Amitabh Bachchan slept with loaded revolver during Mumbai Terror Attacks!!

Amitabh Bachchan writes in his blog that he slept with a gun under his pillow after Mumbai terror attacks. Why did he do that? He says that

to show his "complete loss of faith in the system and governance" and criticised gestures like lighting candles.

"The act of pulling out my revolver is a symbolic metaphor, a figure of speech, to demonstrate my complete loss of faith in the system and in the governance, in providing me, a citizen of India, with my rightful sense of security,"

Congratulations!! Mr. Bachchan, that you are able to pull out a revolver for your safety. Mr. Bachchan! what would you suggest to someone who has to catch a local train/BEST to go to work/home. How does he or she protect himself/herself? How does a elderly man shown here at Victoria Terminus protect himself? or how does a child (recovering in a hospital from injuries after mumbai terror attacks) protect himself?

Mr. Bachchan how about using your influence/stature to generate pressure on folks in New Delhi to bring about changes/improvements in Intelligence Gathering, security measures.

Terrorists strike Mumbai, India

There were a series of coordinated terror attacks today in Mumbai, India which claimed upwards of 70 lives. As of last reports police were still engaged in gun battle at Taj Mahal Hotel and Oberoi Hotel. (more at BBC, CNN)

(The following cross posted from mibazaar.com)
Here's a quick mashup I put together of Twitter Tweets as it relates to Mumbai Terror Attacks along with Google Maps + YouTube video. It shows on Google Maps where in the world people are twittering on Mumbai Terror Attacks. It also shows the latest YouTube videos.

Thanksgiving Buffet at Indian Restaurants

Feel like having some desi food during Thanksgiving, then try out some of these Indian Restaurants.

1. India Spice
On Thursday November 27th from 12 Noon to 9 PM. Call 248-381-5449 for details and reservations. (Adults 10.99 and Kids 5.99). India Spice is located at 30701 W. 12 Mile Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48334.

2. Madras Masala
Another excellent restaurant to visit on Thanksgiving Day or any other day. They are located at 328 Maynard Street, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Tel: 734.222.9006

3. Priya Indian Cuisine.
You might also want to try out Priya located at 36600 Grand River Ave., Farmington Hills, MI 48334. (Ph: (248) 615-7700).

There are other quality restarants you might want to check out at mibazaar.

Let us know if there are other restaurants which you feel the community needs to know about.

Pittsburgh Pirates outsourced to India (Sort of!!)

Guess what, Indians will be playing for Pittsburgh Pirates, no I am not talking about Cleveland Indians. I am talking about Indians from India.

Meet Rinku Singh and Dinesh Patel, both 20 years old pitchers from India. Quoting Yahoo Sports

Both are your newest trailblazers in the world of American baseball.

Earlier this year, an American talent company held a pitching contest in India because it believed the country's 1.1 billion was a vast and untapped talent resource. Singh and Patel topped the 30,000 Indians who tried out and have been working with USC pitching coach Tom House ever since.

So what do you think. Will this move end Pirates losing season?

Narayana Murthy - "Bill Gates" of Asia to visit Metro Detroit

Mr. Narayana Murthy - is the founder of Infosys Technologies Limited, a global information technology consulting and software services provider, headquartered in Bangalore, India. His entrepreneurial spirit and determination has resulted in tremendous cost savings for companies across Europe and the United States, and his business endeavors are also credited with helping lift India out of poverty.

A luncheon honoring Mr. Narayana Murthy is being cosponsored by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE) and will be held at 12:00 noon on Friday, December 12 at the Troy Marriott. The cost for the luncheon is $40, and registrations can be made online. For more information go to www.sba.oakland.edu/ce and click on Mr. Murthy Honorary Degree Luncheon under upcoming events, or call Oakland University SBA at 248-370-3177.

You can also email at: sba-ce@lists.oakland.edu for the registration links and directions.

Twitter anyone?

Twitwhat????

Yes, that is exactly the reaction I get from most people when I ask "do you Twitter?" So what is twitter and why should you twitter?

The what:

We all know the popularity of social media websites such as Facebook and Myspace. Teenagers and youths "network" with friends predominantly on these sites. www.twitter.com is another such site. There are many more, but this is a fun one to start with.

The why:

These sites (also known as Web 2.0 sites) are no longer just for teenagers. Businesses and career professionals are leveraging the power of these sites to communicate, network, and basically gain visibility. So you should twitter so that you can create visibility for you, your company, your pet projects, etc. etc.

