Actually this was meant for my twitter followers, But now its open to all my readers. I have Rs. 500 RangDe social lending coupon. Whoever answers this Bangalore quiz (easy) earliest with maximum number of correct answers will get this coupon. Using which you can lend somebody on RangDe. You will get the money + 2% interest once they pay back the loan and of course you will get some karma points.

Quiz:

1. Whats earlier version of M1A2 called? Ans:- Bangalore Torpedo
2. Is there a Gul Mohar Marg in Bangalore? Ans:- Yes. Inside IISc
3. Where in Bangalore you will find 3000 million year old rock ? Ans:- Inside lalbagh, the rock on which Kempegowda tower is built.
4. Which area of Bangalore first got electricity? Ans:- Cantonment
5. How much did Govt spend to construct Vidhana Soudha? Ans:- Rs 1.75 crore.
6. From where did the granite used to construct Vidhana Soudha came from? Ans:- Mostly from Mallasandra and Hessaraghatta
7. Before Independence Gandhi was asked to take rest in Bangalore, Where was it exactly? Ans:- Okay. It was both Kumara krupa road and Nandhi hills. I was expecting Nandhi Hills.

Go ahead answer them as comments. May be I will close it at 7pm?? closed.

Note: NO, this is not sponsored by RangDe. This one is out of my EB adsense money :)

Results: Raghava got it right second time. Congratulations. I will send a mail. Manoj and Fagun were very near. BTW where is that  city market building? Next time I will hide answers until I close the quiz that should make it more interesting.

Last Saturday of every month, we do group ride in Bangalore called critical mass ride. Critical mass is that minimum mass which will make others to notice our existence (Cyclists). Hundreds of cities around the world organize such rides to make or to educate citizens about the importance of cycling. Its mostly a fun ride around the city but also involves educating curious onlookers.

Even though we don’t have hundreds of cyclist like in other parts of the world. We still have decent crowd to attract the traffic. This week we rode from our regular starting point PTI to Freedom Park (old Jail).

I was happy to see how they have converted old jail into public community space. Its location makes it much more important to have such a place. May be few days from now we will have music or drama evenings like Lalbagh bands at open – air amphitheatre that can seat 300 people. There are art works on freedom wall, there is that old charming watch tower, etc. Kudos to BBMP they have done a great job until now. I hope they maintain it in the same way. Actually I didn’t have good camera and hence the lack of pictures. I will probably get more pictures next time I visit Freedom Park. Make sure you visit it too.

There are many Bangalore brands that I love. But today I want to write about two **lesser** known Bangalore brands. The reason I have emphasized **lesser** is because most of us know them as just big brands but not as Bangalore based brands.
Cafe Coffee Day
For a guy who drinks up to three Grande Lathes per day, its difficult to miss it. I have told the story of CCD to so many who doesn’t know about it. Today officially I am going to write about it. Cafe Coffee Day is a very good case study for any budding entrepreneur. Cafe Coffee Day launched its first cafe in 1996 on Brigade Road in Bangalore. Today they have over 800+ cafes including one each in Pakistan, Germany and two in Austria. Bangalore its home town has 100+ ccds spread all over. CCD became instant hit amongst south Indian coffee drinking youth, mainly because of its style and affordability. I like their 24×7 cafes on major high ways in and around Bangalore. I also like their new Coffee Day Square concept. You can find their first Square at their corporate office premises in Bangalore.
And yes it is owned by Siddartha son in law of SM Krishna. But that doesn’t take anything away from him. I am sure he is using all his J.M. Morgan Stanley experience to make it big.
Update: I just read this very interesting interview of Siddartha by Subroto Bagchi on Forbes India. It seems Siddartha worked along with his team in a CCD in Calcutta on 31st night. And then
Subroto: What was the biggest lesson for him in all this?
Siddartha: “I was simply amazed how indifferent people are to those who serve. Three rich women came, ordered their drinks, did not once look at me, and settled the cheque, did not care to tip me, but worse, did not say a ‘thank you’ before leaving for someplace else where revelry awaited them. It shocked me because it was New Year’s Eve. I thought people would be nice to others because they themselves were in such a joyous state of mind.” Read that interview at Forbes India.

Wildcraft
For trekkers or adventure sports lovers I don’t have give an introduction of wildcraft. I have been owning wildcraft bags since college days. Long time back I went to their Jayanagar branch to get a bag zipper repaired. The guy at the shop fixed the zipper for free with out asking any history. Obviously I was impressed. That is when I got to know that its a bangalore company. I dont know much about the company other than it was found by Dinesh who has engineering background. Its almost ten years old now. But I have been big fan of their bags (check last pic).

There are many other bangalore brands like MTR to Infosys which I like. But here I just wanted to speak about **lesser known bangalore** brands.

I just completed six years of blogging and surprisingly I realized it late. Off late I am not blogging that regularly. It doesn’t mean that I have lost interest or I don’t care. Blogging here is direct reflection of my mind and thinking. So its natural that I blog when I feel like sharing something and not to fill.
I agree with the way Matt of wordpress puts it
I used to think constantly about building an audience for my blog. But now my attitude is, If I’m not blogging for myself, it’s not worth it. So I don’t post once a day, only when it feels natural. Some people complain — they say, “Write more about WordPress; we don’t want to see photos of kids in Vietnam,” but I don’t really care. I really like posting photos of places I’ve been. For my 25th birthday last January, I published a list of 2009 goals on my blog. It included learning Spanish, learning how to cook, and posting 10,000 photos. The Spanish is going all right, but I’m failing the cooking one.
Its not that I am not worried about the readers or analytics. I keep looking at my Google Analytics account once a month at least. In fact the goal for me is to reach 1k rss readers by year end. Its just that its not the primary goal as it used to be before.

I will keep sharing my life, photographs, travelogues and technology notes as long as you read and I feel like. Thanks for subscribing to my RSS feed :)
And a very Happy Ganesh Chaturthy.

Photo: Taken at a restaurant in Udaipur during my Rajashtan trip.

As I had written earlier, myself and @vsr are working on version 2 of Tweet4Blood . Here are some screens which VSR recently created. Home page has more information now. It has lot of white (yellow?) space which I like. As you can see it has very prominent twitter login button for donors to login. You don’t have to login to request as before.

The major change to the app will be alert customization for donors. Now you can login using your twitter account (Yeah. oAuth. No password sharing) and set your alerts. You can get the alerts for the blood requests in your city by mail, DM and IM (is coming not in screen shot). i.e when somebody requests your blood group, in your city, tweet4blood will send you an IM/DM/email depending on your settings.

Blood requesting is same as before, though it will include some suggestions from Umesh aka @ooomz like more user friendly forms. Like I have written earlier, you dont have to login to request.

Let us know what your thoughts about this new design. Actually you can suggest features too.

Question: Should we have an option to automatically post to FaceBook? may be perhaps using an app.