Putting 2013 into perspective

2013 has been a year of all sorts. But all in all, it has been a year of beating the odds and achieving things which were unimaginable at the onset.

April - September 2013:

On the professional front, in April, I took a step outside my department to one in which I had to face clients, attend team meetings and stick to the agile methodology of sprint based development day in and out. This not only forced me to be on my toes but also push my stamina to the hilt; after all working for a minimum of 12 hours daily with on demand requirements is not something I was used to. The experience made me believe that I had stamina far greater than what I thought and able to live up to the challenges of client side development.

May – June 2013:

In early April, my family was dealt with a severe blow of my father’s illness. In May, things got worse and complicated. Taking a recuse from work I flew home, the same with my sister from the states. Spending a month in hospital, battling emotions and managing people, dealing with medical terms I never heard of and arranging for funds to keep the treatment on, was something I had to learn in quick time. Thankfully all is well now and my father is in much better shape.

September 2013:

In spite of all that happened, I kept alive my dream of having my book 'State of the Heart' published. And all I can say is I’m happy achieving the one dream I had all my life. Though my dream was only limited to having a book published, it kind of took me a couple of steps forward. Through my book, I developed my first ever mobile app – State of the Heart app for Windows Phone 8, and have my own Nelton D’Souza brand store. I was covered in print and on air as well. The icing on the cake is that the book not only scores a 4.05 out of 5 on Goodreads (as on December 26, 2013) but will soon be out in its second edition after getting sold out thrice online. The Kindle edition is also growing in success overseas.

The eBook and the exclusive State of the Heart 2014 calendar is available for download on Facebook.

Facebook will now pay you. Earn money for recommending products.

Image via CrunchBase

If rumours are to be believed the biggest and most popular social networking platform out there may just start paying you. Yes, we will get paid. After @mentions and #hashtags Facebook has gone one up and trying to emulate a model where users can recommend certain products in their status messages. This would use the ever bankable model of advertising - word of mouth and also open up greater markets and personal recommendations made for your friends by your friends. So imagine, if you're friend is contemplating to buy a Samsung Galaxy S4, Facebook may use you to recommend him a Nokia Lumia 920 instead. Well, isn't this what we do for free. Given the big way advertisers run after people to sell their stuff this could enable them to get up, close and personal to people who actually want an upmarket smartphone rather than just shooting bullets in thin air. 

Exactly how Facebook would drive this and consequently pay people is not ripe but only time will tell. In either case its the user that's going to benefit. After all he/she will get paid for doing the same thing what he/she was doing all this while. The big question is privacy. With many applications like "Who visited your profile" on the rise who quietly capture your personal details this could be one more way of putting too much online. 

But as we said, theres no confirmed news. It's just a rumour we have heard. So let's wait and watch and hope to become rich. 

Love is like a butterfly

Love is hardly what our Bollywood movies describe it as. The mild cool breeze blowing across the face, the hearing of music in the air, the happy-go-lucky attitude, the flying dupatta's, etc is nowhere be seen when someone is in love. Infact the worse thing is one hardly even realizes that he/she is in love. It’s only when you go away from the person that the sudden cravingness begins, the sudden void and the sudden realization sets in. A person whom you always regarded as a close friend, a confidant becomes even more closer, becomes more yours and you become entirely his/hers.

It can’t be defined or even explained what love is. Whether it’s the amazing sense of understanding that just a look would be sufficient to convey the feelings or the feeling of one’s presence even if the other is miles away; but for sure it’s the hearts of those in love coming so close that words are replaced by mild whispers and feelings are felt as one.

I had gone on a trek to Korigad a few months ago and happened to meet a friend who I hadn’t met for months. From our last meeting I found Riya to be smart, wise, level headed, practical and single with no intention to mingle. Over the period of time while we were apart I got to know through Facebook that she was now in relationship and later had got engaged. I always wondered what had transpired during that course of time that had brought about such a change. Now was my chance and I didn’t want to miss it.

