spirals

pretty cool set of spiral photos

http://spiral.gallery.sytes.org/

creativity

creativity really pays….

#1 and #4 are just super cool.

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/top-5-most-creative-ads

im

there are umpteen different synchronous as well as asynchronous ways in which one can keep in touch with friends, family, classmates….. phone, email, chatting, skyping and of course there are a slew of web 2.0ish stuff out there to keep in touch…

i remember my young years. my grandmother and my mom both had a habit of writing letters. my mom to her dad and my grandmother to her daughters. it used to be a weekly affair. they will write their letter over a period of 1 week and post it out on friday.

usual suspects – letter, email and phone calls

i never got used to the letter writing thing. i wrote a few letters to my dad when i was in college. my dad wrote me a few too. it used to make me so much happy. my parents have switched to email now and they email me atleast twice a week. the emails sure do make my day merrier. i am lazy at writing an email and just pick up the phone and call. letters (and in some cases email) and phone calls are definitely the best way to communicate. they sure provide the cool personal touch. and they are the best means to communicate with close friends and family.
but, u can never easily write a letter or email or even call friends from long last. it is sort of tricky. letters are ruled out completely. my friends are scattered all around the world and i probably have only 1 or 2 snail mail addresses in my address book. emails are better when sent to a big group announcing something. just sending an email to 1 specific classmate from grade 8 does not make sense. phone calls made to some of these friends once in a few months usually contains too many awkward pauses.

im

this is where i believe chatting via im becomes the greatest communication medium. you see a friend online and send a “whazzup”. they do the “whazzup” and u do a little bit of chatting. awkward pauses are part of the routine. they do not affect the conversation. you do a “guess what” and he / she on the other end comes up with another “guess what”. the conversation continues to flow.

and the beauty of im is that it does not have to be necessarily synchronous chatting. with offline message features and chat logs archives provided by almost all im clients, asyncrhonous communication works fine too. you can choose to ignore messages, if u r in the middle of something and get back to replying later.

unlike phone calls, u can send links, photos when u chat. u can also play a little ‘tic-tac-toe’ with im environments. you can make a phone call. change your avatar with a photo. change ur status message to something funny or relevant. the possibilities are just endless.

i have a big mix of folks on my im list. classmates from grade 4 to colleagues in my last job. the folks whom i have on im are the folks with whom i have been in very good touch with. u know what is going on in their life and they know abt urs.

go ahead… fire up the im app and start keeping in touch with friends from the past.

unix

do take a peek @ the unix timeline and history @ http://www.levenez.com/unix/

so many variations / splits and it is still “the” best os out there.

make sure u scroll through the image @ http://www.levenez.com/unix/history.html#01