Trying to make sense!

Just to clarify before we proceed, the title of the post can explain:

• Personality ‘on’ the web
• Personality ‘of’ web

I am going to talk about the second one, i.e. personality ‘of’ the web.

We all use some or the other social networking sites. In fact we now use multiple social networking sites to connect to each other. Let’s take examples:

• LinkedIn: <Professional>: As we all know, LinkedIn was always meant to be a professional networking portal. If you are caught browsing LinkedIn at your workplace? Ah, everyone will look with due respect. It is so professional.
• Facebook: <Decent and Sober>: Well, I am not sure if Facebook had a pre-determined character, but to me it has always given an impression of a decently designed portal. It looks neat and to some extent, professional. If you are caught browsing Facebook at your workplace? Well you may not get the same respect as LinkedIn, but no regrets. It’ll still be acceptable.
• Orkut:<Kiddish and Sidey>: While Orkut is more popular in India, I’ve always found it sidey and kiddish. So what if you are caught browsing Orkut at your workplace? Ah, I can bet, it is embarrassing. You tend either close it or switch to a different window/application. Don’t you?

So 3 different applications built on the same concept have radically different personalities. While some were deliberately made with such personalities, some got their personalities from usage over the years.

We can similarly look at portals targetting other stuff. For example, I find Cleartrip a very clean travel portal, whereas, MakeMyTrip looks so cluttered and clumsy.

What about Twitter? What personality would you associate with it? Hmmmm… Whatever it is, it is impressive. It has already made a big impact.

It is said that everyone has a risk profile according to which they take their decisions. Opps, for those who do not know, ‘Risk Profile’ is simply the ability to take risk. The more risk you take in your day-to-day life, the steeper is your risk profile. We take more risk when we are young and the risk taking ability or urge diminishes as we grow old. Of course, different people at the same age could have diametrically opposite risk profiles.

Anyways, why I am writing this is for the fact that I seem to have a high risk profile. This is what happened today:

I went to the ATM to deposit cash (did you know you can do that?). I had two envelopes to deposit. I inserted my card, chose to deposit cash from the menu and slid the cash envelope on the beep. Wow, as soon as the ATM machine engulped the cash envelope, I got a message on the screen informing that my transaction has been cancelled! What do I do now?  Well somehow I knew that when the cash is cleared from the ATM machine, the bank will anyway acknowledge my deposit. So things are safe.

So far so good. Here’s where the risk profile comes in. Already knowing that there’s something wrong, I started another transaction to deposit cash on the same ATM! And guess what? The result was the same!

Well, just to ensure that I was thinking in the right direction, I called up the customer care. They assured that the deposits will be registered in 48 hours. So all should be well.

So am I someone with a high risk profile, or am I someone who is utterly stupid? Hmmm…tough call. Let’s see. If the deposits come through smoothly, I have a high risk profile. If for some reason they don’t then……………..Alright, I am utterly stupid.

Update: Just got a confirmation that both the deposits have been credited. So that proves that I have a high risk profile and I am not stupid

It looks as if my last post ‘Closure’  literally put a ‘closure’ to my blog!

This is to announce that I am back (don’t know from where) to put in some more boring stuff  ;-)

Let’s see how it goes!

It has been a while when I went to IIT-KGP for a summer project out of my interest in GIS and Remote sensing. Don’t ask me what made me interested in those subjects. For those who are not aware, I am a mining engineer by education and ended up working for the software industry. Well, that is the case with a majority of people in India these days. The software industry is bottomless. It can accommodate without an end (or it could accommodate until the recent crisis!).  I started my education around the same time the .COM bubble burst [...] Continue Reading…

It hasn’t been long when I pleasantly missed my flight! Yes, I pleasantly missed my flight. I had to travel from LA to Buffalo via Charlotte. While I left for the airport a bit tight on time, it was good enough to reach there in time. However, the LA traffic had something else in store for me. The slow moving traffic almost for the whole stretch, made it impossible to make there in time. While I reached there half an hour before the scheduled departure, it was already too late to check-in my baggage as most of the airlines [...] Continue Reading…