How to handle a disaster September 13, 2009
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Jet was in the news recently for the all out strike by their pilots. The company received a lot of negativity and flak in the press. The repercussions of the flight cancellation and the impasse over the negotiotians that followed were felt far and wide. Several flights got canceled and I am sure the passenger confidence in the airline was very very low.
However now it’s all over. This morning I was pleasantly surprised to receive a letter signed by Naresh Goyal himself. I think it was a very good way of handling the situation. I am reproducing the letter here verbatim -
Dear Mr. Jain,
You would have read and heard from the media the good news of our amicable agreements arrived at late last night with our Pilots.
I write to humbly apologize for the inconvenience caused over the past few days and to thank you on behalf of every single team member of our airline for your tolerance and the continuance of your valued patronage.
I am further deeply grateful for the many phone calls, emails and letters I have received from so many of you, almost all without exception, messages of solidarity, support and encouragement.
With all our domestic and international services back on schedule, our ground teams and aircrew are looking forward to serve you with their warm and friendly service that you have always enjoyed onboard Jet Airways flights in India and across the globe.
With gratitude,
Naresh Goyal
Chairman
Jet Airways (India) Ltd.
BWSL July 19, 2009
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Finally got a chance to drive on the Bandra Worli Sea Link. Yay!
The trip to Worli took less than 15 mins. The Mumbai skyline from the bridge was amazing.
Die IE6 July 18, 2009
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There seems to be a growing movement on the web to stop supporting the IE6 browser. I couldn’t be any happier. Supporting IE6 sucks time like no other. Even though IE6 was first released in 2001, it still has a large fan following. We, at burrp!, have a healthy 30% of our users who use IE6 to access our site.
There could be several reasons for using IE6 as your browser (see the chart below)
Why people still use IE6
This poses a dilemna in our minds. Should we continue to support IE6? Apart from IE6 (Win), we also test our products on IE7 (Win), Firefox 3 (Win/Mac), Firefox 2 (Win), Safari (Mac), Opera, . Testing the product with these many browsers takes up time. Specially supporting IE6 by far takes up the most amount of time. There are several hacks we’ve put in our CSS to support IE6. With the newer versions of several browsers coming out, we’ll have to test even more.
I’ve been tempted in the past to drop IE6 support totally. But I cannot disappoint 30% of our audience. Specially, if they can’t upgrade due to one of the above reasons.
With popular sites like Digg and Youtube taking this bold step, we might also bite the bullet. But first I need to see a drop off in the IE6 usage to less than 10% levels. Keeping my fingers crossed.
Cancer vs. Cancer June 18, 2009
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RMD Gutkha with cancer warning
Saw this Gutkha pouch at the tea-stall near our office. Nice. Health Minister Ramadoss might’ve convinced the tobacco guys to put up this warning, but who is going to tell him that this image is of Cancer the astrology sign and not Cancer the disease.
No Indian Apps in Samsung’s ads June 18, 2009
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Samsung's ad for its new phone
See what applications Samsung chooses to showcase on its new phone launch – Facebook, Youtube, Picasa and Flickr. Sadly no Indian apps made the cut, and this is not due to lack of native Indian applications/products. Any killer Indian app that you couldn’t live without? Name any single one.
See my previous post on apps I can’t do without.
The trip to Bordi May 27, 2009
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Last weekend I went to Bordi with my family and friends. Bordi is a small beach town located about 150 kms from Mumbai, near the Maharashtra-Gujarat Border. We hired a 15 seater A/C Tourister mini-bus to take us to Bordi and back and it cost us about Rs. 10,000. Not bad.
Before I talk about Bordi, let me take a detour and talk about my hunt to zero in on a destination to go to. I went online to find some good weekend retreat – some hill station, beach town or a resort. There is no such site that would present you consolidated info. There are portals out there, but most of them seem like amateur efforts. Sites like Nivalink do a decent job of organizing stuff, but yet don’t provide enough pictures or reviews of destinations, places to stay or information about travel or help with travel arrangements. If I am taking my family for vacation, I want to make an informed decision. Reviews or experiences of other people who have been there before would surely help. There is no such site in India. I looked at TripAdvisor – they’ve got content for bigger destinations but nothing substantial for off-beat or lesser known places. Random googling about Bordi threw up one review, but nothing significant. Finally, I took a leap of faith and decided to go to Bordi.
Now back to Bordi – The place is pretty chilled out for a beach town. Considering the throngs of people that you see in Alibaug and such other beaches, this place was nice and quiet. We stayed at a place called Tapovan. The place was a house converted into a “retreat”. They have a kitchen where they custom cook anything you might desire for breakfast, lunch or dinner. The place was decent enough – but obviously don’t expect a JW Marriott experience here. The cost was staying was very reasonable also.
Bordi beaches are very peaceful. Other than my family there was only one other couple.
The trip was fun and I would surely go there again soon :-)
MySQL Conference April 15, 2009
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Heading to the US tonight to attend the MySQL conference
Magazine from burrp! March 23, 2009
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Heeya Mumbaikars,
Grab your free copy of the Know magazine from burrp!. Just fill out a simple form and we’ll send across a copy to you.
Know Mumbai, is a monthly print guide to all that’s hot & happening in Mumbai.
ps – this offer is available only to residents of Mumbai only. Other’s will have a wait for a while :-)
Jaspal Bhatti launches Recession party March 16, 2009
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Sorry, could not resist posting this [emphasis mine]-
Sounding his election bugle with a colourful brass band in tow, comedian-actor Jaspal Bhatti on Monday announced that he would contest the forthcoming Lok Sabha elections with his newly-formed Recession Party and would only aim to become the prime minister.
Announcing his candidature for the Chandigarh Lok Sabha seat, Bhatti said the purpose behind his contesting the election was to overcome his own joblessness and improve his own financial health in these recessionary times.
“I want to beat this recession by contesting in the elections. People are free to contribute funds for my victory and reap many times benefits from me later when I come to power. I will file my nomination papers shortly,” Bhatti told IANS.
He said keeping pace with the latest trend among leaders to declare themselves at prime ministerial candidates, he was also declaring himself for the post and would fight to get it.
He said his party would openly encourage more slums around Chandigarh to help him with votes in future elections.
“These slums will also help us win more Oscar awards in the future,” Bhatti said.
The comedian-actor, who is a qualified electrical engineer by profession, hails from Chandigarh.
“I will not spend a penny in these elections…I mean I will not spend a penny from my own pocket,” Bhatti announced at Chandigarh’s commercial hub of Sector 17 as the gathered audience broke into laughter.
He also promised to create a wedge between foolish and intellectual voters, saying that he would not seek votes from the intellectuals.
