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Advertising through Social Gaming crosses $200M

Posted by AnanthV | Posted in Advertising On Social Games, All for a cause, Bloggers Zone, creative writing, facebook, Farmville, games, kids, Movies Media Entertainment, Parenting & Society, people, Popular Web blogs & links, Social Gaming | Posted on 10-11-2010

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With Social Media Marketing racing into our daily lives through friends, peers & those wonderful first time virtual friends, advertising online received an amazing adrenaline rush with millions of dollars being spent by big Brands on social games for an ad spot, brand reach and the most cherished word for this decade “connect”.

All of the Big Brands seem to want a part of it. Right from Bing, Mc Donalds, The movie   – Megamind, Strauss Groups Peanut bar, 7eleven and more are racing to acquire “fans” & to further increase their brand reach by putting up sponsored ads on the worlds most addictive social game of Farmville by Zynga with over 80 million users online playing it.

Mc Donald Ad on Farmville Social Gaming Advertising

MC D's Ad On FV

mc donalds ad on farmville

The wonderful aspect of this whole social gaming and reaching the audience was also when for causes like HAITI relief, Farmville game contributed a wonderful cause by bringing users together, connecting, being a part of this concern and in real terms making a huge positive contribution and difference to them globally.

Haiti Relief from Zynga Game developers

Haiti Relief from Farmville

7 eleven ad on Farmville game socially gaming advertising

7 eleven Ad on FV

peanut bar from strauss

Strauss Ad for Peanut bar on FV

Conneting with users on farmville megamind ad merchandise haiti relief

Farmville Worlds most Socially connected Social Gaming

No wonder the ad-spend on social gaming has crossed over $200million already worldwide.

What does the future look like for brands and products to connect with their consumers in unique way for a global reach?

Share your views with us on this!

Regards

Ananth V

Techdivine Creative Services

Connect with me:

Twitter @ananthv9

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Related Post:

Farming Socially

For EXCLUSIVE OFFER For Corporates – Social Media Monitoring Campaign Industry based Customized Services  ~ CLICK HERE

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Young Talent Zone: The News behind a Newspaper, DNA

Posted by aduadi | Posted in Bloggers Zone, City News, creative writer, creative writing, Education & Learning, India, kids, life, Parenting & Society, people, Reading, society, writing, young guns section, Young Talents Zone | Posted on 19-05-2010

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The News behind a newsppaer:

All the students of grades 7, 8 and 9 marched over to the buses parked in a grid pattern like the houses of the Indus Valley Civilization. We were all geared up and ready to drive down to the DNA (Daily News and Analysis) printing press in Vashi to learn the entire story of the newspaper that reaches our doorsteps at 7 in the morning, right from setting what percentage of coloured ink the logo on the front page needs to the proofing of the paper to insure that there are no smudges.

DNA News

DNA News

The long drive from the school in Juhu down to the printing press in Navi Mumbai was predicted to take up to two hours, but time flew by- for most of us- as we chatted along with our friends, seeming to find more topics outside of the window. After asking “Are we there yet?” uncountable times, we final got there.
The printing press seemed quite a serene and quiet place from the outside, but that opinion was shattered when we heard it after we got off the bus. The transition from the somewhat cool bus to the scorching heat of the factory compelled our sweat glands to force the sweat out. There was a faint synthetic ink smell lingering in the air, wafting around the huge rolled bales of fresh recycled paper.
As we made our way through huge machines humming, we caught sight of paper being unravelled and printed on at a tremendously rapid pace. In fact, the press could produce 4500 newspapers in just an hour!  Talk about rapid news!
The people at the DNA press were simply fantastic and very helpful. They kindly explained various segments of the press in detail, answering all questions and clearing all our doubts. They diluted their talk by showing us the machines as well so we could comprehend the information visually.
After we were shown how they printed paper, the buckets of ink, how they dried it, how they printed plates, the coloured ink percentages and how they preserved the ink, we were taken into a large conference room to give us an introduction on DNA’s history as well as ‘YA!’, which is a newspaper just for kids, of which we each given a copy of.
I learnt a couple of great things there, such as the fact that they added a chemical to the ink so that it didn’t smudge. I also learnt how the newspaper was assembled and put into boxes to be carted off. I never knew that so many processes have to be followed in order to make a newspaper- right from a newspaper reporter writing an article to advertisement spaces being sold to printing it.

