Why is the foot-over-bridge in Daryaganj being demolished?

This Friday I was reading the news the MCD is going to demolish the foot-over-bridge on Netaji Subhash Marg in Daryaganj or the "Lohe Ka Pul" as we all know it. MCD Plans a subway to replace this bridge. Agency claimed that the bridge has become a regular place for anti-social elements. Everything is okay but I see it from two different viewpoints.

First from a legacy point of view. It has been there since last 45 years. It’s not only an old structure but a land mark too. Dismantling it because it is being frequented by the local goon does not make any sense to me. Are we trying to say that if we create subway it will be a deterrent for these goons? On the contrary it would be more dangerous as from the road one can’t know what’s going on in a subway. I would not like if my pocket is picked while passing from a subway. If this case happens on a foot over bridge at least the public takes notice of this and can help catching the guy who picked a pocket.

Now from the spend perspective. Correct me if I am wrong in saying that a 35 coroe Rupees budget is sanctioned for it. Now my point is does it cost more to repair an iron foot-over-bridge or Construction of subways costs more. Does MCD consider these things before taking the decision to spend the tax money of the tax payers?

A hard to please customer equals A Moron

It was beautiful just beautiful. Tata delivered what it promised a car in a price which nobody even thought that too with whatever accessories are required. yes I am talking about 1 Lakh car Tata Nano. Still the comment that my friend made was "It just look like a Bajaj Auto". Well does someone know how much an auto cost? its more than the price you are dreaming to own a car. "Well I am a customer who is hard to please" is the answer. Its interesting how do you interpret this. I guess it means I am a moron who only knows asking asking and asking without even thinking how much am I paying for it or whether anyone else coming to even this close to what I am getting. Customer is the king but when will all these kings learn to how much is too much. Another one which is very interesting "I had to go through the pain of using shaving cream only because Gillet do not supply enough Shaving foams in my area". Oh wow non availability of Gels I can understand but pain of using Shaving cream! My My My what to do with High minds. Hindi is cheap but English is class, Bollywood never deserves anything more than 3 while Hollywood never goes below 4 stars. These remind me of people who are rich in nuisance value. But now Amir told me the secret to still be happy. Just make your heart believe "All Is Well".

Beggars: Sad part of life

I am sad today. I was driving to my office today when I crossed Ashram chowk and turned on Mathura road towards Badarpur. On the next red light there was this small girl dancing on th e tunes of Dholak. She must be four or may be five. An age where one feels on top of the world if someone offers her a candy. This also reminds me of a day sometime back. Again I was returning from hospital when I saw this small girl playing with her infant brother (it could be sister). This kid in a carton is a very grim sight. Delhi government claims to remove the beggars from Delhi roads before common wealth games. But how is it going to tackle this task? What would happen to these beggars? Are they being just removed from roads or there is some plan to rehabilitate them? How would you ensure that they don't come back after sometime?

Track success of the twitter campaign

I was in discussion with one of my colleagues when this question of how to track success of the twitter campaign cropped up. This made me compile my ideas about tracking the tweeter campaign. This also serves the purpose of base to decide how much of your time for social media should be devoted towards this micro blogging ( or nano expression as Praveen calls it) site.

Tracking requirements for twitter really and actually depends on your objective to use twitter. Your objective could be creating a buzz, generating traffic to your website or blog. In fact the objective behind twitter usage would keep changing during the life cycle of your campaign if the same is extended over 2 month. So when your campaign is starting your objective is to gain as many followers as possible. This means that over a period of first month the tracking requirements are limited to how many followers you are gaining day over day. When we talk about the number of follower not only the people joining your network are important but people leaving it are equally important. If you map the people joining / leaving your network against the particular tweets send out during that duration you can get a fair good idea about their interest to achieve their goal. You can realign your tweets to target right people.