I took a seat next to Riya in the bus on our way back to Bombay and asked her about the back to back shocks she gave all of us. She replied with a big smile so characteristic of her. She went on to say that she had met her fiancé Amit during a college reunion. They were a part of the same group in college and had lots of fun together. During the reunion they shared memories of the time spent back then and had a gala time. Even after the reunion they continued to keep in touch through sms’, chats, calls, meets, etc. The small conversations had now turned to long ones and frequent connections had turned to constant ones. Due to official work Riya had to shift to The Netherlands for two months. So she and her friend said their goodbye’s and promised to catch up when she returns. However it seemed that even the distance couldn’t keep them apart. Riya had to settle in a new environment and Amit had to settle without her. They now started calling each other with international rates applicable. Soon they realized they were not the ‘just friends’ they regarded themselves to be and craved for each other more than anything else. Before Riya could know it Amit caught a flight to Amsterdam and met Riya in person. They both sat; talked and asked each other the one question they had all this while been asking themselves, “Our we in love with each other?” The answer was clearly out in the open. Both were themselves in each other’s company, were well understood, completely acceptable and couldn’t stand the others absence. They chalked out all the differences they had and how they could deal with them and decided that they would spend their lives together till death did them apart, all this under the romantic Eifel Tower. On returning back to India they told their parents who were more than willing even though there was a cultural difference. Riya and Amit exchanged rings setting the ball rolling.

When I got off the bus I kept thinking about this. Probably it’s true when they say that “Love hits you when you least expect it.” One may think that he is in love but love is something you can just feel and not think about. After all, Love is like a butterfly.

Graduating from Orkut to Facebook

Yes, I have finally done it. I am now officially on Facebook. I am now a part of the millions who use Facebook everyday of their life to share stuff with their near ones. Surely there must be something right about all this. (I hope i am not sounding like SRK in the Airtel ad).

Wow, Facebook, what can I say. Good, cool, clean interface. Very nice. What’s more? I have found something that I just hoped would be on Orkut i.e. Community photos. Ahh. ..I wish this was available on Orkut. There are so many Brazilian footballers’ photos that I wish to add to my “I Love Brazilian Football’ community. But anyways, no issues.

Unlike Orkut where you have a scrapbook, in Facebook you have something known as a wall. (Now wait to minute, I have not joined Facebook only to get a wall. My house has more than 1). Well it’s not that kind of a wall. A wall in Facebook is something where al your friends can share with you stuff and post things on…hence wall. Neither the Great Wall of China nor the Berlin wall, simply a plain wall. Now though this wall may have its advantages, it also has its disadvantages. If this wall is yours then its also everyone’s. What I mean is not only all your activities and those related to you are displayed here, all your friends and their activities, all your communities and their updates and discussions too are displayed. Its something like in Orkut terms a fusion of your scrapbook and updates section. Now this thing makes sharing stuff really easy. You get all your friends updates and posts at a single place. You know what your friends are upto, all the applications they are using, all the games they are playing, all the things they are challenging you at, almost everything. That is something really awesome.

However the biggest drawback comes into the picture if you have many friends who are really active in Facebook. In that case, if you manage to find some stuff you are looking for in particular, then least I can say is that you are looking for a needle in a haystack. With time and posts everything just keeps going downwards. Time here is not measured in hours, its not minutes either, better say seconds. At the end, most of the time you'll give up just after a few clicks on ‘Older Posts’. Well but there is partly a solution. It may not be fool-proof but it does happen to help in certain cases. That is checking out your own profile. That is the only place I think that is yours alone on Facebook. Here you will find only your stuff and everything posted by you and none else. Its also over here where you can edit your profile, change your profile picture, etc. basically all the tasks you could do in the Profile section of Orkut. At least something’s similar.

Well apart from the many cool features on Facebook like the page doesn’t refresh when you become a fan of a community (same as member in Orkut) and sharing options (like pictures, videos, links, etc) and also the many famous people being online, I truly find Facebook truly lacking in user-friendliness. I must say that if you are an avid Orkut user, it’s really going to take a lot of patience and time for you to get accustomed to it. Orkut has everything organized. All your videos are in the videos link; your scraps are in the scrapbook, etc etc etc. But you know as the saying goes that “One man’s food is another man’s poison” this not-so-user friendliness of Facebook is probably one of the main reasons that it has a very less number of fake profiles.

Choosing from Orkut and Facebook is not easy. While Orkut boasts of user-friendliness and a very large Indian base; Facebook boasts of privacy, cool features, global reach and amazing applications to never get you bored. If you are out there to make a choice, then heaven help you. If not, then be like me…use both.