Sify: Nothing exclusive about it! January 12, 2007
Posted by Rahul Razdan in Media & Entertainment.2 comments
In the last two weeks when The Hanging of Saddam Hussain posts (here & here) were attracting all kinds of search engines, many of which (as I mentioned earlier) I didn’t even know existed, there was one search service which I did identify — Sify Search. However, what astounded me was the ‘Sify Exclusive’ label next to each search result.
Obviously there was nothing (Sify) exclusve about these results, since in any case Sify Search is “enhanced by Google”! This is reminiscent of a trend in mainstream media where every news house claimed ‘exclusivity’ even for interviews and stories being simulcast all over, perhaps only with different camera angles!
Cricket ‘predictions’ that came true January 7, 2007
Posted by Rahul Razdan in Sports.5 comments
Ok these are not predictions in the ‘astrological’ sense of the word. These are statements (or my memory of them) made by cricket commentators/writers in the last few years. Disclaimer: These are not ad-verbatim.
Sunil Gavaskar on Pakistan winning the 1992 World Cup:
This is one of those rare occassions when Sunil Gavaskar stuck his neck out, and got it right when he backed Pakistan during the 1992 World Cup, even though Pakistan got off to a bad start.
Dileep Sardesai on VVS Laxman before the 1999 tour of Australia:
Sardesai said that ‘…Laxman (is) as good as the big-three…‘! The big three being — Sachin Tendulkar, Saurab Ganguly and Rahul Dravid. This was the series where Laxman regained some pride for India with a masterful 167 in the last test at Sydney, which India lost (India lost the series too 0-3). Soon after that series Laxman made it the big-four!
David Gower on Saurav Ganguly before the 1999 World Cup:
‘…The player to watch from India is Saurav Ganguly…‘ This when we in India expected Sachin Tendulkar to be one and only name that should’ve cropped up for this. And Ganguly was the second highest run getter for India in the tournament — and hit that 183 in a (then) record-breaking partnership with Rahul Dravid against Sri Lanka at Taunton!
Ravi Shastri as a television commentator on India’s disastrous New Zealand tour of 2003:
After India, batting first, got out for 99 in the 2nd test at Hamilton. ‘…The crucial thing is India has got those runs, while New Zealand is yet to get them…‘ And then NZ got bowled out for 94 runs — Zaheer Khan taking 5 wickets for 29! (However, India still lost the match!)
The hanging of Saddam Hussain & the madness after January 6, 2007
Posted by Rahul Razdan in Media & Entertainment, Zeitgeist.2 comments
I had once mentioned what kind of video clips make it to the viral-able grade. That was in the context of sports events/incidents. I also believe the days of ‘World’s Most Amazing Videos‘ genre of programming are over on TV. YouTube and other video-sharing sites completely own this genre now.
Similarly, while ‘breaking news’ is still most dramatic on TV, the reference / search and archival possibilties ensure a much longer life for these videos on the Internet.
There is a popular post which compiled a list of the top ‘Viral video moments of 2006‘. However even as that list was doing the rounds — the biggest such event happened — the hanging of Saddam Hussain.
It was against this backdrop, and being a faithfully-in-love-with-the Internet person, that I was checking out YouTube on the morning of January 1. And that’s when I made the observation about 18 17 of the top 20 ‘most viewed’ YouTube videos on that day being of Saddam Hussain’s hanging. Somehow I wasn’t comfortable linking the actual videos here.
And then two days later when I logged in to my WordPress dashboard I did a double-take with disbelief!
My daily visit count was just going through the roof. The previous best ever was 348, the day Amit Agarwal had tipped DesiPundit about the Maxim magazine post of mine.
This was because the top result on Google for “hanging of Saddam Hussain” was my post! (That has since been moved out owing to Google’s strange batch-indexing policy. It should be back soon.)
Here are the Yahoo! screen shots (till I get the Google screen shot which Nigel took for posterity :-))
People were getting referred from search-engines I never even knew existed…
The search words that were taking people to this site went something like this…
My post stats looked like this:
And then based on this traffic, WordPress started featuring me in their ‘Blog of The Day’ lists… The highest I reached was No.2 (click to see full image)
I wanted to write this post two days back, but was waiting for the deluge to ebb a little. Sadly, I still don’t have a point of view on this issue yet.
Incidentally there was no visible increase in the list of spam messages, thus proving that the sheer magnitude of organic activities far out-strips the dogged efforts by spammers!
The hanging of Saddam Hussain January 1, 2007
Posted by Rahul Razdan in Politics, Zeitgeist.31 comments
Today morning on YouTube — 18 of the 20 most viewed videos were about of the hanging of Saddam Hussain.
My stance on this is still a work-in-progress.
However I do have a couple of thoughts.
It is a poor-poor defence when Americans say, “It was their (incumbent Iraqis’) decision to hang him. We had nothing to do with it.” Yeah sure buddy, we believe you as much now as when you told the world that Iraq was sitting on a tranche-load of Weapons of Mass Destructions! And if going against the grain of incredulity, I were to believe you on WMDs — idiots you killed the only man who could have told you where they were hidden!!
This is the third such political execution I have seen.
The first was that of former Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, who was executed by a shooting squad after a hasty trial in 1989. That was the Christmas on 1989. BBC says:
Two days after the death of Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, Elena, video pictures of their summary trial and execution were shown on television in Romania and around the world.
The images of their dead bodies, riddled with bullets, were broadcast and much of the unrest which continued after their deaths subsided.
The second was that of former Afghanistan President Dr. Najibullah who was publicly hanged by the Taliban in 1996 and whose body was left hanging in the open for a few days. The newspaper pictures of those hanging bodies are graphically imprinted on my mind. Especially since in India we were used to seeing him as guest of the State. In fact the rest of his family had taken shelter in India after the Taliban captured power in Afghanistan in 1996.
Somehow this time around I feel a sense of apathy seeing the visuals. Perhaps the earlier pictures where a fugitive Saddam was shown being pulled out of his hideout, had somehow prepared me for the things to come.
This gruesome link on BBC throws some light on this issue:
Releasing the normally gruesome pictures of dead leaders is a powerful gesture. It has often been used in the past to mark the end of an era.
Hmm…
