On thursday morning, @Gauravonomics posted on twitter saying that he had added my twitter username to the list of must-follow Indian Twitter users and posted a link -http://bit.ly/ktjhS.

This came as quite a surprise for me. Its the first time I’ve appeared on a list anywhere… let alone a list of “Must Follow Indians” See dad!!! All that twittering works!!!  I’m there in that list, right at the bottom…  But hey, someone out there feels I’m worth the trouble and that matters a lot

One amazing thing this linking has caused me is a huge surge in the number of followers! And the best part being all of them being human I hope I do justice to all you people and keep you entertained!

Anyways, I wrote this post here for stating two reasons:

1. I’m in no way a celebrity!!! And by no means a big shot… There are a hundred other big shots in that list and I’m virtually a nobody!
2. And, I love you guys for having chatted up with me all this while on twitter… and more so now-a-days on facebook and posterous also!

Do check the link posted in the first para.  There are a huge bunch of really amazing and wonderful people that are worth catching up with!!!

And, You guys are the real celebrities!!! And Twitter Rocks!!! And oh! I’m @cruismaniac on twitter.

Chao…

But then, here’s the extended version:

Last week, Bengaluru’s popular techblog controlenter had a post on requesting for twitter usernames that were inactive.  Link to post here.  So, as the process goes, You send a mail to username [at] twitter [dot] com with the following data:

1. The twitter username you want
2. Your current twitter username
3. Whether you want to use the username (if allocated to you) with the current account or you want to use it as a new / separate account.

I dug around twitter and noticed that the username @ashwin was unused until that moment with just 2 tweets and about 3 follows and 1 follower.  Typically – UNUSED as per twitter’s terms.  And off went an email to twitter requesting that they give me the twitter username @ashwin.

And five days later, today, when twitter stopped logging in with my username @cruisemaniac, I thought I’d been “phished“.  But then, surprise! surprise! My username had changed.  Twitter had actually allocated @ashwin for me. Thanks guys for that!!!

To be the only @ashwin on twitter is awesome… and so with this tweet, I changed my twitter handle on twitter:

My Tweet indicating change of twitter handles

I did receive a lot of mixed reactions… @the100rabh paid homage to @cruisemaniac! @dkris and @pcsbox felt that the change was good… Some more tweets happened that are on twitter search.

And there ends this happy story

But yeah, the post is not over… The technical part of the twitter-username-change still remains:  If and when you are allocated your new username by twitter, the old one is lost.  If you want, you can register again using a different e-mail ID and hold your old username till someone else feels that you’re squatting on the username and requests twitter to release it for him / her.

I do have @cruisemaniac booked and held tight… Fingers crossed!

For all that followed the @cruisemaniac and felt that the tweets were worth listening to, @ashwin will still rock the show and rule the roost! B-)  And for those who dont know me yet, I’m @ashwin on twitter.

-Chao…

The Colosseum, Pic courtesy tjsuresh

Off to Rome tonight! I will be spending 2 full days at rome and then visiting Pisa on Monday on the way back to turin.  Lucky us, Monday is a National Holiday for Italy on occassion of Foundation of the Italian Republic (I) .  So, advance wishes for a Happy Birthday, Italy!!

Thanks to colleagues at work, we got the Trenitalia tickets at dirt-cheap rates! 65€ per person for the entire Turin->Rome->Pisa->Turin trip! Thank you guys! Grazie!!!

Thejesh a.k.a. @thej pointed us to Youth hostels in Rome which was again a total boon! Dirt cheap rates for quite decent accomodation!  Thankyou dude…

The Leaning Tower of Pisa, Pic courtesy dgmfotos

Thanks to @Netra, who patched me up with @hanisha who stays in Pisa, we have a guided tour in the works!  This is going to be a good weekend!!!

God bless Social Networking!!! Roma, I cometh!!! Let the Race begin!!! B-)

Lots of things in the last 2 months… the most nerve wrecking thing being the loss of my mom… Something that none of us have been able to come out of…  It so happens that when someone shares a relationship with you thats deeper than being a friend, and suddenly, that person gets sucked out… the void is too hard to handle… neways life moves on… and so do have us…

The next topic of the post: the ever lovely and awesome BCB a.k.a. BarCampBangalore is back!!!  BCB-6 summer edition is happening on april 19th and 20th… The venue is IIM-Bangalore… Be there!!! I’ll be running around fixing up wifi for you peeps… Tats for sure…

The next most important topic of the post: Moto-dead… I’ve spoken about this for a very long time… And mentioned in my blog a couple of times too… This was bound to happen… Motorola Handsets Division being royally kicked out of the Motorola stable… atleast that’s how I choose to see it…

You cant be a blood-sucking leech in this age… you have to contribute or else you cease to exist.  I’d go by Motorola’s top brass’ move to do this… but it could have completely been averted.  They didn’t have to screw up. And screw up with so much perfection that nothing can correct it ever again…

Motorola is perhaps the only company thats been practising the jack of all trades in the mobile segment for quite a while. And guess what! It BACKFIRED!!! What else would you expect??? I may not be Trump but I can see through the lining to say that in today’s age where competing takes balls of steel, you had better not be playing around on the highway!!! You’d definitely get run over!!! Many a time..

And I’d say this with a lot of sadness that a Mobile giant simply went ahead and committed suicide!!! RIP Moto!!! The Razr was an awesome show… nothing else after that… Not one single mobile after that was even worth picking up and holding in my hands…

Coming to the next important topic, my conversation has actually changed places… Keeping in touch with poeple on twitter has become the in thing and the easiest thing in life now… A conversation, although asynchronous, is definitely conversation worth it when the whole discussion is available anywhere and althemore better when the participatory limits dont exist!

Twitter just takes chit-chat to the next level… The erstwhile Yahoo chat rooms concept with a bling from technology… converse from anywhere… anyhow…  Follow me on twitter to know more…

And there ends my hiatus…  Chao…