Wednesday, September 14, 2005

DNA launches website - Me like

I am gradually beginniong to like DNA more and more, and after they launched their website today - www.dnaindia.com - I have become even more impressed. This is a surprising clean website, DNA has obviously hired people who know the value of good layout, not just in the newspaper but also on the web. For bad layout, all you need to see are the websites of The Economic Times, The Times of India and The Hindustan Times. The Bennett and Coleman sites might be awful, but then again they're run by the people at Indiatimes, who are doing the Enron-esque thing of reporting the value of the purchases on their website as revenues, not commissions and whose design philosophy basically consists of making font sizes as small of humanly possible. I wonder what their actual profits are, or did that get eaten up by the CEO's humoongous salary. The HT site is firstly paid for premium content (whatever that is) and secondly extremely heavy, I mean so heavy that even if you have broadband the homepage takes five minutes to load and then they are full of shady 'Party Poker' and 'Cheap India Calls' ads all over. The DNA website is not as classy as those of The New York Times which uses javascript brilliantly or that of The Guardian, which might also go in for an update after the broadsheet paper became a Mumbai Mirror sized thing. Talking of which, I wonder whatever became of DNA's plan of also having a 'compact' format paper? I am beginning to slowly vacillate towards DNA, I like the layout, I like the emphasis on national news, and now I like the website. If only their stories were a bit better, other than the entertainment section that is where they kick Bombay Times' ass.
BTW, on another note, I have been facing a slightly complicated issue. How do you tell a woman that she has a BO problem? I mean, someone you might work with or a friend. Say, if a guy friend had issues you could buy him an AXE deo if you were feeling nice or just ignore him or if you can't do that tell the guy, but with women what do you do? I mean buying a deo is a bit direct and can be deemed 'insulting' but not saying anything could be life-threatening (or nose-theatening at the very least). Advice?
And on the spat at SSC which consumed thousands of bytes of server space at Blogspot, there is a blog, ostensibly written by a person claiming to be Samuel Scott Allnutt. Which is fine and dandy until you realise that Rev. Allnutt died over a century ago and is buried behind the chapel. So it might be by someone in college, but not me for sure. This blog has a lot of the stories that papers came out with during and after the crisis, but it missed this gem by Swapan Dasgupta in DNA. For the time being at least!
Here are some interesting snippets from all over the interweb...
European beauty products made from the skin of dead Chinese prisoners. What the....
Microsoft launches 'Max' their new photo organiser, Flickr's got competition.
Mithunda - the man, the legend, the religion!
There is this really cool fashion photographer called Napoleon Habeica, and he does the photoshoots for American Apparel, a all-American brand to combat evil Chinese and Indian textile exports (aka banking on old fashioned US xenophobia - but can you really compete withb Wal*Mart's super-duper low prices). Anyway, the point is, American Apparel opened its first store outside the US in Mexico City and these are some of the outtakes from the shoot for the Mexico store. All I can say is whoa!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, the premise of American Apparel is "no sweatshop labour" and decent working conditions and pay. There is pride in producing locally, but most of the workers in their Los Angeles workshops are Mexican, South American and East Asian immigrants anyway. I don't think they've ever said that they want to combat evil Indian and Chinese imports.

Personally, I don't think they are interesting design-wise, and have the same kind of bland mediocrity that brands like Abercrombie and Fitch and Gap have.

As for BO, hard to break this kind of thing gently. Perhaps you can make a big fuss about being bothered by stink in the office and sniff around pretending to find the cause? She just might get the hint :)

K said...

See I'm completely out of the fashion loop. :-)
About sniffing and getting the hint, it doesn't work. There was this one girl I knew (notice, I use the past tense) who had (and I believe still has) bad BO. I mean - the old stinky socks filled with puke sort of BO, and despite the following hints - switching off car A/C in desperation to breathe Delhi's hot suspended particulate matter filled air in summer, running away from her whenever she came within ten feet of me, sniffing strangely whenever she was in the space space and many hints of upturned sniffing noses (which got the remark - you have a bad cold) I told her one day to well, use deo. And well, I haven't been spoken to since. Not that I mind that, but working with someone who has a problem is worse, but then again taking a Mumbai suburban train with your nose stuffed up someone's armpit. Ugh!
India is still a virgin market for deo sprays.

Anonymous said...

nice, cozy place you got here :)..

Anonymous said...

he just did my band's photos- myspace.com/client.... i totally fell for him. he is so fantastic....