google

Google, you can do better..

Last week, I was trying to look up old posts to link to something I was writing.

Three for three, the Google ads on the right sidebar were something like this.. 

My first thought was "hey, don't I know the woman in the top picture? have seen her somewhere before!"

Then realized that it is exactly the same ad where I had seen her before. the mind is a funny thing. It makes these associations.

Yes. I agree. There IS a "sweet Asian Woman I should be with" and she has a name already.. Sangeetha! 

If Google was smart enough, it would have figured it out. 

On the bright side, they have figured out the right demographic based on my travel habits.  For a good six months they were showing ads for the "sweet Russian woman I should be with". Sooner or later they will zero in on "Indian woman I should be with", then figure out I am already with a sweet woman and finally pitch me something else. Or so one hopes.. 

For crying out loud, there are very few things that are interesting to me right now Google. My life is an open blog!

Work, Home and Bikram Yoga

If it is work, pitch me things that will make travel a breeze (doesn't have to be sweet Asian women.. that is taking it to an extreme)

If it is home, it has to be "back to school" related.. pitch me something that I will be tempted to buy for the kids or for myself, which is restricted to food and photography (don't bother with the Nikon ads either. You should have figured out that I am too deeply invested in Canon to move now after 25 years). As for buying things for the "sweet girl", she would rather buy it herself. So you have to work a little harder and pitch me those things based on what she is checking out online. A little help there would be nice!

If it is Yoga, then you know what you can pitch.

It IS really that simple!

The Android newbie..

Have been a bit on the busy side the last couple of days. One main reason is that my company gave me a brand new phone. It is a phone new to the company as well and I have volunteered to be the Guinea pig on this one..

After getting so many complaints from me about poor AT&T service on my iPhone (note we live in Cupertino, the birthplace of apple but the iPhone has the worst signal coverage with AT&T in this area as the locals have banned the cell phone towers around us as it will be an eyesore on the mountain skyline!) switched me over to Sprint. Also this happens to be an android phone.

Right now there are 4 bars on the phone and the phone works as a phone very well. (Duh?)

It took me two days to figure out the menus, the look and feel of the phone as well as andoid quirks. Have almost made the menus and screens look identical to what was on my iPhone! We are creatures of habit and the fingers automatically to to a certain spot on the phone to check calendar, mail or make a phone call... so now we have an Android phone with 4 rows of 4 apps which look 1:1 like the iPhone screen.

The kids helped me find their stuff too and it is all in there on the second and third screen..

Only issues so far?

No way to see Tamil Fonts. People write stuff in Tamil in emails sent to me, google+ etc and all I get is a bunch of rectangles. Don't know if there is an easy way to support complex fonts or the Android guys simply havent provided support for Tamil fonts yet..

The iPhone was showing Tamil fonts fine. It just didn't work well as a phone...

Also this thing has two cameras, one on the front as well and should enable video chat! Except the gtalk has no videochat enabled on this. So we have to download some other app to do this and sign into google through that app. Do not know how safe that is. So if you have figured out a way to do gtalk with video on a Photon 4G, let me know as well.

Thanks in advance.

Also, many thanks to all of you who gave us tips on the whole birth certificate thing. Really really helpful. Much appreciated!

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