Finally my favorite Nadal conquers the ultimate grass court
championship -Wimbledon in one of the all time greatest matches.
Watch the highlights below

Since this is one of the first few blogs (actually 2^nd)
that I am writing from my Macbook even though I am having Macbook
from more than 6 months! My personality has real hight swings, I
generally write a lot when my personality has swinged to the
direction of a ‘blog writer’. It looks like that’s happening now!
Also over the past 6 monhts I was in India mostly and traveling
around and involved with too many things that I couln’t really
contribute to my blog. “Ho sake to maaf kar de na”

Let me start this new season by writing something about Apple.
I have really become a very big fan of apple after buying my macbook.
Not that I did not like Apple before, but now it has taken over the
number 1 position from Google in my lists of favorite companies. Here
is my current prediction – ‘over the next 5 years apple will become
the biggest technology company in the world overtaking both Google
and Microsoft’. Well it definitely is a very bold prediction, but
Apple fans will know why

Let me put out some reasons for it. Coming to my Macbook. I
never had imagined that I will be such a satisfied customer of
Macbook. I used to have a Dell Inspiron E1505 before. I used to
always curse both Microsoft and Dell because the machine used to have
bad performance (even though I had Core Duo proessor and 1 GB RAM). I
have no such complaints with Mac. Mac is blazing fast. They give the
best hardware for the money they charge. Even though the Macbook
price looks like its on the higher side, believe me it’s worth every
penny. And the software, I can tell you that ‘Mac OS X is by far the
best operating system ever made till date’. Since most of the people
have always been using Windows, they don’t know that Mac OS X is
actually a better operating system.

1.It’s much more easier to use (it might take some time for
windows users to get used to it, which is very much understandable).

2. Its much more stable than Windows. Very rare that the OS will
freeze and you don’t really need frequent restarts.

3. The OS and all the software which comes from Apple (including
Mail, iTunes, iWork, iLife, etc) are all written in a very efficient
way. They don’t really need to used huge amount of memory space like
Microsoft Windows and other microsoft applications.

4. There is a feature called ‘Spotlight’ in Mac which makes
searching anything and everything in Mac very easy. This includes
files, mails, songs, videos, etc which are on the hard-drive. This is
similar to Google desktop but it has much better features than the
google software and since it’s integrated with the OS, it doesn’t
slowdown the system. Also it’s integrated with all Apple applications
which makes it very productive.

5. Mac comes with free software package called iLife which
includes Mail, Address Book, Calendar, iTunes, iPhoto, iDVD, iMovie
etc. These software so so useful that I was wondering how I missed
them all these years. These softwares makes my macbook sooo much more
productive than my previous Dell.

6. And not to miss, the look and feel, ease of navigation etc
which are apple specialties. This will leave any person in awe.

7. The battery life is awesome. It always lasts me for at least 4
hours.

I am sure there are lot of elaborative article. There are lots of
reviews available for Macbook. And there are also lot of videos
available on www.apple.com which
shows details of features of Macbook.

And coming to rest of the things from Apple. I am sure you would
have heard about iPhone. If you have really used iPhone or an
iPod Touch (which I proudly own), you will really know what the hype
is all about. If one looks into the market there is no product
anywhere close to what an iPhone is. I have even checked out Samsung
Instinct personally which is supposed to be the iPhone killer and
boy it just sucks. One can’t use it after having a look at iPhone!
iPhone is really getting $325 subside from AT&T for every iPhone
sold. And the subside becomes $425 if it is sold by Aplle stores. Can
you imagine the kind of money apple is going to make out of iPhones!
Since it’s priced at $200 for the 3G GPS phone, it will sell like hot
cake and Apple is going to make tons of money out of it! And now they
are also challenging Blackberry with new features which also makes it
a good business phone which can be used in Enterprise!!

They have also started an amazing web based feature called Mobile
me. This also shows how good Apple can be at making web applications.
They are not really far from Google in creating great web
applications.

Apple always know where the money is, Apple products never come
cheap. But they are always worth every penny paid for it. Out of the
3 big technology companies Apple, Google and Microsoft I think
apple is rising the fastest. If you just check the rise of Market cap
of Apple since Dec 2006 you will understand what I am talking about.

If you don’t already own any apple product you will soon come to
know what you are missing all these years. Do check out www.apple.com
& don’t miss the videos there!

For now you can enjoy the Macbook Air Video!! Trust me it’s
amazing!

I had a long wait for this. When I was planning to buy an iPod last year, my friend Spot told me about the full screen iPod that Apple is planning to launch. Since then I have been waiting for the full screen iPod. I was very exited when Apple announced the iPhone with full screen. But, I didn’t buy an iPhone due to reasons like–>
i. iPhone comes with 2 Year contract with AT&T. So, if I move to India anytime in between I will be forced to pay extra money to break the contract.
2. Also, I am already having a very good contract at a great monthly rate with Sprint.
3. iPhone cannot be used with other service providers. It doesn’t allow the user to put a SIM card into it. So, the phone will be useless for me when I visit India for vacations.

