A glass of steaming milky syrupy tea is best served cut. One by two or two by three, it embodies the spirit of sharing and camaraderie (and more significantly a resource crunch). Come, have a sip.
IIPM is again making news, of the wrong kind of course. Many thanks to Careers 360 for bringing to light, again, the truth beind the tall claims by IIPM.
But unfortunately this story has to be repeated over and over again. IIPM hasn't learnt any lesson, not that we expected it to, and continues making pompous claims in full-page ads on major national dailies (I doubt any of those would publish any negative news on IIPM) and students still fall for such arrogates.
Therefore it becomes a responsibility for people who are aware of the facts to disseminate the other side of the story at regular intervals. We might not have the resources for full-page colour ads but we have the strength of community and we should use it for the advantage of the unsuspecting and gullible students who spend lakhs of their parents earnings for a 'degree' whose worth is under question.
And here's the joke of the week:
Move over London, Wharton, Harvard here comes "The Greatest B-School on Earth" IIPM!
Arindam Chaudhuri's vocabulary seems to be limited to superlatives (and someone please fire his designer. On second thoughts, don't. I want my laughs.). Or he is a firm subscriber of the famous adage favoured by the Nazis "The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed."
I think people with access to Shah Rukh Khan should advise him to reconsider his association with IIPM. People tend to falsely add credibility to whatever a star endorses. I, on my part, have sent a tweet to the Twitter account believed to be Shah Rukh's.
And there's also Planman CHE (Centre for Higher Education) and the logo, you guessed it, the star on Che Guevara's beret.
Prospective students should be very wary of the ads published by institutes and always read the fine print. I happened to notice this on yesterday's edition of The Indian Express.
Dr MGR Educational and Research Institute University, Chennai, advertisess itself as "India's No. 4 University" but the fact is that it ranks fourth (according to a Financial Express study) only amongst the universities established after 2000. Though to their credit, it is mentioned in the ad, but something that could easlily miss the eye.
By the way, what happened to the multi-crore lawsuit fromm 2005? Only bow-wow-wow?
In a bid to retain its mammoth share of the internet browser market, Microsoft is trying to better its offering, now that more and more people are getting aware of the other better options out there. And they have also released a set of new fun ads for Internet Explorer 8 in India. It shouldn't matter that, for me, Firefox is still more fun.
I've found four such ads and each highlights one prominent feature of the browser.
A take on the MTV India Roadies auditions and the kinky selection process. They call it the Coadies. On a slightly different track, the MTV show is supposed to be about roads and bike riding - hence the name - but half of the participants can't even ride a bike. It isn't that Indian girls don't ride bikes, a lot do, but I think that such girls don't care much about such shows and their gas-filled producers.
Every guy's ultimate fantasy (girls' too), to go invisible. Some call it the porn mode. And this is what I believe that this TVC is not-so-subtly hinting at. Guy's water runs out, he goes into the girls hostel, invisible, to fulfill his needs - brushing, shaving, bathing and of course ogling.
Microsoft silently made available to the public its new (actually Live Search on energy boosters) search engine Bing.com - they prefer to call it a "decision engine". And the online world was abuzz with buzz about the new product. So was I.
To test the product (well, that wasn't my only purpose) I tried to see what it served me when in asked for the most popular keyword on the World Wide Web - sex. And Microsoft, rahther its new surgically enhanced baby - Bing.com poured a bucket of cold water on my carnal desires.
The search led me to this page:
THE SEARCH SEX MAY RETURN SEXUALLY EXPLICIT CONTENT. To get results, change your search terms.
I tried other 'sexually explicit' keywords. Same result. Then I looked for an option to turn off the safe search (as in Google or Live Search), but nothing existed. Then I logged in with my Windows Live ID, to see if it recognises me and displays some benevolence. No avail.
Not the one to give up I changed my country location and tried masquerading as a lascivious surfer from the US of A. And like magic, the discriminatory service revealed all, in partial glory (it was safe search moderate by default). And I could also change the safe search settings.
That can mean one thing (or I would like to look at it that way), that Microsoft Inc. does not want us Indians to search for sex or porn or xxx or nudes or anything of that genre - the sexually explicit kind.
But it doesn't discriminate when you look for kama (essentially sex in Sanskrit) but censors the Kamasutra while it is kindly towards Kokshastra.
The countries that Microsoft thinks (I assume) are more conservative and should be kept away from anything sexual include:
Arabian countries
China
Germany (I wonder why?)
Hong Kong
India
Indonesia
Korea (obviously South Korea)
Malaysia
Singapore
Taiwan
Thailand
Turkey
I had earlier expressed my displeasure on Twitter over Microsoft playing the nanny for us Indians:
2. If there are pre-roll ads before the videos, Bing treats the ads as snippets and plays them (maybe publishers hungry for search referrals might need to rethink their video ad placements). Advertisers would obviously be happy.
The last ad of this series was released in April 2007 - the very catchy and wonderfully executed Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho ad for Madhya Pradesh Tourism (Incredible India). And in May 2009 comes another memorable ad. Some feel that the the first one was better and don't think much of the new TVC. I beg to differ, a little.
Like the last time Cutting the Chai is the first to put up the ad on the internet (I checked).
Hindustan Ka Dil Dekho was more like an ad showcasing the wonders of the state of Madhya Pradesh and inviting people to come visit. This time, the theme is similar but with a little twist, it is not an invitation for MP Tourism but an endorsement (dekho to dekha), a kind of a first person account. And the bioscope makes way for a pair of very expressive (and continually moving) eyes.
This new jingle is also very catchy, quite like the last, and would make for a good ringtone. Preview and download if you like:
I had twitted about this a few days back, but since the readers of this blog far outnumber my followers on Twitter, thought it was worth the while to post about it here.
The YouTube video player has some features that would save us the bother of moving the fingers to the mouse and then move the cursor to click the buttons/icons.
A click of a key on the keyboard while watching a YouTube video can perform some simple (and oft needed) functions.
A little list of useful YouTube keyboard shortcuts/commands:
The last ad of this series was released in April 2007 - the very catchy and wonderfully executed 
I had 
