Chirag Desai

Who doesn’t love candy. Come to think of it, I can’t think of anyone who’s ever told me they hate Gummies. Maybe not biggest fans, but don’t like Gummies. Yea, NEVER happens. Gummies are things that you can’t stop eating once you start, then you feel sick and tell yourself, okay not having *that* many again. Until a couple of days later, you walk by a store that sells gummies and…pfft, what’s another entire pack going to do — I survived fine last time!

I indulged heavily in gummies — gummy bears & worms in particular during my stay in Philadelphia. With everything from the next block grocery store to the elaborate candy stores carry them, they were never in short supply. Over time, you even new which ones carried fresh gummies (yes, there is such a thing as ‘fresh’ gummies compared to stale ones. It matters!).

Moving back to Dubai meant a literal cut down in the amount of gummy intake. That probably wasn’t a bad thing but you also don’t find gummies around the block, and when you do, they just seem expensive. Ofcourse, all has changed over time and I can safely say I can find gummies within a 10 minute radius from whereever I am these days.

This however, brings me to Lifesavers. For the uninitiated, Lifesavers can be best described as the American Polo. Well, you don’t actually get Polo there, and you see Lifesavers everywhere. Frankly they don’t really come close on a taste front, but they make do. What Polo however doesn’t have, are…Lifesavers gummies! Those brilliant, mint-candy-with-a-hole-shaped soft gummies. So good. Case in point: when I touched down in the US last year for the first time in 4 years, the only thing I wanted oh-so-badly along with my Snapple Iced Tea obsession were, yup, the Lifesavers Gummies. And yes, they are joined by the 7–11 Big Gulp.

The good news is, the ENOC petrol station store has started featuring Lifesavers, including the big versions, but in hard candy. Everytime I stop by to fill up the tank — even if more than once a day at the same station — I make a quick move into the store purely to check out the Lifesavers aisle in the sad-puppy-dog-eye hope. So far, I’ve been disappointed.

Lifesavers, are you listening?

My early thoughts on the all-new Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion — image via Apple), in trademarked bullet-point style:

• I upgraded to a new OS for all of $30 and did not step out of my room. While this appeals to my height of laziness, you have to say that is an impressive way to function. The installation took about 35 minutes in total, not counting download time (a little over an hour).
• (Update) Case in point, it just took me >30 minutes to download the 30MB new VLC.
• I decided to leave the new scrolling as is and test it for a while first. In a couple of hours, the new scrolling is happening a lot more intuitively. I definitely like how full screen apps are being handled — pretty much a separate virtual desktop that you can scroll in and out of easily.
• I’m having am amazing time using Twimbow — or I’d imagine any twitter-like application — scrolling through twitter columns is now identical to using an iPhone.
• Mission Control is a brilliant add-on. Actually it’s not so much mission control itself, but the way this has been integrated with the new scrolling and the virtual desktops mode. Very seamless, intuitive to move around and it does what you think it would do. I also like that Dashboard has now setup its own screen on the far left (similar to the search screen on the iOS). It handles dual desktop better than before.
• What remains to be seen is how seamless the change will be between using a Magic Mouse and using the trackpad. At my desk I use an external keyboard and mouse, whereas often during the day or when out, I’m glistening about the trackpad. Now the gestures are a bit different between them for some of the tasks, so it might take more than one try to get it right based on the input device.
• I’m not so sure about the Mail app yet. I’m a active Gmail user for both personal and work, part of the reason is that they offer a significantly improved interface and controls, and the other part is my not having to manage my inbox and archive and so on and so forth — a major pain in Outlook days. Apple seems to have got the interface down real well, I’ll give them that, but I’m not as fast on it as I’d be on Gmail, simply with the shortcuts — I use keyboard almost entirely to sort, shift, search, archive, delete and send email in Gmail. Tab+Space vs Command-Shift-D? Yeaaa, no. That said, the interface is smooth, clean and the use in full screen mode can be very productive and focused. For now I’ll use it on and off, but the lack of labels and keyboard ease of use will deter me as a full-time Mail user. However, I can completely see why normal users (ie, non-heavy-gmail, outlook or previous Mail users) would be very happy with it.
• So far, I’ve not run into an app compatabilities. However, apps that would improve upon the finder, such as say Dropboxwhich adds menu options have lost these, so a re-install will be necessary. At the same time, a variety of my pre-Lion preferences (such as changing my screenshot folder) have stayed on.
• The all new account syncing is actually quite good, although surprising. Using my stored account info the keychain, it managed to figure out that I used 3 chat accounts that also had calendar, contacts and email attached to it, imported the accounts and gave me a prompt to chose what I wanted synchronized. Nifty.
• I also get a feeling that the Dock is on its way out. I was barely using it anyway — a combination of Alfred and Spotlight pretty much give me everything I’d want — but with Launchpad coming on as a visual ‘Let me see all my apps’ option…
• Finder, and just general interface wise, it’s looking a bit more polished. The buttons looks almost Chrome-HTML5 like and snazzier, and there are definitely some adjustments to contrast, shading and general whiteness.

