A few hates…

There has been so much noise about this new ‘gadget’ that I have finally decided to write about it on my blog in spite of my better judgement.

Its the iPad!

Seriously, there is so much stuff about it on my favourite blogs that its driving me crazy and I just end up skipping most of the posts. Thank God for Google Reader…

Take Mashable, GottaBeMobile, Cnet etc, they all are brimming with iPad rubbish. Understandably its the latest high profile release at the moment, however, that doesn't mean that its the ONLY bloody electronic device out there. Heck, recently we had to purchase an automatic washing machine, (& I kid you not here) I would gladly read all the reviews i can find on the machines than this useless fan boy pleasing ‘gadget’, and yes, here I use the word ‘gadget’ rather churlishly.

At TechRadar (wonderful site btw), Gary Marshall hits it on the nail with his post about Apple on 3rd April. The company is more evil & chauvinist than any other company (Nintendo comes second!) out there & its scary to read that Apple is the third largest company on US stock market. Don't get me wrong, Microsoft is evil but Apple is…

My Apple hatred may seem a bit over the top but having had my share of exposure to Macbooks and even reverting two pro-Apple (they are not exactly fan boys), I feel justified in my bias. One of the two, my brother, bought a macbook and after arguing with me about how much his macbook is better to my tablet, ended up giving his macbook away and getting a windows laptop! My sister, the second one of the two, was the unfortunate one to receive the macbook and was so happy when she received her Dell V13 Vostro laptop with Windows 7. Not surprisingly she has no plans of moving from WIndows 7 anytime soon.

On to the second topic, I was surprised to read that a new (yet another) Pakistan political party is advertising itself on Google. The new party goes by the name of Mustaqbal Pakistan and its website seems awfully full of fluff without any info seemingly near Facts. I have to send them an email, in the meantime, here is their website:

My Current 5 Favourite blogs:

This is something that intrigues me a lot: Finding out what others read. So, its only natural & courteous that if I am asking the question, I should be the first one to answer:

 

1 - LifeHacker

Without a doubt my favourite blog at the moment. Lifehacker is about tips & downloads of small free software for getting things done on your PC. Actually sometimes they do go into seemingly other random tips and tricks... but mainly its software focused site. They cater to all operating systems (except Linux I think) & from the rate of updates, one would image they have a full time staff working for the blog.

The best thing about them is that they have an active following & these readers share their experiences in the comments section, which really helps & gives a wider feedback about the various topics discussed. Not many 'professional' sites can boast of that!

If you are into Windows/OSX and want to find out little ways to be more efficient, all the while learning and having fun, this should be one of the top most sites in your list.

www.lifehacker.com

 

2 - ZenHabits

What a wonderful personal development blog & for once a well deserved winner of '2007 Best Overall Bog' award. Very simple and even simpler blog design which actually works in its favour. To me, this blog is for when I am about to pull my sleeves up and ready to get down to business with full attention.

Over the months I have been reading this, I have bookmarked many of their individual articles, I have even printed out a few and shared them with my work colleagues, friends and family. The beauty of ZenHabits is that unlike other Tech blogs etc, the articles published here never get old, as they do not cover the latest tech, gizmos or trends but it's about the slow and gradual development of human being, or more like slow and gradual development & understanding of our sub-conscience. And that is why, you can go on and on back through the previous posts.

http://zenhabits.net

 

3 - Kotaku

As you might have noticed from this blog, I love computer games and have a passion for interactive entertainment (i.e. video games) industry. The competitiveness, the cut-throat tactics & blood & Gore (only in games), what is there not to like!

Kotaku is perhaps the first blog of its kind that covers even the smallest of stories about the industry, some even bordering on nonsensical but if you want to keep abreast of video gaming industry, you will need no other site for news. Reviews are another matter as Kotaku does not review games per say. It acts as a great site for video games news across the globe, be it UK, US & East Asia.

Do check it out here:

www.kotaku.com

 

4 - GottabeMobile

Yes, another of those tech blogs. This one is focused towards one of my passions, Tablet PCs. Gottabemobile (no points for guessing the origins of this blog) is an American blog on mobile tablet computer hardware. Because of this specialised nature, it tends to cover the whole spectrum of tablet computing, from hardware to software, and the forum is so well known out in the tablet industry that developers usually come over to post topics of discussion & get user feedbacks, quite an achievement for a simple, admittedly very plain blog.

If there is one issue I have with this site, it has to be the aesthetics... the site design is so 1999... but hey, it is the content that matter the most.

www.gottabemobile.com

 

5 - ThinkSimpleNow

This is one of those random blogs I stumbled upon and while its not updated as regularly as the other ones, when it is updated, it is usually some delicious dough.

One of its high profile post actually made it to the top of 'The Digg' & is something I still go to every now and then to refresh in my mind.

Its author actually posted a very fascinating entry on 'How I quit my day job', it was at Amazon too! A wonderful read and if it was updated a bit more regularly, I might have placed this higher in the list!

http://thinksimplenow.com/