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In my name..


In my name
I urge the governments to
keep their promise
(www.inmyname.com)

Hallowed be thy Blog

It was that Sunday when I realized or I should say many of us present there realized our WWW presence, and how much it meant to us. If I am missing out on something.. Oh! yes it was the IndiBloggers meet here at Kolkata. It was like one of those nostalgic moment when we survive in a second life, the Internet, where each time opening up an internet explorer or a firefox page feels just just like starting a new day. A new day of creativity, a new day of curiosity, a new day of knowledge, a new day of refreshment...

The Indiblogger badge in my blog directed me to a page one such day. It was a bloggers meet that was going to be held at Kolkata for the first time. It said i need to confirm if i wish to be at the meet. I knew from that moment that i will be there. I was confirmed in a moment and all set to go.

Well.. Prior to going any further with my review on this Meet i should say i am a newbie here... and here goes my review.

The venue finding was not an issue and i reached there safe and sound. The number of turn ups were a bit less but people started pouring in within moments as the organizers had to arrange for extra chairs. It all started with a short video from Pune bloggers meet follwed by a short creative video composed out for Kolkata bolggers meet by Archit.

The One minute of fame started with all the bloggers turning up to the deck and introducing themselves and their piece of work on the www, works ranging from Blogs to Private domains. I thank the IndiBlogger team to select a comment from my blog in their "who knows their readers best??" session. We had also had Sandhya with us that evening who is a Student Partner of Microsoft. Windows Live Writer, a handy blogging tool, was the topic discussed by her.

Bloggers Ethics was the topic of discussion up next where people poured in with their ideas and concepts of T&C Violation, Plagiarism, & Internet security. The everwaited dinner was ready for us by then and we also got some cool IndiBlogger T-shirts.

The whole purpose of the meet to me was to Inspire Indian people who blog, provide a proper platform where their work can get recognised, get connected, and over all, to remove any man, un-manned, physical or logical boundaries between us.


i like the lonliness
In the crowd
i think about
a lot of things
i have a friend
in every foe
i know places
far and wide
i know
the good things in life
i do have
a kid in me
i want
to break free

- Vinni, IndiBlogger team
(watch full video By Vinni, vinni.co.in)

I Know
No boundaries
I Blog,
Therefore I Am..

Six Degrees of Luckiness

I lay on my bed panicking about the training I had to attend the next day, my feets cold. The panic was not about the subject matter that was to be covered, but about the painful eight hours I need to spend in the training. My room-mate lay on the other side of the room while explaining me the concept of "Six degrees of separation". Even though I couldn't relate six degrees of separation to my current situation of getting a chill due to the up-coming training session I was eager to know the fact.

And Here it goes -
In the late 1960's a person called Stanley Milgram conducted an experiment on the US of A wherein he requested for volunteers. Each volunteer was handed over a package which he/she has to deliver to a totally unknown (or may b known) person (lets say Todd). The volunteers were not provided with any further details such as address of Mr. Todd, the region/location was specified though. The volunteers were supposed to deliver the package to Mr. Todd through any of their first name acquaintances whom they think can help deliver the package to Mr. Todd.

After the experiment Milgram found amazingly that the Packages from the volunteers reached Mr. Todd on an average of six hops. Or to simplyfy, each package from the several volunteers took exaclty 6 intermideary person to get delivered. Eventually Milgram came up with the concept of Six degrees of separation wherein he stated that every person knows every other person(unknown) in the world with a maximum of 6 hops in between. Some people said that eventually in due course of time the number of hops would decrease leading the world to shrink.

Years later a similar experiment was conducted by Richard Wiseman along with a new objective of proving Luck. His experiment included similar volunteers from United Kingdom, who were supposed to deliver a package to some unknown(or... may b known) within the country. He found out a rather similar result but this time the number of hops were reduced to four !! He also observed that people claiming themselves to be unlucky didn't even bothered to pass on the package, when asked for the reason they stated that they couldn't find any person whom they thought would be of help to deliver the package. On the other hand people who claimed themselves as lucky seem to have delivered the package without fail. So does that mean that the social circle of the unlucky people are smaller than the luckier ones or rather they live in a much larger world than the lucky people who have acquaintances.

This anomaly proved that the world was really shrinking (with the help of science and technology ofcourse), and people are just lucky because they know other people or they live in a small world where they know most of the people or are better connected.

A useful piece of information shared by my room-mate, it was. The painful eight hours was suddenly of no pain anymore. I was busy analyzing my luckiness the whole time. Each time, again & again, i tried to answer the question of being lucky or did the fact that "i am really unlucky mean that i know less people? & why ain't the world shrinking for me??"... "do i really know Gorge W. Bush or Kareena Kapoor within six degrees or separation or its just a wishful thinking??"...