It’s still early days. Still, 1 million downloads on Day 1 is pretty staggering (think $30m revenue and no shipping/box costs). I haven’t tried everything yet, particularly Resume & Versioning.

Overall, I think I now understand Apple’s Back to the Mac campaign a lot better. They have learnt some sharp lessons from the iOS adoption and incorporated them with good insight into the OS. Launchpad, Scrolling and Full Screen apps are great additions to both experience and productivity — and mission control seems to be a much-upgraded version of Spaces+Dashboard without losing their usefulness. I’m happy so far.

Be happy to hear your thoughts too!

Well for the two loyal readers this blog actually has, they’ll know I got in to the premiere viewing of the final installment of the Harry Potter series. I’ve been a huge fan of the books since I first read them in 2001 and frankly most of the movies tended to disappoint. But that’s normal with adaptations — you lose out on the subtleties, additional plotlines and in the case of Harry Potter, I feel we lost the inherent sarcasm that he spews oh so easily in the books.

That said, my overall verdict for the final installment is: satisfied.

As expected, there were a few changes, but I was definitely happy to see a lot of dialogue was imported straight off the books and the intensity was just as captivating. I’m not much of a review writer, but I am very much of a bullet-pointer and therefore, I give you — the bullet-pointed review. Enjoy!

• I was constantly amused that wand translated to ‘baguette’ in the French subtitles.
• Knowing that Flitwick and Griphook are played by the same person enforced on me that they looked like brothers. TO be fair, he carried out the role real well.
• Bellatrix. Gosh. She does such a good job really, does Helena Carter. Even as Hermoine she’s rather convincing. The character is one of those love to hate
• McGonagal was brilliant. I’m really glad they included the Locomotor spell, with a nice little quip. I wasn’t thrilled they left out her threat to Slughorn to have Slytherin choose an allegiance. The line “we duel to kill” in the book always gave me goosebumps.
• Aberforth was awesome. Loved his character and it was unfortunate he had limited screen time but he had the tone and attitude correct, unlike Gambon’s Albus has been.
• “The boy who lived, come to die.” Brilliant. That entire sequence was perfect.
• Seconds after I thought to myself, where in Merlin’s Beard is Hagrid, he showed up on screen.
• The Battle of Hogwarts lives up to expectation. The scenes, intensity, darkness and the fact that we got to see (again) a lot of the characters in small roles was great. I did miss John Cleese though.
• Caveat (and a little bit of a spoiler). I’ve spoken to a couple who felt that they handled it well but I was not entirely thrilled with the last 15–20 minutes. It wasn’t bad, I just felt it could have been better, although I will say that outside of that, the movie surpassed my expectations. However, for me the end scenes were about the conversations Harry and Voldemort have. I missed that.

Finally, I leave you with some thoughts from people sitting around me before the start of the premiere:

• “I cried at the end of the book wonder what’s going to happen in this movie!”
• And my favorite: “If I haven’t seen part 1 is that okay?”

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As the posters say, ‘it all ends’..tonight.

