Rammurthynagar underpass finally ready

The BDA officially inagurated the Rammurthynagar underpass yesterday. With six lanes (3 on each side) this underpass will enable smooth movement of traffic from Hebbal towards KR Puram and vice versa. The BDA completed this in record time as scheduled. but the main bottlenecks still seem to be the Lingarajapuram signal and the Nagawara signal. Assuming the BDA does up these junctions with two more underpasses the road then must be sufficiently free enough for smooth traffic movement.

dImages courtesy: Deccan Herald and Times of India.

This is something that BDA must have thought about long back, which they did not, and thankfully they are now proposing something like this for the 8-lane peripheral ring road – still to be one of the best ring roads in Bangalore. For now they can either use the precast underpass blocks (which they are now using for the international airport connectivity) elsewhere too at places like Nagwara for example. Only time will tell how the congestion will look like after these structures are in place.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Nagwara, Nagvara, Lingarajapuram, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, Underpass, Rammurthynagar, BDA, Hebbal, Kr puram, Peripheral ring road, Prr, International airport, BIAL, Grade separator

Staples comes to Bengaluru

Staples Inc has finally made it to our very own Bengaluru, at Marathahalli! Opportunity knocked I would say. Staples was the store that invented the office supplies superstore concept way back in 1986 and has over 74000 people working for the store all over the world! Staples 2006 sales alone was $18.2 billion, can you imagine how much that is in Rupees? It is 18.2 x 1 000 000 000 x 40, which is a mind boggling figure of Rs. 728000000000 !!!!!

Today as they step into Bengaluru, consumers never had it so good with respect to choices for stationery. Move over William Penn, Staples is here! As I was driving down the Airport road towards Marathahalli, I finally caught up with this poster!

So people what are you waiting for, bring your kids along and splurge on some great stationery for yourself! I am sure you wont regret it

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Staples, Stationery, Bengaluru, Marathahalli, Pens, Books, Airport road, Ring road, Multiplex, Banner, Hoarding, Kids, School, Office supplies, America

Apple cutters for Bengaluru, my day is always made

So how fast can you eat an apple? Well, perhaps in five minutes or even lesser depending your hunger level. But If I were to tell you to cut the same apple in the same two minutes, would you be able to do it without the seeds being there?

I can thanks to my new apple cutter which I bought from the London M & S store (marks and spencers). It cost me about 7 pounds, but more than compensates for that price with the many apples it has sliced for me since a year now.

So there you go then! Easy to eat apple. There is also another product called the apple corer, where you just push that instrument right into the middle of the apple until it reaches the other end, and the entire seed portion is cored out like drilling a hole into a wall

This brings me to a parting joke for this post

An apple a day keeps the doctor away, but if the doctor is beautiful, keep the apple away!

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Apple, Marks and spencers, Apple corer, Apple cutter, London, Benglauru, Blog, Bangalore, Fruits

Gmail launches AIM integration in chat

I am not sure why Google thinks AIM is so important that it has integrated AIM buddies into its own chat, but perhaps they foresee a potentially lethal alliance between themselves big enough to screw other players with their chat application going places. One thing is sure, Google is sure upto lot of things this Christmas!

For more details on AIM integration, click here!

Technorati Tags: Technology, Google, Gmail, Aim, Chat, Integration, Buddies, Talk, Aol, America online

Gmail adds more functionality to labels, and new colours too!

Google seems to be doing new things with Gmail. First it was emoticons, then it was IMAP, then it was a slight change in UI, then it was group email chat. And now labels and options on labels. For starters, google is now adding colours to labels, and you can set colours to your important labels to spot them easily on the screen.

Not only that, you can also access emails or conversations based on labels more easily than ever before. One can easily notice its AJAX at work efficiently on the google mail. If your conversation has a label, you can now click on that label and it will open that conversation in a much bigger better view showing all labels associated with it.

You can then click on the labels in view to search for all messages with that label. You could also delete a label off this conversation by clicking the small close ’x’ button next to label. Pretty neat eh?

So more label related features coming onto gmail now! Google is now ensuring that people drift more and more away from traditional memory hungry, bandwidth hogging email services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! And as of date google has given me almost 4 GB of space (virtually though!) which itself is unmatchable by anyone as time goes by. Way to go google!

Technorati Tags: Technology, Labels, Add label, Delete label, Gmail, Google, Inbox, Hotmail, Yahoo, Conversation, Threading, Label colours, 4gb, Email

The leaning tower of Bengaluru – the silicon city of India

As usual my evening drives always provide me with interesting insights into what automobiles can be used for in India, and today was no exception. There was this truck with a huge set of container type loads, of which two of them were dangerously leaning on the verge of collapsing onto vehicles nearby. In fact in all glory it resembled the leaning tower of Pisa. I could not help marvel at the angle at which this load was balancing itself. I am not sure when I would get a chance to see the leaning tower of Pisa, but for sure I would perhaps get many chances to see such leaning towers of Bengaluru, the Silicon City of India!

