I know it's still early days for the IPL and I shouldn't judge it prematurely, but somehow, after months of hype and hoopla, I had a shrewd (well, not so shrewd) instinct that the actual matches would be something of a let down. Understandly, the first couple of matches haven't really captured my imagination.

In my view, the IPL has some big disadvantages compared to the ICL which really drew me in despite the lack of official recognition, big names and sponsorship. And many people I've spoken to have expressed the same feelings, which leads me to believe that I'm not alone in my assessment.

Some factors counting against the IPL:

• Smells too much of money power and arrogance (read: Sharad Pawar and the BCCI). I know a lot of cricket fans might disagree, but that alone has been a big turn-off for me.
• Has the "me-too" factor stamped all over it. In spite of the IPL being the "official" league, everything about it feels phoney and duplicate. All right, it has the big names, but the teams seem to have been put together in a hotch-potch manner and there just doesn't seem to be a sense of harmony among the teams (which was apparent in the ICL).
• Many of the foriegn players in the IPL will be leaving for international duty after a while. This will definitely take the sheen off the league. In contrast, the ICL, being shunned by the cricketing world at large, definitely has the advantage of keeping its contracted players playing for the league over a period of time.
• Believe it or not, I actually believe that local players should be given more importance than the foriegn players. And the ICL actually promoted the local boys and helped them gain recognition. Names like Ali Mortaza, Stuart Binny, Rajagopal Sathish, Tejinder Singh and Syed Mohammed come to mind. On the other hand, the IPL seems focussed only on the big names - the likes of Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Mahendra Dhoni and so on.
• Last, but certainly not least, the media attention given to the IPL has made me sick of it already. That the ICL was widely ignored by most of the media has actually given it something of an advantage and allowed the promoters to focus exclusively on bringing out a quality product. On the other hand, I feel that the IPL promoters know that their product will sell anyway, so might not be too worried about the game itself.
• A minor gripe: the team names chosen by the promoters are horrible. Case in point: Mumbai Indians, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Kings XI Punjab?

I'm aware that all these are subjective issues, and I fully acknowledge that my opinions might be completely out of sync with reality, though.

I've been noticing a new trend with worry. A lot of web designers are optimizing their website to work with Firefox and ignoring every other browser out there. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but when websites start actively *recommending* Firefox for "best results", I'm getting worried. It reminds me of a few years ago when many websites would refuse to work properly with any browser other than Internet Explorer. Worse, when plugins and extensions refuse to install in Debian Iceweasel just because it's not called Firefox (Iceweasel is Firefox rebranded in Debian due to legal reasons) it starts getting a bit ridiculous.

Now I'm not a Firefox hater, but there are plenty of other browsers out there I could use, like Opera or even Konqueror on Linux. The lack of a 64-bit version of Opera is an impeding factor here, but given a choice I would use it instead of Firefox because it just is better in many ways. For instance its built-in RSS reader is miles ahead of Firefox's "Live Bookmarks" and its rendering engine is a tad faster. That's not the point though.

The point is that I am a big believer in open standards and I think no single web browser should control them. Microsoft did it with Internet Explorer after winning the browser war against Netscape, but now that Firefox is starting to dominate the browser scene, we should watch for the same problems.

There are specifically some issues I'm concerned about, like

• The assumption that all users are using Windows XP or higher.
• The reliance on non-standard browser features.
• The lack of cross-platform and multi-architecture (x86, AMD64 etc.) support for certain technologies.

I believe that no website should be optimized for viewing in any single browser, even if that browser is Firefox. I am a big believer in standards compliance on the web and more importantly, interoperability and platform independence. It doesn't matter whether a web browser is proprietary or Free software, so long as it complies with accepted standards.

It is my strong opinion that talent often goes unrecognized by the majority. I think the reason is that even to detect talent, you need a bit of it in the first place. Not a lot, but enough to understand the speciality of that talent. On the other hand, mediocrity recognizes and understands nothing beyond itself.

You see, I believe that each of us is born with something that we can do better than others. Sometimes, it takes a long time, hard work and painful effort even for the individual concerned to recognize and nourish it. For a few people, their special talent comes so naturally to them that they end up not valuing it enough. Rarely do you see child prodigies. In such cases, the whole world has no choice but to sit up and take notice.

I think the best organizations in the world are the ones which detect talent early and discipline it quickly. Microsoft of the early days is a prime example in the software world. The ability of Bill Gates and co. to pick up talent and mould it made them what they are today. But sadly, most software companies today lack this instinct. That is what comes out of cutting corners in HR management.

