June 22nd, 2009
Ideaz Team had stocks of fun in store this weekend. The team went for a river rafting tour hosted by VNA Resorts which is situated at Rishikesh-Badrinath highway, 25 kilometers drive from Rishikesh. It took almost 8 hours for the team to reach the promised destination. And the series of mundane incidents that happened on the way could not rib the vacation spirit of the team. The 2 days old trip turned out to be an awesome break for everyone from the hustle-bustles of city life.
Day1: Ideaz team reached VNA resort by around 3:30 PM. We were allotted in those bamboo- made cottages (but later shuffled to tent rooms again). Post lunch, everyone rushed off and took a plunge into the Ganga, which was such a heavenly relief from the scorching heat. Loads and lots of muddy, dirty, cheesy and chasing affairs went on among the team members besides the sun-kissed beach of the Ganga and the evening transcended like that.
The next event for the evening was flying fox in which every one took part.However, the excitement in the making for the evening was something else. We could not wait to chill the breezer and beer cans and went down at the beach.
Far from the madding crowd, with the stars twinkling in the sky and the splashing waves of the Ganga murmuring beside, it was a perfect night at the beach. What’s more! We had stocks of beer to company the entire night. And the last can of beer was gulped down by around 1:30 A.M. Everyone almost dozed off at the beach because of the beer-effect (not buffalo effect) and it was almost 2:30 when we all had to head for our tents in a yawning state.
Day 2: Rock climbing was the first event of the day. Post rock climbing, yummy breakfast was served after which we got ready for rafting, the mega-event of the trip. We started rafting by around 9:30 A.M which went on till 2 P.M It was the second river rafting trip for Ideaz team, however, the thrill and excitement was still fresh and alive.
After rafting, we were ported back to the resort for lunch. Post lunch, half of the team headed towards the beach for another plunge in the river. By 4:00 P.M we bid adieu to the resort and headed off towards our cabs.
The return trip was more of looting the whole excitement and fun of the entire trip. Heavy and tedious traffic almost delayed our return journey for around 2 hours in Uttarakhand. It seemed as everyone’s good patience was badly tested. By the way, thanks to our creative director Gurpreet. If he had not asked some police men there about another route which heads for Delhi, then maybe we would not be able to upload this post yet. Gosh! Indian traffic is simply pathetic.
Well, the weekend getaway was more than a corporate retreat for Ideaz team. It was more of an excursion trip with friends. Ideaz team is back to work again. And almost all the creative professionals are greasing their minds behind the electronic boxes again.
By the way, who knows another weekend getaway trip is again in the making for Ideaz family. We will keep updating about what is happening here in this space. So stay tuned!
Tags: Ideaz team, river rafting, summer river rafting, weekend getaway | Posted by IZD Team in Scribbles | No Comments »
June 8th, 2009
Google has unveiled preview of the “Google Wave”. Google Wave is in designing state and it was a developer preview. Google wave is another product from Developed by brothers Lars and Jens Rasmussen and Stephanie Hannon the creator of Google Map.
According to the Lars “Wave is what email would look like if it were invented today”.
It is a combine form of Email and instant messaging with the sharing of images and a lot of other add-ons.
Main Features of Google Wave
Google wave is a HTML5 application. It has a left-hand sidebar “Navigation” and a list of your contacts, from your Google Contacts. As shown in the picture, main part of Google wave is your Google Wave inbox. This is almost looks similar to the Gmail inbox except it shows the faces of contacts who are involved in the various threads. There is also number indication if there is new content in that thread.
By clicking on any threads will open another section to the right of the inbox. This section will show the complete conversation in the threads. If they are re not online, you can send your reply just below their message as you do in the Gmail. In the Google Wave there is no bulky new message creator to pop open, you can simply start typing below the message. Google wave has a interesting feature too if you want to respond to a particular part of their message, you can do that too by starting to type below the part.
If you want to add another friend to the thread, you can do this by going over to your contact box and dragging his/her picture into the there. This is where things really start to get interesting. If that friend wants to get caught up on what everyone else in the wave has already been talking about, they can do so by using the “Playback” feature. This is sort of like rewinding the wave to see what has happened in the past and you can watch it progress through its changes.
But if two of the people involved in the wave are online at the same time, you can talk to each other in real time, all in the same wave. Simply start typing and your friend will see words as you enter them, and vice versa. This is the element that’s like instant messaging obviously, but the key is that it’s just a small part of what potentially makes up a wave conversation. And if you don’t like the idea of real-time communication where the other person can see what you are typing as you type, you can enter a “Draft” mode to hide your words until you’re ready to send them.
And say there is one person in a multi-person thread that you want to message privately. You can easily break-off a private conversation in the wave. Obviously, only you and the other recipient would be able to see this message, but for the both of you it would remain in the flow of the wave itself, keeping it in context.
And from here we go much deeper. Say you want to share some recent photos on Wave, if you have a browser with Gears installed, all you have to do is drag and drop the pictures right into the Wave window.
Google says it would like to see such functionality added to the HTML 5 standards because it really simplifies this type of sharing.
Google isn’t just thinking of Wave as another web app that it creates and you use on one site — it wants you to be able to use it across all sites on the web. Say, for example, you have a blog. As a post, you could share a wave with the public and allow others to see what you and the other people in your wave are doing. And these visitors to your blog could even join in as well right from your blog, and all the information would be placed right into the original wave.
