Zyka Restaurent in Atlanta GA. I have never seen such a crowd in any of the Indian/IndoPak restaurents so far. It just reminded me my days at Bangalore and made me instantly homesick. I visited Zyka in Richardson, but it was quite different. The differences are quite striking with the Zyka in Richardson,TX. First and foremost is the crowd.

• In Atlanta You have to wait atleast for 15 minutes at any point of time to get a seat. Many people easily give up their search for seat and eat standing or take home. In Richardson, there is no such problem. I never waited for more than a minute to place order. Seating is always avaialble. It is slightly bigger, looks like. But there is far lesser crowd here.
• You see people come of the shells and be truly Indians for some time. I mean… you know. While getting to the counter to order or getting an empty table, if you wait in line like an obedient child, you are good to stay in line forever. I mean, quite frankly there is no line. People are quite afraid of going in lines, because they can not trust each other. So, they do what they are good at. I recently saw again such a mad rush and exuberant display of true intentions at Diwali Mela, at Texas Stadium in Irving. Some thing, I will never be part of and proud of.
• Food is much better in Richardson. May be because of lesser crowd.

Some times it doesn’t make sense to buy just one. Or quite expensive to buy just one. Found at a Old Navy outlet in Grapevine,TX.

Perfect Tees, now 2 for $10. Or $10.50 each.

Is it a typo or perfect marketing trick to get rid of their stock? 

Its like a DEMO conference showcasing the Indian Technology and Innovation. Proto.in is organizing first of its kind 2 day conference on 20th and 21st of January, 2007. Chennai is the natural candidate for such a conference, as it demonstrated its enthusiasm and committment to bring ideas to life with similar conferneces earlier, like Blogcamp.

I picked up this image from WebYantra, showing a diaspora of Indian startups.

Mobile Mondays, Blogcamps, BarCamps…. and now Proto.in….. India is heatingup with Innovation and exuberance of startups. The place to be in, without any hesitation what so ever.

Science Fiction movies in Hollywood are pretty close to reality in labs. I remember watching The Minority Report. Wall-sized displays, gesture recognition, and seamless information convergence. Tom Cruise calls up and manipulate video footage and other data in mid-air after donning a special pair of gloves.  Its an intuitive touch-free interface.  

Watch a similar intuitive interface, whick works on multiple touch sensors and eliminates the traditinal interface from the picutre. Wow!

Jeff Han is a research scientist for New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences. Here, he demonstrates—for the first time publicly—his intuitive, “interface-free,” touch-driven computer screen, which can be manipulated intuitively with the fingertips, and responds to varying levels of pressure. (Recorded February 2006 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 09:32)

Watch the video here.

Wonderful discussion on The Minority Report Interface here.

The Minority Report Interface  by LukeW

It turns out that Microsoft Research, MIT, and several design shops had a say in the interface designs found in the film.

 My first impression is Thumbs Up!! Wonderful !!

Guruji.com a new search engine from India, is challenging Google in bringing better results for local search. Guruji.com is attempting to bring much better and relevant search results than popular search engines like Google and Yahoo for local search in India, much like what baidu is doing for China. Google does not offer Local Search in India, YET. So Guruji.com is attempting to fill that gap along with providing better search results for Indian content.

Learn about the new search engine and its recent win of $7 million from Sequoia Capital from CEO & Founder of Guruji.com, Anurag Dod in this podcast interview, Is Guruji the new Google for India? by Kiruba Shankar at podtech.net.

Sounds quite interesting. Isn’t it? I just gave it a try to see whether Guruji can beat Google and pull out better search results. After trying a few searches particularly in Bangalore, I am quite impressed. 

About the name:

Brute force translation means ‘Dear/Respected Teacher’. In vernacular however, it  means a person of knowledge and/or wisdom. I don’t know how they came up with this name. But it is quite catchy and easy to remember. However, it does not directly mean anything related to search as such. But who knows, if it clicks, we might make Guruji synonymous with search, like Google. On the fun part, Knowing the meaning I can not use it as a verb like say I guruji it, just like ’google it‘.

About the Search:

I tried looking for pizzahut in bangalore. Have a look at the snapshot. There are two key differences.

1. The top portion of the results page, ‘City Results from Guruji’ is actually pulling out results like an Yellow book offering address and phone numbers of pizza hut.
2. The later portion of the results is generic web search for the keywords. Again in the web search, it seems Guruji.com is pulling out results from domains which are primarily Indian rather than general search on the whole world wide web. That means, better and intuitive local results than popular search engines, say Google.  

The localized search is quite evident if we search for a generic keyword. So I tried Pizzahut at Guruji.com. And here is the result. The page impressed me by pulling out the Pizza hut’s India website at the top, folllowed by results from webpages by Indians.

If you just want Yellow pages results, you can try City search. Click on City above the search box. And then enter keywords. I tried ‘Pizza hut in Bangalore’. The pages showed all Pizzahut locations in bangalore. Thatz exactly I wanted.

Another impressive feat is when I search for a general keyword like ‘blog’, it pulls out the information about Indian blogs, even though they are hosted on sites like google’s blogger(blogspot). This is quite useful and intuitive. Try searching for blog in Guruji.com. You can see for yourself.

 So, my first impression is Thumbs Up!! Wonderful !!

One thing I wanted to see included in the search results is a link to a map showing the location of the business. Since number in street address alone does not make much sense in India for navigation, it would be wonderful to show the results in a map with reference to a well known landmark in the map. This is how we find an address in India right? First find a well know landmark, and go from there. That would be a killer.