This experience has increased my knowledge by miles- around as many miles as there are letters in a newspaper.

Thank you DNA and their entire team for such a wonderful experience and Thank you EcoleMondiale for this amazing opportunity.

Aditya K

School Ecole Mondiale

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Standard Chartered 2010 MUMBAI Marathon

Posted by admin | Posted in All for a cause, kids, life, Parenting & Society, people, society, Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon | Posted on 17-01-2010

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Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010

Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon 2010

The 7th Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon (SCMM) 2010 kicked off at the crack of dawn today (Sunday, 17th Jan,2010). This event representing each individual running for their cause is undoubtedly one of Asia’s largest philanthropic events in India.

The event was alive at this 7th year SCMM run with each one running for the causes they believed for (Children, Orphans, Senior citizens, Physically challenged, HIV, Water, Pollution……)

Catch our Tweets on this HERE as this year Kenya’s Dennis Ndiso and Ethiopia’s Bizunesh Mohammed won the men’s and women’s titles respectively in the $310,000 seventh Standard Chartered Mumbai Marathon.

Ndiso finished in 2 hours 12 minutes & 33 seconds(2:12:33), just over his personal best of 2:13.51 seconds and the course record of 2:11.51 seconds.

The run was all across the streets of Mumbai, as Mumbai’s CST, Bandra Worli sea link and so many zones all across saw the unbreakable spirit of runners with a cause.

Amongst celebrated names and organization’s one amazing spirited team definitely were from Cadbury, as they were seen jingling and running with the cause for Saving water.

John Abraham who is supporting scores of NGO’s was pouring his heart out on the event. He was also seen giving fitness tips on having a safe run.

Rahul Bose, Akshay Kumar, Tina Ambani, Anil Ambani, Gul Panag, Amrita Rao, Shahid Kapur, Gulshan Grover and so many other business and cinema celebrities were seen cheering, running and doing their part in adding more life to yet another wonderful event from Standard Chartered!

Thanks to Standard Chartered for yet another amazing event!

Run Mumbai, run!

The spirit of Mumbai, will always shine!

For those who were part of this amazing event, do share with us your views and comments. We would love to hear from you.

Thanks!

Admin

TECHDIVINE Creative Services

www.techdivine.com

Follow our Tweets: @Techdivine

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Online Creative Writing Contest for Students is HERE!

Posted by admin | Posted in Contests & Prizes, creative, creative writer, creative writing, education, Education & Learning, kids, Reading, TECHDIVINE, technology, travel, twitter, Work Life, world, writing, young guns section, Young Talents Zone | Posted on 15-12-2009

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logotdcopy

All across Mumbai the first ever Online Creative Writing Contest with widest range of subject topics.

All contents are Copyrights of TECHDIVINE Creative Services

All contents are Copyrights of TECHDIVINE Creative Services

Registrations will begin ONLINE ONLY from: 15th January, 2010 to 10th February, 2010

ONLY after confirmation is received from our end from (admin@techdivine.com) of your completion of all registration details, You can enter the contest:After which, Contest Date: Submit Online anytime between:

February 15th, 2010 to March 15th, 2010

ONLINE CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST RULES & PRIZES

ONLINE CREATIVE WRITING CONTEST RULES & PRIZES

Topics

Topics

Registration Process

Registration Process

stayupdated

Subscribe through email to Us for Updates: Subscribe Here

For queries: admin@techdivine.com

Kindly note, participants are eligible to enter & submit for the contest only after receiving the confirmation mail from our end from this mail id: admin@techdivine.com asking you to submit your entry and confirming your registration with us. Any entry submitted without above confirmation will be disqualified.

All the best for the Contest!

We wish you all the success.

ADMIN

TECHDIVINE Creative Services

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Speed Reading – 7 Simple Steps…

Posted by admin | Posted in education, Education & Learning, Freebies, kids, life, parenting, Premium Members, Reading, Social Networking Sites (SNS), writing | Posted on 07-12-2009

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Why Speed Reading?

