In search of the best Twitter client!

I've been using Twitter for quite sometime now (seven months to be precise). But, my active tweeting started once I bought a Nokia 5800 in Singapore. I began tweeting through the mobile web application that Twitter provided, but was really not happy with the options that were provided on the mobile web app. So, I ventured into the Ovi Store that Nokia provides and found out my first Twitter app for mobile, Tweet60. But, with the time taken to tweet and read tweets, sadly, I had to ditch this app!!! I found fring, probably one of the best IM apps available for mobile phones. And, as the world is behind Twitter and Facebook, fring too offers a Twitter app. The sad point with that was, well, you cannot retweet :( but you can reply to a tweet! This seemed a big problem for me as I believe that retweeting is one of the essential feature of the big family called Twitter!! I eventually settled down with Tweet60 on my mobile phone as it offered the features but not the speed of reading. But, my quest for the best twitter client on the web/desktop never seems to come to an end. I seem to discover at least 2 twitter apps everyday!!

Some of the twitter clients for desktop that I have used are:

• TweetDeck
• Digsby
• Trillian
• Twhirl
• TwitterExplorer (Windows gadget)
• Google Desktop Twitter App

The list of twitter apps that I've used on the web are:

• Brizzly
• Ping.fm
• iGoogle Gadget
• Twitter Web (of course!)
• Tweet3
• TweetFox

The list of twitter apps that I've used on my mobile phone are:

• Fring
• Tweet60
• Mobile Web

I did find quite a number of apps for my phone but I have not yet tried them!! I would try them soon and list is

• Dabr
• Slandr
• Gravity
• Twittix

Wow, am really astonished to even read out this list of apps for Twitter. Well, so much of work is being done for a mere 140 character space micro-blogging idea. Terriffic. The verdict:  I found Brizzly really useful, with its interface and the way it allows creation of lists. For my mobile, I still use the good old mobile web as I've not yet tested out the new apps I discovered!! I think I will download all the new apps I read about and test them out and post the results later. For the desktop app, the Windows gadget TwitterExplorer was quite useful. It did not pester me with unwanted IM's that Digsby or Trillian offered. Am sure there would be better Twitter clients that are computationally less demanding while offering a great solution to Tweeting!!! Happy Tweeting...

This was the first presentation that I had done at NTU working as a team. As you can see from the photo, we made a presentation on Linguistic Fuzzy neural Network Models as a part of our Computational Intelligence course! It was interesting to read so many papers and work with a mixed team. Hoping to do more such presentations in the near future..!!

Unplanned!! Yet an exciting outing...

It was the most unplanned weekend I've had after coming to Singapore. But, to tell the world the truth, it was the most thrilling weekend I've had after arriving in Singapore on 27th of July 2009. Our initial plans were to go to Little India, so some shopping, visit a temple that was long pending on the list of to-do items. This plan is almost a must do for every Indian living in Singapore. If you are in Chennai, Mustafa Shopping centre could be compared to all the Saravana Stores put together in one single place. An ocean by itself, offering everything you need to stay alive in Singapore. With a concrete plan in mind when we left our rooms at Graduate Hall situated at the NTU campus, I met one of my seniors at the MRT and he told me that there was an IT fair going on at Suntec City at Raffles Place. To begin the demolition of our plans one of my friend informed me that the temple had closed for the day at Little India.

We began juggling our minds between going to Suntec City first and seeing the Merlion, both at Raffles Place and finally disembarked at Raffles Place. It was the most beautiful sky I've seen in real-time. I've seen photographs and videos of the sky being filled with skyscrapers but not been there seen them. Our journey began at the Merlion Park. This was one of the destinations I've wanted to see after coming to Singapore and I did that at last. Thanks to our poor planning! It was blessing in disguise. The Merlion was majestic and there were scores of people beneath the huge Merlion taking photographs of themselves. I was one of them, looking for those few shots that would mark my presence in Singapore for the rest of my life!! Having seen this, we moved on to the Esplanade Theatre in Singapore. It was one of those buildings in Singapore that is distinct in its architecture. I came to understand that the design was inspired by the durian fruit. The interiors in the Esplanade were so aesthetically designed and smelled of lemon inside. The Esplanade, I heard, was famous for its free orchestras and bands playing rock concerts by the waterfront! I had a chance to see the rock concert by the waterfront. After going so near the concert, we noticed that the Singapore Flyer and the Singapore Grad Prix racing track was so close.

