Pots And Fans

The sixth Potter book is slated for a mid-July release, I think it's the 16th. The marketing hype surrounding the 672 page (that's the publisher's figure) release has to be huge. Scholastic, the American publisher, will have a 10.4 million initial print run for the book. The highest ever for any book and 4 million more than the earlier Potter offering. The book has already hit the top spot on many bestseller lists including Amazon. All this just based on the pre-orders

So far the book's had its share of controversies/rumours. First we had the title controversy way back in June last year. Then Hagrid was rumoured to be the Half-Blood Prince. The other contenders were the usual suspects, Tom Riddle, Harry Potter. People speculated as to whether Aurthur Weasley would be the new Minister for Magic but JK Rowling's website struck down that suggestion. The saga of rumours jumping up to get your attention will go on till the book is out. So will the scams like the Potter e-book scam. One thing's for sure though, the books (No. 6 & No. 7) will be darker, probably morbid to some extent, than their predecessors-Book 5 wasn't particularly happy. There will be more deaths as Potter grows older. Not that any of these predictions are affecting sales, the marketing juggernaut or the growing popularity of these books.

A Time To Blog

How big will blogging be? Even as you read this many "pro" bloggers are logging out. The fad's dead and so is the spark says Kiruba Shankar, one of India's most active blogger (www.Kiruba.com), who has put in his last post. The dictates of consumerism has taken over, the eyes are glued to the 'Adsense' performance chart. Original thought and good intentions are being sidelined by Mammon. This trend will kill a lot of good writers who entered blog scene to meet, converse, and share ideas with others. It will also mean that everyone with a decent bandwidth will rush to set up blogs, just as there was a mad rush for personal homepages. I, for one, had a blog up in June '05 but have started regular updates only over the last week. I've also gone ahead and signed up for those advertisement services provided by Google and Amazon. Being in the publishing industry, writing comes easy to me, so leveraging that to set up a publishing platform of my own seems too tempting an idea. This might be true for many others, people who have a POV and want the world to know about it. The hippy pioneers and the baby boomers of the blog scene are wrapping up their sites, but a new breed of enterprising individuals are latching onto this as a viable business idea. Syndication of your blog feed and services like mobile-blogging are coming into the limelight. With the bandwidth scene in our country improving and a slow but perceptible increase in the acceptance of the internet as a parallel media/broadcast platform, blogging or blogrolling might just end up being one of the most lucrative/influential mediums for communicating an idea.

Dot & Dash

.Wanna talk bout love
-What bout love?
.You know the cliched type of love talk
-Why would I want to do a cliche with you?
.Because you have nothing better to do
-But cliched love talk with a person of the same sex
.What you Homophobic now?
-No, but you're not homosexual either.
.Now that's not a problem. Let's assume that I am a homosexual
-Well, then we also got to realise that I might not be a homosexual
.C'mon just for talking. I hereby ordain you a pukka....I'm tempted to rhyme that with you know what
-Don't do it, we don't want to be called insensitive, do we?
.Hell no, won't go with my homosexual image anyway
-Why do we get such short lines?
.Cos you ask such stupid questions honey
-Why the effyouseekay you call me hon man?
.Now why you talking like a motown man
-Jusforkix
.Don't plagiarise
-Now I'm bored
.Is that why you stole a line
-Ok bye
.Bye sweetie, I'll wait
-I'll be back sugarmuffins

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Playing Around

What does it feel like? Now, now I'm not taking about anything here. These are jsut one of those plugs. When you have nothing to say, PLUG. You I think there is a big cartel of electronic manufacturers who make sure that we always need adaptors. Earlier we needed them for our PLUGS, cos the Americans used a different Voltage. Stupid Hobbitses. Then we had adaptors and patches for softwares so that our Office would be compatible with our Macs. Now we shall soon have an adaptor for our DVDs you know with all the stand-off between the Blu-Ray camp and the HD-DVD one. A parallel industry just making adaptors. The whole real story behind the Electronics companies bottomlines. Hows that for a conspiracy theory? Will some big firm come down and serve a legal notice? Shut down this blog cos they feel threatened by this blog that has very limited reach. A major Indian media house had done that to a small little blog, read by probably a couple of thousand viewers. Hope to see you on the front page.

I'm Getting Swamped

Hell, how I wish this was true. My Plain Jane blog, so poor, without updates and content. No photographs to vie for the Photobloggies. All this augumented by bad spelling and malapropism. Alas I shall never be a star in the blogging scene. Oh I forgot, there's also a writer's block to contend with. What the hell is the block doing with me, I'm no writer. I am not a fence sitter. I can't spell well and to top it all I am extremely opinionated. This makes me a bad journo. A bad Journo who cannot write.

Dot &Dash

-I want a laptop. How much will it cost me?
.Haha, depends on the make
-That's it. Only the make
.No postage and handling will be charged extra. You'd also have to pay taxes if any.
-Ok, so there's fineprint too
.No, it's not called fine print. It's after sales service
-Yeah rightIt's good you know, make a lot of money by selling ideas that make people spend more money
.Hey that's not fair. Money is to spend. If you didn't spend all of that moolah, what's the use of making any? Your crusade against this money thing will end up questioning the reason behind making the wheel
-Who are you a capitalist zealot?
.Hello it's 2005. Doesn't make sense to align yourself anywhere. I'm your fence sitter
-And from there you pass your judgements
.No, just acting like an incorrigible ass hole. You could say that I am an idealist
-And I'm Einstein
.No you're not. You would have understood that I'm seeing everything relatively
-Relative to what?
.To the other frame. In your case IBM, Compaq, hp, Apple... hell even Bill Gates and Stallman
-So where are you in the war against the terror
.Depends on who you are. I'll try my best to oppose you
-Hah, you're a rebel woithout a cause
.No I mean to offend you.
-You're sounding shallow now
.That's the whole point. People must think someone out here is fast running out of ideas
-And that is wrong because...



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