Information, today, is pure POWER in our hands.

With so much of data out there, both online and offline we have reached a point in our lives what we can term as “information overload“.

Speed reading technique helps one to read with discipline a lot faster with good retention.

For whom?

This is very helpful for both children and adults.

It’s thus a great resource and technique for school goers, college students or working students.

How did I come across this technique?

It was purely a desperate need for me.

There was a time when I had to keep up with my studies in my management school, had to establish understanding simultaneously of the company product policies and guidelines where I was also doing my internship, plus I was habituated to reading a novel just to keep my head from spinning and to soothe my brain, with a good book at the end of the day.

I just wanted it all!

Simply put, the idea in my head was not just to clear the exams and get the job for the day done, but to understand and implement what I had learned in my class and put it to practical use at work.

This needed a good understanding of what I was reading & also good retention. This was something that most of us would face or would have faced at times.

What happened?

I cracked and I just couldn’t, it was……… It was well, pure “information overload” for me.

That’s when I came across this technique of “Speed ‘QualityReading” and it helped me a lot.

So, I thought I would share some simple techniques that you may find useful even in your routine.

What does speed reading do?

Many a things; “TIME is Money”

  • To start with, you can learn to read specific & important part of information more quickly.
  • You may also get a better understanding of it with a disciplined practice.
  • It helps one to even learn foreign languages quickly
  • Today for anything and everything we just Google it online for work, fun & for learning, this technique will help us get the information quicker and only that which is practically useful.

There are lots of methods:

I am giving below few simple steps that you can follow and scan through all that Social media sites, search engines and digital content available that would add value to you & assist you in making your lives richer, more interactive and resourceful.

7 Simple steps that could help you in “Speed Quality reading”:

Use this technique in quiet places to start with. Eventually with practice you will be able to quality speed read even amidst noise around

  1. Skim through your book / content / text (Skimming is visually searching the sentences of a page for clues to meaning) – You can also look for Headlines, Titles, Sub titles, text with bold, italics, underlines etc in the page first and put them together. It helps you to get a gist of the text or content immediately.
  2. Use the Meta guiding technique. Use your index finger or mouse pointer or a pen, in order for the eye to move faster along the length of a passage of text. This reading dynamics system centers     on moving one’s hand across the page in order to maintain eye focus on the words. It helps to read      without getting distracted.
  3. Do not Read out aloud or sub-vocalize the words, instead associate with visuals. US Air force research shows you can recognize words in less than 5/100th of second while sounding it will consume more than twice that time.
  4. Slowly, increase speed in which you move your hands / finger pen etc and adapt to the speed
  5. Do not repeat and slowly learn to skip words like “as, and, it, then, if” etc
  6. If you are reading online or on a computer, try highlighting the text and reading it as reading white text on a dark background is easier than the reverse.
  7. Start with books / magazines where there are variations in fonts and types and then you can enter into textbook & other material reading slowly.

These are some really simple techniques that have helped me, hope you find it useful too.

Link to Test Speed Reading: Try it out, its fun! CLICK HERE


Do give us your comments, suggestions & views.

You can also write to us at:

techdivine@gmail.com or admin@techdivine.com

(Do not try this if you are reading a legal document :) )

Enjoy!

Happy reading.

Free Resource & Steps for Speed Reading Practice

speed reading

speed reading

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Transitions in Life!

Posted by anjeneyan | Posted in kids, life, The blog is personal again | Posted on 13-08-2009

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Transition, change from the past, for the present
Transition, change from the past, for the present

Do we notice the imperceptible changes taking place around us?  Mostly not; unless compelled to do so.

The most common culprit of almost imperceptible change is age. “Why do you wheeze when you climb stairs for just two floor?” My daughter asked me last week. I passed it off as a toll taken by age; though the reality is that this weakness is an old one and remained unnoticed.

Most resist the external symptoms of time and related wear & tear. A thumb rule is that the older a person is, the more time taken for formal dressing. So there is a calculated effort to impress- bright colors, branded shirts/pants, hair waved back carefully. Sometimes I wonder, whether the person is comfortable in the role being enacted (for the sake of family). Why not let go and be what you actually are? But then, do many of us know ourselves well to decide to be as and what we are?

