Http://me

Puja Nanda, from India, is an MSc student studying computer science engineering. (Photo: webcam)

“Little did I anticipate the level of dependency that I’d eventually have in life when first laying my hands on a personal computer as a 4th grader in the mid 1990s. From geeky Windows 3.0 to its more convenient descendant, Windows 7, the transformation has been marvelous. The first time I used internet was some 12 years ago - the altavista.com search engine. A Rediffmail account was trendy back then in India, and having a well-populated Yahoo! messenger chat list was considered equally cool for us Indian schoolkids. By the time I reached high school, I’d graduated from a naive BASIC programmer to a more comfortable being in C/C++, and thus decided to study computer science.

My earliest encounter with internet each day happens when I subconsciously try to shut my online kukuklok.com rooster off and turn on my grooveshark online streaming playlist to kick start my day. Of course I’m a social networking fanatic, but I also end up spending lots of time at my favorite technology web publications, TechCrunch.com and BBC Technology. Technology’s a rather volatile domain, where something new is born each day, thus I’m always surprised by articles on these sites. Apart from the technical blogs, I really enjoy exploring Flickr.com, checking out the photo of the day and other photographs at Flickr Explore. I love photography, and Flickr.com’s a brilliant site for photographers to share their work and learn from each other.

Internet’s growing and shrinking simultaneously. What’s brilliant about internet is that it’s accessible to me in all sizes: from lightweight apps on my smartphone to the massive SETI@home project that allows me to contribute to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. Since I’m a student of scientific computing, I love the latter, but for personal convenience I end up spending enough time interacting with internet applications on my smartphone. My current favorite smartphone internet apps are Google Sky Map, travel helpers like 9292ov and NS app, ActionVoip (international calls on student budgets) and blogs, like my Dad’s blog. I could never write enough about the internet; it’s such a delightful abyss. Tim Berners-Lee is a superhero for inventing www and I’m lucky that I share a birthday with him.” 

My favorites:
techcrunch.com
flickr.com/explore
setiathome.berkeley.edu
ramblingnanda.blogspot.com
kukuklok.com