Map Doesn’t Change Map Page Does November 6, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: India, India Map, Indian Map, Map, Map of India, Mapsofindia, Mapsofindia.com
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Indian Map has gone through one significant change in last 11 years, the state reorganization which was done in Novemeber 2000. If we keep that change aside nothing has changed as far as the Map of India is concerned, but at http://MapsofIndia.com the India Political Map page has been changing at least once every year. It changed once again yesterday, essentially to incorporate a new user interface (UI) and also to accommodate some broad level changes in integration with other content on the website.
Mapsofindia.com has been a site close to my heart since I named it against the trend prevailing at that point of time, Maps of India is amongst the first phrase as a domain name websites in the world. We are working on a significantly high number of changes on Mapsofindia.com.
The site is being geared to grow exponentially in coming days on both accounts knowledge and traffic. I would like your feedback on the new layout of India Political Map and I also look forward to your suggestions on what all you would like to see on Mapsofindia.com
Please visit the link and let us know your thoughts – http://www.mapsofindia.com/maps/india/india-political-map.htm
Twenty Most Useful Indian Sites November 5, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Indian Website, Indian websites, Internet, Popular Websites, Simarprit, Sites, Top Sites, Top Websites, Website, websites
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Total of 30 parameters and close to about 200 hours of my personal involvement has resulted in one list:
Here is “The Authoritative List of India’s Twenty Most Useful Websites”
The list with one parameter and Useful Ranking is being made public with this post. The complete study/report can be shared with anyone at a nominal cost of $25,000.00. Number of sites studied for this report are over 2000.
Your comments and specific questions would be welcome.
Important:
- Mapsofindia.com which made to this list is owned by Compare Infobase Limited
- IndiaMart.com & ClickIndia.com are founded/co-founded by Dinesh Agarwal, I know Dinesh
- MakeMyTrip.com founder is Deep Kalra who chairs NASSCOM SIG on Internet of which I am also a member
- I have considered only those websites which are Indian in origin and deed
- We had a tie between BigAdda and Ibibo – we included Ibibo
| Website | Google PR | Google PR Rank | Useful Rank |
| Rediff.com | 7 | 3 | 1 |
| IRCTC.co.in | 8 | 1 | 2 |
| Indiatimes.com | 7 | 3 | 3 |
| BSNL.in | 8 | 1 | 4 |
| Naukri.com | 7 | 3 | 5 |
| Cricinfo.com | 7 | 3 | 6 |
| BharatStudent.com | 7 | 3 | 7 |
| NDTV.com | 7 | 3 | 8 |
| MapsofIndia.com | 7 | 3 | 9 |
| IndiaMart.com | 6 | 10 | 10 |
| HDFCbank.com | 6 | 10 | 11 |
| BookMyShow.com | 6 | 10 | 12 |
| Magicbricks.com | 6 | 10 | 13 |
| Sulekha.com | 5 | 15 | 14 |
| ibibo.com | 5 | 15 | 15 |
| Shaadi.com | 5 | 15 | 16 |
| Clickindia.com | 5 | 15 | 17 |
| ICICIdirect.com | 5 | 15 | 18 |
| Makemytrip.com | 5 | 15 | 19 |
| Redbus.in | 6 | 10 | 20 |
Do post a comment, it is important to us:
1984 Anti Sikh Pogrom (Riots) and Twitter November 1, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Sikhism.Tags: 1984, Being a Sikh, Delhi, India, Sikh, Sikhism, Sikhs, Twitter, Twitterverse
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Twitter is a medium which shows everyone naked, instinctive statements taught a lesson to a host of thought leaders on eating crow. Shashi Tharoor, Barkha Dutt, Vikram Chandra, Pritish Nandy, Rajdeep Sardesai were all stopped in their tracks and requested/asked/ pushed to clarify their statements and use of words. Some like Pritish Nandy were extremely quick in clarifying their views and stating their position where as others like Barkha Dutt, Rajdeep Sardesai and Shashi Tharoor took a circuitous route to reach the same place. Shashi Tharoor was quickly reminded of his “Cattle Class” misadventure on Twitter and decided to go absolutely silent on this question after making one simple clarifying statement.
