Transition of Thoughts

Weaving thoughts into words

Tag: Gmail

Q & A with Madhumita Mukherjee: Author of ‘The Other Side of the Table”

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On June 13, 2013

In Interviews, Uncategorized

Madhumita Mukherjee grew up in Delhi and did her medical education from Calcutta National Medical College. She has been living and working in England since 2001 as a Paediatrician. She has a special affinity for epistolary novels as well as novels written as journals and diaries like ‘Diary of a Provincial Lady’ by E.M. Delafield, and ‘I Capture the Castle’ by Dodie Smith. Besides these, she takes special interest in novels with medical themes such as ‘A Country Doctor’s Notebook’ by Mikhail Bulgakov.

‘The Other Side of the Table’ is her first novel. She joins us here for a small tete-a-tete –

Aseem: Who or what inspired you to begin writing?
Madhumita: Nothing in particular and certainly not anyone. I suddenly had the time for the wrong reason and I wanted to distract myself by telling myself a story…

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In conversation with Oswald Pereira – Renowned Journalist & Acclaimed Author

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On June 5, 2013

In Interviews, Uncategorized

Oswald Pereira

A veteran journalist, Oswald Pereira has worked for leading newspapers and magazines in Mumbai, New Delhi and Muscat. Oswald, who has taught journalism at The Times School of Journalism, is an editor and an English language trainer. Oswald is the author of the widely-acclaimed, best-selling crime thriller, The Newsroom Mafia, published by Grey Oak Westland in December 2011. He was born in Thane, Maharashtra, and studied at St Xaviers College, Mumbai. He now lives with his wife and son in Noida. Revenge of the Naked Princess is his second novel.

Oswald Pereira with a copy of his novel Revenge of the Naked Princess

He joins us for a small little chat –

Aseem: When and how did you decide to start penning down novels?
Oswald: Before entering journalism, while doing my post-graduation in Economics in Bombay University I wrote my first novel in the young adult genre. It was liked by the editor of a top publishing house. But the editor-in-chief overruled the editor. I was unfazed and wrote my second novel in which the protagonist was a priest who falls in love with a girl. Then I joined journalism and reporting and writing front page stories seemed far more exciting than churning out fiction. My two novels written back then, which still remain unpublished were a forgotten story. They still lie somewhere among my old papers that include a big scrapbook of hundreds of news stories.

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Book Review – The Other Side of the Table

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On May 28, 2013

In Book Review, Uncategorized

the-other-side-of-the-table-madhumita-mukherjee
Source: http://vaultofbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/the-other-side-of-the-table-madhumita-mukherjee.jpg

‘The Other Side of the Table’ is Madhumita Mukherjee’s first novel. She has pursued medicine and works as a consultant paediatrician in Manchester. She has a special affinity for epistolary novels. And that’s what she pursues in her first attempt at writing. Does it work? Let’s check it out.

The blurb goes like this –

Circa 1990.
A world drawn and woven with words.
A bond punctuated by absence and distance . . .
Two continents. Two cities. Two people.
And letters. Hundreds of them.
Over years. Across oceans. Between hearts.

Between Abhi, who is training to be a neurosurgeon in London, and Uma, who is just stepping into the world of medicine in Kolkata.

As they ink their emotions onto paper, their lives get chronicled in this subtly nuanced conversation through letters . . . letters about dreams, desires, heartbreaks, and longings . . . about a proverbial good life falling apart, about a failed marriage, a visceral loss, and about a dream that threatens social expectations . . .

Letters that talk. And don’t. Letters about this and that. Letters about everything . . .

Letters with a story you would never expect.

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Indian Government now asks Google for Gmail Encryption!

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On December 20, 2010

In My thots and scribbles, Uncategorized

Indian security agencies have suddenly gone into a tizzy. Over the last couple of years, terror attacks as well as terrorist threats have multiplied manifold across the nation. Internet has become de-facto mode of communication for most of these terrorist organizations. In a bid to track this communication, security agencies are trying to tap every internet channel.

They are now directly going after these websites / service providers which could be prone to being used by terrorists. The first target was RIM’s Blackberry where the data from where information came couldn’t be found out and this proved a security threat. After having a war of words with them, the government has given them a 31st January 2011 deadline to hand . And finally the thousands of Blackberry users in the country heaved a sigh of relief.

