Universities as Sponsors

I used to watch TV quite regularly when I was doing my schooling. I completed 12 standard in 2002. Since, then I have watched TV only now and then and during the vacation time I spent at home. When I was still going to school I saw that various programs on TV were sponsored by giants in the business world like - Pepsi, Coke, Goderej, Reliance, etc. These companies would get slots between the program to show-off their brands.

But, nowadays a lot of universities are seen to be sponsoring TV programs. I could see more advertisements of various universities and educational institutions than those of Coke and Pepsi. These universities are spending a lot on adervtising in all forms TV, newspapers (some of them give full page advertisements) and the internet. The private universities in India adopt the business model - in which fees is their primary source of earning. So, they want more and more people to know (hence, advertising) about their university, so that more and more number of people would join them and be a revenue source to the university.

I believe a university must be known by the work it does not by the number of places it advertises. But, unfortunately that is what is happening.

Orkut goes for a toss!!

Facebook is the most popular social networking site in the world. But, in India Orkut is the biggest hub. People in India are more loyal to Google (although Facebook is catching up). Orkut has a number of flawes I do not know if people have noticed it or not.
Orkut counters (the ones that show you the number of fans, number of scraps on your home page) are hopeless. The number of scraps keeps fluctuating between the real value and plus-minus 2 scraps. The number of fans sunndenly become less.
The best of all, Orkut cannot differentiate (sometimes) between male and female. For and example consider the image posted above - It has been cut from the feeds that I received on my home page, it says "Varun.. received comments on her photo". Varun is a guy (even as per what Orkut has in its database).

Google Hacked or What??!!

I attach a screen shot of the google search for 'Google'. The results have a link "This site might harm your computer" for every result that is shows even for Google itself!!!

What happened to google? Have they been hacked or their algorithm has gone for a toss??

The Journey (Part II)

The next day I had plans to go to Ranganathitu (a bird Santuary) in Mysore. In the peak season there are about 13000 birds in the santuary (I do not know how many species). I had to use my new camera - The Sony CyberShot H-50 to capture some pictures of the birds there. Arpan and I went to the sanctuary by 3:00 pm. I was so disappointed on reaching there, very few birds were there. The people at the sanctuary told us that December is not the season. The birds will be back in feb. "Oh Shit!!!" (what a bad time for a vacation). We did take the boat ride and tried to capture whatever birds were there. There were number of bats hanging from the tree and of course a few crocodiles.

Here are some pictures taken at Ranganathitu:








MORE TO BE ADDED...keep watching..