Moulis Blog

Moved.

2006-09-01T20:29:00.000-07:00

Click here to visit my new blog. This blog now has a new home at gcmouli.wordpress.com Please do come and visit my shiny new home. I will continue writing on the same areas of personal productivity and technology in its new avatar also.

Death to Cubicles ...

2006-08-17T09:57:00.000-07:00

Meandered my way to this awesome Fast Company article titled Death to Cubicles.

Collaboration is great, but sometimes I'd kill for a door. .... Fittingly, this outburst took place just down the road from the University of Colorado, where in 1968, a fine-arts professor named Robert Propst came up with the "Action Office." Propst's vision was to give white-collar workers, then toiling amid rows of desks in huge open spaces, both more privacy and a way to individualize their space. By that measure, cubicles were an improvement. But in the hands of space-mad facilities planners, the idea was perverted to justify an officescape that resembled the Chicago stockyards. Dilbert was born. Scott Adams got rich.

Nicely written. Read the full article here.

Zero Based Budgeting

2006-08-16T09:40:00.000-07:00

Getting Finances Done has a very nice write up on zero-based budgeting. The basic concept here is that, all money coming in will be spent either by 'actual' purchases, or on paper. In other words, every penny/paisa/cent should be accounted for on paper. If it goes into savings, or into investment, wherever, it goes on to a spreadsheet row.

Total income - total exp = 0

Check out the post here.

Happy Independance Day

2006-08-15T05:59:00.000-07:00

India celebrates its 59th year of Independance today.

Jai Hind !

Stay focussed at work

2006-08-15T05:53:00.000-07:00

Dave Cheong in his most enriching blog, has a nice post on 18 ways to stay focussed at work. Makes a very interesting read. I have started implementing a couple of the tips. It has been working out well until now. Some interesting tips are :

Write out a daily task list and plan your day.

Setup filters in your email.

Clean up your desk.

Change your mindset and make work fun.

Read the full list here.

Update: Found another Being Focussed article on the same blog. Man, this guy is amazing. Check out his list of things to do, for keeping his blogging consistant:

Having a goal to write 120 articles in a year.
Working on 3 articles each week, or 2 paragraphs in each sitting.
Prioritising bill paying before working on writing tasks.
Tracking the number of posts I have done each week.
Planning the topics for future articles in advance.
Taking time out to do searches on Technorati and Google.
Waking up at 5:30am and working on an article before work.
Asking my wife to wake me up if I fail to get up on my own.
Unplugging the Xbox to remove distractions.
Watching TV to relax my mind after completing an article.
Visualise the growth in subscribers to my feed to maintain motivation.

Wow !

Typing this from MS Live Writer

2006-08-14T20:45:00.000-07:00

This is very neat. I am impressed. The UI is clean and uncluttered. All the important aspects are present. Formatting buttons, buttons to include pictures and links. Nice.

However one bummer (as of now) is I cannot publish pictures through Live writer to Blogger. Apparently blogger will not allow me to.

Download the live writer [here]

Update: Uploading the below image through blogger.com

Outlook Update

2006-08-12T20:23:00.000-07:00

Yes. I have been using Outlook completely for about a week now. I am a happy camper until now. No mishaps. I have set up a few filters. I am wholly on INBOX ZERO (an idea, I had read about in fellow blogger Merlin Mann's 43 folders). Basically, every email that lands in my box gets a priority/action associated with it. It either gets filed into a folder, or gets deleted, or stays in my INBOX if it requires an action from me. It gets a red flag, if it is a deadline oriented task (or has an appointment linked to it - so that I will not have to toggle to/back from the calendar mode). So far so good.

Rebuttal to Steve Pavlina

2006-08-12T20:12:00.000-07:00

This is what I like about the internet most. Healthy competition. Free flow of opinions and ideas. I am sure Mr. Pavlina will take this in good sport too. Steve had a nice article sometime back on 10 reasons why one should never work for someone. Business blog businesspundit.com has a rebuttal post to it. 'Rob', the author gives his opinion on each of the 10 points that Steve makes, and dismisses them. He ofcourse, says that these are purely of his own experience. Very nicely written rebuttal. Each point that Steve makes, 'Rob' has a comeback. For instance,

6. Having an evil bovine masterThe flip side of this is you could work for a business genius that teaches you all sorts of lessons in two or three years that it would have taken you ten years to learn on your own. Think about it - if you want to be a value investor would you rather start from scratch or work a few years under Warren Buffett?

Nice. Check out the whole article here.

Lego Art

2006-08-11T21:41:00.000-07:00

Wow. Amazing. It is amazing how Lego enthusiasts adapt themselves to so many situations.

