Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Grand Union

As a child, I grew up fantasizing that there will come a day when all whom I know - especially the near and the dear ones, would converge for a grand gala union. The thought process was so intense, that culmination was more a question of time than of feasibility. The meticulously drawn list of invitees, check-list of events and all the associated discussions used to unfold in the grey matter with clock-work precision. The rotation of Mother Earth at an amazing speed of almost a thousand miles an hour, brought forth newer days and equally newer nights, but still no sight of the D-day. This is what possibly prompted Vitalstatistix to thunder famously to Asterix, Obelix and the other Gauls that 'Tomorrow never comes'. The invitee list was growing for a while without any deletions. But the indomitable process of aging had its own plans, forcing people to shed their mortal coils. The invitee list was no longer a straight line going up in the first quadrant with constant slope. Soon it dawned that the fantasy may not cross the mental realm for ever.

Years have rolled by and now the Net has grown larger and penetrated deeper, the Web has become unfathomably complex, Mobile and Smart phones packed with features get unleashed at regular intervals. Communication is instantaneous and almost global. Blogs, Tweets, MMS/SMS and a plethora of tools, ways and means to communicate have ensured that people who are miles apart in geography and poles apart in personality, converge, coexist and collaborate in real-time. Is this the grand union?

Sunday, December 19, 2010

The world of blogging

I had not gathered that little extra push all these days, months and years to do what has been going on for aeons (as per the current day measures!) - the world of web logging. Surprising for two reasons at least - firstly being in the thick of the IT industry for a score of years, the temptation should have arisen long back and got fulfilled and secondly having thoughts and observations sharing as an innate trait, blogging is a very natural channel that should have been explored and tapped much earlier!

It was a few days back that I tried my hands at tweeting. The length of a tweet reminded me of the archaic telegrams. Micro blogging is a pretty handy tool for quite a few things such as expressing oneself spontaneously, sharing links, gathering feedback or TIM - Thoughts in Motion (coined a la RIM) etc. It is akin to the Sutras or Aphorisms of the Hindu Wisdom - brevity to the core and focused. What I soon realized was that while tweeting is a very good option for expressiveness, it cannot be the only one. More often than not, we have a need to construct a plot with all the elaborations possible and permissible, to drive home a point. That directly led me here - to the World of blogging.