God, with His sense of irony, has made human beings attach undue importance to parts of body which have limited utility. Hairs on the head is a classic example of a decorative object. It does not serve any great purpose (unlike hands or legs). But the impact a great hair style has on the subject and his/her viewer cannot be measured. So we find youngsters staring hard at mirror for long periods, patting their hair, men keeping tufts (meant originally only for certain purposes) like women, old men and women dyeing their imperfectly to evade the toll of time and all sorts of odd behavior if examined in the light of reason.

When I was a young boy (several decades back) only school boys and  domestic men servants (who washed clothes, vessels, cars etc.) wore half pants in Mumbai.  Now of course, it is a fashion statement to wear half pants and odd sized pants on all occasions (except job interview) and thereby attempt to belong to another age group. So, when I wear a shorts (called half pant in the past) to the gym, I have an uneasy feeling that someone would  call me to wash their car.

The real changes take place in our sub-conscious and then trickle down to external visibility.  This is noticed only if we meet the person after a reasonable gap. Mentally we slow down- that is reduce the pace at which we want to live hereafter. We see this around us but do not observe. We want less surprises- less changes – expected or unexpected. Life has to be same from yesterday to today. But God and the world around us have a gleeful pleasure in altering our well laid down plans.  So we find sedentary grandparents rushing off to USA/Gulf countries for a new career in babysitting (most probably no one sits, the baby runs around and we run after it continuously till our legs pain).

Did our parents sit back and ponder over their errors of omissions and commission? Did they even admit it to themselves? My son reminded me recently in non-judgmental manner of the instances when I beat him during his childhood. Did I beat him? Yes, I did. For what reasons?  I do not remember. Do I regret it now? Yes. But when I look at my daughter trying to tame my grandson (unsuccessfully at times) by oral requests and then resorting some small corporal punishments, I realize that these are inevitable and cannot be examined by hindsight.

Do we lose our ambitions, zest and enthusiasm with age? I would say they become more tempered. The  goal posts change. Survival up to the goal post  becomes more important than running past it. Some unexpected past time or interest catches serious attention.  So it could a social or a religious organization in which there is some lurking desire to play a more prominent role. I have seen several large institutions run  by persons most of whom had retired from gainful occupations long  back justifying to this logic.

But what is most important in all this is identifying what our heart really seeks- what is it that would give us great happiness. This is the most difficult part of life at any juncture. Long but aimless life serves little or no purpose. At each juncture of life, knowing what we want to achieve in our career, what we enjoy doing in our spare time, what relationships to invest in to make our life more beautiful is vital. This is more easily said than done.

I envy today’s youth some of whom are clear eyed to give up easy choices and seek for what they really want. India has given choices which did not exist some decades back.  But whether they are able to achieve a balance between their material success and mental happiness is a moot point. This perhaps applies to youth and younger generation in any point of time- yesterday , today or tomorrow.

So next time I visit the nearby shopping mall, I will take the plunge and buy the black shirt with stripes displayed at Zodiac shop. My family’s puritanical views on wearing such garments can take a back seat.

I will look handsome in that shirt- rather as handsome as I looked some decades back.

 

Anjeneyan.

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Wolweric: Part2: The Revenge of Crewin’s son

Posted by shivanshjuneja | Posted in kids, life, writing, young guns section | Posted on 21-07-2009

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By Shivansh J
By Shivansh J

 

 

“May be I should be a vampire instead of a pumpkin,” said Ale.

She and Joe were sitting on the backyard. The birds twittered. The autumn leaves made a rustling sound. “But you already have your pumpkin costume although you had been a vampire last Halloween.”

“I know but I want to wear my big teeth again.” said Ale.

Kraw! Kraw! A sound came from the sky. “Oh my” said Joe “it’s a raven”. It flew to the forest. “Follow it” said Ale it’s a sign sent by Romania.

They followed it and reached the dense forest.

There stood Romania with the raven and told them to come to Wolweric.