Once you have achieved the critical mass of the follower your goal could be either creating buzz about your service / company or generating more traffic for your website. Retweets and hash tags are two good tools which can be used for these. Thus it becomes absolutely mandatory to map how many people are contributing towards your hash (#) tags or how many are retweeting your tweets. You also have to bear in mind that to allow people to retweet your posts you would have to limit your post length so that it can accommodate RT @ name. Believe me if people have to take pain in compressing your ports, its going to reduce the RTs to a significantly low number. A map of numbers of a significantly low number. A map of numbers of # or RTs against your tweet content is a good tool to correct and realign your tweets with your goals.

Twitter is a good tool for any social networking campaign but it can easily be a reason for wasting your valuable time for sweet nothing. If we track our campaigns through these maps we can reduce the time devoted to such campaign to less than an hour a day and that is what we cant to achieve

Dont spread panic spread Information to prevent Swine Flu

"Reeda Sheikh is Dead; Fahmida Panwala is Dead; Sanjay Tukaram Kokre is Dead and Patel an NRI is Dead; A Young Boy too is Dead also Dr Babasaheb Mane is Dead".

I was watching this news channel when a well known face of news industry said above words in a very Dramatic tone. The health minister's byte was shown where he said that developing the indigenous H1N1 vaccine for deadly swine flu will take approx. 6-7 months but Govt. will do the required to make it available if some other company develops it earlier. After this our dear newsman asked us, the public if "We will have to rely only on being quarantined and wearing Mask to protect ourselves against the epidemic?". So Mr. Newsman is there any vaccine for flu already available? Ho yes... your channel did share the good news the very next morning .... "America has started testing the swine flu vaccine on humans and results will be out within next 3-4 months after which the medicine can be made available for the victims". Now that is a good news indued because if the tests are positive India can import the vaccine which can cure this epidemic.

What I want to ask is "Are we using swine flu to raise our TRP?" "Are we even thinking if our words are fueling the panic?". Should we not be little more sensitive towards the issues and matters like swine flu and not spread the words which can create panic especially when we are a medium which is seen by Lakhs of people(what's the peak viewership you claim Mr. Newsman?). Lets spread the information which can save few lives. Here I am sharing few details which I have collected from some of my aware and responsible friends, office colleagues and Govt. publications. I'll validate and edit (if required) some of the information collected from friends and colleague from the Medical authorities. Mean while following is the information

• Swine Flu Helpline Number (Delhi) -- 011 - 23921401
• Give Influenzium 30, Homeopathy, 4 tablets once a day for few (3-4) days for protection against swine flu.
• Swine flu Symptoms are those of common flu like Fever, Cough, Headache, Weakness and fatigue, Aching muscles and joints, Sore throat, Runny nose. Click here to read.
• When you see flu symptoms do consult your physician before visiting Swine Flu Testing Centers. This will shorten the que for people who need immediate attention.
• Prevention and Precautions for Swine Flu.

Underground parking hits green roadblock

Sunday , Aug 02, 2009
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com

Delhiites who have been opposed to the idea of creating space for vehicles under parks can finally breathe easy. Environment Pollution Control Authority (EPCA) has told Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) that it cannot create such parking sites without taking residents of the area into confidence.

This move has been proposed after taking into account the diminishing green cover in the city. Shalimar Bagh residents had filed a complaint with EPCA regarding the parking lot being created by MCD under a park in their colony. The parking project has been dropped now.

Sunita Narain, member EPCA, said: "We do not want to disturb the green cover of Delhi and have asked MCD to consider making vehicle space under parks as the last resort. We have asked them to ensure such areas are developed into flat areas after parking space is made. The MCD commissioner has been asked to ensure that in future, permission of residents of the area is sought before constructing a parking site.''

Said an MCD official: "If we have to keep seeking permission from residents, we won't be able to create parking at all. We are following the Master Plan 2021, which provides for allowing parking under green covers.'' MCD has plans to create 24 parking sites under the green cover, with work on at six such sites.

