Usenet

Aahh its a sunday afternoon and as usual I am bored. Nothing much to do other than surf through a few boring sites. Today reminds me of days that were about 2 years ago. I had just started posting on the usenet . Initially I started posting on rediff and some online newspapers like economictimes and times of india but there wasnt much activity there and I was kinda bored. Then I came across this google site and woa .. usenet got into my blood. :). I would get up in the middle of the night to reply to some post , wake up a little early in the morning just to check the posts. My favourite site are the ones related to India and Pakistan.Each of the poster on usenet had a typical online personality like

Seeker: All of us carried the impression that Seeker was very old and was senile :)..He was total Paki loyal and would come up of the most unheard of arguments. Me & Jerkovski had some good fun with him.

Naureen: the permanent 16 year old teenager on the net till I shared with her some facts that made it clear that she cant be 16. After that she became scarce on the usenet. Her explaination- she was preparing for MBA !!!. Naureen claimed to be a Pathan and a die hard Islam loyalist. Although she was one of the rare posters on the usenet who would accept mistakes but it had more to do with being a woman than a Muzzie. Besides myself she was the only other female poster on the usenet :(

Nusrat: claimed to be from lucknow. Was a muzzie but hated the muzzie culture. He and Naureen knew each other well. I think he was what you call " the neutral man." Also he was the only man on the usenet who NEVER used dirty language but still managed to put across his point in a very calm and poised fashion.

Koolfire: An indian ( a surd I presume) used horribly funny and abusive language but in the end the mixture of the confused words brought out some great logic. This man had a writing style that many on the usenet try to copy.

Jerkovski: A man with great argumentative and logical skills. I had the maximum fun posting with this poster. We would send a post and then discuss it, pat each others back. LOL. I think half of the fun on posting came from these discussions :). It was good fun until he became geatly inspired by Koolfires and Thoku's. Then his language became extremely abusive :(

Myself: Guess Who? Not too great writing style but did come up with good logic when the mood sets in :)

The excitement of posting was just maddening but then gradually over a period of time most posters stared believing that whosoever uses the most abusive and dirty language wins the argument in the end.Sad but then posting on usenet became next to impossible so here I am discussing this rather than busy posting::)

Summer Vacations

The advent of the month of May makes me nostalgic and reminds me of summer vacations and naani ka ghar. I have never been able to convince myself why we dont have summer vacations at work :P.
Much of my summer vacations were spent in Satna, a small town in Madhya Pradhesh very close to Maihar Devi. Although this town was very small but it had a charm about it. My nanaji was an engineer employed with the PWD of the railways. I never delved on this but it seemed he was holding a very important position. The house that the railways had given him was just out of the dreams. Built on 20000 sq ft of land, it was build during the British era. The house had a verandah all aound it and a huge huge aangan, innumerable rooms , a swimming pool !!, a bath tub in every bathroom ( ofcourse the bath tubs had no running water and had to be filled in manually), a tree of every variety you name it- mango, jamun, imli, guava, falsa, even a litchi tree !!- there were other trees as well but as a kid I was only interested in the fruity ones.It had a huge garden with chairs and tables arranged around it. All vegetables were grown in the kitchen garden only. It even had a huge swing.
The moment I landed up at my nanaji's place, I would ensure that all the kids in the surrounding area were aware that they needed to keep me happy to have access of the swing. The deal was pretty straight after each kids turn on the swing it was my turn and the other kids were supposed to push the swing for me :)
Lot of times I have thought of going to Satna again to check on the house. Was it really so big and so green or is it just childs dream. Whichever way be it I would love to live this dream again :)

Trip to Varanasi

Although I didnt expect Rani Mukherjee to pop out on the roads singing " hum to aise hai bhaiya" and things getting as bad as they were in the movie, the trip to Varansi was a SHOCK !. Broken ( almost non existent ) roads, shabby traffic, wild people ready to pounce at you at the sight of money, lost culture is my impression of Varansi.
About a year ago, I had to visit Varansi for official purposes. Travel freak that I am, I was excited about visiting the"kashi vishwanath" temple. So I quickly got my train bookings done.

Reaching Varanasi , what I saw was a shock ! Roads outside the station were non absent, traffic was wild and the place was just so crowded. Ofcourse once we reached the hotel, the ambience and the food was just GREAT. Next day my client drove me down to see the BHU campus. Woa !!! what a mind blowing campus. Its amazing to see such a huge campus planned out years ago in the pre independence era. Ofcourse we havent done much for the campus post independence other than to use the facilities. The campus looked old and shabby.
The next visit on the cards for the Vishwanath temple. Once back from the meeting, I told a colleague of my intentions to skip lunch and quickly o and visit the temple. My colleague inquired " with whom was I going" and I told him " alone". What followed was a dramatic scene with my colleague insisting that I shouldnt go alone and in the end I found it easier to just give in ( Thank God that I did) than to argue. So one of collegaues subordinates accompanied me to the temple.
The temple was inside a maze of lanes and the pandits were ready to pounce every penny out of the tourists. When I tried to pull out a note which was tangled in a bunch of notes from my purse, the pandit present in the temple quickly grabbed the whole bunch out of my hands. I was left looking at him open mouthed. Thankfully the guy who was with me quickly reacted and pulled out all the notes from the pandits hands. Post this incidence I quickly finished my darshan and came back to the office. Uff what a visit !!!

Joker in the Pack

An excellent entertainer. Once I started i just couldnt stop till I had read the last page. I could identify with most of the emotions present in the book. The book is well written, the humour seems so real, nothing overdone in it. The reference to relatives as " extras" somehow seemed very hillarious. I think a MUST READ !!!