After they reached Wolweric Romania told them that she received a challenge letter from Crewin’s son. The letters on the letter were curvy and old fashioned. Joe picked it up and read aloud.

To Joe and Ale I challenge you both to have a fight with me in the Temple of the dark Lord which is above the Mountains climb a hundred of stairs on the land of Eldorado on 8th of March in the year 1358.

Joe and Ale ask Romania how to reach there. She told them to go in the time machine which Stiffen had invented. They found it after a long search of Wolweric. Romania told them that Crewin’s son had inherited the transformation power from his father and he could transform into an old lady.

They were setting the machine to go in1358. Soon they took off, to the temple of the dark lord after they reached there. They found the mountain and realized they have to trek. After reaching the peak of the mountain they found a staircase going in the middle of the mountain and as they stepped on the first step the entrance closed by a huge boulder.   They met an old lady who told Ale to drink a portion which would make her stronger.

On the way Ale fainted Joe picked her up and continued the journey. Joe remembered that Crewin’s son can transform and an old lady. Oh no the lady was Crewin’s son and the portion she gave her was poison. Just then Joe heard a voice coming from the walls it said “if you want to save your sister’s life defeat me. Joe hurried down the stairs to the temple. Finally he met Crewin’s son. Very soon they started their fight, the weapon he had was very dangerous and Joe had to fight bear hand!

They started fighting, Crewin’s son fired the weapon Joe dodged it. When Crewin’s son had to reload his weapon Joe took the advantage and started to kick and punch him. Crewin’s son fell down and he kicked back Joe. Joe fell near the idol of the dark lord and found a sword behind it. He used it to fight against Crewin’s son. Just then Crewin’s son again fired the weapon and Joe strike it back with his sword on him and killed Crewin’s son.

A tablet came out from the dark lord’s idol and a voice came from it too it said give this tablet to your sister she will be fine. Joe took it and gave it to Ale. Within a few minutes Ale was fit and fine.

Soon they went home and went for the Halloween party near their house…….

To be Continued…….

School St. Gregorios

 

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The Greatest Trip To The Zoo

Posted by aduadi | Posted in kids, life, travel, world | Posted on 20-07-2009

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Dense Nature

Dense Nature

 

 

 The transition from the cold blue and foggy grey pick-up area to the vibrant and somewhat gaudy interiors of the bus hurt my eyes. After all the pupils of 6ChM and 6JSa had boarded the bus, it was now waiting for my English teacher, who was one of the coordinators of our zoo trip. I glanced at the designs on the inner roof of the bus. There were multicoloured cellos and shining trumpets, looking as if they were waiting ready to leap up and play a melody.

 

After I was bored at staring at the metal transport office with the peach coloured roof and the brown bench outside, I started a brief chat with my pals. In the heat of the conversation (which turned out to be not so brief), my teacher finally entered the vehicle. It was quite unusual as my English teacher was never late. It was as queer as a green flamingo writing the middle name of its sixth cousin (thrice removed) with the leg that it was balancing on.

 

This zoo trip was a trip to give us inspiration for writing poems, which was what our English topic was. We had been informed about a trip around a week before it took place. In class we had to vote for either going to the botanical gardens or the zoo. My class is full of animal lovers and majority of us voted to go to the zoo. We were to take notes about our surroundings in the zoo. These were to help us later when we were writing poems about the field trip.

 

The bus started immediately after my tutor belted up. The zoo was quite close by because the school was also in Jurong. However, the trip could only be two hours long because we left in the beginning of lunch, stayed there for the two periods of English and returned by the end of the afternoon break. We spent 40 minutes in the bus, so that left us only an hour and 20 minutes, in which time we also had to get to and fro from the places in the zoo. In the middle of the bus ride, a storm broke out, which we all knew would lead to the animals not coming out into the open if they didn’t like rain.

 

Just as we were about to enter the zoo, the rain stopped. In fact, the rain hadn’t reached here yet because the roads and flora were dry, although we could see the grey clouds in the distance. We strode over to the ticket counter, formed a straight line a few metres away from it and each gave the teachers five dollars for the ticket. My friend and I got tram tickets as he had a muscle problem because of which he couldn’t walk long distances. Because he wasn’t allowed to go alone (a school rule), I was requested to go with him. We hopped onto a tram with zebra stripes painted all over it and headed off for the fragile forest.

