Etymology of ulaar

Back in my undergraduate alma mater (Birla Institute of Technology Ranchi, India), this moniker referred to students who were gentlemen of leisure, or in other words, displayed very little interest in scholarly pursuits. So how did these characters spend their time (you may ask)? A great majority of them indulged in inebriation, smoking and rowdy behavior – perhaps not very different from certain fraternity organizations in US universities. Some of the reclusive ulaars also resorted to excessive sleeping. The related term ulaari refers to the act of being ulaars – in other words, if you were spending examination night indulging in binge drinking, you were doing ulaari.

In certain minority circles, the ulaar moniker morphed to a more broader state of mind where one “didn’t have a care in the world”. The moderate ulaar has not abandoned scholastic ambitions but realizes that there’s more to life than a single-minded pursuit of excellence. During my years at BIT, Mesra, I was definitely a moderate ulaar though, I daresay, none of my friends could have surmised it.

A Time to Qik

I’ve always been an early adopter of technologies. Shortly after I moved to the Bay Area in ‘98, I bought the 1st generation Palm Pilot 5000 – absolutely loved it & evangelized the hell out of it (not that many of my Bay Area friends & acquaintances needed persuasion). When I joined Online Anywhere in ‘99 followed by the subsequent acquisition into Yahoo! Mobile, I had access to a steady supply of cool new devices ranging from Blackberry to Neopoint (1st smartphone?) to a Timex pager-watch to a Treo 650 to a MacBook (you get the idea).

My constant trysts with cool new technologies temporarily ended in 2007. Not surprisingly, it coincided with my departure from Yahoo and joining Graspr as a co-founder in April ‘07. I figured I’d be perpetually connected on my MacBook (either at work or at home) so I ditched the Treo 650, disavowed all manner of smartphones & phones with the tell-tale “email” button. I settled for the super-cool Sony Ericsson W810i and deliberately did not sign up for the data plan. It took me a few months to stop looking for the “email” button but the transition was surprisingly easy. The SE W810i liberated me from my business shackles. I easily settled into using the consumer features of the phone (ahem! the camera) and took loads of pictures & movies of my kids. I also managed to avoid the phone browser barring the occasional “local search” when Goog-411 didn’t like my accent.

When the Jesus-Phone arrived in June, I stayed strong and didn’t succumb to temptation. I vicariously marveled at the i-Phone’s amazing features every time one of my friends brandished it (and a LOT of them did – often). Then in December, my friend Bhaskar’s startup (Qik) launched their mobile live streaming product and, this time, I could hear the “call of the early adopter”. After the Montreal vacation in Dec & the Graspr fundraising activities in Jan, I was ready to order a Qik-ready phone.

I ordered the Nokia N75 and it arrived earlier today. I registered on Qik & streamed my 1st live video – yea! it feels great to be back! The video itself (below) is rather ordinary – you can see the “working cave” in my house, the battle-weary MacBook surrounded by a clutter of post-its & my 2 Yahoo stars. You’ll hear me chuckling in the middle – that’s because I saw the neat chat integration working for the first time. Even though I’ve heard Bhaskar telling me countless stories of how Qik works & I’ve read/seen enough of Scoble’s Qik blogs, I was still blown away when I saw it all working. There was something VERY surreal about broadcasting live – even if the setting was a dimly lit study & the audience was a grand total of ONE – Bhaskar.

The embed code doesn’t seem to work here, so here’s the url to my first Qik video: http://qik.com/video/1692

Ramu, Bhaskar, Nick & rest of the Qik team: Fantastic job!! You have won yourself another Qik loyalist.

- Vishy