Check out this amazing lego art.

The starry night mosaic. Click [here] to see the mosiac in its various stages of genesis.

Another laptop goes Kaboom

2006-08-01T01:37:00.000-07:00

Tech Site gizmodo.com reports, that another Dell Laptop went kaboom. This time, it was the hard disk.

What is even worse is that it appears to have happened while the laptop was shut. So it may have been in standby mode, which is even more frightening.

Wow. I am scared too now !

IE/Outlook vs Firefox/TB

2006-07-30T20:16:00.000-07:00

I have been a strong fan of non-Microsoft browsers/email clients for quite some time now. I switched to firefox long time ago, and I recently switched to thunderbird. But it just bit me where it hurts two days ago. These guys are still not fully stable yet. MS might have bugs, but it is fairly stable as far as the normal end user is concerned. Browser: I missed out on a nice airline fare, because firefox was not supported by the website. I did not even realize it. I had to book a flight from Delhi to Chennai. I chose my Origin as Delhi, and the only thing that the destination drop down box showed was Mumbai. So I thought, this airline did not fly to Chennai. Well, get this. The airline does. When the website is opened in IE, the destionation drop down box shows a list of 8 cities ! Well my 'trusty firefox' had given up on me. So I am now left in a quandary. Is it worth it to hold on Mozilla/Firefox, just because of some nice fancy user-friendly-hacks like tabs or extensions ? I dont know ...... Email client: (1) I almost sent out an email to a wrong person the other day. The reason, Thunderbird believed that the name that matched the local directory is more apt than our LDAP configured one (or even the one in the To: box). Yes, it does get complicated when we have two people with exactly the same names in different departments in our company. (2) TB did not show me new emails in a certain folder until I went and clicked this. I noticed this yesterday when I saw a "You have new email" thingie pop out at corner of my screen, but I did not see any new email ? The email had been filtered to a folder, which did not show up *bold*. I went and clicked on the folder, and voila, it becomes *bold* and shows me 5 new messages ! Outlook has never done this to me (in the little time I have used Outlook). 'Pine' ofcourse has never ever done this to me. But I, with great sorrow, gave up pine recently, because some of my new managerial responsibility is getting me to receive so much email, that I need some nicer gooey-er way of handling email. Again same question: Is it worth it to hang on to TB, just because it does not store its mail folders in any proprietary format (it stores it in MBX format, which is txt friendly). I dont know again ...

India not going with the OLPC project

2006-07-29T06:09:00.000-07:00

For once I agree with the government. Oh my God, it has been a long time since I said that. I first read this paragraph:

The case for giving a computer to every single child is pedagogically suspect. It may actually be detrimental to the growth of the creative and analytical abilities of the child," Education Secretary Sudeep Banerjee told a planning commission.

I was like, Oh no, not another beurocrat making a bad decision. Then came the surprise:

. "We cannot visualise a situation for decades when we can go beyond the pilot stage. We need classrooms and teachers more urgently than fancy tools," said Banerjee.

I cannot agree more on this. Hat tip to Mr. Banerjee. [Full news article]

IE7 beta

2006-07-15T20:41:00.000-07:00

I downloaded and installed the latest and greatest IE7 Beta. It is still in Beta. However, it does look like the Redmond folks are paying close attention to competing browsers. IE7 has tabbed browsing (very cool), a very clean no-clutter interface, and most interesting of all, it has a tab-thumbnail preview (very very cool). Download and check out IE7.

Meeting with the leader

2006-07-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

Jason, from blackbeltproductivity, has covered an often neglected topic, in a short and sweet post. He covers what you should do, before you have a 1-1 with your leader. It is incredibly important, you prepare for a 1-1. I have very recently noticed this. I actually write down bullets that I want to cover with my boss, before my 1-1. This defenitely helps. One, the boss feels good that, the 1-1 is productive. The second, sometimes the 1-1s just finish faster. Often times, before I have noticed that I waste a lot of time in the 1-1 itself trying to remember something that I wanted to talk about.

Read the post here.

USB Teddy

2006-07-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

I just cannot stop grinning from ear to ear. Just read this post on the gadget blog on how to make your own USB Teddy. What is a USB teddy you say. Well, it is a small teddy bear stuffed toy, with a USB drive stuck in it ofcourse.

You take the teddy. Chop its head off. Insert the USB drive, suture the wound.

Read the full article here. You need to see the second picture . I guarantee, you cannot stop the grinning either.

