Remember the days when your mom would be all upset because the maid didn’t show up! Well, my fellow desis those days are over, we have babajob.com for reliable maids, chauffeurs, cooks!

Alright, this is still in the future for anywhere except Bangalore and even Bengaluru (this is the last time I am using this spelling) has limited listings and no referral comments from other users, but its a start!

You may ask, ‘Ramesh, using internet? He can’t even write his own name’. This is where you and me come in; baba’s of the house and yes the baby’s too! We create the profiles for them, and we get Rs. 200 for doing that if they are employed through babajob.com. As if we needed an incentive to help Ramesh or Vinod or Lalji whom we have seen growing up! For posting a job or to get the contact information of the person seeking job you pay Rs. 500, small one time cost if you can find a reliable cook, who speaks the language you do and cooks delicious vegetarian food in desi ghee.

Babajob.com is not only about finding maids, its essentially a job website for anyone who might need help finding a job but has no means or knowledge to be connected to the modern world of internet. What surprises me is it took an American to see the need of such a website. I really hope this startup survives the test of time as we are getting connected more and more!

Podcast of the interview with the co-founder Sean Blagsvedt..

While some follow football, some follow cricket and some Rachel Ray, I like to follow web startups, just because some of these applications are cool, anything creative gives me a kick like a bloody mary! These startups are created by 20 somethings, one by a 6th grader - {{{ bells }}} - another start of bubble!! No, I don’t think so, not so much volatile as last time because VCs have learnt from their mistakes but you never know… here is a video that got famous (over million views) last December before it was taken down because of a copyright infringement - it is now back online without the law breaking unsharable photograph (according to the photographer and her lawyer) used before!

Another wonder of web2.0 - ‘Jooce’ is a flash based online desktop for people who like to stay connected through the new religion of www. It’s very similar to ’stixy’ - but the way I look at it is, stixy is what windows is for an operating system, while jooce is more like a mac os.

Not that I am arguing if one is better than other, but jooce has its advantages - it offers msn, icq, yahoo and aim chat applications along with desktop sharing abilities that also stixy provides. And it also lets you upload youtube videos, music and media files and play them online. As for disadvantages (as compared to stixy) it does not offer a calendar/todo list and while it looks and feels like a desktop, well it really is a file sharing application at the core of all the cool graphic interface.

So get ready to load up your virtual hard-drive - I wonder how secure these applications will be in the long run!

For 2 years I was away from any sort of television.
Why? Because I am addicted to television.

I do have a tv now but no channel subscription.
Why? Because I will be addicted to TV shows.

But my addiction makes me search for other sources of webtv and no, I am not looking video sharing websites like youtube.com, heavy.com, blip.tv (actually this is not that bad) or million other websites with tons of illegally shared, low resolution, ad-poping video content.. I am looking for web2.0 apps that share videos legally with shows that you would watched on your tv!

Some time back I reviewed Joost as an option - I may have used it 4 times since then being the fact that it is a memory-hog, and while really cool, my 4 year old laptop can’t handle the vista type graphics interface it offers. So when I read about Hulu, I signed up for their beta and finally got an invite!

Review : It’s amazing!

Great video quality, no softwares to download, if you have a decent internet connection you get no issues with buffering and the selection of shows currently is well - I can see House, Scrubs, Simpsons, the Office and more…

It also lets me share the videos (you don’t need a hulu account to view it) -

Hulu earns money from ads played in between the video content, I don’t mind seeing a good quality ad, lets just say I watch Super-Bowl for the ads :)

Enjoy this episode from The Simpsons and sign up for the beta here :)

Remember the times when the four of us lived in a shabby two-bedroom apartment (it wasn’t too shabby!) - fully furnished, thanks to our rich seniors who left their furniture in the trash that they had acquired from the dumpster when they first moved in. TV that turned on/off with a remote, a remote that could have been any footwear resting next to you, routine haircuts standing in the bathtub!