The clarification seekers came from all geographies and belonged to all communities, however Sikhs from India, US, UK, Australia and Canada outnumbered everyone else due to obvious reasons. Sikh, Sikhs, Riots, 84 and 1984 remained critical words in all tweets. Rough estimate of number of tweets pertaining to 1984 Anti Sikh Pogrom puts the number close to 100,000. One could see instinctive collaborations happening simultaneously in putting across point and countering thought leaders, in some cases to a great pounding effect.
A random check of profile and age group of those who were actively countering or correcting the “thought leaders” talks a lot about the even spread of community across diverse verticals and 1984 atrocities hurting all age groups. An 80-year-old tweeted about re-living the partition mayhem and a 21-year-old talked about his being brought up listening to first hand stories from elders who faced it all and survived to talk about it.
On Twitter the Sikh community emerged as a Virtual Nation and grieved as one.
Tofu Sandwich Recipe November 1, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Food.Tags: Breakfast, Breakfast recipe, Food, Recipe, Sandwich, Sandwich recipe, tofu, Tofu Sandwich
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A strange situation emerged early in the morning today, my daughter Avval wanted a “Never Had Before” breakfast, here is what she was served:
Tofu Sandwich:
- 4 Slices of brown bread
- 1 Small Capsicum
- 2 (1 cm Thick & 5 cm x 5cm) slices of Tofu
- A palm full of corns
- Few assorted herbs
- Tomato/ Onion Paste
- Mint Chutney
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- Olive Oil
Step by Step -
- Bread slices were put in toaster
- Corn & Straight Cut Capsicum was cleaned and put to boil
- Tofu slices were cooked in Olive oil and Herbs were added after Tofu slices became golden in color. Flat pan frying with just a hint of olive oil as cooking medium
- Tomato/Onion paste was lightly cooked with salt and pepper added
- Boiled Capsicum and Corns were mixed with Mint Chutney
- Cooked Tomato Onion paste was put on two slices
- Tofu slices were added (1 each)
- Corn & Capsicum mixed – with Mint Chutney were divided in two equal portions and put on top of tofu slices
- Sandwich was closed with the other two toasted bread slices, and bread corners were finely removed and the ready sandwiches were cross cut into two triangle sandwiches each
- Wow, wow , wow was celebrated
Stay Young, Drink Twitter Every Day October 27, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Internet, Twitter.Tags: Gul Panag, India, India Fashion Week, Twitter, Twitterverse, WLIFW
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When I woke up today morning I had a strange thought, do I eat Twitter or do I drink Twitter. I asked myself where this came from. The answer is plain and simple, Twitter has become something which I must consume everyday, my day has to begin with it and my day must end with it. It has become an addiction, which I am proud of. So, the question remains, do I drink Twitter or do I eat Twitter. I think in my case, I drink twitter everyday, reason is plain and simple drinking is done more often than eating. You can’t begin your day with eating something but you can always start it with drinking something. You can’t go to bed after eating something it will make u feel heavy, but a drink just before sleep is perfect.
Having given an answer to myself to this strange thought, I asked myself who else is drinking Twitter around? There are many, the 1st and foremost name that came to my mind was of Gul Panag. It looks like Twitter has become her favorite drink, specially the way she is going about the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion week tells you that she can drink as much of Twitter as is offered to her or she can lay her hands on. On an average she is doing about 60-70 tweets a day either from the desktop or handheld and her every Tweet whether it is generic to specific to the Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week or it is one-to-one tweet, you can see the adrenalin rush which she has in abundance reflecting in it. Now, why am I observing it so closely, it is because a part of the action which she is doing involves one of the projects passionately incubated by me, Twitsanps.com. Gul Panag has been using Twitsnaps since many months but the way she is driving the mileage out of the site is making me wonder on why we didn’t identify this dimension of TwitSnaps
Let me just allow random thoughts to flow and these thoughts are just throwing up zillion words, Social Media, Lifestyle, Fashion, Glamour, Connectivity, Networking, Integration, Bollywood, Miss India, Charisma, Fan Following and I can go on and on and on. What Twitter has done is that it has brought forward a platform where you can create a potent mix of absolutely unrelated disconnected, disjointed entities floating around in the world. No wonder the new name Twitterverse makes lot of sense to me. There is a separate thought with which ITC would have gone and created Wills cigarettes, there would have been a surrogate advertising thought with which they would have created Wills Lifestyle as an apparel brand. There would have been an altogether different thought with which Ministry of Textiles would have conceived India Fashion Week, now bring in a former Miss India who is now a Bollywood actress who has always had a dream of doing news coverage using Twitter to cover an event aided with a photosharing site which was conceived with a very different objective.