Technorati Tags: Earn the dough, Bengaluru, Silicon city, Leaning tower, Pisa, Lorry, Truck, Marathahalli ring road, Junction, Karnataka, Bangalore, Blog, Containers, Load

PR #2, 10000 visitors and two blogs – thanks Bengaluru!

One of the aim of this site was to create content that my visitors would like and to enlighten them about life in Bengaluru. With my many posts I have managed to convey this information in pictorial ways to make you enjoy and see Bengaluru city through my blog! With encouraging comments (good and bad) from all of you, I shall continue to go foward with this venture to measure up to your expectations. Just to let you know, the website today crossed 10000 visitors since its inception and a record 4000 visitors since just six months.

Not only that this website now has a page rank of 2/10 on google, which in itself is an achievement. As I go foward, I intend to make this blog a PR4 blog with my contributions and I look forward to all your support to make the Bengaluru blog the most liked blog about Bengaluru!

Shown below is the statistical data about this blog, with data got from www.siteranks.net

So do keep visiting and happy reading the Bangalore blog and the Technology Blog!

http://blog.chowchowbath.com

http://technology.chowchowbath.com

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, Technology, Chowchowbath, Srikanth eswaran, Google, Page rank, Visitors, Favourites

Google introduces group email chat!

I was browsing through my google mail when this menu item caught my fancy:

Upon clicking it, it showed me a new feature launched by google, group email chat!

For more information, google says:

About group chat

The group chat feature lets you chat with many friends at once. There’s no limit to the number of people you can chat with, and any participant can invite others to join. To get started, follow these steps:

1. Start a chat with a single person in your Contacts list.
2. Once you’ve started the chat, click Options at the bottom left of your chat window and select Group Chat.
3. In the field labeled ’Add a person to this chat,’ enter the name of the contact(s) you want to add to your group chat.

To end your chat, click the X at the corner of the chat window. Others in the group chat will get a message saying that you’ve left the conversation. If you want to rejoin, you’ll need to be invited back by a contact who’s still in the group chat. The group chat will continue until all participants have left.

So how easy it is exactly to access this group chat? would it accept names or only email IDs? Well it does accept names so you can type the name of the person as you have named him, and he will be invited to chat with you on the same window with other people. I tried it, but did not find the window so intuitive enough, perhaps I would have preferred a list from where I could pick up the persons I wanted in one shot. Typing each person’s name is pretty painful, hopefully google will change that shortly! Way to go google, you never cease to amaze!

Technorati Tags: Technology, Google, Gmail, Email, Chat, Group chat, Icons, Smileys, Emoticons, Invites, Multiple chat, Chat window

Gmail chat now has smiley icons!

Recently while chatting with a friend on google email chat, I noticed the following support for icons in google. It was a long desired feature, and now that its there its time for you to be emotional with your chat partner! So go ahead, frown at him, smile at her, do what you feel good doing, with emoticon support in google email chat!

There seems to be support for text icons, round icons and square icons, pick your choice!

Technorati Tags: Technology, Google, Gmail, Chat, Gtalk, Email, 3gb, Icons, Smileys, Emoticons

Chowchowbath – sweet, sour, spicy, bland – all the things you need to know about Bengaluru

The time has finally come to explain why this website is called chowchowbath.com – why this name and what it signifies. From the day I began to understand life, about 25 years ago (a silver jubilee of sorts!) I slowly began to be associated more and more with Karnataka, Kannada and our very own Bengaluru. In these 25 years, Bengaluru has seen so much of metamorphism that no other city in India would have probably witnessed. From the days of having no TV or telephone, until the present day Tata Sky’s to DishTVs, and to Reliance free mobile to mobile calls, so much has gone in between like you would find a burger from Mc.D’s! We have come across sweet things, spicy things, sad moments, sour moments and bland moments. In essence this represents Karnataka’s favourite dish, Chowchowbath. From the day I began to build my website since 1997 until now, it went through different stages until I reached a juncture where my blog became my shoutbox and the site itself attained this name – Chowchowbath.com. And to keep it just like the age old Karnataka recipe, I try to give you to the best of my ability, all news and opinions, sweet, sour, spicy and bland on my blog. So the next time you head to a nearby Darshini(Fast food joint in Karnataka) – remember to order for CHOW CHOW BATH! – It has all the things you need to eat, just as this site has all the things you need to know!

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Chowchowbath.com, Blog, Chowchowbath, Kesari bath, Khara bath, Kannada, Karnataka, Bengaluru, Darshini, Mc donalds, Mac donalds, Burgers, Tata sky, Dish tv, Reliance