Entries from January 2006 ↓

My brother in law wanted to find out about a legal advisor today. He only had their address and the names of two lawyers in the organization. He asked me if I could find out their phone numbers.

This firm is at Free Press House, Nariman Point and I will be going there this evening. So I thought I will go personally and check. But then, it would be too late and the offices may be closed. So I could send my office boy to go and find out!

Then I thought I could use the “2888 8888″ service to find out! So I called them up. Now they are a phone based information provider. They can provide phone numbers of only organizations they have in their database. They did not know anything about the people I wanted to find out.

Next, I checked up MTNL website. They have an online directory service to find phone numbers. None of the queries I made produce any results. I don’t know if they even have this service working!

So I called up MTNL telephonic service that finds out numbers for you. (call 197). The call center executive was very courteous and willing to help. She actually did many permutations to find the numbers. But alas, nothing worked.

She then gave me the numbers of Ask Me services (2411 1111), so I called them up. They did not have the details either. But they could provide me the phone numbers of 3 other lawyer firms in the same area.

So I called up those three firms to find out if they know any one of the lawyers I was looking for. The receptionists were a bit apprehensive of talking to a stranger who was asking not for their services, but a competitor’s! Nonetheless, they did do their best.

Dad suggested looking up the printed Yellow Pages next. So he started searching in there. He looked up one name, but then got tired of flipping through the yellow pages.

Then I thought I should look up the websites of the yellow pages and search there. So I did. But then, I thought let me try Google! I was not expecting the law firm to have a website or to find anything online.

But I was proved wrong! And I was happy about it! I searched for the address of the firm and it landed me straight to a page not only with the full address, but also phone numbers and the details about the company - including the bio’s of the partners! Superb!

Martindale.com is the website I found their info from. I spent some time on the site after getting the info, and found it very interesting!

Next time you are looking for a lawyer, you know where to go!

Vinay setup Drupal on OpenCerti website. There is no content on it yet, but it’s great to have the site up.

We welcome your comments and content on the site.

Mahatma Gandhi was a great leader. His leadership style and principles still inspire people around the world.

Gandhiji said:

Eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind.

And Einstein said:

Future generations will only hardly believe that someone like him was born and walked the earth.

You can learn more about Mahatma Gandi on Answers.com or get a wealth of audio/video/text/photos on the Gandi Serve website.

Mark Shuttleworth spoke at the Mumbai LUG yesterday. The event was attended by around 60 people. Mark was late due to traffic but he spoke well about Ubuntu, community building and his experiences of India. The question a lot of people wanted to ask: “How do you manage to send out so many free CDs?” was aptly answered when Mark remarked at the end: “(cause) I can afford it!”

But Mark is really an inspiring person. I was moved by how he spoke, answered the questions, and achieved so much at this age. I wish he could speak more and there was more time for interaction.

And yes, people ran to grab the Ubuntu CDs!

The pictures will be available on the LUG site soon!

I am participating in the “Self Expression and Leadership Program” (SELP) of Landmark Education these days.

The experience so far is - well, different! In the Landmark Forum and Advanced Course, you learn a lot of things. You complete with people, you create possibilities for yourself. Both the courses are fast and power packed. The leader drives the course.

SELP is different. The course structure is different. There is a community project that each participant does, a group and a coach, and then the course leader. There are weekly classes, and things get very demanding! A lot of people say that SELP is difficult and very confronting.

I agree. And I strongly believe that’s the design of the course. That is what takes us to a higher level. The design of the course creates leaders.

My community project is OpenCerti. It’s a community driven certification for PHP. Most of the discussion and material about the project is on my blog. I invite you to contribute! Everybody can contribute!

More later…