I had posted earlier about the onset of winter in our Bengaluru, well the season seems to be still on, with temperatures going as low as 12 degrees this time. Add to that a cyclone in Tamil Nadu, and the shivers only crept up more faster than ever. The fog was so thick that it had engulfed the whole of the KR Puram hanging bridge. Proof of that is here:

Its there in the first snap, and missing in the second! With this being the only hanging bridge (other than the ones that well …. sort of hang precariously), it always makes me stare at it in awe everytime I pass through it each day.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Bengaluru, Blog, Bangalore, Kr puram, Hanging bridge, Winter, 2007, December, Fog

Yes we have seen thousands of cigarette lighters of all jazzy types and prices and sizes in both the domestic and international markets so far. But how about the good old indian beedi and cigarette lighter? It has withstood the test of time, and has lit many billions of cigarettes and beedis for the customers since time immemorial and continues to do so.

Except that if its electricals arent so right, it could even light you and your clothes in flames too

This the real raw deal – two probes connected to a 230 volts 50Hz AC supply and a small spring connected inbetween them, much as a filament rests between the leads in the tungsten lamps. When you pass electricity through this spring, it lights up and becomes white hot (not red hot!) which you can then use to light your puff. Though dangerously exposed, this still is the cheapest, to the point concoction that simply works till date! And maintenance is super easy too! Just replace the spring or better still each component that goes into this stuff.

Technorati Tags: Life in Bengaluru, Cigarette, Beedi, Lighter, Puff, Smoke, Health, Smoking, India, Bengaluru, Bangalore, Blog, Electricity, Spring, Tungstend

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 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

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

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

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

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

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