Take of a Twenty something, on the Arizona cricket !

Into my 2nd season of cricket at Arizona, people might feel I am too inexperienced to write an article on Arizona cricket. Sure, I might not know the history, but I sure have my own personal experiences to talk about. This is just my take on Arizona Cricket.

I came to this alien land of America almost 30 months back chasing my dreams. 30 months after that day, I am still chasing the same dream, though in a different plane. New possibilities in a new land also meant crushing other dreams, not possible here. The cricketing avenues that Arizona had to offer me, presented me with a new found hope to reestablish my interest to play the game of my dreams-cricket, yet again!! As part of these 30 months a lot of things changed about me, but one thing that remains intact, if not more, is my passion for the game of cricket.

Sure clubs like my own-'I Kingfishers', are trying to improve the conditions of pitches, they laid down the region's first 'Astroturf concrete' pitch in Snedigar Sports Complex, Chandler. The Umpiring standards are trying to be improved by introducing 'elite umpires' chosen from the players who passed a written Elite Panel Umpiring Assignment Test (UAT). There are things that need more work to be done- especially the unity between the different teams and representation of the players from this region, in the nation (USA). Also there is no body representing the interests of the players.

The best way to describe Arizona cricket would be 'weekend cricket'. Rant as much as you want, it's hard to ignore that. Sure, it's different than the other leagues & formats of cricket played in this region, in the seriousness with which the games are played here. I was surprised with the seriousness involved in the games here, and that is the biggest reason I got attracted to them. The ACA has a set of rules & regulations of their own within which the games are conducted. Rules are needed to maintain discipline & proper conduct in such an environment. But with rules come responsibilities & breach of rules. Tolerance is needed in such a scenario. Jumping for heads straightaway as the only solution for breaching conduct is 'immature'. The 'disciplinary procedure' involved leaves a lot to be desired. The worrying detail is all of it is done in the absence of the player involved. I can talk about this from my own personal experience(s). Sadly, this chapter had been 'coldly' finished, without any concern about my feelings, neither from my team nor the ACA.

I call for a body representing the interests of the players, which keeps track of the feelings of the individual players. When there is punishment, there needs to be a chance for redemption too. The judges are not correct always. This is where ACA lacks I feel, in trying to ape other leagues & professional cricket leagues by conveniently ignoring those details which they are not comfortable with. Taking strides is of primary importance to them, in which direction, is something that is not well thought about. The exact working details of the executive committee is something, I am not in a position to talk about.

But complain as much as you want, professional cricket per se ain't possible with the kind of lifestyle people have around here, with work/school as their primary motive. People are all busy in their own lives where they have no time to worry about players feelings, but indeed have time to punish them, to maintain discipline that is!! I am sure a lot of people reading this are already prejudiced and view this as an immature attempt by rebel, rather than the honest pleas of a victim !!

Harsha Bhogle is passionate in the way he writes articles about cricket. Sachin Tendulkar is passionate in the way he wants to be a champion for his country. Sreesanth is passionate about the way he wants instant stardom, forgetting that his bowling alone can get him the laurels he craves for. Commentators like Ian Chappel, Sunny or Mark Taylor are passionate about the way they find mistakes in the current players, forgetting easily they did the same few decades back.

In a similar way I am just passionate about the way I go about with my cricket on the field, leaving them on the field. Everyone has a different way of showing passion for the game, expecting everyone to react the same way is unreasonable, if not naivety. If not for the passion, none of them would be playing cricket anyways. Sadly this tolerance is something I see lacking in the Arizona cricket among players & the so-called authorities.

Twitter as a news source - Twitter vs Google Reader

This is my take on Twitter as a source of news and how different could it be when compared to other sources of news in the present social media. I won't get too technical and as usual this is the perspective of an everyday avid user.

So of late there is this explosion of social media, applications and devices which specialize in bringing specific personalized news to the reader's (consumer) door step, instead of the traditional method of consumers reaching out and picking information that interests them the most, from a plethora of junk. Those were the days of the good old newspapers.

