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Sunday, December 21, 2014

Why I love Internet!

I keep reiterating that the major problem solver for me is internet. Any issue or a problem or a question that I face with, I first type it on Google for it to look up on the internet and my problem gets solved usually in the first click, and a few times in a few clicks. While it is amazing how Google finds out right link to the solution for me, it is amazing how people all over the world have already faced such a situation and patiently documented their problems and solutions. Indeed the most useful and amazing innovation!

- My mother messages me 'paap means sin, punya means?'; and I Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V on google on my mobile phone and I find the answer in the first link itself :) And I type the message back to my mother - all happens in 3 mins time.

- A Motorola phone of mine stopped working, it just doesn't switch on. I try my best to do something with the available buttons on the phone, I ask a colleague of mine. Then I type it on Google, the first link is a forum where people have discussed this problem and also have suggested solutions that have worked for them! I followed the most talked about solution and it worked in the first attempt!

- I was working normally when suddenly wherever my cursor goes, it would select everything I click. I didn't know what to do, I opened a new tab on my browser and just wrote 'cursor selects everything, and didn't have to even click and go to the respective page to get the answer - problem solved!

- Eggs in one form or the other are a part of our breakfast usually, till about some time back it was usually the boiled ones. We used to boil the eggs normally in a small steel vessel. I was tired of the same and looked up in Google if we can boil eggs in a pressure cooker, the answer was yes and its been 3 years or more I guess now that I boil eggs in a pressure cooker.

- My pet Bruno was unwell the other day with bad stomach. I knew there is a medicine at home in his first-aid kit, but the strip of tablets was torn and I could not see the name of the tablet to be sure that is the medicine I should give him. I could see the end portion 'dal' on the strip. I wrote on google images 'dog bad stomach dal', and I got the tablet strip images with the name 'dependal', the strips were exact match of what I had with me. I gave the medicine to my Bruno with confidence and he was alright the next morning!

- Most of us would have seen the last Google Search Ad, the famous 'jhajhariya' one. I had a similar experience. I had a colleague long time back, whom I completely lost touch with. I had made a lot of attempts of asking people, common friends and colleagues at various time periods about her whereabouts. Out of the blue one day I thought let me try Google. I typed her name alone, no luck. I typed her name+school+<place I knew she was in>, the school link came up with her name as some head there. I clicked and saw a picture of her's in an event group picture. I called up the school and through that I got her mobile number. I called her to find her astonished and saying 'tumne mujhe kaise dhoondhaaaaa!' - this was before the jhajhariya ad :) I found her after almost 8 years :)

- I had my in-laws come in and they were watching a programme on the television where some random guy rattled a long sentence claiming it was his own creation. I had heard it before and I knew it was not his creation, it was a meaningful dramatic dialogue that is made of the movie names of Amitabh Bachchan. I had a cassette of Amitabh Bachchan songs that started with this dialogue. I wanted to look up for the same because it was quite fascinating. I looked up randomly putting some names of movies as I recollected from the long dialogue, it took a few iterations but I did get it and felt really good :)

Long live internet, people who actively post content on the internet; and Google!
The few things that could make it even more powerful is translations (currently, they are not very accurate - I used many dictionaries English to English, English to Hindi to English, English to Telugu to English, Hindi to Telugu to Hindi, English to Gujarati to English - it is fascinating to use a dictionary, feels very knowledgeable and intellectual, but I very reluctantly now use Google); and identifying songs by the music when someone is humming (I found that there are a few websites for this for English music, I think it will be great to have this for Hindi music as well - going forward I guess it would be very useful).

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