Ajoy’s fight against VSNL-Tata Indicom continues. You can read the first part of this saga here.
If I was irritated earlier, I am really mad now. It is one thing to have in-efficiencies in operations, but to have a successful business whose strategy is to provide service “when convenient” is unthinkable. I too have been part of the service sector in India (Infosys Technologies), and I recall how we treated customers — like customers. And I am sure the software division of Tata - Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) - does the same. The rules of course change when you are serving compatriots. It is just because we (Indian consumers) accept mediocrity that business get away with offering such lousy service.
These people need to be kicked, and I hope that is how the courts approach this issue. They should not only ascertain damages, but grant punitive damages. Finally, I must say I am really proud of my cousin here, this is not easy. Dante’s Inferno would seem like a fairy tail in comparison to bureaucracy in India. I wish you the very best Ajoy.
When my cousin Ajoy Eric Lal told me that he was heading back to India after living more than 20 years in Germany, I wondered how he would fare against the slowness and inefficiencies in India. Some people just complain (or bitch), some people take it for what it is and get “Indianized”, but there are few who really try to do something about it. Here’s him dealing with internet connectivity.
If there was a more worthy cause I haven’t heard it. What could be worse than a bad internet connection? That too in the capital of the country. Ajoy says (you can read his lips when he is trying to get to the support personel) it the best: What the fuck! Seriously, What the fuck!
I love my blogging software (Wordpress), it’s the best of the breed but it still doesn’t make for an easy blogging experience. Notwithstanding a decent online HTML editor; I am forced to use an extraneous editor to spell check my post, email it around so that I can have my friends preview it or just edit it myself from home and office etc. All of which is very painful and part-n-parcel of any blogging software you might be using.
In comes Writely, a good quality on line HTML/Word editor with support for collaboration, access control, version control, and implementation of standard XML-RPC calls to publish posts to a blog with a single click. Beautiful, kudos Google and the Writely team. I see this going far and even though enterprises would hate it (nobody likes to have their sensitive data stored on line), people are people and they are going to use it because it’s easy. Yahoo! groups and Yahoo! Messenger might sound like ordinary software, but I have seen them used at the highest echelons of management even in big corporations. Check out writely
Here’s my tip for Eric Schmidt; launch another version of the Google Appliance Server loaded with goodies such as GMail, GCal, Writely, Search etc and let the enterprises deploy and secure it as they see fit. Sure Microsoft and other vendors have tools that do similar thing’s and arguably better, but there is that lure of http and the browser that’s irresistible. Advertisements are not the only way to monetize this stuff.
Obvious Conclusiuons: I am holding on to my Google stock and this post was edited on Writely!!
Test Results:
1) The image did not transfer correctly, the url was obviously wrong it was: “http://www.zuberon.com/File.aspx?id=ddgfkvgg_1ct4g2z”, perhaps it is a minor bug and a URL like “http://www.writely.com/File.aspx?id=ddgfkvgg_1ct4g2z” would work. Which would be very cool.
2) The title of the post was lost, I suspect that is the nature of the MovableType API supported by Wordpress or due to my settings.
In any case I can live with these minor inconveniences for now.
Here’s my tip for Eric Schmidt; launch another version of the Google Appliance Server loaded with goodies such as GMail, GCal, Writely, Search etc and let the enterprises deploy and secure it as they see fit. Sure Microsoft and other vendors have tools that do similar thing’s and arguably better, but there is that lure of http and the browser that’s irresistible. Advertisements are not the only way to monetize this stuff.