The friends have been texting and messaging, wondering where I have disappeared to. For dropping by Facebook is now like a visit to the laceName>laceName>laceName>WaterlaceName> laceType>laceType>laceType>ParklaceType>, a rare event. A chat invite from an old friend visiting India gets a ‘tata’ icon, before I rush offline. A traditional Email reminds me I haven’t blogged for months or participated in any policy making forums, online and offline.  

    Hey, says the IYCN founder from Oz, can we talk this year’s India-wide strategy?  Have you taken ‘Skype’ yet, aunty? My assignments stare at me, they too happen to be techno speak. Paypal, the tech-enabled online platform, has stopped transactions for India.   

    All of a sudden, it seems my life has been invaded by technology at every turn. Even the recent flurry of surgeries in the family, seem to have techno driven decisions.   

    Yet, I have always been a writer foremost and shied away from technology. So much so, that I still love cooking in my most traditionally old-fashioned kitchen, even though the daughter and husband love comparing the ‘Gadget Guru’ reviews to those of CNB-Awaz’s ‘Tech Guru’.   

    But 2009 has changed it all. For paradoxically, the recession of last year also witnessed technological renaissance or should I say, technology explosion, that actually hacked my conventional self and rebooted it to a tech driven OS, that’s ME.  

    Barely had I completed tweaking my security settings at Facebook and got familiar with the plethora of new features, that one morning the Yahoo inbox greets me with social networking connotations Having downgraded my Yahoo settings (yes, downgrade is precisely what I did!) and educated my close ones about the necessity of fine-tuning their Yahoo settings too, to guard their privacy, I got caught up with exploring Bing, the amazing new search engine. 

    The images and Travel sections at Bing are simply awesome, a fav for my daughter’s projects.  I am really looking forward to Bing India (when?) with great enthusiasm, so that each time I get bored  and want  to try a new place for dining or travelling, I’d be techno-informed and assisted. But then, I am reminded. I have already been awaiting Gmail’s Bengali script tool for so long, that I sometimes fear I shall forget Bengali by the time it arrives. So much so for speed in tech upgrades (sigh)!   

    My cell phones have always had a high turnover. So I have never gone for a smartphone. However, this time the much hyped launch of the iPhone killer, the Verizon Droid, had me deciding I WANTED THAT.  But it seems it will be another year before the Droid and its service apps hit India, so no use even importing it!  

    Consoling myself it was anyway bulkier than iPhone, I killed the Droid plan, and went berserk, hunting the net and corporate showrooms, Mobile Store and Axion outlets, for the smart choice. It made me think we were better off in those days when we barely had choice than in today’s techno advanced times, when we are too spoilt for choice to make the choices in one go. Oops!  

    The launch of Windows 7 had me puzzled for a while, before I decided I was OK without it. After all, I like my music from the conventional 1000 watt speakers (haven’t been able to give up my penchant for Blue Purple & Dire Straits!) and not have them streaming in my kitchen or bathroom or hold it, from photo frames! And that’s the only ‘plus’ of the Windows 7 as I see it.   

    In the interim I declined 2 invites to Google Wave, as I am not much of a social networking buff. It has its uses though, for collaborating on work as I do, with team mates spread across time zones. However, no regrets here.  I do not want to clutter up my screen further or be disturbed with Waves while working on the perfect phraseology / marketing pitch. But hold on, perhaps I ought not to be hasty in declining the next invite. It would be an awesome tool for planning ‘the much awaited grand reunion’ where 70 % would be flying in from all over the world.  

    The Kindle Reader is a bore. I like to hold my books. In fact, I like holding hands more. But as a couple, we are long past the hand-holding stage and my daughter finds it silly.  So, it’s the conventional book-holding for me. At the same time, I am keeping my fingers crossed that my friends don’t end up buying the Kindle R or the iPad for my upcoming birthday. OK, I am petite, and am obsessed by all things small, including my laptop. But I draw the line at teeny gadgets. They are eye-guzzlers first, and give frown lines mid-forehead, second. That would mean six Botox fillers in one go.  

    The Google again! It gave me wicked thrills that the Nexus One flopped. Not because I am still yearning for a smartphone or an alternative geo-text enabled set, mind you!  But because, the Droid is still the best.  

   The latest Google buzz, yet again in the social sector, has your Gmail going the Yahoo way, albeit with a difference. This one called Google Social Search, launched as Beta version (read, still unsure!), grabs your online tweets, Picasa images of your travel beats and what have you, for a social jaunt across cyberspace.  Hyped to beat the nouveau marketing strategies adopted for Avatar movie making hands down, it is today the latest buzzword in social media, with analysts, SEO drivers and bloggers alike, powering up with social media strategy.  

    Geospatial technology has invaded the personal space. Now my daughter keeps muttering that I ought to have my glasses GPRS enabled, while I wonder why can’t I have my husband tagged and the route mapped so I can know exactly WHEN he is reaching home?  

    I am glad however that I have always resisted the Skype temptation. The good old-fashioned cell phone is my fav even today. A call to UK / US any day costs less than a branded Pizza, and I have the option of ‘speaker/hands free’ or Bluetooth. However, I don’t like any colleague or stranger ‘following me’ (the bete noire of SN), though I find it amusing when clips from my public profile surface elsewhere on others’ bio or mosaic of my blogs someplace remind me of what I blogged about 4 months back.  That’s another nuance of ‘following’ online!  

    Albeit, I keep ‘upgrading’ my parenting style, it is in many ways, simpler than the kind of work involved in tech upgrades.  

    When I wrote about the i-TV in my futuristic novel venture, I hadn’t known that the “i” word would someday have so much of a techno overkill. These days, I think of apps when I am fusion cooking, nano as I dice potatoes and tweak when I have been too liberal with the salt. And Mashups do not always mean the family favoured boiled peas in sync with mashed potatoes.  With even the thought functionality having become a digital hybrid, life has indeed turned techno-turvy, oops, topsy-turvy.