Shalimar Bagh residents had earlier filed a PIL against the civic agency which had planned to build a parking lot underneath Shiv Vatika a park between the AM and AN Blocks in Shalimar Bagh.

Abhilasha Mathur, a resident of the area, who took up this cause, said: "The park has 250 trees and MCD had said it would cut down 100 to construct the parking. We had taken up the matter with MCD but got no response. They didn't even consult us before taking up the project. We then decided to approach EPCA and are happy with the decision. This park is used by 3,000 locals.''

According to the list of authorized parking lots finalized on Saturday, there are around 140-150 surface parking sites under MCD areas and 53 in NDMC areas. Said Narain: "We will put up the list of authorized parking lots online and will initiate action against the unauthorized lots soon. Money collected from parking fines and charges by various agencies should be used as city development fund for improving roads and the public transport system. We're now looking at revising parking rates charged by MCD.''

Meanwhile, Delhi Traffic Police has sought revision of the Motor Vehicle Act 1988 in an attempt to curb road related violations by hiking fines for different offences. As part of the proposal, the traffic police has suggested that the fine for unauthorized parking be increased to Rs 1,500 from the current Rs 100. While the proposal has been submitted to the Union surface transport ministry and was to be discussed after the elections it is yet to come up for discussion.

Save depleteing ground water table

Today when Kapil dropped me in the evening, it was raining. My home being one and a half kilometer from his place, I knew that whatever I do can not save me from getting drenched. So leaving the idea of taking the shelter aside, I started walking. It was pouring down heavily. I got drenched even to my inner most layers, before the seconds hand of my watch could complete one round around the dial. But I enjoyed the rain thoroughly. Though it’s not been too long since I got caught in the rains, last time, but it was the time when I was not worried about saving my Laptop. The cold drops of rain on my face felt so good.

Walking with the long strides, on my way back, I was passing through the streets. The streets were flooded with the overflowing drains leaving only small islands, for people like me to walk on. The water was flowing down from the small drains made on the roofs of the houses near by. Suddenly I felt "Aren't we wasting the lot of rain water by allowing it to go down the drains and not harvesting it". The water drained down only from my roof should be sufficient enough to irrigate a small field for may be two days. Had everybody harvested this rain water and used it water the plants and garden, it would have saved a lot of underground water in already depleted ground water table. I am not mentioning the electricity required that water out. I resolved to get rain water harvesting system installed at my house and do my bit believing that it would inspire the others also. Somebody please share the address of the places in Delhi from where I can get the rainwater harvesting system.

Gmail Labels get drag and drop

Today when I logged in my google mail account a change alert greeted me. Google mail has kept improving its interface in 5 years since its inception, to add functionality or improve the user experience. This time it has introduced the Lable drag option. This feature lets you assign the lable to any and many messages in your mail box by simply dragging the lable onto the messages.




A very cool usability feature. When you are on your inbox or on a message screen you can drag a lable to assign that lable to the message(s) in question. From your inbox you can also drag message or multiple messages(press "Shift" Key while selecting, to select multiple messages) to assign a specific lable to these messages. But on assigning the lables this way (dragging message to the lable) will move your message from the inbox to the folder specific to your lable.



This functionality eases the task of assigning lables to your communications especially if you have a longish Labels list. Google also has thought the functionality well from usability perspective and moved the Lables above the chats widget. This means just drag and drop no Scrolling up and down for finding the lables (or communications) while dragging. Another thing that They have maintained is the Lables drop down. So when I am at the end of a loooooong mail, I can assign the lable to this mail the conventional way (from the drop down). Google sure knows the nerves of its users.