 

The fragile forest was a butterfly enclosure. The butterflies would just be fluttering in the air- living in an enclosed area wouldn’t make much of a difference to their life as the place was huge and the zoo keepers refilled their ‘feeding bowls’ (Five multicoloured hexagons with holes in them arranged in a circle on a white disc that is nailed to a tree.) and there were countless flowers. We made a partition in the chains that were hanging and opened the door that led to the butterfly park.

 

There was only one colour around me- green. Everything from the butterfly net to the moss growing on the emerald trees was jade green. Name a shade and it was there- pear, olive, lime, Persian green, army green, shamrock green, pine green, bottle green, sea green, racing green, midnight green, teal green, camouflage green, kelly green, pigment green, tea green, electric green, moss green, office green, hunter green, fern green, myrtle, spring green, spring bud, viridian and even asparagus!

 

The first thing that greeted my ears was a bunch of loud peacocks and peahens hopping like they needed to use the toilet but the thing that was using the lavatory was taking its time. Hanging upside down from the tree next to me was a bat. Its sinewy wings looked like the fabric batman’s wings were made of. A fresh breeze hung in the air. I walked a few steps ahead and I was soon on a wood bridge, as brown as the three primary colours mixed together.

 

There were calm waterfalls and tranquil water flowed elegantly under us. Unruffled lotuses bloomed in the cool pool like a magicians hands hypnotizing someone. The peaceful moments were broken by two screams. One of them came from a girl near a cluster of bats. She had screamed in surprise because the bats had just urinated. The other one came from one of my classmates because she had dropped her homework diary in the pond. We all walked towards the place where she dropped it to see if it could be retrieved. We could see it, floating on top of the water but it was out of reach and it was drenched in water. There was anyway not much point recovering it as the water would have made the ink spread out all over the page (chromatography- the process of separating different liquids in a solution). I then walked towards the bats and took a couple of snapshots so that I could write a poem about it later.

 

We lined up again and marched over to the orang-utan point. My friend and a supervisor had already left because he could then rest on the way and they will still reach there before us. It had started drizzling and soon it was heavily raining. I praised myself for remembering to pack and umbrella. After all, this was Singapore- you could never predict when it would rain. The problem was that the monkeys had all gone indoors as they disliked the rain. We only had half and hour left so instead of waiting for the monkeys and getting as fed up and bored as a spoilt five year old being forced to look at mouldy custard dripping down a wall, we headed back to the bus, stopping for a couple of minutes in the otter’s pond. Anyways, we could see their living conditions later by peeping in our locker room.

 

I could hear the otters before I could see them. Otters are minute mammals that eat fish. They are as furry as stereotypical teddy bears. I didn’t find them too interesting as most of them just sat in the corner under a tree and we could barely make out their outline even after craning our necks as much as owls. I could only see the head of one of them that was sleeping inside a hollow log.

 

We reached school a few minutes late for our next lesson, but otherwise, we followed the schedule. The trip was enjoyable and amusing because all my friends were with me and we had a great time. Even though I had been to the zoo numerous times, I never had this much entertainment. Also, I noticed many more things in this trip because I was looking for small details to write some poetry about. This was a fantastic trip and I think that it was a great idea to choose the zoo for inspiration.

Aditya K

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Addiction: Contagiously unique: Dying to get Offline, but alas!

Posted by Author | Posted in kids, life, shopping, technology, The blog is personal again | Posted on 31-05-2009

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36

  

ADDICTIONS: Dying to get Offline, but Alas!

ADDICTIONS: Dying to get Offline, but Alas!

 

 “Greatness adds to the Good & evil begets evil, as simple as that”

 

 One 12 year old kid, who was supposed to enjoy his summer vacations by going out or playing till he drops in the heat, was having a horrible day yesterday, because his mother was not allowing him to play the Xbox (which he was playing for more than few hours already).

 

 He came to me angry with his mom and asked, ‘I am getting bored. I don’t want to go out and play. Can you tell mom to allow me to play on my Xbox so that I can have some fun.’

