The folks at Taazza suggested that I might like to use their app. Unfortunately, that specific version seemed to have some issues with the phones and moving the app to the SD card. So, once I did provide that feedback they were nice to email a couple of us with a preview release which is also scheduled to hit the Android Market. Since the premise is to provide specifically local content, the only way to give it a spin was to get local at a couple of places (Hadapsar, Magarpatta, KalyaniNagar, Koregaon Park, MG Road, Moledina Road were my places) and see how it goes.

I like the app and, I'd recommend it as a fun one to have around.

It is light and fast, has a clean interface that allows some interesting things like providing news about deals with when they expire (that's fun to keep track of), weather information and, some reasonably detailed listing about Places (restaurants, movies/theatres and so forth). I specifically like the way it handles the City News via aggregation. For me that's a nice way to read news around and about Pune. And it does a seriously good job with that which can be tested by changing the location. The deals/information can be shared using email/Facebook/Twitter and, orders can be placed via Web or, a print-ready coupon. The means to select additional cities to read news items about is also a plus.

Having said all of that there's a couple of things I'd like the app to improve in the coming versions:

• handle the slight stutter when changing between tabs or, scrolling quickly. The app visibly stalls and stutters for a slight moment before reloading the content
• in the landscape orientation the scrolling requires some work - it just is a bit slow
• in the landscape orientation (why would an app like this require a landscape ? :)), the content reflow is a bit awkward
• geolocation - this is currently what I'd like to get fixed. The app seems to save a location and each time one has to re-locate oneself to get local (or, hyper local) information. I'd have wanted an automatic re-location and hence a refresh of the content. So, basically I would want to activate the app, or, navigate to the app and I'd like it to use an existing and active data connection to geo-locate me and figure out the content to fetch and display.
• content -> activity. In other words, I know that I can get the contact numbers of a movie theatre with the app. But, how do I make bookings ? For a restaurant, a contact number might be enough to call up and make a reservation, I guess that doesn't work out nicely for theatres and movies/plexes etc
• more content is required and that is probably going to be cyclically linked to more usage

In short, good job but there's more to be done. And, the page probably requires some means to put in feature requests and rankings :)

Flipkart is finally listing Bengali books. However, going through the listings I was forced to be disgusted. It looks shoddily done and, without a proper care of reviewing the entries. There are:

• Titles which are wrongly typed. Even phonetically they don't come close
• Author names which show wide variation
• Wrong listings too

In short it means that unless I chance upon that book it would be impossible to search by either Title or, Author Name. And, for an online bookstore that just takes away the interest in clicking through a number of books/pages to arrive at the book. Which is where another thing bothers me. In this day and age, why can I not set a preference about how many books I want listed once I login ? Or, for example, choose to see an infinite scroll ? There ought to be a way to handle that.

I am happy that I can (if I try hard enough) actually buy Bengali books off Flipkart. I am disappointed at the fact that they did not put as much care as they did for their English language books.

I followed the IPL Player auctions first on Set Max, then via Cricinfo and finally resorted to a combination of Cricinfo and CNN-IBN (in fact Gaurav Kalra's comment about Gayatri Reddy being the 'diva' and how he has no qualms admitting that he looks at the screen when she's on was a squirmer !). And, while everyone jaw-dropped and registered some choreographed umbrage at the non-bids ('unsold') of Sourav Ganguly, Gayle, Jayasurya and Lara (especially Ganguly), I think Harsha Bhogle got it summed up best as "everyone has a sell-by date and Sourav probably thought that his wasn't near yet". I suspect that Anil Kumble was sounded out to a similar possibility, not to mention the contradiction in terms about being part of a State Cricket Association among other things while playing at the IPL and hence his "mentor" role at the RCB. Rahul Dravid on the other hand probably ended up getting the venomous end of the dirty stick that the Mallyas wave around and hence this extremely pejorative statement from the owner.

Here's how the teams stack up.

Coming back to the Sourav Ganguly issue. I feel that the effigy burning drama and the sad theatre of hate that is going to unfold at Kolkata doesn't befit him. His fans should realize that not being bid for by any of the 10 franchisees does in no way diminish the stature and greatness of the man. As does the lack of faith exposed by Mallya not demean the fierceness of The Wall. On any given day, you are what you are by your deeds, not by your memories. For a cricketer and probably for every sports personality, that translates into the happy memories they injected into the national psyche. An auction for a private sporting club (pretending to be the national cricket representing body) for an event that is exposing equally odd biases isn't the measure of worth for anyone. I'll admit that I'll be watching the IPL matches (irrespective of the fact that the CNN-IBN panel has now made me suspect Sanjay Manjrekar's cricketing brain) and while I may not be really overjoyed with the team selections, I am not going to drown in misery and curse/cuss at the Kolkata Knight Riders. The greatest joy that I've had with Sourav wasn't that they said about him being second to God on the off-side, or, that he took off his t-shirt at the Lord's, or, that at Taunton, while being miserable about his slow start I was jumping up and down on the sofa with his hammer-n-tongs attack on the bowling. The joy was in realizing that he took his time in building up the character of a team that didn't take things lying down or, didn't decide to throw in the towel. And, that he wasn't the quintessential dandy Bengali who'd be foppish and squeamish when things went tough.

You don't want to measure that kind of a man and, those men with their presence or, absence in IPL auctions. You'd want to wish that the new crop realizes that and brings forth an unbridled aggression that would do the teams a power of good.

I was at The Tossed Salad Book Club meeting today. The first one. If you aren't already following/on the group, here's the link. I posted a couple of photographs from the event. I am still learning about the innards of the camera on the phone hence please, no comments about the images.

It was a much better turn-out than I anticipated ;) I had figured around 8 folks turning up excluding the organizers and, we had at least a bit over 30 and a few folks standing throughout the event. That's a promising start. For the fact that this was the first time the book club was meeting (barring the times the organizers have informally met !) the selection of the book and the availability of the author was a great combination. A quick introduction about the book club, some rules, and, an introduction about the book and the author started the show.

Amish is an engaging personality and, Poonam was an efficient moderator. The discussion was a bit one-sided though with a larger share of the conversation being steered by Amish including his nice side-stepping of that query about whether the fact that the trilogy is in English and not widely available in local languages is a factor of him not getting brick-bats from the usual suspects. The book lends itself to layered interpretations and sometimes re-thinking about our oral traditions of myths and estabilished folklore-history-mythology. This was also probably a reflection in the questions and, the contextual side-jumps in the conversation. Amish took a quick trip into his motivations and process (or, lack thereof !) during writing of the book along with fielding questions on the date of the next book on the trilogy (I wonder why no one asked him about the third book at all :D). It would probably be nice to have him around the time of publication of the next book and open it up to a much larger audience.

In short it was a good two hours well spent (and, I didn't purchase a book even though I was at a bookstore !). The next book up for discussion and critical appreciation is A Confederacy of Dunces. And, I hope that more folks come to the group meeting reading the book or, at least reading up notes etc around the book. Sahil mentioned something along the lines of sharing reading material links etc. Hope that's going to work out nicely.

As always it was good to meet a few twitter handles ;)