Times been changing and I have always been an ardent newspaper reader. Somehow I haven't been able to adopt properly and feel comfortable with the explosion of e-papers ad e-news. Plus the idea of traditional network news is too time consuming and too specific in terms of the news. All of that, along with the teenage-youth excitement and perpetual laziness have pushed me away from news for a while. Somehow it seemed all fine to be away from news, lesser things to worry about, plus I always kept track of things that I wanted to, anyways. With the lots of free time on hand social sites like Facebook, Myspace, Orkut and YouTube, made way into my browsing time. Ironically, I also stumbled upon twitter in this process.

I had my concerns before adopting to Twitter. But a series of incidents led to my first #helloworld tweet on twitter. It was surprisingly easy to use and the rest as they say is history.

In Twitter I found a social website, which lets you follow the tweeple( people on twitter) that you would like to follow and only them. This way you get to see only specific information that you would like to, right on your computer. The pain of going through news websites to search for news that interests you could be eliminated. This gave me a new hope for reviving my interest in news once again. Sure there have been devices which pushed specific news to your computer before, with the RSS feeds, etc, but I was attracted to Twitter because of its social interactivity and social presence.

Other news devices for example 'Google Reader' serve a similar purpose too, when it comes to pushing specific news to users. Add to that the power of google i.e the information they collect about users and their powerful search capabilities - we indeed have a device which potentially could wreck some major media houses. But that hasn't happened yet and why? if you wonder!!

I guess Google Reader lacks in a few areas. I have been using it off late and one thing that I don't quite like about it is, its inability to share information with my friends on facebook/twitter. For now, I guess we can safely say that the power of friends & followers in Facebook(FB) and Twitter can't be challenged. Other social websites like YouTube and news websites have accepted that and are harnessing this feature for their own good. It is surprising to see Google Reader not adapt the same. It allows you to share the information to your 'Google profile' or 'followers' on Google, which is minuscule in terms of the power of twitter or FB. I am feeling handicapped at not being able to share it with the people I know, who all have established profiles on either FB or twitter. So why should I change base to Google Reader ?

Sure Google Reader's selling points would be its excellent recommendations in terms of 'news you might like' ( thanks to powers of google) and of course the power of 'google news' itself. But I did a small check on most of the sources of information on google reader and found almost all of them having a twitter profile and who tweet at the same pace as information that appears on google reader. Add to that the powers of Twitter in being able to reach out to the audience and a big user database, I see no reason in changing base to google reader. Of course I will continue using google reader to get updates on the new blog posts of my friends who i subscribed to on 'blogspot', but is that the extent of google reader ?

Twitter might not have the data that google has, of users- so the recommendations are missing, but all it takes for someone like me, would be to use the 'recommendations' provided by Google Reader, and follow the tweets of those recommendations on Twitter. There, with that simple step the power of 'recommendations' provided by Google Reader, just became redundant. With the new additions of 'Retweets' & 'lists', Twitter has become a stronger source of spreading and accessing news. Lists are able to eliminate the deluge of information on Twitter. They are doing a great job in segregating useful information from random information. They are doing the same thing like what 'feed bundles' in Google Reader do. Almost all the major media houses have 'list bundles' now for the ease of 'news-push' on Twitter now.

Next with real-time updates of Twitter almost any netizen or a phone user can become a news reporter and push news real time from any corner of the world. That's another power of Twitter where as Google Reader does not have any such features. With the latest 'real-time search' introduced by Google, they have started collecting the real-time data from twitter users, thus recognizing Twitter as a very good source of real-time news.

The trends on Google Reader have already been challenged by the 'trending topics' on Twitter. The re-tweets on Twitter definitely are stronger than the sharing feature on Google Reader, thanks to the user database of Twitter.

The idea of using a simple hashtag (#), to reach out to almost the entire audience on twitter is overwhelming, where as on Google Reader I just feel like a single aloof entity in this whole wide global village. Unless Google Reader adopts the power of friends on twitter and Facebook, it might be a great potential resource not properly utilized. The 'Social search' on 'Google labs' has already been trying to harness the connectivity between users provided by twitter and facebook.

