Chirag Desai

Life is fragile.

Hang in there RN. We’re rooting for you.

Jobs, the movie

The trailer for Jobs just debuted ahead of its August 16 release. I’m intrigued, it looks decent, and I don’t mind Ashton Kutcher at all but I don’t think he generates the screen presence you’d expect of someone playing Steve Jobs.

His dialogue delivery — particularly Apple announcements and the iconic Think Different ad — just don’t sound strong enough. I’ll watch it, but my expectations are low.

Update: I couldn’t get through more than half of it.

Ellen DeGeneres commen-cement speech

2009. Hilariously well done.

It goes something like this*:

W: ‘I’m not one of those people’.
M: ‘One of what people?’

You know, the kind of people who wouldn’t drink coffee at a petrol station at all, let alone on a first date. Ok, so there are principles involved.

M: ‘But it’s not just any coffee, it’s…’ coffee of a very specific brand.
W: Hmmm, but is it organic?
M: Yes, my princess, they have organic options
W: Oooh, you’re a classy guy.

Not that I was dying to try it or anything, but now I’m totally off this brand of coffee. I mean, what. Just, what. How. WHY?!

Folks, please chime in. Is petrol station coffee a turn on for a first date as long as it has an organic option?

The Coco Nails ad is starting to sound pretty good.

*Quoted from memory, not transcribed.

It hasn’t been all that long since Posterous was acquired (well, acuihired) by Twitter and I dealt with the closing of one of my favorite publishing platforms.* So my surprise — and subsequent introspection at my choices — at Yahoo’s acquisition of Tumblr was not surprising.

Acquisitions are tricky little things. Yahoo themselves, have a huge list of them, and the track record isn’t something to write home about just yet. But over the last few months, I do feel that Marissa Meyer’s moves have been largely positive towards Yahoo’s own spirit. The Tumblr announcement itself came in parallel with the long, long, long awaited major redesign to emancipated child Flickr.

And I will admit the initial signs are good. Unlike Posterous’ announcement which carried the rather dangerous ‘We’ll give you a way to export all your sites’, Yahoo’s announcement contained a very encouraging:

We promise not to screw it up.

Also worth reading is employee #2 Marco Arment’s thoughts on the acquisition and Tumblr as a product.

I realize the title of this post is a little condescending of the term Yahoo, and probably is not the Yahoo under Meyer. But I also really hope they don’t Yahoo Tumblr.

Funny take on the marriage question. My favorite bit:

You are putting so much drama and telling, ‘Father is getting old and his health problems are also there. What if “something happens to him” without seeing your marriage?’. Like this and all you will say means what to do?

This is like saying ‘If you don’t kill yourself now, I will die. Now you choose what you want to do’

Thanks @bhuminasta for the share!

You should get married soon. Or else..

Cricinfo reports:

“Three Rajasthan Royals players — Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Ajit Chandila, who were arrested for their alleged involvement in corruption in the IPL, have been suspended by the BCCI.”

Apparently it doesn’t matter if you’re already earning bucket loads of money.

BlackBerry plans to make BBM, our wildly popular mobile messaging service, available for the first time to iOS® and Android™ users this summer…

Well, well. This was rumored years ago incidentally, but since then, WhatsApp has pretty much eaten up the multi-platform market and Apple launched iMessage.

I must confess I don’t think it will amount to much. Tons will download (I will), a few users will switch away from RIM, and that will be that.

BBM coming to iOS, Android

Why, why do people have signatures that are 3 times the size of their emails. Imagine receiving an email with an ‘Ok’, and how if I’m not the intended recipient of that wonderful OK, I should instantly close the email lest I spontaneously combust into flames where I sit.

I think an email signature containing your name, a valid contact number suffices beautifully. Sure, your position and company with a link work, as does a Skype. Beyond that…

What does having the world’s longest disclaimer and a bunch of images/gifs achieve in an email signature? Particularly a corporate one.

I get the massive disclaimers of how messages are meant only for the recipient back in the days of snail mail and faxes but for email? The only reason why an email would be opened by someone else is if you sent it to the wrong bob, or they were hacked. But good thing you put in a disclaimer, so the hacker knows he shouldn’t read any further.

Gotta love Obama’s sense of humor

Say what you want about Obama, this is one cool video.

If I were him, I’d be mad all the time. But I’m not him, I’m Daniel Day-Lewis.

Hilariously done.

Thanks to Marc Blumberg for the share.