 

 I guess, this is what has become when I look around me, except for those very few who are still fortunate, under control and in touch with the real world.

 

 That’s when it struck me.

 

 I too have been addicted. I realized that I have become utterly obsessed to the cyber world like millions across the world. Today I am just one among the million less fortunate getting strangled to the today’s ipv4 syndrome – The Internet.

 

 This virtual platform engineered by those who started it as an information sharing platform has gone manifold through inventions & contributions by great pioneers like Al Gore, Tim Berners-Lee, Vint Cerf, Robert Kahn, Leonard Kleinrock, Lawrence G. Roberts, Radia Perlman and few others.

 

But why do I quote the first line that “greatness adds…..”

 

I realized the missing link around that could hold me grounded and keep me engrossed in life that is real.

 

Today, as I scan across my little self-centered murky world, I find all those around fixated to something that is not just contagious, but uniquely contagious, in the sense that, it drives oneself to catch their novel form of addiction on their own.

 

 Surrounded by those either addicted to the till death do us apart yearning for money or those with a deflective state of philosophical bent through religious dose of daily booze or those obsessed with zero value adding life skills of traditional education or the amazingly exasperating bunch of hardcore shopaholics who have today led me to succumb & snail myself into a smaller world owing to sheer utter boredom.

 

 I feel suffocated when I end up nowhere but yet ‘find myself’ in a Mall every other day or worst diluting my already troubled fitness regime sitting in a restaurant that is definitely not helping me regain my good old self.

 

 Why? ‘coz today I am tired of again and again planning a spontaneous tour to a better place or at least a real world around and unfortunately cannot also find,  ‘who can take on ideas to connect to the real world’ & initiate an adventurous outing may be?

 

I keep trying to reinvent by being innovative and planning to reach out to the outer and real world and sadly find myself in a restaurant or compulsorily on the almost only way to stay connected with each other today – Telephone or even worst in a bar or a again a mall.

 

The value addition per se seems to be missing at every stage as addiction has caught up with specific religious routines of not thinking beyond the monotonously small world around.

 

 With so much of information explosion, I am today finding the spontaneity missing around me so much that I chose to get addicted to a virtual world with just a couple of hardware and loads of unnecessary junk from all across the globe.

 

 As I drift towards spending shockingly gifted long & empty weekends addicted to the virtual galleria, the more I realize the emptiness of adventure and spark with zest and energy around.

 

 The more I update myself on Web3.0 today, the more I feel sorry for the world of tomorrow that ‘might’ be a part of these uniquely contagious addiction syndromes over a period of time.

 

 Now that I have done some keying in for the day, let me get back to Orkut or Facebook where I can meet real people, ahem!

 

 Can’t believe, I am actually dying to get offline!

 

 What say?

 

 Let me know your views

 

 Ananth V – ‘(Still Online)’

 

 

Image Source: AnanthV

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Young Talents – Aishwarya Venkat – Fiction – Onions…..

Posted by aishv | Posted in book, education, faith, India, kids, life, people, world | Posted on 20-06-2008

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9

Why do we cry for the onion?

 

Many centuries ago, a tomato, a capsicum & an Onion were best friends.

One day, their master felt hungry & was looking out for them. As soon as he saw the tomato his pangs of hunger shot up.

 

All the three friends tried to flee but the master caught the tomato. He cut it into slices & ate it. The capsicum & Onion started crying for the poor tomato.

 

Next was the capsicum’s turn & he too was cut into slices & eaten by the master.

 

The Onion started crying for the capsicum again.

 

Suddenly, a spirit appeared in front of the Onion & asked him why he was crying.

 

The Onion said that his friends Tomato & Capsicum had been cut into slices & the Onion had cried for them. Now that he was all alone, there was nobody to feel and share his pain.

When he will be cut into slices, nobody would cry for him. The spirit blessed him & said that anyone who cuts you will from now on cry for you.

 

So the next time we slice onions, we know why we shed those tears, don’t we?

Aishwarya Venkat

Age:10 years

School Dr. Radhakrishnan

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Do post in your comments and views below

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