In a recent news, security agencies have also threatened to stop the 3G services in India as they are not able to track the conversations happening over 3G

And now the Indian government has trained its eyes on the third most popular email service in the world – Gmail to hand over its encryption keys.

Why the encryption keys cannot be handed over?

Be it Google, Gmail, Blackberry or any other site, encryption keys are used by sites to protect the users private data. Since these sites have information about people’s demographics, psychographic profile – leaving it out into the open could give rise to a huge number of problems.
What is the problem then?

The government has told Gmail to lower the encryption levels or hand over their keys so that they are able to monitor all the activities taking place.

This is beset with problems

This move by the government shows that our cyber cell is non – existent or completely pathetic. Our intelligence agencies seem to be asking for an easier route or lower encryption rather than improving their ability of decrypting higher levels of encryption.

Today they are banning Blackberry, tomorrow Gmail and day after Yahoo – like [^] this we are encouraging the terrorists of their aim to directly / indirectly affect Indian citizens. The terrorists seem much more technologically advanced than our RAW!

Maybe till the time we are able to decrypt higher levels of encryption, they would have gone on to much more intricate technology!

Facebook’s Gmail rival “Project Titan” – The next generation in email?

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On November 12, 2010

In My thots and scribbles, Uncategorized

Move on from Gmail, Facebook Inbox dubbed as “Project Titan” is launching on Monday, 15th November. This just doesn’t promise to be a rehash / improvement of the Facebook messaging system which exists currently. But instead it looks set to be a much more detailed and comprehensive alternative to Gmail. The Facebook messaging leave few changes here and there has been mostly static.

First things first, it would give you the chance of having @facebook.com addresses. At a later point in time, it would include a version similar to that like the Gmail Priority Inbox which would have conversations and interactions with the users Facebook friends those he frequently chats with. As with Gmail this would be a very good filter for an individual to categorize his messages. Eventually the aim is to include all the features of Facebook like photo and video sharing, events information and management etc. which would appeal to all the Facebook users.

MySpace had come up with its webmail service in 2008. But it lacked POP and IMAP support. But interestingly Facebook will have both POP and IMAP support. This means that one can log into the email service without going to Facebook itself but instead through third party websites like the way one uses Twitter. According to research, more than 60 million people log into 80,000 third party websites each month via Facebook Connect.

Considering that recently Google banned users from importing their Gmail contacts to their Facebook Ids, this announcement by Facebook becomes even more interesting and one to watch out for.

Only time will tell whether it can be a Gmail killer or not. But this is one announcement I am surely looking forward too.

Google’s social media plans have completely fallen flat! Haven’t they?

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On August 10, 2010

In My thots and scribbles, Social Media Roundup, Uncategorized


Google is the most innovative technology company of our times. It has led the way in new technologies on the World Wide Web from the day two entrepreneurs from Stanford University took it to the world. With applications like Gmail, Google Talk, Google Docs, Android, the Chrome browser, its search engine and more, it has shaped the way the world uses the World Wide Web. But today the world has gone more ‘social’ than ever and truth be told – Google is struggling to keep pace with the change.

Google Buzz, Google Wave, Orkut, Dodge Ball – Google has tried its hand at social media and social networking. But sadly it has not seen the kind of runaway success with which it has been associated in the field of technology. The reasons for this are many –

1. Despite the fact that Google has built various applications, it has mostly concentrated on search which is its USP. Like many others, it tried its hand in social media, but didn’t see the success it expected. Orkut is popular only in Brazil and India while Google Wave has closed down and Buzz has not seen much success either.

2. It probably was late in moving onto the social media scene as it initially played it down as a fad. But when a search was conducted as to how more people are spending greater time on Facebook than on Google, it got jittery and started taking drastic measures.

3. Orkut became really popular in Brazil and India. But sadly it hasn’t been able to be even half as popular around the world. And studies now indicate that Facebook is slowly but surely going to surpass Orkut. When Google realised this, it started added apps and also redesigned it. But again they were too late.

4. Google’s search is based on page rank. But today search has become social as more and more people are looking to their friends for views about different happenings.

5. One of the biggest things to worry for Google is the Bing – Facebook partnership which has resulted in Bing getting more and more search requests from the 500 million users while Google sits there and cribs over having missed such a huge population.

So what can Google do?

Google Me which is expected to be some sort of gaming social website can be its saviour. For this it had recently acquired ‘Slide – a gaming player’. But can Google fightback? You can write them out at our own peril!

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