Beware:
Employers are monitoring social networking sites so be very careful about what you post and how you word it. If you are a business owner, again be careful so that you don't alienate potential clients. I know during the elections that I got turned off by many who posted very opinionated content on twitter, they are no longer people I follow.

The how:

Here are three simple steps (with tips) on how to get started:

1. Visit www.twitter.com and create your profile (Tip 1: It's always good to create an ID that will generate visibility for you. So rather than creating a random username, see if you can find one that will brand you).
   
   
2. Send an invite to a friend or associate to ask them to follow you. (Tip 2: This will give you your 1st few followers. Then you can see who they are following or who their followers are)
   
   
3. Once you add a few people, it will become easy for you to find others who you can begin following. (Tip 3: Try to follow people who will also follow you. I believe networking should be a 2 way street.)
   
   
4. Now begin posting messages that give people a glimpse of who you are or what you do (Tip 4: Focus on networking, not selling. Yes, there's a fine line. The ones who post good content are the ones who get good followers).

Finally, Tip 5: Can't find a friend who is on twitter.com yet? Begin by posting a message to @mibazaar & @jenesysgroup and we'll add you. Then you can check out who we follow and add more. That should get you started...As of 10 minutes ago, I'm holding steady at 99 followers so you can be the next one to make it 100 followers for me.

And no, Twitter doesn't pay me to promote them. Catch you all again soon....with something else that is interesting for me to talk and you to hopefully read.

Indian Navy Sinks Pirate Ship - GO Indian Navy!

I just got back from a meeting and absently turned the television on and the first thing I hear is "Indian navy sinks pirate ship". I did a double take but the news reporter on Fox had just moved on to another topic. I quickly got online to see what the heck they were talking about and sure enough, I found out that the Indian navy has destroyed a pirate "mother ship" in the Gulf of Aden.

This link gives all the details: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article5186821.ece

39 ships have been hijacked in the Gulf of Aden just this year and 9 in this past week alone.

All I can say is GO Indian Navy!

General Motors YouTube Plea

General Motors takes to YouTube to make its case for a bailout. Looks like they might have to wait after January 20th, 2009.

So what do you think? If Michigan had voted for republicans for last couple of elections would the bailout have come easily for the automakers?

Amma in Michigan

Amma (Mata Amritanandamayi Devi), an Indian spiritual leader revered as a saint by her followers, who also know her as "Amma", "Ammachi" or "Mother" will be in Michigan as part of her 2008 North American Tour from November 30th thru December 4th, 2008.

Amma will be at Hyatt Regency Dearborn, 600 Town Center Drive, Dearborn, Michigan 48126-2793 (Tel: 313.593.1234).

Please visit amma.org for more details.

Motrin faces a backlash from Moms

(cross posted from mibazaar.com)

Motrin came out with a ad targeting babywearing moms with something like "We feel your pain". This did not go well with Moms. Makes you wonder who they consulted before coming up with this ad.

Moms are angry with MOTRIN and they have taken to Twitter and YouTube to express their displeasure. Result: As of this writing Motrin's website was down. They might be taking their ad down.

I quickly put together a page which shows "Mom/Motrin Chatter" on Twitter. In addition I pull in videos related to "Motrin Moms" from YouTube. All this is shown on Google Maps.

Now Motrin is "Feeling the Pain"

Track Flu Trends for Michigan

(cross posted from mibazaar.com)
Google launches "Flu Trends", which will provide up-to-date flu-related activity estimate for all 50 states in the U.S. Quoting from Google Blog

Our team found that certain aggregated search queries tend to be very common during flu season each year. We compared these aggregated queries against data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and we found that there's a very close relationship between the frequency of these search queries and the number of people who are experiencing flu-like symptoms each week. As a result, if we tally each day's flu-related search queries, we can estimate how many people have a flu-like illness

(Information first found at: http://bit.ly/XTyX)

Vagree.com - a brand new website

Meet Vikas Gupta, originally from Chandigarh, India and now living in Windsor, Canada. He is a talented software developer. During evenings and weekends he is busy maintaining and enhancing his website - "Vagree.com" which he has just launched.

What is Vagree.com? From vagree.com website:

VAgree provides a platform on internet where people in local communities can interact with each other for reasons like buying/selling goods, sharing view and ideas, personals etc. and say yes "We Agree". VAgree is currently available in USA and Canada.