Work flow planning

2006-07-02T05:07:00.000-07:00

Chris Brogan from Lifehack.org has a great writeup on how to design a good work flow. At some points, it does seem too good to be true. But then isnt every productivity system supposed to tend to 'Utopia'. He gives a good list of online tools, which can be used to sharpen your workflow, and how to get 'maximum' work done. [link]

Warren Buffet to give away 85% of his wealth

2006-06-25T23:19:00.000-07:00

Warren Buffet to start a steady process of donating 85% of his fortune - mostly to the worlds largest philanthrophic society - Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This is in the order of billions by the way. Wow. Just recently Bill Gates announced that he is stepping down from the throne at Microsoft and he is going to concentrate on his philanthrophy. [Fortune artlcle] I wonder, if these two events are related ?? [news gathered from slashdot]

360 degree leader summarized

2006-06-22T09:55:00.000-07:00

Jason and Micheal have dedicated fridays to leadership in their excellent 'blackbelt productivity' blog. They have an excellent summary of John Maxwell's book on 360 degree leader. Very very nicely written. Check it out here. [weblink]

Under Maintainance Message

2006-06-15T20:25:00.000-07:00

I opened up my bloglines page today, and the cutest thing ever was there. They were doing some kind of maintanence work on bloglines. Usually the "Under Maintanence Message" is so drab, that it is mildly irritating, and you start beginning to wonder, when they will fix it etc etc. This message in bloglines, was so cute, that I almost was not irritated at all. Very pleasant.

Great Mistakes in Technical Leadership

2006-06-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

A gold mine of a find - hacknot.info website. The archives section contains a brilliant section of articles. Ranging all the way from Debugging 101 to the article titled the subject line of this post. The author (who says that he has about 13 years of experience in the software industry) says that he compiled this list of Great Mistakes in Technical Leadership by observation. He says there is no way of learning this, other than taking note of stupid mistakes committed by others. The article starts off with the following quote :

If you are a good leader who talks little, they will say when your work is done and your aim fulfilled, "We did it ourselves." -- Lao-Tse, cited in Becoming A Technical Leader - G. M. Weinberg, Dorset House, 1986

Read the full article here. [weblink]

Brilliant sketches

2006-06-14T22:51:00.000-07:00

Some brilliant sketches, available (mostly) royalty-free from http://www.fromoldbooks.org/ Basically these are hi-res scans of some very cool sketches from Old Britain. [source the 'Things that you make go hmmm blog']

Vista 'apeing' OSX ?

2006-06-12T22:55:00.000-07:00

Gina, over at Lifehacker, has a good post up, giving her first impressions of the new Vista Beta.

From the emphasis on searching and not browsing (Spotlight) to the Windows Sidebar (Dashboard) which runs Gadgets (Widgets), to the built-in Windows Calendar (iCal), the similarities are striking.

Check out the full article at lifehacker .

Copyscape

2006-06-12T03:25:00.000-07:00

Just stumbled upon this today.Copyscape is a really cool tool, which scans through an archive that it has built from pages on the internet, and gives you a list of websites that closely resemble content on your website. I ran my blog through, and I found only pages, with some content resembling mine. I am not worried, because this was 'quoted' content anyway. Several blogs had 'quoted' from the famed feynman commencement lecture.

Check out http://www.copyscape.com

Interestingly it has a very google-sque appearance.

Crop that pic !

2006-06-10T00:56:00.000-07:00

I am long time fan of the Digital Photography School. They have done it again. A beautiful piece on how cropping a digital photograph can enhance the pic by leaps and bounds. Check out the article. It has quite a few examples, where you can see with your own eyes the grade of improvement.

[weblink]

How-to for shooting sunset pictures

2006-06-06T19:17:00.000-07:00

The digital photography school has a beautiful write up on how to shoot sunset photographs. I love sunset photography, and I agree with several points in this write-up. Check it out.

Look around you - The wonderful thing about sunsets is that they not only create wonderful colors in the sky in front of you but they also can cast a beautiful golden light that is wonderful for other types of photography. As the sunset progresses keep an eye on other opportunities for shots around you (not just in front of you). You might find a great opportunity for a portrait, landscape shot, macro shot etc behind you in the colden light.

Check out one of my sunset snaps.