Also the feature of Google Reader in showing unread posts over the last few days is 'annoying' to sat the least. I don't like the idea of opening Google Reader after a week to see '1000' unread posts. Sure all it takes for me to do is 'mark as read', but well Twitter does not do that.. So...

Looking forward to a more technical comparison of Twitter and Google Reader by people working on Social Media like a friend of mine 'Munmun'.

The Twitter era - Twitter vs Facebook for dummies :)

At the end of the day it entirely depends on the user on how they would like to use these plethora of social networks, but this is my take on the social websphere and a beginners guide to twitter :P :). -My take not being too technical, but from the perspective of an everyday user with a little more analysis, when scratched a little more on the surface.

There are so many social networks these days. Gone are the days when a bunch of kids used to hang out after school and do stuff like pranks, play and do other things about which we do not talk.
Now they prefer sitting at home and doing most of it virtually on the computers. The frequency and the time spent on real-time interactions and communications has definitely taken a beating. They have created virtual networks on the computers, and doing which is the 'in-thing' to do. This is where the money and people are, so this is where the new investments are (lately) too. There have been huge success stories, the likes of Facebook, Myspace, Orkut(google) and YouTube, to name a few. Not surprsingly many new ones keep coming up everyday. One such social network has been 'Twitter'.

I wasn't too keen on twitter to start with. But after some discussions with friends, primary among them a Munmun and its visibility almost everywhere around me, I took my first steps in the 'Tweet-world'. It wasn't that difficult to adopt to, was an easy progression and then started the game. Slowly the focus shifted from facebook to twitter and that's where I am standing right now.

I like to tell people what I am doing and share information with friends and/or strangers with similar tastes as mine. When I was naive to the whole twitter era, I felt Twitter is similar to facebook's status updates. Now if I look back at it, the difference is that in facebook you push your news to almost everyone in your friends list, people who might not even know what you are talking about when you are talking about touchdowns and football. In twitter, on the other hand, only people who know football and care about touchdowns will follow you. Plus, another good feature in Twitter is, 'you don't have to follow your followers' - meaning you follow someone only because you are interested in doing so, not because they are interested in following you, like say the 'friends' concept in facebook. So the whole concept of 'friends' in facebook has been transformed to 'followers' in twitter.

So to say Twitter and facebook serve different purposes. Facebook is more like a social website where your aim is to befriend as many people as you can and network in the process. Of late facebook has also become a good source of video-sharing. The concept of 'friends' has not explicitly been defined in youtube. YouTube is good for videohosting, but in terms of social interactivity, it still depends on other social websites like Facebook and Myspace. Facebook excels at the concept of 'events ', where in you are able to spread the word about invitations to a large group of people.

Twitter is more specific where you choose to follow only people who might interest you and is a very good source of specific news being pushed to your door-step. It specializes in bringing specific personalized news to the reader's (consumer) door step, instead of the traditional method of consumers reaching out and picking information that interests them the most, from a plethora of junk. Also Facebook is good for creating a good fan base like communities/groups/pages, etc but I don't think Facebook has been able to really expolit the fan base, after creating them. This is where Twitter has been able to capitalize and use the power of fan base for some good. I feel Twitter is in a better position to harness the powers of a fan base and reaching out to a huge mass of like- minded people. Next, 'Trending topics' are something unique to Twitter, which facebook doesn't have. The concept of hashtags (#) , retweets and lists only work to make Twitter better at what it is.

hashtags (#) lets one know of the 'trending topics' and reach a specific audience ( esp strangers). This proves a good point to twitter being as a good source of news. Re-tweets is a new concept which lets other users re-send your information/updates to other people, thus resulting in spreading of information across the web. Lists are a new concept, which lets the users segregate information on the tweet-space. These are similar to the bundles in other news pushing devices. More about twitter as a news source in another article.