I am sure what Twitter is doing with me it is doing with Gul Panag and with many others. It is just making us younger with every tweet we do. The minute we Tweet, we allow unrestricted flow of thoughts to float around in the universe. We know if all these thoughts are connected together, it would truly reflect our persona which for people like me is the root cause of addiction. I have always felt that I have never been understood and I think many of us do that, but if you tweet and you tweet passionately and you tweet straight from your heart and your tweet carries the finest your gray cells have to offer, you know that you are home, you know that you can simply go and tell someone that if you want to understand me go and read my tweets.
Today when I was updating my Google profile in a section on write your brief biodata, I just wanted to write one word @simarp. So do I go ahead and change my name, maybe I should. I love eating but I must drink and my drink is called Twitter. Stay young, drink Twitter everyday.
Tata Nano Modifiction Agenda October 25, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Car Customization, Cars, India, Tata Nano
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As I eagerly await delivery of my Tata Nano which is still few months away, I have decided to make a to do list anyway and open it to friends and family for suggestion:
- It would be our first Business Idea prototype from Avval Business Ideas Pvt. Ltd.
- Our modified version of Nano would be named Seerat
- The roof would be the first thing to go off and would be replaced with toughened glass
- The back seats would move out and become flat platform
- Air Bags would come in
- The front seats would be moved out and replaced with power controlled seats with lumber support and would be connected to an additional battery
- Rear wiper with spray would be added
- The rear view mirrors would get power control and indicator lights
- Front lights would get an internal row of LED circle – blue tint
- Rear/ Back light unit would be replaced with an LED panel
- Steering gets replaced with Audio controls
- A special U lights comes at the front and rear
- Tubeless tyres (If available in this size)
- Gets Alloys
- Gets a protective shield to cover the bottom
- Gets a four speaker music system
- Essentially a two seater, we would need to plan what we do with the rear doors, if possible we would close one and make the other remote controlled lift up gate for shopping and such
I would love to implement more ideas, if they are practical. The idea is t make the car a small fun car for the family which does service in 5-7 KM radius for local errands, in 100% self drive mode
On Twitter – Why Not Follow? October 25, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Internet, Twitter.Tags: Follow on Twitter, Tweeting Habits, Tweets, Twitter, Unfollow on Twitter
2 comments
I tweet and I have become choosy. Like most of us, I also started with following celebrities and thought leaders, good start to morning and good start to anytime of the day is what I believed in for several months. Now I have noticed that I can’t stand some Thought Leaders and Celebrities and I have decided to (un)follow them, here is a list of reasons which prompt me to (un)follow them:
- If anyone has following count = Zero (OMG – I don’t want to follow Gods on Twitter)
- 24×7 auto tweets (You may be good, but I don’t want to just see you and read you)
- Predictable tweets and too many cliche and absurdities (Hi Tarling
I am reading Tewspaper – one even went up to write Twabindranath Twagore) - One way communicators (They don’t respond to you, they don’t respond to anyone except their pre-twitter era friends)
- Seldom tweeters (If they tweet once in several months, I fail to connect and create bonding)
- Sell, sell but never share (A good number of journalists just sell their program on Twitter, I am sorry – i refuse to watch your program, I refuse to read your tweets)
- Over exposure to - Social Causes (I am wearing a shirt which has been made from recycled cloth)
- Seeing London, Talking Tokyo (When tweets just don’t connect with the persona)
- Nothing beyond 140 (When they never link, never share, never propagate, never write- to me Twitter is life – it is a complete food experience and over a period I want to ensure that my each taste-bud is active)
- Latin and Greek (Celebrity yes, but I am sorry I can’t relate with anything you write – one celebrity tweeted I just returned my assignment advance of X Million Dollars as I was busy tweeting and the agent was bugging me)
I would work further on this post and even name them at some point of time.
