Vijay Basrur

Death Threats due to Blogging

Some guys take blogging way too seriously. Michael Arrington is one of them. But he loves blogging about start ups and suchlike. And he has created a huge ecosystem of startup reporting at TechCrunch. Infact every startup would give an arm and a leg to get covered by TechCrunch because that would be the best form of publicity. TechCrunch boasts of a followership, only a few can match.

But yesterday was the first time Michael came out with the bad side of blogging. He blogs about getting spat on his face because he was too tired to meet an entrepreneur. He also refers to a death threat he received sometime last year. He is planning to take a month of to take a backseat and relook at what he wants to do in life.

Jesus. This is freaky! I had read about Om Malik getting a heart attack sometime late 2007. Ironically TechCrunch has a post about it here. And Om talks about his learnings about the stress of blogging and starting up here.

This does throw a lot of interesting questions on the problems in store for serious bloggers.

I think blogging is great way to publish your thoughts & ideas. The moment you try and exploit this for a commercial purpose, it is bound to stress you out. The level of stress is probably directly proportional to the success you aspire.

Social Networking Time Drain

I was reading David Pogue’s Twittering Tips for Beginners and was quite amsued by this quote of his

I’ll admit that, for the longest time, I was exasperated by the Twitter hype. Like the world needs ANOTHER ego-massaging, social-networking time drain? Between e-mail and blogs and Web sites and Facebook and chat and text messages, who on earth has the bandwidth to keep interrupting the day to visit a Web site and type in, “I’m now having lunch”? And to read the same stuff being broadcast by a hundred other people?

And sometimes I feel it is so true..some of these have become time drains, haven’t they? Unless you are disciplined about it you can go through an entire day twittering, facebooking, orkuting and other such (blogging for ex ;-)).

Time to get back to work!

Cool Product SD Card with Wi Fi

I mean this is amazing. A SD card with inbuilt WiFi. How cool is that?

Check Eye-Fi »

Thanks to Guy Kawasaki!

Subsidy

Bill Watterson’s take on why a firm needs subsidy

Subsidies

A new year

So another year comes to an end and a new one begins. Its always so exciting at this point in time. The memories of the year gone by are still so fresh (time does move fast) and the plans for the year ahead are still buzzing.

The highlights of the year gone by were my job change (after nearly 7 years), parenthood (we were blessed with a baby girl in May who continues to infuse so much happiness every day) and our new car (after 5 years) Ironically the job change & our baby came nearly around the same time and it turned out to be the most stressed out time of the year. But thankfully I sailed through with my mother-in-law being of great help during that time. Both, the new job and our baby girl, are doing well and I am enjoying both quite a bit.

Getting back to a startup has been a refreshing change. The joy of creating something and seeing it grow is unmatched. Here’s to hoping that 2009 turns out to be great for Quikr

The year ahead has quite a few things in store from a personal viewpoint. Our daughter will turn 1 this year. We are hoping to be closely involved with my Mom’s school project at Igatpuri for the Puntayma Prabhakar Sharma Seva Mandal. If you would like to contribute do write in to me. Our nephew, Shreyas, who is the apple of our eyes, takes his first steps into formal schooling and it will be a joy to see him grow up. We are hoping for a full family outing this year, even if it is a weekend. And maybe, just maybe an international holiday, if things go well planned.

So much for plans. As for resolutions, there are a few since I am good at breaking them. But I am hoping to stick to the ones that I have lined up. Now that’s the first resolution I need to stick to.

Have a safe year!