Our Suntec plans began its delay further and we headed straight to the racing track. It was completely dark but the darkness did not bother us. We began walking on the track where Fisichella and Barichello would be whizzing past in a few weeks. I am not an F1 fan yet was pondering over the money and the efforts that was put on this race. I believe that tickets at the grandstands where I had been costed around 200 to 300 Singapore Dollars (7000 to 10000 Indian Rupees) and that the tickets near the pits were anywhere between 1000 to 2000 Singapore Dollars (34000 to 70000 Indian Rupees). At a time when the world is crying over the spilt milk, i.e. economic breakdown and recession, where do these people (I mean the F1 fans) get such money from? But then realized that there is no recession in the sporting industry!! I read that MS Dhoni, the India cricket captain was the highest paid cricketer in the world in terms of earnings in the year 2009 followed by Sachin, Sourav and Rahul! The hotels near the race track here is offering rooms that start at 600 Singapore Dollars a night which is about 21000 Indian Rupees. I believe an IT fresher in India would receive that amount as his monthly salary and here are people spending that for one night and that too for watching Formula One. Our trail led us near the Singapore Flyer and yet we decided against going to the flyer only because of the fact that it was already quarter past eight in the evening.

We were joined by two other friends to continue our journey to Suntec City. The star attraction at Suntec park was presumably the Fountain of Wealth that is situated right in the centre of the five Suntec buildings! We reached there after walking for about 15 minutes from the Esplanade. The Fountain of Wealth was at its best that night. Brilliantly lit lights, wishing people who had made efforts (like us!!!) to be at the fountain in time to view the awesome display. One of the guys in our team (who is also like half a Singaporean only because he knows this place, its history, the people, the culture and what not) told us that we would be able to go in to the center of the fountain and touch the smaller fountain. But as luck would go, the fountain was at its peak with water reaching heights of about 5 metres! We then proceeded to eat our dinner at a Subway which was at one of the buildings. To our surprise, after our dinner, the fountain of wealth was opened for people to touch the centre of the fountain and to make a wish there. It was our poor planning again that helped us to be here as our plans were to go to the convention centre to buy a hand phone for one of the guys. Our poor planning was a blessing in disguise for us.

Though our plans were to get a hand phone in the end, the convention centre was closed down but we still managed to get in to have a feel of the IT fair that was happening. To our surprise, we found that the place was in utter mess, papers strewn all over the floor and there was total chaos. This was the first time I had seen such a chaotic, unclean and unorganized event in Singapore. We finally managed to pull ourselves to the City Hall MRT which was about half a mile down the road. Boon Lay is the most frequented interchange by any NTU student and we were no different. One interesting point we noted was that our trip to Graduate Hall costs which usually 91 cents costed only 41 cents. It was understndable that off-peak hours are cheaper to travel than the normal and peak hours! At last, we reached our rooms sleepy and ready to hit the sack for the day but with plans to go to China Town and Little India the next day. And hoping that our poor planing would help us this time too! Watch out for my next post when I shall describe what happened to our trip the next day. Cheers!!

Introverts vs Exroverts; the golden ratio

Being an introvert is way too easy. You must have to stay alone, not bother about others and the most important of it all, have a circle of friends where the radius tends to zero. I was impressed with the phrase by Mark Twain which goes "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt" and I was a blind follower of this. I thought that sometimes, (or rather may a times) people felt that you are genius when you kept your mouth shut and kept a large distance from the others. It was good to notice that introverts are praised for their work but are really victims of poor social bonding.
On the other hand I wondered if extroverts (people who are social) won people's hearts. But this notion too was not true. Its really a question of how extrovert or how introvert you are. Actually I noticed that people who turned into extroverts after being a introvert found that the world that introverts have are much better. You need not really bother about others and feel hurt if someone even makes a joke about you (as though someone would!!). I believe that an equal mix is necessary but am not sure if the introvert character or the extrovert character would win eventually!! Its also important to understand that a person who wishes to be an extrovert should not make or take statements personally. At times I start think philosophically, wondering if this world would be filled with people who only enjoy the company of one another but later on found that there would be no fun then if everyone was happy. It has to be balanced in nature. Physics states that the energy that the system contains has to be a constant at all times!!!
The golden ratio would be a 40% extrovert and a 60% introvert. That way you neither compromise on your self esteem nor do you compromise on your social circles!!

