problem gets increasingly magnified as the number of mails containing the keyword increase. Hence, it is always better to organize mails into relevant labels, and then search for the appropriate keyword within the label.

Nikhil recently told me an ingenious technique used by him to organize his GMail. If there is an email which he wants to 'tag' (not label) with certain keywords, he sends a reply in that conversation to himself, with those keywords in it. This helps when one needs to find these emails later based on the 'tags' in addition to the words in that email.

I would like to invite all readers of this post to share some GMail manners they follow, as comments. It would be interesting to know the different ways in which different like to organize their mails.

Please note that the Gmail manners mentioned above should not be confused with Gmail Tools and Tips. A complete list of tips can be found here.

Before you begin to feel that I am a GMail Marketing employee, let am also mention something I don’t like about GMail. :-)

I for one, do not subscribe to their “Search, Don’t Sort” philosophy. At times, one would like to sort emails based on certain criteria, in order to draw certain conclusions. Here is an abstract example. Suppose you remember that a friend of yours sent to an MP3 file containing a beautiful song long time back. But you are either not able to remember the name of the friend, or have too many mails from that friend in your mailbox, and hence cannot locate that particular mail through the GMail search mechanism. If you have a “sort” option, you can sort all the mails in descending order of attachment size, and hence locate the mail containing the MP3 file, as it would be one of the larger mail attachments in your mailbox. While this example might not properly capture the problem I am trying to highlight, I feel it necessary to bring this out as I know a person who refused to shift from Yahoo Mail to GMail, due to the lack of sorting option in GMail.

I have just realized that this is one of the longest blog posts I have ever made. In case my GMail rant has got to your nerves, I end on a lighter note, with this old PJ from an Indian biscuit ad.

Reporter to a male college student:- “What do you think about e-mail?”

Male college student:- “E-mail is good, but fe-male is better !!”

P.S.:- Here is Nikhil's take on GMail Manners

Globe Trotter

Hyderabad
Mumbai
Bangalore
Delhi
Chennai
Nagpur
Bilaspur
Raipur
Chandigarh/Panchkula
Frankfurt
Chicago
Baltimore
Columbia
Hagerstown
Annapolis
Washington
Herndon
Boston
Burlington
Cambridge
Rockport
Jersey City
New York City
Lewes
Atlantic City

4 months, 25 cities, 17 states, 3 countries, 3 continents.
7 airlines, 6 metros, 3 ferries.