My Blog added on Twitter

Starting Tuesday, June 2, 2009, the posts from my blog are available at Twitter also. Follow me at @lochanrajeev

Google Announced Search Options Panel Launch

Last week I was browsing the groups I have joined on Linked in when I found a post regarding the launch of Google Search Options Panel. Being lil too stuck up with the one of the projects, I saved that link for future reference. Today I found sometime and so opened this link to find out what this Google Announced Search Options Panel is. The page opened with some compact data and a video of Marissa Mayer Vice President, Search Products & User Experience, explaining the functionality launched. It is a neat set of drill down tools introduced in the Google search. After seeing the video I thought to try the feature myself. I searched for "IPTV Service" clicked on show options. There I clicked on related search and with in 4 drill downs (and which were quite fast) I was actually in front of a search result page of my company's web site. Pretty Good!!! I am impressed.

So what is Google Search Options Panel? It is a collection of tools that let you slice and dice your results and generate different views of the results. Read more about it on Google's Official blog. The Search option panel gives you multiple options to drill down. These options are divided neatly by groups like Type of results (Videos, Forums, Reviews) , Recency (Recent results, Past 24 hours, Past week, Past year), Display option (Images from the page, More text) and drill down options (Related searches, Wonder wheel, Timeline).

While Videos will show all the videos (hosted on say You tube) matching the keywords (or key phrase) searched by you, you can also sea the results from the forums or the reviews only, posted on different forum or reviews sites respectively. But all this stuff depends on the site owner properly marking up pages. Web publishers will have to adopt microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML for Google to show reviews under reviews and forums under forums.


When you choose Related Search option, the related search keywords are displayed on top of the results of the search you have made. When you choose Wonder Wheel, a graphic (a Dial with multiple hands) with related linked search appear alongside your search results. Clicking these the related search links opens another such Dial linked with the existing one. Also the search results change according to the new search suggestion chosen. I'm not sure how useful this will be though. Timeline can be used to search results based on the time duration. It drills the results to a specific year and then to a specific month. This is a great option for the research purpose.

These features though promise good user experience but consumers can't readily use some. For instance, if a user to see results found in a discussion forum, or videos or reviews only the quality distinction will start appearing once the web masters start marking the pages accordingly. We will have to wait and watch how many web masters do it. When I search for "parking laws india" the related searches give me better options than wonder wheel. Now I am not sure which option will give me better results. May be little more experimenting will lead to better understanding. But it still is to be seen whether these tools will improve the quality of the information and reduce the time.

Future of the country is in whose hands?

You want to succeed in life (read that improve your English), then start reading the newspaper daily. That’s what we teach our kids more than often. But a cartoon in Delhi edition of Hindustaan Times (15th May 2009) caught my sight. What do our newspapers teach our children? The above image is just an example of the standards our news papers are following these days. Who has written this graffiti? Does this guy have mental level that is any different from a spoilt collage goer these days or he is taking his lessons in public toilets. It definitely seems like he is graduate in the Toilet Literature. I would like to receive the suggestions about what can we do about this scenario.

Delhi Police's helpline numbers

Delhi Police's helpline numbers

anti-obscene helpline	1096
anti-recovery agent helpline	1097
senior citizens helpline	1291
Eyes and Ears scheme	1090
Women's Helpline	1091
Traffic	1095
Child	1098

BJP Ad Campaign Sucks

I refrain from writing about the political matters. Politics is not my cup of tea (or the coffee either). This time also I'll not write about the politics but the execution of a political Ad campaign. In your opinion what has been the cause of failure for BJP in last two elections. Let me guess the same result even in these elections too. If you ask me the biggest reason for their loss have been the Ad campaigns released before each elections. I'll never go for a party which believe in negative campaigning. The only positive thing that the Ad talks about is "मजबूत नेता | निर्णायक सरकार " (strong Leader, decisive government). On the other hand congress has always talked about their achievements.

I am not sure who has given them this campaign idea. You can not create a great impression by counting what someone else has not done, irrespective of the statements being true or false. What public wants to listen is what you have done for them. And please do not tell us that a leader of opposition is in no position to do anything. Is there someone listening. Come on guys think and think hard. Come up with whatever achievements you have made in all those years. Those will definitely fetch you few votes. And next time you win the election working on my advice do comeback and put a comment back on this post.