Demo

After a few hours of javascript hacking, this is what I came up with.

How it works

It will fetch random (Creative Commons Licensed) sideshows from slideshare.net using the API. The application uses the SlideShare.net API and Prototype/Scriptacluous to create some pretty visual effects. The SlideShare Karaoke Randomizer was used for the first time on 11th July at the Creative Commons Salon in San Francisco!

Here’s a great writeup for how to run your own PPT karaoke.
More info on SlideShare.net blog here and here

Download

The code has been released under the CC-GPL license at Google Code project hosting.

Download: Aksharabhyas (zip 605kb)

Screenshots

Its your chance to make a big impact by affecting lives of billions of people around the globe. Your idea, Google’s implementation.

Or is it that Google wants to fool people to give them their ideas so that it can get richer? Either ways, its good that someone’s thinking about the Earth.

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgSRwOZtDQ8

Youtube: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=pHO1JTNPPOU

Reminds me of one of the quotes in my hostel dorm:

Another day passed and you still haven’t done anything!

Although my place Bhubaneswar, is dry and safe, many of the surrounding areas have been submerged including the twin city of Cuttack which is on high alert as Hirakud Dam released more water.

You can find for more information about the status of relief work and floods through this portal.

Youtube: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=lpc-jGZkbAk

The following short story was forwarded to me by my friend Ameet.

A man once visited a temple under construction where he saw a sculptor making an idol of God. Suddenly he noticed a similar idol lying nearby. Surprised, he asked the sculptor, “Do you need two statues of the same idol?” “No,” said the sculptor without looking up, “We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.”

The gentleman examined the idol and found no apparent damage. “Where is the damage?” he asked. “There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.” said the sculptor, still busy with his work. “Where are you going to install the idol?” The sculptor replied that it would be installed on a pillar twenty feet high. “If the idol is that far, who is going to know that there is a scratch on the nose?” the gentleman asked.

The sculptor stopped his work, looked up at the gentleman, smiled and said, “I will know it.”

The desire to excel is exclusive of the fact whether someone else appreciates it or not. “Excellence” is a drive from inside, not outside. Excel at a task today - not necessarily for someone else to notice but for your own satisfaction and excellence.

Having said that, there are occasions (very frequent when you are in business, owning it or working for some one, either ways) when you have to let go of the excellence part. Reasons can be various.

• meeting a deadline
• to increase productivity (trade off with QoS)
• to be more efficient (in a diluted way, ofcourse)
• $$$ profits

The same person who strongly defends his principles, ideologies, thoughts while in college (where there are [relatively] less deadlines and lots of time),  tries to reach a compromise as he grows professionally.

So while I don’t think excellence and business are complimentary stuff, I feel the missing link here is “patience“.

Interestingly, the same guy won the 1st prize last year for his presentation Shift Happens. Both of his presentations have a similar theme, they talk about statistics with the motive of generating awareness (or an emotion of insecurity) in the viewer and are thought provoking, I am not too sure about the authenticity of the statistics they bear. Nevertheless the presentation style is awesome. I loved it.


SlideShare: http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/thirst

I wrote about one of the contesting presentations earlier. It stood second.

Youtube: http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=TQmz6Rbpnu0