After B Tech, what?

This is the question that stares at IT grads fresh out of college. IT companies that have suspended campus recruitment suggest that leading educational institutions introduce a one-year post-graduate programme for students on loose ends; that is, those passing out of colleges this year. The suggestion is reported to have come from the communications manager [...]

Of Obama and his BlackBerry

Reading about the US presidential right to keep his  BlackBerry, with certain restrictions on access,   I wondered  if  Joe the Plumber  would get  on Obama’s e-mail list. If  he doesn’t,  I don’t see how else can the  ’people’s president’   stay in touch with folks at the grass-roots level .  Of course,  he  gets   feedback from his trusted Chicago friends  [...]

Google and greenhouse gases

Did you ever wonder how much greenhouse gases Internet  users generate? I didn’t,couldn’t care, till I happened  by this post by blogger James Crabtree.  He says he is  confused by what he read in the media – that two Google  searches from your desktop could generate as much carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for [...]

Reporting Gaza

Martha Gellhorn,  American war correspondent of  Spanish Civil war vintage,  was  quoted as saying,  “If a journalist can do nothing positive, to make the world more liveable or less cruel or stupid, he can at least record truly, and that is something no one else will do”.
And that is the thing -  ‘reporting truly’ -  that [...]

It was Slumdog’s day at LA

Four Golden Globes – the best picture, director, screenplay and music score. Danny Boyle’s  Slumdog Millionaire  has drawn global attention to Mumbai slums and their grim reality,  as depicted by an orphan boy struggling to make it in life.  A  Kaun-banega-carorpati  type TV show  gives  him that chance to make it.  And the millionaire slumboy,  reunited [...]

Where’s ‘Satyam’ Raju ?

It is a question to which no one appears to have an  answer. CNBC-TV 18 reporter in Hyderabad who raised the  question with the police was told that in the absence of  anyone filing an FIR they weren’t really looking for Sri Ramalinga Raju of Satyam.  On the morning after the newsbreak on the Rs.7,000 [...]

Gaza under ground attack.

After a week of pounding from air Israelis moved their troops into Gaza strip. TV channels,  notably CNN,  kept up  a running coverage,  but their reporting was from the Israel end,  for no foreign journalist has been allowed into  Gaza. TV doesn’t take us behind this picture of  smoking  Gaza.  It takes a  blogger to give [...]

Getting people to smile

It may be bit of a tall order – getting people to smile, and  spread  cheer,  in trouled times such as the present  economic meltdown.  But it hasn’t deterred Bren Bataclan from trying.  In fact he has made it one of his life’s social  missions to engage,  literally,  people on the street to spread a bit of [...]