June 2008

The Revival of SurfUnion

I was in a discussion with a friend last weekend at her swank new office. Suddenly we came across a point in social networking and SurfUnion popped up in my mind. If I ever come out with an autobiography there’s sure going to be a chapter dedicated to SurfUnion — a designers forum of which I was a proud member and an architect. Unfortunately the founding of SurfUnion is more interesting and worth discussing than the way we managed it.

In late 2003, five of my close buddies had wanted to do something worthwhile. We were at best designers with creative skills but worked out of home; some of them like me on a paltry sum. On the night of October 2nd, we launched a ‘designers only’ forum hiring some space on Buttclencher’s server. We decided to call it ‘SurfUnion’ or a group of surfing designers. The name took the imagination of all the admins as we liked to call ourselves and later we were joined by many. One of them was a geeky guy nicknamed Bane and was located in Colombo. Five of us – myself, Kreativea (Aadesh), Buttclencher (Raunaq), RanTen (Ranajit Tendolkar) and FlashKid (Isaac) operated from Mumbai. Thus we had a majority stake in the decision making process while LimeIce (Gursimran) located in Delhi and Ryche (Fahd) in Kolkata completed the admin lineup. The fabulous tagline of ‘We put the Desi in Design’ was suggested by Ryche in one of our online sessions. During our tenure, we arranged competitions and meetups that helped bring varied talents face-to-face.

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Breathing Fresh AIR

AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime) is Adobe’s cross-operating system runtime environment that allows developers to leverage the current technologies like Flash, AJAX, Flex, HTML and JavaScript, and enable the deployment of Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) to the desktop. Prior to it’s release AIR was codenamed Apollo.

Applications developed using AIR provide a delightful way of presenting live data and one does not need to be connected to the internet all the time. From the visual standpoint, AIR technology offers the power to change the interface design thus bringing a coherence between function and looks. This also greatly enhances the UX of the product and supplements any deficiencies in the original structure. It seems unlikely that the increasing reach of AIR would make the internet browser applications redundant since a majority of the internet population still relies on the software for surfing pages. However as a reminder, the developers and designers must begin earnestly to move towards web standards and help to bring about a consistency in the way content and design is demonstrated online. Till such time get addicted to AIR like me.

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Strangers In Love

A short story that I wrote over the weekend. It’s a work of fiction and bears no resemblance to anyone or any incident.

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He meets her on the Internet and very unusually they fall in “love” with each other after a brief chat session. Two “lovers” from diverse cultures and city are brought together by fate and technology. In truth by technology but the two strongly believed it was fate. They exchanged their cell numbers so they could share their happiness and sorrow. This meant endless hours of naughty “love” chirping and philosophical discussions 24/7. A special “happy” ring-tone was set especially for her so he could single her call out from the various others on his cell-phone. When verbal communication was unable to express itself satisfactorily, they would turn instantly to messaging. Wherever they went, their feelings followed just like that through the never-ending tender vocabulary. Tragically she was committed to someone and he was fully aware about it. Yet he believed there was the hand of god that drew them closer to each other everyday and each night. He was full of hope and positive and she thought there was nothing that could separate them. Despite her background she promised to be with him forever.

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Aamir (2008)

Rajeev Khandelwal as Aamir Aamir is a tantalising story of a young man who gets trapped in an intriguing web of crime. Rajeev Khandelwal makes his big screen debut after enjoying huge popularity on television with soaps like Kahiin to Hoga and Left Right Left.

Aamir Ali (Rajeev Khandelwal) returns to Mumbai from London and is rather unwelcomed by the immigration officer. His polite demeanour notwitstanding, the religiously biased officer is bent upon harassing an innocent man because he’s a Muslim. The real drama starts to unfold outside the airport when two suspicious bikers hand him a cell phone and speed off. The gentleman on the phone wants Aamir to follow his directions in exchange for the freedom of his beloved family. The ordeal similar to a treasure hunt leads him to the ghettoes of the city and makes him puke disgustedly at the living conditions. In an attempt to win over his emotions, the voice mentions the purported brutality of the majority community over the Muslims in India and across, how the Muslim brethren globally are financing the jung and how Aamir, who’s name literally means a leader is not caring for his kaum and fighting for them. It’s shown while the man on the phone eats and drinks merrily in his chambers, he ensures that the terrified Aamir is made to run across the city without food, water or any respite. It’s clear that this racket of terrorists is well organized and is dedicated to mislead the Muslim youth into forcing them to commit serious crime.

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Sarkar Raj (2008)

Before I start to say anything about this movie, I must make a note of a few things that occurred with Ram Gopal Varma, the director of the Sarkar series. Last year he took the liberty of remaking one of Indian’s best known cult movie called Sholay (1975), aptly titled Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag. It was hardly a coincidence that it crash landed at the box office. What followed later was even spectacular and not astonishing for the class of media publicity that we sometimes prefer. He was mocked and scoffed at every awards function, FM and TV program, even flash animations were utilised to depict the “torture” inflicted by his imbecilic work. He was in short, written off by the media at every level. Since I come from a creative background, I could understand Ramu’s dilemma. In his zest to recreate a 21st century masterpiece he forgot he was toying with a movie that many in India consider to be a landmark film in cinema. At the same time it could only take the guts of a man called Ram Gopal Varma to even attempt something like this. Don’t forget that his CV has the colurful Rangeela (1995) that launched the careers of many including Urmila Matondkar, Raat (1992) and Bhoot (2003) that were successful experiments in the genre of horror while his Shiva (1989), Satya (1998) and Company (2002) showcased his class in making gangster movies. It’s unfair then to judge the likes of Ram Gopal Varma (RGV) with just one ‘Aag’ from his ‘Factory’.

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