Thursday, January 17, 2008

Right and Wrong!

End of an illustrious career

I hardly ever write about anything related to cricket. Even if it is something as 'big' as Sydneygate. Due to essentially two reasons. Firstly there is hardly anything left to write after reams/TBs have been written/spoken on every conceivable aspect of the issue, and secondly there is a fatigue that grips me due to overcoverage of Cricket!

But I am making this exception to salute one of my most favorite and respected cricketers who said farewell from the game last week, and ironically while all of us were busy lambasting bad behavior on the ground the retirement of one of the most gentlemen cricketers hardly made any news, atleast in India.

I believe you will echo my feelings for Shaun Pollock, who showed us that you can be aggressive and competent without engaging in verbal slur. His records speak for themselves but, it was his onfield persona that made me his fan.

Good bye Sir. The game certainly owes a lot to you!

Correct Me!

A few months ago The Times Of India had a discussion on their edit page on the topic: Is it ok to allow SMS language in exams? The main argument supporting the issue (that yes it should be allowed) was that it is more important for examinees is to write correct answer. What use it is if someone writes a wrong answer in correct English? Fair enough! Only if I could find this supporter I would make him/her read all the crap that we Indians have started pasting all over the internet.

Don't get me wrong. (if you are getting me wrong in first place, that is!) I don't mean to be preachy but reading really terrible language even on technical forums is not a very enriching experience. (Read the comments on Rediff.com if you want to see really ugly face of Indians.) Instead of question you have to interpret the SMS words that poster has used. (Vaibhav and I have tried to be strict about language of questions posted on our C/C++/Java community on Orkut, and have had some success.)

And I am not even talking of grammatical and spelling errors here. Don't they have good old language writing classes in schools anymore? Or the students submit their answers through SMS only?

I think Firefox should start using something more than red dotted underlines to show people that perhaps the word they wrote does not exist in English!!

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Trying 'M-Blogging'

I have never tried blogging from phone. Can't say if it really is mobile blogging. My set doesn't support many blog and mobile specific software like Yahoo GO.I guess this also should be a criteria when selecting a phone when you want to be able to do everything!

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Aditya Birla Group does 'more' to Trinethra

After aviation industry, it's consolidation time in India's retail sector. And if the former has been heavy on our pocket the latter should be friendly to it. Aditya Birla Retail, an Aditya Birla Group company acquired 'Trinethra Super Value', a chain of retail stores owned by India Value Funds.

Trinethra has got a huge footprint in South India with stores named Trinethra in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu and Fabmall in Kerala and Karnataka. It has got warehouses in various cities as well.

The new stores have been named 'more' and sport an orange and light green colours.

To be honest I have found 'more' not very different from 'Spencer's Daily'. It is too early to tell how will 'more' diversify. It could be on the lines of Spencer's which has got different names for different size stores:
4000-7000 sq ft: Spencer's Daily.
8000-15,000 sq ft: Spencer's Super
25000+ sq ft: Spencer's Hyper

Ofcourse as the size of stores increases, the variety of items also increases.

Second style is the one pioneered by Pantaloon Retail and followed by Reliance Retail. Having a different brand name and look for different products. Both the retail giants have a flagship store (Big Bazaar and Reliance Mart respectively) and multiple stores which can be termed as niche stores. Reliance has been making lot of noises in this segment with it's Reliance Fresh stores which enjoy deeper reach due to their numbers. Reliance has started a footwear store chain called Reliance Foot Print, a health care store chain named Reliance Wellness and are soon going to start an electronics chain as well. Pantaloon retail however is miles ahead with about 15 brands which include an e-Commerce company (futurebazaar.com), a shopping mall (Central), a medicine chain (Tulsi) and loads of stores having apparels targeted at different age, income and size bracket!

'more' has lots of competition on hand already and coming months are not going to be easier for sure!