Group Chat and Yellow Smileys debut on Google Chat

Google Chat (the in-browser chat application over at GMail) has now introduced the Group Chat feature – similar to Conferencing in Yahoo Chat. Using this feature, on can add more than one friend into a chat session and all of them can simultaneously chat with each other. There’s no limit to the number of participants a Group chat can have and anyone can invite any other person to join. That may be a bit awkward sometimes! What if someone I don’t want to have a discussion with, has been invited into the chat? I’d have to politely exit. It would have been better if the chat-starter is allowed the option of adding as well as removing users from a chat

The second feature that Google folks have added into the Chat console is ….Smileys or Emoticons. There have been visual smileys in GTalk but now they’ve added those yellow animated ones as well. What’s more, apart from the usual round-faced smileys, there are also square-shaped ones! And the entire smiley-set represents the same emotions i.e. for a tongue-out-taunt, there is one plain-jane smiley, one round-shaped yellow smiley and one square-shaped yellow smiley. Typing out the character-combos that make up the smiley also turns it into a smiley – corresponding to the type of smiley that you’ve kept selected. So if you’ve selected the round-shaped smileys tab selected and type :  ) (without the spaces, of corz) into the chat window, it will come up as

More: GMail What’s New | Google System

P.S: I dunno if the same features are available on Google Talk – the standalone chat client. Any idea?

Now Ads inside PDF’s also!

Advertisers and Advertisements have inundated our lives, literally! They’re all over the place – be it around us in the physical world or be it in the virtual world. In recent times, digital or online advertisements have reached hitherto unreachable places as well. Case in point is the Yahoo Messenger. Earlier versions had the option to turn off unwanted pop-ups, banners etc but the current version has an ungainly perennial ad-bar at the bottom!

Now comes the news that these Ads will even make it into static PDF’s as well!!! Reuters India reports about how Adobe and Yahoo are testing out running of ads within PDF files.

A Hangout at Haveli

The Lifestyle building at Begumpet is a teeming and happening place. Itz got one of the biggest and glitziest shopping brand store, a MusicWorld, some IT Companies, few Bio firms, many a commercial offices and a whole lot of eateries and restaurants. Itz got a Roll Call, a Subway, a nondescript Bakery, a Deli 9; pubs n’ rest-O-bars like Carrot, Sparks, Club 8; Restaurants like Malgudi, Urban Tadka, Kabura, L’autre and Haveli. It was to the last-mentioned place that we trooped in today afternoon to have some nice time and of corz, to have some nice grub!

Haveli is a typical Hyderabadi restaurant that specializes in well, Hyderabadi and North-Indian cuisine. By North-Indian, I mean essentially Punjabi but there’s a smattering of Mughlai fare also. Like oh-so-many restaurants in the city, Haveli too had fallen in-line with the buffet bandwagon i.e. it had a lunch buffet on offer. We had quite some waiting to do, what with it being a busy lunch hour and with so many companies in the vicinity, it was bound to be full with luncheoners. It seems that the restaurant has had an experience of sorts with waiting people; that explains the nicely-decored waiting area – both within and out of the main entrance. Chairs were laid out to accommodate atleast twenty people and every few minutes, we’ll be informed of the “just a few minutes more” time would take in getting us tables! It took no more than twenty minutes to get us seated though. The first thing that I liked was the seating. The six-seater table was amply wide and there was plenty of elbow-room….quite unlike a few other places where it would be well-nigh impossible to keep both hands on the table and not knock-up one’s neighbour! Decor was minimal (no fancy fountains or stones n sceneries) and lighting was good. There was soft karaoke music playing in the background that was just about at the right volume.

The Buffet spread is priced moderately at INR 180 (+ taxes) & starts off with the usual soups n’ starters (one each of veg and non-veg), which I think is too little. A single starter is somewhat boring…even more so when it is the ubiquitous Veg. Manchuria! Veg. Hot n Sour soup was ok though. The Main course spread was quite good…in number. There was Biryani, Chicken and Lamb for the meat-lovers and Veg. Biryani, Paneer saagwala, Chana Masala, Aloo Jeera and Mixed Veg. for the green-lovers. There were a few salads too – sprouts, the regular carrot/onion/cucumber, chicken salad, aloo-chana chaat and boiled egg with cheese n’ sauces etc. And keeping in-line with the multi-cuisine nature of the spread, there was chow-chow, schezwan noodles & spring onion fried rice in Chinese and talimpu rice & dahi wadas in Southie ishtyle! Rotis and Naans were served hot off-the-charcoals at the tables itself. Quite a lot of food, right? And I didn’t even mention the steamed rice, sambhar and dal fry!!! Food was good and not too-spicy. The chana were a bit hard though! Tasting all the items would require some taking to do, but the all-round consensus was that the food was good. Not excellent or pathetic, but just good! Dum Biryani is their speciality and they sure showed that in both the Veg and non-veg avatars.

Force India F1 – The Team, The Livery, The Website & More…

It is common knowledge by now that the erstwhile Spyker F1 team is now the Force India F1 team, after being taken over by a consortium (Orange India Holdings) led by maverick Indian Tycoon Dr. Vijay Mallya & European businessman Michiel Mol. The team has already concluded their winter testing at Catalunya and are hoping towards more productive testing across the beginning of next year. I came to know of their logo and website just today and both of them are pretty impressive; although there’s some room for improvement in the latter!

The car livery is predominantly white & maroon burgundy now and it remains to be seen if Mallya’s intentions of getting the tricolor onto the car will be fruitful. See all the pics of the Force India F1 car here.

The team’s journey will start with the 2008 season, at the Melbourne Grand Prix when the team’s newly designed livery, will be launched on track for the first time.

