Moving to Wordpress

I've decided to move this blog to wordpress.

Please go to http://mystardream.wordpress.com for further updates on this blog.

Thanks for reading!

Came across this video today.. quite interesting!

Read Here

De Taali review

De Taali - *** (3/5)

I saw De Taali last night.

Last night, I had some spare time on my hands and decided to watch De Taali. I really liked the music of the movie and was looking forward to watching it.

As soon as the movie started, I knew how it was going to be. Ayesha Takia - Her acting involved only smiling and laughing and jumping around. She can do a better role than this. Ritesh Deskmukh - he could do a much better job.

Storyline - Three best friends. 2 guys & 1 girl. Close from childhood. One guy - very rich - Abhi. Keeps falling in love. Girl of group - Amu - ends up liking Abhi. Thinks he's going to propose. Turns out to be in love with some other girl who's after his money. Girl and other guy - Paglu - try to break Abhi and vamp girlfriend up. End up kidnapping vamp gf and finding out about her past while making Abhi fall in love with Amu.

Movie ends the way you expect it to with vamp gf and Paglu ending up together and Amu and Abhi getting together.

The music doesn't blend with the movie. Which kind of spoiled it for me because the music by Vishaal-Shekhar was good.

Timepass movie. If you have nothing else to do, you can watch it.

Getting Vs. Taking

Read this article today from Seth Godin's blog

Getting vs. Taking

Most people spend a lot of time to get an education. They wait for the teacher (hopefully a great one) to give them something of value.

Many employees do the same thing at work. They wait for a boss
(hopefully a great one) to give them responsibility or authority or
experiences that add up to a career.

A few people, not many, but a few, take. They take the best
education they can get, pushing teachers for more, finding things to
do, exploring non-defined niches. They take more courses than the
minimum, they invent new projects and they show up with questions.

A few people, not many, take opportunities at work.

What have you taken today?

Quite interesting... It's something that it seems to me all of us know we should do but never end up doing. We make up excuses and say - "oh, I can't do that" and "this doesn't apply to my situation" and other excuses like that.

Nice Article...

Came across this article today - Zen & the art of eating the Masala Dosa

I think I fall somewhere between the eat from the bottom and eat from the sides type... :)

Where do you fall?

J.K.Rowling gives Commencement Speech at Harvard

Here are the links to her speech. It was a good speech with some humour and some good advice.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

And I'm back.... :)

Finally, I decide to start blogging again...

Here's a link to start you off with ...

5 Tools to track how much time you waste/spend online... :)

Another presentation post...

Following up on my post on giving presentations, here's another link

Merlin Mann gave a talk at Google called Inbox Zero - which was basically on time management and being more efficient with email.

In his presentation, his slides are minimal and have very little text on them - like how Steve Jobs did in his MacWorld talk which is basically a simple graphic with a very few words next to them. Below is an excerpt from Merlin's post -

Guy Kawasaki’s 10-20-30 Rule

... if you’re really struggling with your visuals, it’s worth making “10-20-30” a rule that you break only with mindful and deliberate care. At least until you’re more comfortable with what you want to say, and how you want to say it, hew to Guy’s party line:

It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

Get in, get out, and don’t make people squint. Awesome.

And he really does this in his presentation at Google. If you get a chance, take a look at the video. It's good.

How to Present

Following up on my last post, here is a article from BusinessWeek - Deliver a Presentation Like Steve Jobs

The main points I liked in the article were how he talked about specific things Jobs did .... I noticed the same things and was impressed by Jobs because of that ....

Read some excerpts from the article below -

Set the theme. "There is something in the air today." With those words, Jobs opened Macworld. By doing so, he set the theme ... and hinted at the key product announcement—the ultrathin MacBook Air laptop.

Demonstrate enthusiasm. Jobs shows his passion for computer design. During his presentation he used words like "extraordinary," "amazing," and "cool."

The one below really caught my eye and is a very good point.

Make numbers meaningful. When Jobs announced that Apple had sold 4 million iPhones to date, he didn't simply leave the number out of context. Instead, he put it in perspective by adding, "That's 20,000 iPhones every day, on average." Jobs went on to say, "What does that mean to the overall market?" Jobs detailed the breakdown of the U.S smartphone market and Apple's share of it to demonstrate just how impressive the number actually is. Jobs also pointed out that Apple's market share equals the share of its top three competitors combined. Numbers don't mean much unless they are placed in context. Connect the dots for your listeners.

Some of the classic points are worth repeating.

Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. Steve Jobs cannot pull off an intricate presentation with video clips, demonstrations, and outside speakers without hours of rehearsal. ..... You can see he rehearsed the Macworld presentation because his words were often perfectly synchronized with the images and text on the slides. .... The entire presentation was coordinated. A Steve Jobs presentation looks effortless because it is well-rehearsed.

If you're interested in reading more, do read the article at BusinessWeek.

Steve Jobs Keynote

I've become a big fan of Steve Jobs. I watched his keynote address at Mac World 2008 through a podcast today and was very impressed. One of the small things I liked was that he was in jeans, a casual top and sneakers.

He's a good presenter and powerful speaker. His personality is engaging and I can see how he's become the face of Apple. Now, he's probably got his faults but what I really admired was his drive and forceful personality.

I was reading about him on Wikipedia today. He's very shrewd and smart - obviously.