Anjali's video chat with her Chitappa

Here's a recording Arjun made of a happy video chat session. Anjali loves the song (she knows it well by now) and usually dances to it.

Things are generally good at our end. Anjali is having some difficulty adjusting to her days at the daycare but we hope she will be comfortable soon.

Till later!

The best things in life are free

This post doesn't really have anything to do with the song by Luther Vandross and Janet Jackson but I just realized that song is 16 years old, ouch! Guess I'm not that young anymore :)

Anyway, on to WSJ.com. I really enjoy reading the Wall Street Journal at my work, and I realize that not everyone wants to pay their hefty subscription fee even if their articles are top notch. Well, the good news is that there is plenty of content online at WSJ.com that is available to everyone. For instance, I think all of their blogs are free. Here are a few that I enjoy -

Developments - Headlines from the Real Estate market, always a topic of interest.

The Juggle - Topics of interest for parents who "juggle" challenges in their families everyday. Usually spot-on with many of the challenges discussed.

Marketbeat - Notes from daily market events. Quite useful to follow if you don't obsessively track stocks but would still like to keep track of major events in the markets.

There's many more that are all free. When I'd like to check a blog regularly, I usually just add it to my list at Bloglines (use the beta!), follow it for a week or two and then decide if I'm going to keep the feed. Try it.

Introducing Chumby

A Chumby is one of the emerging class of internet connected devices that can be used around the home. It can be thought of as a cross between a small digital photoframe, alarm clock and low-power computer. This particular device is easy to develop for and thus has a mushrooming collection of widgets available to all users.

Arjun and I got one of these as a gift for my parents for their anniversary. Now they can keep up with blog posts and photos on flickr without having to switch on their computer. (If I got the Gmail widget to work, they could check email too!)

Anyway, the device has no persistent memory, which means it loads everything it needs from the internet when it powers on. I have created a virtual Chumby that is a clone of my parents' Chumby.

Check it out.

Playtime with Anjali

Sorry about the quality, this is from my cellphone!

Another cool Sony ad

Sony does it again. Love it.

I wanted to place the video inline but it screwed up the layout. Click on the link, I guarantee it's worth it! :)

I uploaded this copy so I could share!