Friends,
My opinion just got featured in HT. I feel like a celebrity :) Cheers !

Rohini Sharma wanted to go on a family holiday over the Easter weekend to Lansdowne, a hill station in Uttarakhand. The family was all set to go with accommodation tentatively booked at the Retreat Anand at this charming, colonial hill station, when the plan was changed to stay instead at the Bird House in Dehradun. Why? Because reviews and images posted on the Internet by other travellers did not paint a pretty picture of Lansdowne.
Instances like these are becoming more a norm than an exception as travel planning enters the Web 2.0 era. The Internet is full of reviews and opinions posted by travellers, and many people are using these as a key reference source when planning any trips. Such User Generated Content (UGC) is being seen as mostly credible and trustworthy, with the ‘authoritative’ voice of a professional writer no longer the last word when it comes to deciding one’s holiday.
“When planning a trip, I always check on the reviews and satisfaction levels of other customers. And then I also blog about my experiences so others can plan their trips. This is the future of travel,” says Rajat Nagpal, travel consultant and founder of TravelVidya.com. The result has been the phenomenal success of global sites like TripAdvisor.com and WAYN.com. UGC has seen them emerge among the most visited sites on the planet. In India too, significant investments are being made in sites like HolidayIQ.com, OkTataByeBye.com and Raahi.com. The last two have been promoted by MakeMyTrip.com and Yatra.com, both online travel service providers.
How do you choose the site that is right for you? “UGC has a cultural context to it. For example, Indians tend to travel in groups of four and above and they are seeking very different experiences compared with, westerners. You may thus want to visit sites where your unique needs are addressed,” says Hari Nair, Founder and CEO of HolidayIQ.com.
As reviews by fellow travellers become more ubiquitous, covering the remotest of locations and obscure properties, it is not always a simple exercise to use such content. How do you grapple with issues of data overload, credibility, half-baked postings and quality? Here are some tips to get reliable advice from the Web.
Do not rely on only one source. Look for multiple perspectives, use your commonsense and follow your intuition. If there is one bad review about a hotel, take it with a grain of salt; if there are many within a short period of time, it is best to seek another.
Start bookmarking sites and writers whose words you find trusted and credible. Sometimes, lesser known websites and personal blogs may be better than the bigger brand names. Be sceptical; this will help you spot posts written in sheer anger or out of a sense of revenge, as well as those ‘goody-goody’ ones posted probably by those with a vested business interest.
Look out for pictures. These convey a lot because many reviewers do not have the gift of expressing themselves lucidly through the written word, even with the best of intentions. In fact, after reading mixed reviews, it was the images posted on the Internet that finally convinced Sharma not to go to Lansdowne.
It may also be a good idea to check out the “blogosphere” for traveller experiences. These are often written with a greater effort than if one were writing for a third party UGC site; after all, the credibility of the reviewer is at stake on a personal blog. Of course, there is no guarantee that these reviews are the final word; the opposite can also be true, as Ruchi Tandon, a manager at ICICI Bank, discovered.
“I have tried referring to sites like oktatabyebye.com, but the reviews can be misleading or biased sometimes. For instance, one review strongly dissuaded me from visiting the small seaside town of Guhaghar, for reasons including bad food at the resort the reviewer stayed at. But I still visited the town, and found it to be very nice with good clean beaches,” she says.
“I get a good sense of a place by reading reviews from people who have been there; I have found such content to be useful guiding points to what to look for,” says Shashaank Awasthi, an entrepreneur.
Even if the reviews cannot be very descriptive, they are very useful for getting tips and basic information on weather conditions, the right clothes to wear, local culture and social behaviour, modes of travel, costs, security issues and other small points always invaluable to a traveller, suggests Tandon. Who does not want a little publicity? But when public relations professionals cannot exercise at least a certain degree of control and restraint on what gets written about their companies, like in the case of UGC, then it can be a challenge in itself. With everyone having unrestricted freedom to write what they like, how do you keep the bad news away? “It’s worse when there are half baked reviews on halfbaked sites,” says Nair. While blocking views may not be possible in a free world, this also means an opportunity for the travel trade in many ways. A negative post can be read as an early warning sign, and those who care for their customers can take corrective measures in time. If a bad review is without justification, or a result of a misunderstanding, companies can join in the conversations on forums where the travel notes are posted to present their view before such opinion can become common belief. This also means a closer bonding with customers, leading to increased loyalty and sales.
Of course, when feedback is positive, then companies can actually show them off. And even when these are on not-so-known blogs or websites, the power of the Internet kicks in. All such content is indexed by search engines like Google and Yahoo, and thus made accessible to prospective customers seeking such information.
For smaller businesses, engaging with customers online can offer benefits that traditional communication may not offer. This could be in the form of setting up groups on social sites like Facebook, publishing blogs, responding to posts on other blogs and websites and even writing on third party Web properties. “Smaller hotels are beginning to realise the value of such reviews,” says Nair.
All this means travel related businesses need to keep a track of themselves on the Internet. Surprisingly, few have fathomed the power of UGC. “We are trying to build trust with the travel trade too, and telling them we have no axe to grind when we allow user content to go up on our site. We invite them to react to reviews, but they have yet to start doing so,” adds Nair.
(The author is an independent writer and blogs on technology at www.TechGazing.com)

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=aef26c62-a991-47b8-a50d-3fa5c2ba27c2&MatchID1=17&TeamID1=4&TeamID2=1&MatchType1=5&SeriesID1=1&PrimaryID=17&Headline=Get+set+for+Web-inspired+holidays