While it is nothing like the Hoshitashi Home Theater System I bought last year, my mother bought a television (her first) this week. The customer service at IndiaInfo.com is excellent -- they even brought the TV home, installed it, taught my mother how to use the remote control, and setup cable service for her.
The timing is perfect, because soon she will be on TV in the Namaskara show, and she can watch herself! We have been on TV several times before -- including BBC, TechTV (never got to see them) and an hour long interview on Uday TV (saw recording), but since we didn't have a TV, she never saw the broadcasts.
For those of you who wish to gift electronics to families and friends in India, I recommend IndiaInfo.com service.
Status Report on Kamat Blog Portal
- Bug: There was a defect in the caching logic that prevented some sites to report updates. I believe that the same bug exists in Weblogs.com's cache comparison logic because I have seen the same behavior there. The problem is this: To verify that a blog has changed, the portal will look at certain part of the page (so it can bypass dynamically inserted timestamps and advertisements), and in some instances (in my case when the page had very large, static left hand sides) the new copy is identical to the old cached copy and causes the portal to lose the update. Corrected.
- Reverse Ping Integration: I have added a script to periodically look at Weblogs.com and import relevant pings into Blog Portal. So the ping synchronization between Blog Portal and Weblogs.com is two-way!
- Introduction of a new bug: Since Blog Portal accepts only one ping per hour, if a ping was imported from Weblogs.com, it no longer honors the PickupLine submitted by the author during the same hour. I will fix this.
Bad Weather is Good Business
My company sells Emergency Response Management software that helps governments and utility providers (power, gas, telephone, and cable service providers) respond to natural calamities such as hurricanes, earthquakes, and blizzards. Hence, in a twisted way, bad weather is good for my business.
Our software does not rely on public networks (for obvious reasons -- you can't send email if the email is down), and instead makes use of private networks (such as those owned by military and telcos).
I am not the only beneficiary of nature's wrath. Have you noticed how the stocks of Home Depot and Lowes go up every time there's a storm and homes get damaged?