Do post your comments
Jinnah of Jaswant Singh October 11, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Books, Review.Tags: Book, Book Review, Books, India, Jaswant Singh, Jinnah, Pakistan
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Question: Do I like Jinnah?
Answer: I didn’t like him before reading the book, I haven’t changed my mind after reading the book
Question: Why pay Rs 695/- for a subject you don’t like?
Answer: One should be open to reviewing stands long taken, which may or may nat have had a strong basis. Having said that I found all the reviews shallow and wanted to form my own opinion about Jaswant Singh and Jinnah through this book.
Question: Do you like the book?
Answer: No.
Question: Why don’t you like much acclaimed, and much talked about – Jinnah India-Partition-Independence
Answer: For one, Mr. Jaswant Singh had no patience to read the copy of his book before it finally went for printing. The book has typos and other mistakes which Mr. Singh could have easily spotted had he read “his life’s work” even once after compiling. The book has been poorly researched. The author and publisher didn’t feel a need to have an editor as a result the book is loose collation of random articles which may or may not talk to each other. A good book is like a river without dams, it just flows its course, Jaswant’s Jinnah doesn’t flow – you need to turn pages to read on and do pick-and-drop till your wrist starts aching.
Question: What was that you were looking in the book and you didn’t find?
Answer: For starters, I was not looking for trash which is in abundance in this book. What I was looking was for an insight of a scholar and a balanced book which was as detached as required to connect millions of people to an opinion other than the one they have been forced to believe. I was looking for statements, judgments and an insight which are just missing. Loss of life & property in both Bengal and Punjab have been given at best passing references. The emphasis has been on what is written and re-written hundreds of time. I was looking for a new drink, which could have been hot or cold, any color, any density – what Mr Singh has served is a glass of polluted water from the beds of Yamuna pulled out from ITO bridge Delhi side. Armchair rewriting at its best.
Compare Infobase 11 October 7, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Compare Infobase
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Thank you Compare Infobase for being around for so long, most of those who started along with you have perished, merged or submerged. You are around, and stronger after few extended underwater maneuvers, you have become a good swimmer, I don’t think I will live long enough to see Compare 100 but Iam sure I would be around to see Compare turn 50.
Here are my 11 favorite projects where Compare has atleast some ownership -
- http://MapsofIndia.com – 100% Owned by Compare
- http://Dgreetings.com – 34% Owned by Compare
- http://MapsofWorld.com – 100% Owned by Compare
- http://MyDearValentine.com – 50% Owned by Compare
- http://TwitSnaps.com – 100% Owned by Compare
- http://HeadlinesIndia.com – 100% Owned by Compare
- http://SitaGita.com – 33% Owned by Compare
- http://IndiaHousing.com – 26% Owned by Compare
- http://FocusSingapore.com – 100% Owned by Compare
- http://SubmitYourSite.com – 100% Owned by Compare
- http://YouMustSee.com – 50% Owned by Compare
Here are my 11 Projects where Compare has no ownership now
- http://IndianHoliday.com
- http://Indiaedu.com
- http://IndiaProfile.com
- http://123World.com
- http://FlightsHub.com
- http://NaukriHub.com
- http://BestIndianSites.com
- http://GoaHub.com
- http://ChristmasCarnivals.com
- http://PalacesonWheels.com
- http://DiwaliMela.com
The above lists are completely from a ‘Founders perspective. I personally thank all those who worked on these projects.
BTW: I am aware that the links are not clickable