If I didn’t learn anything else from the 2 years in North Carolina State University, I decided to master my hands at cutting hair with all the freeloaders who were willing to let me have all the experience needed - I imagined making a leaving out of it, if the tech industry decided to throw me out on the streets! Barbers have a steady set of income. Hair grows, and we need a hair-cut irrespective of how the market is doing. If you have a job you want to look decent by avoiding the extra hair riding on the back of your neck. If you lost your job you still get a hair-cut (when needed) to look nice on your next job interview.

Only person who was brave (at times stupid) enough to cut his own hair was our forth roommate, you-know-who, he mostly did a good job at that. I was reminded of you-know-who when I bumped across this step by step guide to cutting your own hair - if anyone decides to use it, do share a before & after picture!

And you thought I am going to teach you how to cut your own hair! How can I? I want my customers for the bad days, my bad days not their’s :)

Confession - I am addicted to television - I am going through rehab!

While I do have a TV, I have not subscribed to cable over the last 4 years (well off and on I had basic cable). While signing in for rehab they never mentioned the use of internet as a restriction. It had worked well!

Until Nihar (one on the scooter), showed me ‘Joost‘, after searching online I finally figured out how to get an invitation!

What is Joost?

It is what Web2.0 was set to define - a web platform for your online application - to watch TV - for free!

What channels can you surf?

National Geographic
MTV
Comedy central
These are the channels that got my attention, but they have a growing list of channels that you can tune in!

Who controls the remote?

One who gets to control the mouse.

How much?

Free is the keyword! No paying $40/month to Time warner! 12months and you can buy yourself a 42″ LCD from the money you save, hook it to your laptop using a VGA cable and experience the TV in high-def

Do you have invites?

Sure, leave your email address

Is Joost the only online TV network?

Well, not really but Joost is the only one I have used, there are more online - Beware! some have legal issues.

Is this the future of television? Well, who knows! It sure looks great from here :)

Do you feel fine? Your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings - whatever you type is getting tagged; is being watched. You are being interviewed every day of your life and you have no idea about it.

wefeelfine.org scans through millions of blogs worldwide to do just that. It searches for common emotions expressed in words (like feel, sad, happy, etc.) while studying what these emotions could mean in real world. If they are influenced by weather, by time of the day, by location and so on…. It is interesting to watch the creator Jonathan Harris demo this website and also unveil his new project, Universe.

As most of you know I hate talking on phones, but I love great applications and things that we get for FREE, don’t we all?

No, its not another i2p (internet 2 phone), i2i (internet 2 internet) kind of deal, its more like your phone to any phone!

yak4ever.com

Good news : through the club service (as they like to call it) you can call a number of countries around the world for free.
Bad news : India is missing in the list :(

I haven’t used it to confirm on the call quality (it takes about 24 hours to setup the account), but on signing up you are allowed to enter 10 extensions that you can dial to (those are the only 10 numbers you can dial for free). Once your account is active you dial a US number using your normal phone (usually free from cell phones) and one of the extensions to connect - as simple as that. I will update the post once my account is activated, while it does not work in India, I do have family & friends in other parts of the world :)

Do drop in a comment if you have used it already!

Edit to add : This service is also available for people in UK and Ireland, although the terms there seems a little more complicated than US.

When we were busy orkutting, myspacing, facebooking with friends - Geni.com comes up with a social networking site for family members.

It’s a website where you can create your family tree. Its simple, clean and fast. Took me 15 minutes to add 62 family members (and thats not even half my family). You can browse through the tree added further by others on your tree, invite family members, keep track of birthdays and anniversaries, send a group message - invite your family members to your wedding, if they are all technologically web based junkies - basically socialize online with your family.

While creating my family tree, I realized I know more about my friends than my own family members, its time I knew what they are upto :)

This is another wonders of Ajax, makes me really really want to learn this scripting language.