Freedom is like Cadbury's Bournville - You need to Earn it

Warning - Random Rambles of a Caged Mind - let loose for few minutes

The ad of Cadbury's Bournville says...

You don't just buy a Bournville.. you earn it!

Dark exotic chocolate aside, The tagline easily fits the description for something that we seek dearly, and forget usually as we part with our "pound of flesh" to the mean marketplace - The rare flavoured Bournville I am hinting at is what we know as our Freedom.

Yes I wanna break free.. I am sure most of us would immediately go karaoke alongside the memoirs of Freddie Mercury and resonate with the urge to break free.. from what? A world of our own inhibitions? towards what? A world of our own fantasies? As a concept, Freedom gets mysterious upon scratching below the crust of usual perception.


The Harsh Reality - There are two aspects to this - One, we are all born free.. Two, it takes an effort to remain free.  It's the effort to keep reminding ourselves that nothing binds our imagination and freedom to use it, other than our own inhibitions and fears. Nature has indeed given us fear as a guarding emotion, to ensure that we sustain through her forces of creation and regeneration. However, but for a conscious effort to balance our imagination with this fear, we will never be free! And thats the effort that earns us the Bournville - The exotic flavour of our freedom.

We are and we have always been free...  but to enable us to be immersed in that freedom, we need to put an effort of courage in being a black sheep, of taking the unbeaten path. And over and above, keeping our minds homed in on what we seek from life herself!

Google's bite of an Apple - Is Eden getting closer?

I am a voracious user of Google services and a big fan of most of them. One of my early online hobby used to be discover all that's listed under the "more" option of the Google header, one service at a time.

In the recent span of time, Google+ has been creating waves (sorry not google wave :-P) after two unsucessful attempts at getting a grip on the online social media sphere. A lot has been written, and many are still writing their early reviews of the service and what would be its potential course and its effect over the other social media hotspots.


To be honest, i logged in to blogger today to write about my first hand experience with Google plus. But what met my eye post login changed the course of my topic towards a change happening across Google. --- The new look of Blogger after ages of seeing the same boring dashboard was here staring at my eyes wide open.

Winds of change

Google Adsense was among the first service to undergo a change in look. But apart from aesthetics there were some added features too such as better reporting. Most of the changes then were Googlish - read, mostly white and thin arial fonts all over the place.

Adsense - Old Look

Adsense - New Look

Google is known for doing rigorous multivariate testing before even moving a pixel, and thats where certain sea-changes made me wonder!


























Among the first revolutionary design to hit me was... naah not G+, it was the new look of Google Analytics. The fonts got a tad larger with the screen stretching out and demanding more scroll than the older site. The scroll is a compromise for a cleaner look with elements being spread out a bit. The new design though would perform very well with better screen resolutions.

Google Analytics - Old Interface

Google Analytics - New Interface

Just when i was grappling and toying with the sneak peak of Google analytics, the top bar of google turned Black all of a sudden when i was logged in to GDocs. I first thought it was an graphic error due to low memory. Just when i saw BBC news release about the new arrival - G+

More press releases and blogs revealed that Google had bitten an Apple (hopefully not the one left behind by lady Eve!)... The fundamental changes in G+ and the cleaner look was courtesy an ex-Apple employee who brought in the new design elements.

And .. the changes rolled on

Two days since i started using G+ there was a link atop my Gmail prompting me to try the new Gmail look through the theme settings. I could now see an overall pattern which Google as a whole was moving towards. Slim gray bordered buttons and boundaries, Generous usage of white space, fading of the characteristic blue and inclusion of a palette of Grey and an unusual reddish brown were some of the obvious changes.



Blogger Today!

The latest Google baby to crawl out of the changing room is blogger. The new and improved post editor resembling a Wysiwig Gdocs editor is a welcome change. The new lean mean look is refreshing and as you can already see, has spruced up my blogging appetite.


Eagerly awaiting to see the effect of these changes on usage of G-services. Unlike Lady Eve, i hope, Google will open up the garden of Eden for online users, rather than the other way around!