Like all areas of specialization, I think Human Resource management is a key discipline in any business. But if you check out the HR department of most software companies today, all you can see is a bunch of incompetent, inexperienced staff who sit around imagining that HR is just about recruitment, hiring, firing and paying salaries. It's not. HR goes far deeper than the day-to-day activities of man-management.

The main reason why there is a high rate of attrition in the software industry is the HR staff of organizations. Not only do they neglect talent, they actively discourage it because they cannot see beyond their own limitations. And even if they do, they are too insecure to give it its due reward.

A prime example of talent gone unnoticed is my brother who is an extremely talented OS programmer. Most companies he applied to rejected him because he did not have so-called "experience" in a job they consider as constituting valid experience. But today, he earns far more doing what he enjoys and does best than even top programmers do in the Indian software industry. It was the inability of these software companies to notice his talent that helped him find his true potential. If he had, by any chance, been recruited by any of the Indian software firms, I'm sure he would be wasting his potential, sitting in an office and churning out code that any trained monkey can churn out.

I just feel that the whole concept of PC is flawed because that it is extremely selective in application and only to certain issues or certain groups of people who are, for the lack of a better term, more powerfully offended by the usage of certain terms than others.

Take the example of the recent race row in India's Cricket tour to Australia. Harbhajan Singh was accused of calling Andrew Symonds a "monkey", which is supposedly a racist taunt (I wasn't even aware of this before the issue arose). Now how do you decide whether "monkey" is more offensive than say "bastard" which is a deadly insult in India where we hold family traditions sacred? Or how do we, as Indians, explain that "monkey" is a term of endearment used commonly to describe a naughty child and with no offensive intent? Yet, the other side hardly bothers to understand the cultural differences and prefers to wallow in indignant self-righteousness.

Another example of meaningless political correctness is using the term actor used in both masculine and feminine contexts. That's just a ridiculous practice adopted by the media. The funny thing about it is that even the same newspaper doesn't adopt this usage consistency and columnists frequently revert to the feminine form "actress."

Even though it's simply not in my nature to use crass or vulgar language, I feel that if every group of politically sensitive people start lobbying successfully to ban specific words or phrases, very soon dictionaries will shrink to half their size. And of course, Political Correctness will remain an exclusive weapon of the group with the largest voting power because they can and will impose their version on the others.

Let me just say I'll accept Political Correctness the day when you accept my list of offensive words/phrases/language usage in the same way that you want me to accept yours...

I've never been a big fan of Orkut-style social networking websites where you create user profiles, add friends and exchange messages. Somehow, I've not got into them. These social network sites, in spite of being so feature-rich and user-friendly are nothing more than glorified online contact lists. Yes, you collect a whole bunch of "friends", but what does that really achieve? A simple e-mail address book is a much better social network tool and much less clunky. After my initial burst with social networks, I've not found anything to draw me back to them. I hardly log into Orkut these days. Even the excitement of discovering my old school mates through such channels has died down. I feel that those sites are nothing more than self-centred networks. Your main focus is your own profile. And everything else centres around you. To me, at least, these self-centred networks don't have a great deal of attraction. My blog does a better job in that case.

Oh, I am aware that you can build discussion forums and communities around these social networking sites, but discussion communities are not unique to social networking. Discussion groups and online forums have existed in a far simpler form long before the whole "Web 2.0" phenomenon came into existence.

And then there are the link submission-style (social bookmarking) sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. Once again, I'm not a big user of those. Yes, they do help you get a link back but most of these links are worthless from an SEO point of view (unless your article gets to the front-page somehow). It's true that you might get a lot of traffic for a couple of days from such sites. But then again, it does nothing to promote real social interaction. Additionally you are bound by the likes and dislikes of those communities. I generally find that the communities who use social bookmarking are extremely unreceptive to topics other than technology (and to an extent politics). Thus they are useful to you only if you follow their trends and write about their kind of topics. Besides most of the visitors who come to read your website after clicking on such sites never return. Finally, to the best of my knowledge (and from what I've learned from others), the traffic from social bookmarking sites never generate much advertising revenue anyway. It's merely the internet equivalent of 15 minutes of fame.

I know a lot of you will disagree with this. In fact, I have no doubt that most people will have made better use of social networking and social bookmarking tools than I have and see them as very valuable online resources, but then this article is about how I see them. It seems to me that the whole social-networking thing is overhyped. I always follow my own path in this - most of my friends online are people who've been interacting with me regularly by e-mail for years and those who I've come to know over a period of time. I know I'm old fashioned