Adrian Sutil is their only “probably confirmed” driver for next season and speculation is rife as to who will partner him. The contenders include Vitantonio Liuzzi, Christian Klien and even Ralf Schumacher! Indian drivers Narain Karthikeyan and Karun Chandok are also said to be in the fray; what with Karthikeyan relinquishing his Williams test driver role and Chandok donning the same role, albeit at Red Bull. As I say most often than not: only time will tell…

Punkymoods

Peter, the guy who runs Peter’s Useful Crap (yeah, the name’s correct!) has this sub-site called Punkymoods that “brings back those fun mood emoticons”. For a long long time (maybe since time immemorial!), smileys have been yellow in color but most of them are tiny or small and those which aren’t, are too gawky and garish to look at! These set of smileys or emoticons are more of a mood-displaying kinda emoticons and are derived from their erstwhile avatar called Unkymoods

Unkymoods, created by Marc Lutz, are scribbles bloggers used once upon a time to display how they were feeling at any given moment. The moods range from normal feelings like agitation to surreal feelings of toastiness. When I started blogging Unkymoods was a big deal and you could see them all over the place. [Via]

Now they’re back as Punkymoods and it just requires a simple registration to go about getting them on one’s site or blog or discussion boards. Signup process is here whilst the homepage is this. There’s even a plugin available for WordPress users.

Airtel’s Shoddy Customer Service

Airtel, the flagship communications company of the Bharti Group and one of India’s most trusted brands, boasts of excellent customer services and satisfaction guaranteed for its millions of users and customers. But for a new customer inquiring about their services, they show scan respect and a nonchalant attitude. I have heard only good words for Airtel and its broadband services in Hyderabad and hence I thought I’ll inquire about their offer plans and tariffs before making a switch. I had called up their toll-free number displayed on a hoarding exhorting their broadband services and an agent politely requested me to check up on their website for the address of my nearest Airtel Customer Service Center.

A brief search on their website later, I headed off to their Kundanbagh office (located in the white house building). Once there, I awaited my turn at the counter and when I presented by broadband query, was directed to the 8th floor office coz that was where the “broadband people” were sitting. Now the white house has three blocks and all of them have 8th floors…so it was a veritable treasure hunt for me as I scoured each of Block I and II before I landed up at the IIIrd block and voila! The Airtel office was there on the 8th floor (BTW, none of the parking attendants and guards I asked knew about its exact location…all they said was ‘look at the floor plan boards’). Once at the lobby, I inquired as to where I can get information regarding new broadband connections and know what did I get to hear in response? “You can ask at the customer service office located on the main road of block I” Then I explained that it was them who had directed me here, and was made to wait for sometime as they called their “rep”! And a 20-minute wait later, was told that I can leave my number and the “rep” will call me back in two days!!! Having no other choice, I did that.

That was on Thursday and today is Sunday! So after not hearing from them within “2 days”, I am now penning this down and am also shooting off an e-mail, complaining about their “excellent customer service” or rather the lack of it!

P.S: The brightside of the in-vain visit

 

Thanks for the Vacations

Day two of an extended 4-day-weekend and am already feelin’ bored! It’s Thanksgiving Week in the US and courtesy some generous ppl. out there, we’ve managed to garner an err..ummm….vacation this Thursday and Friday. Hence the 4-day weekend, including Sat & Sun. A big thanks to the people behind it!

Other than getting bored, I’ve seemed to accomplish little…notwithstanding the NFSU exploits and commenting on anti-communist posts but there are a few productive tasks in the pipeline [*procrastination*] – a visit to Princeton Review ; a Marriage to attend; decide whether to appear or not to appear for this; and a few other mundane tasks. Sigh! Have to get started now……

—————-
Now playing on Winamp: Chahaton Ka Silsila
via FoxyTunes

Finished: Need For Speed Underground

Most of my friends know that I used to play lot of Games on my PC back in my School and College days. But few knew that even after Graduating, I have kept alive the gaming spirit within me, alive and kicking! Alas, lack of suitable hardware and the non-proliferation of cheaply available game titles have put a full-stop to my home-playing but not one to be disappointed, I have continued playing’ em at Reliance Web Worlds

After dabbling in UT & CS for a little while, I knuckled up to play Need For Speed Underground and after nearly 3 months, have finished all the races in the Underground mode. That would be a total of 112 out of 111 campaigns (wierd, but that was how it was!) And why it took me nearly three months to accomplish that (as compared to most of the gamers who do it in a week’s time) was because I used to do so only on Sundays and that too not all Sundays. In the real sense of time, my gameplay would have lasted for a little over two weeks – with on an average of 1 hour play time. It would be good to dish out some stats, wouldn’t it:

• 112 Campaigns Completed
• 5 – Star Reputation achieved
• Made it onto 17 Magazine Covers
• 1st Rank in each of the Circuit, Drag, Drift, Sprint & Knockout race types
• Total of 366 Race starts with 154 Race wins
• Won some real nifty tune-ups and upgrades (from TJ & Samantha) – most memorable one being the Dragon-like paint job!
• Most-Driven Car: Mazda RX-7 & Honda Civic
• Most Favored Mode: Sprint
• Least Favored Mode: Drift
• Most immersive soundtrack: Fortress Europe and Out of Control

I’ve tried to take some screenshots of the end-game credits et al but couldn’t! I’d have also loved to win more online races. I participated in 3 and won only one. The Time-zone difference and lack of sufficient bandwidth deterred me from playing more online races. Playing over the LAN was also not as popular for NFS as it was for CS! So, nothing else to do with NFSU now other than…quit! I know I’ve been behind-the-times; what with NFSU 2, NFS Most Wanted, NFS Carbon and now, NFS ProStreet calling the shots. But hey, better late than never, eh!

Next Up: NFS Carbon (Most Wanted didn’t run on my Notebook!)