When you look up Gujarati food, thepla ranks right up there. Theplas are pretty much one of those all-purpose items. A staple for any travelling Gujarati, it can be eaten plain, with condiments such as indian pickles (achaar), yogurt, garlic paste (one of my favorites) or with curries much like a roti. In fact, the best description of a thepla is probably a flavored roti — you find them in the plain/masala type, the methi (fenugreek), or kothmir (coriander) flavored types. With or without garlic. Adjusted to be soft and foldable or crisp and a little less foldable. Really thin, or slightly thicker. Every family has their own style and the actual recipe is ultimately pretty flexible.

Enjoy (and if you need some, well, ask nicely :P).

Check out what Red Panda has been pulling out of the oven over at Red Panda Bakes!

A lot was said before, during and after. Google+ was unveiled to a lot of trumpets this past week and well, we have a serious well-thought out contender. My first impression — well it still holds — is it looks like the perfect fusion between Twitter — the interactivity, un-binding relationship (You don’t *have* to see my posts just because I want to see yours, and vice-versa), the free-flow of public data and sharing — and Facebook — the limitless posting, pictures, videos and locations. Minus the farmville. In HTML5. Dang.

I’m not leaving Twitter or Facebook yet. Twitter still holds value for news and initial interactions. The quick easy stuff. Facebook feels like a giant with way too many users to die (which is okay) but I think over time, and what I see from my current troupe of people, will live on for family and company pages.

A lot has been said already, but I want to highlight some very interesting — and maybe slightly underestimated #wins from Google.

The Google bar. For anyone that uses Gmail or Google to search, Google has steadily improved on the bar at the top, making it sleeker, more organized and so on. With the advent of G+, this bar has jumped to a new level. As expected, there’s a new +You option on the left. But: the integration and ease of posting and responding to posts using this bar is absolutely brilliant. Unlike Facebook that requires me to get on its site to view something (or open up an email), Google has setup a way that — quite literally — lets you leave everything as is and respond. I think it’s underestimated how easy they’ve made it. You can write entire posts, respond to any comments all without leaving your search window or Gmail. And it’s slick, too.

Pushing content to the right people. This to me is less about privacy and more about sharing. Sharing baby pictures is something I’d do with close friends but not necessarily with the world, pictures from a trip I don’t want extended family in on — the list is endless. It looks like privacy, but it’s more about sharing to the right audience. That’s why the circles ideas work so well. I think it is only a matter of time before I have additional circles around people’s interests, and my interests towards them as part of our group dynamic.

The one-stop shop. I don’t really think twitter tried to be this; on the contrary — current issues with development aside — twitter has relied on third parties to build frameworks around the messaging service. Photo-sharing, vid sharing, even link sharing came from outside first. While numbers might indicate a different trend, I do believe most power users prefer twitter clients to twitter web, still. G+ on the other hand is built as a one-stop shop. Over time, I’m sure we will see more platforms and companies integrating with it — pushing and possibly pulling content but the core platform is built for it all. Picture sharing integrated with Picasa, Location with Maps are built so seamlessly it’s tough to see why one needs to go anywhere else. Everyone’s raving about Hangouts as well. It’s a one-stop shop. That will mean a lot to a “new” social network user looking for an easy service to get started on. It will also mean — actually, has already meant — that savvy users are ditching using 2 or 3 services and merging them into one G+ account. There’s value there.

On a different note, I’m interested to see what value organizations can attach to Google+. From a management side of things. Twitter clients typically allow you to manage more than one account, so that makes it easy enough. FB on the other hand now allows you to act as your organization once you have pages you are an admin of. These options make it easy for organizations to use these platforms. The option to create company-specific Gmail accounts exists for now (since google doesn’t allow Apps uses to G+). I can’t confirm or deny yet how easy they will be to manage. But tell you what, I have an idea. Let’s see.

UPDATE, July 4: Well, the last paragraph is a tad pointless, according to this.

UPDATE, July 4, 11:30 a.m.: Guess the google bar isn’t as underestimated. A new Chrome extension keeps the bar floating as you scroll and other improvements. Handy.

