I came across a cool concept called photo-mapping on Gary Burd's weblog. The idea is to add geographical meta-data to photos (digital photos), such as GPS location information, which will then enable one to build a map of places where one has visited along with some markers on them, which are links to the photos taken at that location. One can thus organize a photo album based on the trail one has followed. There are softwares available that already make this possible. All that one needs is a digital camera and a GPS receiver. Check out this tutorial for more information on this very interesting idea.

One follow-up application, I can think of is that of history of places. If people create online catalogs of such photos and create a public interface to it. Google can not only help others find it, but at the same time if more than one person has taken photos of the same area at different point in time, a history of that location could be created. Moreover it will not be too difficuilt to create a web application that creates a photographic atlas of the world, where a user could navigate through photos taken within a particular geographical area and at the same time, explore its chronological space as well. The possibilities are limitless.

I am testing the PyBlogger module, which is a wrapper to the Blogger API. Please ignore this entry. Thanks.

Goa Trip

I just returned from a weekend long trip to Goa. The trip turned out gr8. We stayed at the Whispering Palms beach resort. Although this was probably not the best time to visit Goa, nature cooperated with us and we had mostly sunny skies for the time we were there. Places we visited:

- Candolim beach: Also known as Sinquerim beach. A stranded ship - the Princess - takes away from what would have been a very nice view and that too so close to the resort.I believe it has hurt this otherwise tourist attraction.

- Calungute beach: Popular beach.

- Fort Aguada: Old fort with a now-closed light-house. Also houses an ex-central prison.

- Dona Paula: Suicide-point - now a tourist attraction.

We also took an hour long after-sunset ride in a ferry on the Mandove river. The ferry-ride offered local entertainment in the form of demonstration of local Goan and Portuguese dances. Ironically, watching these performances, I forgot that we were on a ferry ride and missed a glimpse of Goa under lights from the ferry.

We also caught a glimpse of Goan night life at Club Titto's. The music was good. But the place was pretty crowded, especially the dance floor. But the club was operating at a temporary make-shift place. I was told that the permanent home of the club has an open-air dance floor. That would have been fun.

All in all a short but good trip. The next time I go there, I am going to stay longer, because thats the way it is supposed to be done.

The New Glycodin Advertisement

The new (atleast for me) Glycodin advertisement is quite funny. Everyone in the room (including me, ofcourse) was in splits when we saw it. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you do.

The new Pepsi advertisement with Saurav Ganguly is pretty bad. These people have tried to make a funny ad. and I think they overdid it. Probably Pepsi should take some pointers from Coke.

NDTV-India: Zubaan pe sach, dil mein India

I was wondering who did the voice over for NDTV-India's "Zubaan pe sach, dil mein India" advertisements. I was sure it wasn't Amitabh Bachchan, who has already been used in scores of other television advertisements. I suspected it was Salim Ghosh. For those wondering "who?", Salim Ghosh is probably well-known as the person who played the role of a drug addict in the telivison series Chunauti. I am now quite sure that my suspicion is right.

The advertisment was made by McCann-Erickson, who also developed Coke's "Thandaa matlab Coca Cola" campaign. The NDTV ad. campaign is a powerful one and a brave and different approach I think. Sadly, the news coverage of the channel and its presentation doesn't match the quality of the advertisement.

On a side-note, be sure to check this interview with Prasoon Joshi, the National Creative Director of McCann-Erickson.