But, today my wait is over. Steve Jobs finally announced a new generation of iPods. And the hot launch of today is the iPod touch. This new iPod is very similar to the iPhone except that this is not a phone. So, this doesn’t come with a contract with AT&T which is good for me. The pricing of the new range of iPods looks pretty good. The touch screen with lot of patented technologies makes iPod touch (like iPhone) way ahead of any other competitor product. And not to miss, this comes with Wi-Fi capability with a built in browser. Now one can easily sync one’s iPod to get latest podcast like news etc which can be downloaded from iTune built in the iPod touch. One can easily buy songs, movies and TV shows directly from the iPod!

As always Steve Jobs came up with a great Key Notes today & I placed the order for a 16 GB iPod touch after watching the wonderful Keynotes. The product won’t be shipped until the end of this month, so I am eagerly waiting for it.

The large screen makes it so much more easier for me to watch movies on the go, especially when I am travelling long distance in flights or trains. Also, now it’s much easier for me to share my photographs with my friends when I meet them! Since, I am training for Marathon, the music part of the iPod will be much more useful than usual for me.

I know that my blog has gone dead from quite a long time. Busy life! Let me not give too many reasons

To give a few updates, I have been through quite some movement. I moved to Charlotte from Bangalore in Oct 2006 Y then to New York in May 2007.

I have been doing lots of things, so there are quite a lot of things to update.

Had been to Caribbean, Las Vegas & Niagara Falls in between!

For the time being, I’ll at least give link to some of my new photo albums.

Click here for the entire photo album of my Caribbean Visit

Click here for the entire photo album of New York photos taken right next to my house

Click here for the entire photo album of Niagara falls

Which car are you planning to buy?!

Long awaited Swift Diesel is finally out linky

Here is a detailed review of the car –> linky

Guys, this is supposedly an amazing vehicle. This is based on a technology purchased by Suzuki recently from Fiat. This car will supposedly give a mileage of 20kmpl !! So, it should work out to something like Rs. 2 per KM!
(An interesting fact about this diesel technology developed by Fiat is that in India this technology will be used by Maruti, Fiat, Tata and General Motors!)

Also, look out for Santro diesel, Getz diesel and Zen diesel which will be launched soon.

i. Diesel is cheaper than petrol in India (Petrol Rs.55 & diesel Rs.40 per litre in Bangalore -Jan 2007)
ii. Diesel cars give more mileage (distance per litre of fuel) than petrol.
iii. Diesel technology has improved a lot in recent times.
It looks like the era of diesel cars has arrived in India!

Skoda (they have amazing diesel engine technology), Toyota and Honda (will launch a small hybrid car also) will have their small car (hatch back) in India in in another year or two.
In 2007, 50 new car models are being launched in India.

Also, Mahindra-Renault, Nissan, Fiat-Tata have lot of plans for India and not to speak of Audi, BMW and Merc with their own plans for India!
Lot seems to be happening in the Indian car market!

[This article has many photos]

Sometimes we just need to move on in life even though there’s quite a big price to pay for it. I recently changed my house in Bangalore & moved to a spacious apartment near to my office. The worst part of it was that now I have rare chance (may be no chance) of meeting Prateeksha. Here are the last few photos that I took of her.

Click here for complete album of Prateeksha

I had taken more photos of Prateeksha, but unfortunately when I was at Chicago recently I was trying to do some experiment with my camera & accidentally formatted my memory card due to which I lost lot of precious photos including many great photos of Prateeksha

[This article has photos]
Last weekend I was in Mysore for Ganesha Habba!

Colorless Ganesha (without artificial colors!) @ my home.

"Ganesha banda, Kai Kadbu tinda, Chikkerel bidda, Dodkerel yedda!!"
If you don’t know Kannada, don’t worry about it

I met my high school classmates this weekend after many many years! We all went to Mysore from Bangalore this weekend for Ganesha Festival, together in my car. We were remembering all the masti time we had in our high school. It was great fun all the way. On the way we stopped at Shivalli Restaurant which is by far the best restaurant on this highway. It’s quite famous for masala dosa’s & boy we all had it! I keep spotting celebrities on the way to Mysore every now & then. This time I saw Kannada film actor Vijay Raghavendra near this restaurant. (Last time I had spotted cricketer Javagal Sreenath in another restaurant - Kamath).

My high-school classmates — Dinesha, Praveen Baliga & Gurudutt

with my flat-mate Anand

[This article has a photo]
I guess I didn’t update about my car (It doesn’t take much to guess actually).
This is my car. Opel Corsa. Some think it’s blue, some say it’s silver in
color. Officially the color of my car is ‘Artic Breeze’. Bought this in April.
Since I got the car my spending for fuel has gone up many many times!

My car on the Bangalore-Mysore highway.

.

It’s been quite sometime since I updated my website (in-fact it’s been more than 2 months). But the strange & unbelivable fact is that my website is still getting lot of hits!!

I am back in India now, but I am caught with lot of work & other things. But, there are lot of things to update, should be doing it sometime soon.

I am very heavily loaded with work right now. My application is going for production and I am not finding time to write blog. Infact on friday night I had to even skip my sleep! But I hope to find time soon. [Don’t tell me to find it on goolge ]

Lot of people have been asking for updates from US.

Life is nice at Charlotte & I am loving it. Everything here is so new to me. I am still getting adjusted to the totally new environment. My brain is on a big learning mode. I have quite a lot of things to say, so wait for my next articles here!