Singapore and India, some contradictions

Writing my first blog after a long time on Blogspot. I am here in Singapore for my PhD in Computer Vision at Nanyang Technological University. There are quite a lot of points that as Indians, we tend to be flustered in this place. The way this city/country works is really awesome and at times it makes us wonder if we are in a new planet. The first thing that one would notice, as an Indian student in Singapore is that these places have drinking water dispensers in the form of a fountain. I think this is common in countries like the US but for a guy like me from India, well this looked pretty odd. Water is pumped out through a small tap like structure from where you use merely your mouth to drink the water!!! The point to note here is that the water dispenser is supposed to be the most safe form of drinking water here... and the problem with drinking is that the fountain of water is so cold that if you manage to bring your teeth in between the water fountain and your tongue, you would end up hurting your teeth so much that you would be waiting another 15 minutes for the pain to reduce.
The second contradiction that I noticed in this bustling city is that there are no "ground floors". And this is one of the biggest surprises here for us. I live in level 3 which is essentially the second floor in our Indian lingo!!! In most buildings on campus, there are so many levels below level 1, and actually there would be a basement 6 while there is only a level 2.
While we walk and jog every morning, Singaporeans like to jog at night. If you travel anywhere in the city by night, the walkways are filled with joggers listening to an iPod and jogging all through the night. The city almost looks diseased with the fact that people jog and cycle only at night time. We tend to sleep while these guys here jog all night long. In fact its so much a rage here that you would see even 50 year old grandma's running along walkways. Everyone in the city look so fit and I believe this would be their secret!! You cannot spot more than a few obese people across the city. In the 12 days I've been staying here, I would have barely noticed 3 or at the max 5 people who are obese. I have seen so many Indians who are so obese yet manage to wear trendy or rather skimpy outfit!!!!! No more comments....
Food from an Indian perspective, is really a big problem here. And for people who are staunch vegetarians, beware that the city is really short on good Indian or rather South Indian restaurants. For south Indian food, one has to go up to Little India and this cannot be a regular feature in your calendar!
Talking about Little India, this place is one of the most contradictory places in Singapore. While the city boasts of cleanliness and discipline, this one place simply does not care about the "c" and "d" words. This place is where you need not bother if a car is running on the road and for that matter, people walk on roads which is called 'Jaywalking" and could be fined if you were elsewhere in the city!! Shops are typically Indian, selling every kind of cereal and vegetable that we would get back in India and the way they organize these shops are rather appalling!! You would see vegetables strewn on roads and on pavements that you have no other walkway but the roads to walk on!
One of the best things I noticed here is that, people are so warm and happy. Anyone you meet would greet you with a smile. This was one thing that does not happen in India, if you see someone walk by and smile at her/him, she/he would could back and ask you what was it that made you smile looking at her/him. If you help a taxi driver here, he would thank you a hundred times that you would think he is rather ridiculing you. And buses dont have drivers but captains. So you would have to go up to a "bus captain" to give the change for the trip if your Ezlink card does not work.
Another point that you would immediately notice here is that this city uses a machine to clean the roads. I saw machines all through the day just cleaning the roads in the NTU campus. A city perfect in its cleanliness and discipline. Zebra crossings are absolutely free and the minute a vehicle driver notices you by the zebra crossing, s/he is so conscious to stop and let you pass by. Its the case even with huge buses that ply across the city. This is something that I've never seen in India and was thrilled to get the respect at zebra crossings.
If you are an Indian reading this and you are planning to come to Singapore, be prepared to face a lot of contradictions in this place. I think I would take some more time to get accustomed to such practices. Anyways, I got four (or rather five) more years to live in this city of cleanliness.

Loss of Potential Knowledge in the IT job market

Its a really poor situation in a country like ours where potential knowledge is recruited and wasted due to lack of required infrastructure and training facilities in such a "big" IT industry of ours. This situation must change as quickly as possible and must clear way to possibly a point where the companies either call the recruited candidates as soon as they clear college or possibly provide a concrete and understandable reason for not recruiting the deserving candidates. Certain companies do call candidates as quickly as they complete college but there are those that take real hard time on the candidates and this puts a lot of pressure on the candidates who eagerly await not only to get their first big pay but also to get a practical experience on how software is done.
Corporates as they are called behave not only less than professionals but fail to provide candidates the exact and simple reasons that makes the company not to recruit in time. They fail to realize that a lot is bestowed upon the candidates and that they have the responsibility to answer properly and in time.
Campus recruits are not only made to wait for more than half an year to get into the training rooms but are also ill-treated at the company premises when the candidates takes a personal visit to get to know the "possible" date of joining.

This scenario must change quickly and the people in responsible positions must make sure to at least work over planning properly to schedule their intakes.