Personal Digital Disaster Management

What does that mean? In this world of digital communication where email/mobile are the key instruments to be in touch with the world, imagine a day when you cannot log into your mail account and you have also lost your mobile phone. Afraid of such a day? I hope none of you get to see such a day but it actually happened with me. My mobile was stolen when I was in Amritsar for a personal trip and somehow someone hacked my yahoo password and I lost access to that. You just cannot imagine my state. I was feeling so helpless, not able to reach out. Suddenly in office I felt lot of extra time. Why? Because I lost access to my yahoo messenger also :(. The only saving grace was Orkut which allowed to communicate to some of my friends there. Without mobile, I lost all numbers (never took a backup) cutting me from the world further. Things got complicated as yahoo didnt mail me the password to my alternate mailid as i didnt know my secret question. Legally I had all the information to get the password mailed to me but that never happened. I hope I can sue Yahoo and set an example.

After settings things back in order in few days which meant buying a new mobile and using a alternate email id, I thought how to minimize the impact of such a loss in future. I have come up with few guidelines to reduce the impact in case of digital disaster.

1. Always remember phone number of some key people whom you can communicate with in case of phone theft to block your mobile. The person can be your flatmate, your office friend or your parents.

2. In case your wallet is also stolen, keep your Credit Card numbers safely written down somewhere which you can retrieve (at home) and immediately block them.

3. Use SynctoPC feature of your phone to backup all your contacts. Keep taking backup at regular intervals.

4. To minimize the impact of email getting hacked, set mail forwarding in your primary mail account to some secondary email id. This will allow you to take backup of all your mails automatically. So in case you loose access to primary account, you atleast dont loose important mails and contacts.

5. Orkut provides a method of downloading all your contacts in a .csv file. Keep generating that file at regular intervals and take backup of that.

All this would seem unnecessary hassle at the begining but believe me, its worth taking the pain. When I say take regular backups, i mean it regularly. Schedule such activities every forthnight/month and please please dont press the Snooze/Dismiss Button.

I will keep adding to this article as and when I get some better tools for personal disaster management.

Good People need break...

and this is repeated loud and clear in the movie Click. Its about a person having a remote which can control life around him. Excellent movie I must say. After a long time, I saw a good comedy film which also teaches few good things of life. It clearly shows the value of family and shows us the value of each moment in life. It also kind of reflect that the journey of reaching certain goals in life is much more entertaining that just being there. But wait a second, given such a universal remote, what I would like to do...let me try to list down couple of them.

1. Visit back some nice memories of North Campus/NII.
2. Pilani days for sure...last couple of oasis on campus
3. Family reunions.
4. Europe trip.

Things I want to fast forward...
1. Shaving/Haircut
2. House cleanup (i rarely do that but it would be good if I can avoid that totally)
3. Discussions which are done for the heck of it and can be avoided.

Anything I want to slow down...Ofcourse the PRESENT...Life is Beautiful. Time to take a break as Good people need break.

Visiting Pilani as a Recruiter

I got a chance to visit BITS Pilani for Adobe's Campus Recruitement and I must say its a wonderful experience to go back to your college as a recruiter. Any of you getting a chance to visit your alma mater for recruitment should grab such opportunity at the earliest. You feel so good going aroud the campus wearing your company tshirt. I met couple of faculty members and they were so happy to see me on campus for interviewing people. They were mentioning that time flies so fast. They still remember the day when i joined pilani and was so silent as a fresher and today I am back to interview students and offer jobs. True...time flies and we need to keep pace...

Had a nice time with Utkal Samaj members and was privileged to stay in Malviya Bhawan which has a balcony too (thanks Chira). Malviya bhawan has been converted back to Boys hostel and the new section that was constructed has balconies. This leads us to a question that why girls hostel are better planned than boys but I will leave that to some other day...

Online Movie Rental Service launched in India

As I write this blog, i can hear my friends saying "Shit yaar", "why didn't we?" "missed opportunity" and similar comments. This online idea came up to couple of us while playing a TT game. We really sat through the idea for some time the same day, discussed different modalities and some of us even started working with database design and website design in the weekend to make a prototype for the Online DVD Rental. But as predicted by most and also believed by us, the idea never took off after that and we abandoned even thinking about it.

and today it is back in our minds. One friend of mine told that a similar service has been launched in Bangalore. Seventymm.com has launched an online movie rental service in Bangalore and looking at the model it works, its very similar to what we have discussed. All the best to the Seventymm team and i hope they are successful in their venture.

All this brings a big question to my mind. Do I have it in me to try out different things and actually give shape to ideas rather than just "discussing". Only time will tell that. Most of the ideas are not unique but what matters is how well they are executed. Its really important to take an idea from its initial conception phase to a final product phase. An idea is like a unborn baby. Most of the time, its aborted but once we decide to give birth to that, its a huge responsibility but at the same time gives us the challenge to nurture it properly.

All the best seventymm.

Back in India

Check out my latest Europe travel updates from my "Travel Corner" link at the right...

Off to US and Europe

I will be visiting US and Europe in the comin days. Leaving for US (San Jose) today to attend a conference and while coming back from US, i am taking a 10 day break in Europe and planning to visit Frankfurt, Paris, Strasbourg and Oslo. So once I am back, I will have lots of stuff to blog...

Home Sweet Home

From 1998 onwards, I have maintained visiting home for every december break. Pilani semester break ensured I spend my new year in bhubaneswar and Adobe Winter shutdown helps in maintaining that tradition. Last week of December was all about relaxation at home. Food Sleep TV Food Sleep...i think i did nothing else than these for the entire week. Other than the occasional visits to relatives, I managed to take a relaxing break at home and yes we also conducted BITS Orientation Program across 5 cities in Orissa.

One thing I realized in this break is that real estate prices have really gone up in the city. Infosys and Wipro are having a +ve impact on the city's economy. The completion of the Flyover on NH-5 at Jaydev Vihar was a big relief. Luckily Abdul Kalam visited the city during that time and the Govt. Authorities were busy giving bbsr a good look. I hope he visits the city as often as possible.

Back to school...

Today I visited Vishwa Bharti public school, Noida to judge some computer contests which was part of their "enovators 2k5" fest. I was primarily involved in judging the Movie Making contest(thanks to my stay with Adobe which allowed me to judge such interesting events). The theme was "Imagine yourself to be a superhero". There were couple of flash entries with basic animation(tweens) but I really liked a entry which showed a school student drinking a solution in chemistry lab and getting transformed into "Shaktiman". It was well made.

Other than judging, I really liked spending some time in school. It reminded me of my school days. I was just wondering how much things have changed. I had a good look at a computer when I came to BITS but nowadays students in 9th class make flash movies, use camcorder to shoot footage and edit them using NLE's. Woh...Really enjoyed myself...