The name is:
Nafisa Joseph
Claim to fame:
MTV VJ, actress and former Femina Miss India.
How Net savvy are you on a scale of one to ten?
I'm pretty Net savvy. I'd give myself six and a half.
What do you enjoy doing online?
Checking mail is a critical part of my life. I have family abroad, so we keep in touch and exchange pictures online. Surfing is the easiest way to get information. You just log on to a search engine and voila! Everything is laid out for you. And of course, MSN chat is a great facility. I chat with my near and dear in Dubai often.
What's your daily routine like? How much time do you spend online?
My computer has conked off, so I don't have a daily routine as such. But once I'm in a cyber cafe, I easily spend 45 minutes to an hour.
What's your idea of a perfect Web site?
One that loads quickly and is colourful.
Any favourite sites?
Since my interest lies in music, my favourite is mtvindia.com. It's a funky, fun site: You get a lot of info on music and are updated with the latest on the scene. It's got a lot of colour and the graphics are good too. Yahoo! is also amazing but loads slowly.
Have you ever been ego-surfing?
Yes I have. I just wanted to see if anybody knows me, so I typed my name in a search engine. About 300 to 400 sites were thrown up and I was like, "Wow". It feels good. Most of it is stuff lifted from magazines, picked from papers. What's disappointing is that they've put up horrible pictures of me.
Is there something you'd like to buy or sell online?
When this whole baazi.com thing came about, I was very curious and intrigued. I've sent flowers and cards. It's a strange feeling though… Much too virtual for my satisfaction.
What's your favourite Web-based gadget?
I'm a total mobile freak, so nowadays my favourite gadgets are the phones you can attach to your PC. You can send mail over the phone and accessing phone numbers via the comp is fabulous.
What do you hate about the Internet?
Once, long ago, I chatted with a stranger who was contemplating suicide. It was morbid. You try to talk him out of it, get involved, try and solve the problem and get disturbed. Later on you don't even know what happened to that person, what he did to himself or if he was just trying to gain attention. I was totally put off.
Any strange experience online?
I remember once I thought it was a good idea to visit a site where you could interpret your dreams. So in all innocence I typed in dreams.com and to my horror it turned out to be a porn site. I was so embarrassed because I was in a cyber café. I quickly shut the window. I thought it would be good time pass, but it turned out to be somebody else's idea of timepass, not mine! I wish somebody would let me know of a site that interprets dreams. That would be nice.
Is there any one celebrity you'd love to chat with online?
Amitabh Bachchan. I don't think I will ever have the guts to talk to him personally, so online would be a safer bet. But I don't trust this medium. Anybody can type in words, you know.
If you could change anything about the Internet, what would it be?
Nothing really. Everything is just getting more progressive. I only wish the speed would improve and downloading would get faster. Earlier it was expensive, but now it's cheap as hell to use the Net. You get to surf for 45 minutes for just 15 bucks. In Bombay there's no concept of a cafe. In Bangalore, you have great music, a coffee counter and a real cafe feel to it, as if you're in Barista's. I wish they would spruce up the cyber cafes in Bombay too.
Have you traded in stock or downloaded music online?
Not yet, I'm waiting for my cousin to come down and teach me how to go about it. He's a total computer freak.
If the Net didn't exist…
It would be difficult to keep abreast and in touch.