Michigan India Chamber of Commerce - Meeting on 11/12/2008

Michigan India Chamber of Commerce's monthly meeting is scheduled for Wednesday November 12th, 2008 from 5.30 pm to 8 pm at 39577 Woodward Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI.

The featured speaker at the meeting is Randall Dence, an M&A expert with more than 20years of experience of working with start-ups and established companies.

Register for this meeting by visiting http://miicc.com/event_register.php or call Nipa at 248-470-6299 or send email to nipa@jenesysgroup.com.

The Shanti Project invites you to "Parivaar"

This is back to back post on Domestic Violence Seminars taking place in our area. This after couple of deadly incidents associated with domestic violence in the Indian community (one in California and the other here in Novi, Michigan).

Shanti Project of University of Michigan School of Social Works will be hosting "Parivaar" on November 22nd, 2008 from 3:30-8:00 PM at Southfield Parks & Recreation, 26000 Evergreen Rd., Southfield, MI 48076.

From their event flyer

A Celebration of Pride, Prevention & Peace.

Celebrate the pride we feel in preventing domestic violence and the joy we feel as pioneers in promoting prevention and peace.

Speakers at this event are:
Sen. Hanson Clarke
Mumtaz Haque
Smt Sharada Kumar

Other fun Activities:
- Theater Play
- Garba/Raas
- Door Prizes
- Shanti Talk – fun game

RSVP before November 19, 2008 by calling 1-888-4SHANTI emailing shantiproject@umich.edu

Domestic Violence Seminar

Michigan India Chamber of Commerce is hosting a seminar on Domestic Violence on Tuesday November 18th, 2008 from 5.00 PM - 8.00 PM at Dykema Gossett Law Firm (Merrill Lynch Building), 39577 Woodward Avenue, Bloomfield Hills, MI.

This seminar will provide employers with strategies for implementing a program on workplace violence prevention and will offer solutions for responding to domestic violence and offering assistance to employees.

The speakers include:
Cheryl Rogers, JD - MI Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence (MCADSV)
Yolanda Royall - Verizon Wireless

To register please visit miicc.com or call 248-470-6299

Host of Indian Radio personalities to appear together on Stage - November 15th, 2008

Musical Charity Event - "The Musical Odyssey" which is scheduled for November 15th, 2008 at the Seaholm High School Auditorium in Birmingham will feature leading Indian Radio Hosts from Michigan.

Rajiv Sanghvi - host/producer of Swar Bahar (heard every Sunday from 11 AM - 12 noon on WNZK 690 AM) will appear on stage along with Amin Sayani of Michigan Indian Radio - Dr. Subhash Kelkar. Subhash Kelkar is host/producer of Geetanjali (heard every Saturday from 9 AM - 10 AM on WPON 1460 AM).

Along with Rajiv Sanghvi and Subhash Kelkar the community will get to witness legendary Michigan Indian Radio Host - Narendra Sheth. Narendra Sheth is host/producer of Geetmala (heard every Saturday from 11 AM - 1 PM on WPON 690 AM).

Musical Odyssey is a program of old melodious and new Bollywood songs. This event will include a multi-media live musical program with 15 singers and 30 musicians of International Repute including the Plymouth Symphony Orchestra.

This event is supported by Michigan Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (MAPI). The Funds raised from this event will support MAPI charitable medical clinics.

Check out more details at detroitindia.com.

Live 2008 Elections Results

Folks at Google have come up with a Google Election Results widget which can be embedded in your website or Blog. Click here to get the widget. For a timetable of expected results check out GoogleMapsMania. Here's what it looks like:

KILX TV 10 - Lansing, MI

Going through my website Traffic stats I noticed that there were quite a few TV Stations which have embedded my Obama, Mccain, Biden and Palin Journey of Life maps on Google Maps. One of the TV station is from Lansing, MI - KILX TV 10.

Here are some of the other TV Stations which have embedded my Presidential Journey Maps:

• WRDW.COM - Augusta, GA
• NBC - Madison, Wisconsin
• WOWT (NBC) - Omaha, NE
• KXII Sherman,TX and Ardmore, OK
• KONLNKGIN - Lincoln and Grand Island, NE
• KBTX - TV Brian, TX
• Charlottesvillenewsplex - Charlottesville, VA
• WSAW - Wasau, WI
• WLTV - TV Knoxville, TN
• WNDU - South Bend, IN
• WHSV - Harrsonburg, VA
• ABC - Winchester, VA
• WTAP - Parkersburg, WV