AED250 for a slice of pizza.

Okay, granted that not technically accurate, but hear me out.

Anyone who knows me will know that I love my pizza. Not the Pizza Hut and Dominos nonsense, I’m talking real authentic stuff. Light crust that is just a little charred, a good dollop of fresh mozzarella baked to perfection in a wood-fire oven. Frankly in Dubai, I’ve enjoyed that experience in a grand total of one location, which has since shut down. But we’ve learnt to move on, haven’t we? Okay maybe not.

Ferrari world hosts a few “authentic” Italian outlets to keep in with the theme. As part of my reconnaissance mission, I walked around the entire place to find out everything I could about the attractions before we decided which ones to hit, I passed by what looked like an absolutely delicious slice of pizza. I ventured in to find a cross between a restaurant and something like a business- or first-class lounge at an airport, really. As I normally do, the first thing I checked out was their oven. A nice little brick deal but with conventional gas flame. Not my ideal kind, but I can live with that.

After we were done with our ‘adventure’ on the world’s fastest roller coaster, I dragged everyone in for a slice. I LOVED the mushroom pizza, of which I sadly do not have pictures. Frankly, and I’m pretty vocal about this, I do not like stuff on my pizza. Pizza to me, is defined by the crust, the sauce, the cheese. Finito. Okay one exception — mushrooms. Otherwise it’s just mozzarella and basil. Oh, heaven.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy the extravagant topped pizzas — take the Superbiotic at NKDPizza, they’ve actually done it well, but to me, those don’t fall under the authentic Italian Pizza category. Moving on.

The Pizza at Mamma Rossella was very well done. The crust was light enough while being a tad crisp and sauce didn’t interfere with the rest. The cheese was just your standard mozzarella (ie, not the fresh kind) but it worked. One caveat is that they make their pizzas frequently and stack them, so they reheat when you pick up a slice (yes, exactly like they would in say, New York) but it was still pretty good.

Before I talk about my problem with this whole scenario, I need to give their Olive Oil a shoutout. Yes, you heard me. Their Olive Oil must have been imported but it was amazing. Fresh, olivey and it tasted like it had been cold pressed an hour or so ago. It was so brilliant I took a picture of the bottle so I can try to hunt it down.

Right, so about the price. This is a bit of a dissapointment. The only way to get a slice is by making an AED243 payment (AED225 to get into Ferrari World and a basic cheese pizza slice is AED18). You basically can’t decide to drive up to Ferrari World just to grab a slice. Which if you know me, is something I would do for a slice of good pizza. The drive, not the pay.

I was able to find out — sadly — that this was their only branch, and they are negotiating with the big digs at Ferrari World to try and either get the restaurant area accessible without attending the “theme park” or get a mini-restaurant version outside the ticketed area; either of which are good for my purposes anyway. However, they did confirm they won’t be opening anywhere else for the moment, to maintain the exclusivity of being at Ferrari World.

Mamma Rosella
Ferrari World, Abu Dhabi

Yesterday’s iCloud announcement has, and will, cause some stir.

…

Apple is paving the way for taking Cloud technology to the masses, and all those who wouldn’t stop talking about how scary the cloud is. Free stops a lot of people from asking questions. Often, when speaking to customers about the fact that a lot of our technology offerings are based in the Cloud, you can already see that they’ve shown you the door. Talking to them about the benefits of the Cloud — the ease of use, availability from anywhere — doesn’t seem to change their minds, until they hear the words, “unlimited storage”, as is the case for email archiving in the cloud. Suddenly it sounds more interesting.

iCloud may not be the next phase in Cloud technology, but it’s the next step

Briefly, BakeFestDXB is an initiative by organizer Nick (also known as the dahlink of Twitter — @theregos) to bring together Dubai’s community bakers. Wild Peeta has been the main supporters of BakeFestDXB and have generously opened up their venue for us for the second time (how cool is that?!) to sell our stuff.

Read more about BakeFestDXB — Round 2 at Red Panda Bakes.