[location Mussoorie, Uttaranchal, India]

[web link]

HP cuts down on telcommuting

2006-06-06T18:55:00.000-07:00

HP and Sun were one of the first companies in the silicon valley to bring in telecommuting. 'Working from home' became a phrase common in the valley. After almost 4 decades (telecommuting started in 1967 in the company), the new CEO is tightening his reins and has said 'no' to telecommuting. His rationale behind this rule is that, people need to get back to teaming and increasing productivity. He has said that high performers do not pose a risk or a problem when they work from home, but it is the lower end of the productivity spectrum employees who usually do not benefit. These people would increase their shared learning and increase the productivity if everyone came to office, and all leverage on one-another's strenghts. I think I kinda agree with him. I believe strongly in teaming, in shared learning, and in leveraging on one-another's strengths for a single common goal. [news link]

Black belt Productivity

2006-06-04T06:46:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled upon an amazing blog called black belt productivity. Simple amazing. This is all about being productive, and getting your system together. The two authors (Jason and Micheal) do a very impressive job of both giving a lot of info, and yet havng a very nice and clean design to their website.

Besides a lot of things, something work checking out is their very thorough primer of the Getting Things Done (GTD) book by David Allen.

Please do go and visit the site and get impressed yourself.

[link]

Do you need 8 hours of sleep ?

2006-06-04T02:57:00.000-07:00

Relentless productivity (found through lifehack.org) has a pretty good article, on whether you need 8 hours of sleep. He gives a couple of references to show that, the must-sleep-8-hours is a fallacy. He says that each person has their own sleep requirement. There is also a nice way to experiment and determine your sleep requirement. Try it out yourself. [link]

Get back your machine (from Windoze)...

2006-06-01T18:59:00.000-07:00

If you are stuck with Windows on your company machine (or laptop), and want to recapture your machine from the clutches of Microsoft, Cygwin is the deal. Cygwin is a small unix core that works as an app with windows, and gives access to most Unix programs that you would need - a good shell (with tab completion), midnight commander, and even a minimal desktop manager like Window Maker.

Check out a detailed feature-listing here from the one and only lifehacker.com here.

Download cygwin from here.

Ho Hum. . Retire early !

2006-05-31T01:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah, people talk about it all the time. There is whole feed-crunching website on personal finance (pfblogs.org) etc etc. But I found this one article in motley fool to be incredibly succint and to the point. Check it out, and build confidence that, it is never too young or too old, to save enough to retire early. [link]

Cargo Cult Science

2006-05-30T09:19:00.000-07:00

All of us have read the Steve Jobs Commencement speech (the one he says that we have to connect the dots backwards). But has anyone read this amazing commencement speech by Richard Feynman (1974 - Caltech). Brilliant in one word, is how I would put it. An excerpt:

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head to headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas--he's the controller--and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land.

Now it behooves me, of course, to tell you what they're missing. But it would be just about as difficult to explain to the South Sea islanders how they have to arrange things so that they get some wealth in their system. It is not something simple like telling them how to improve the shapes of the earphones. But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science. That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying science in school--we never say explicitly what this is, but just hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can tell they have been eliminated.

If the above excerpt excited you enough, go check out the entire speech. [link] I found this through Seth Godins blog.

Exam Results Online

2006-05-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

Incredible, how India's IT infrastructure has advanced by leaps and bounds. Every state educational board exam result is available online (via NIC - the National Informatics Center). Yesterday my society supervisor came and asked me if I could check the result for two of his nephews. The CBSE (Central Board of Secondary Education) has been having the results online for a few years now. But, it was quite a surprise to me that, now almost every state has its results online too. For instance yesterday, all I had to do was to go upresults.nic.in (to get the Uttar Pradesh Class X results). Amazing. The interface is incredibly light - so that the servers can take the load and the page can load quickly. The page only has a box for roll number. You type in the roll number, and you get the students name (just to confirm, it is indeed the right marks you are looking at), and the score breakup in each subject. There is also a top level results page results.nic.in, from where you can jump to any state of your choice.

Tapping the screen to change workspace ?

2006-05-25T07:24:00.000-07:00

Watch this incredible youtube video, where mac userErling Ellingsen taps his macbook screen left and right to switch between his virtual workspaces. Amazing. [via lifehacker]

Email writing 101

2006-05-22T23:26:00.000-07:00

Good post in the Blue Flavor Blog about the essentials of email writing. Good points made. The authors talks about how brevity is important, how subject lines decide whether the reader will read the email or not ; and how one should leave the reader with an easily respondable question. I strongly agree with this. In most cases, I would strongly favor an email asking me something like -- "Do you agree with this ? " -- and I would embed my answer into the email. I would not like something like -- "What are your thoughts on this ?", or "Do you think this would work ? " . Both these require you to put effort into the email, the consequence of which is going to be just a decision. If there is more to be discussed, I would rather expect something like "If you have more thoughts, call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx". Check out the post here. [link]

De-stressing with Deep Breaths

2006-05-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

Yoga-bound has a brilliant article (written in first person, by someone teaching us what his teacher taught him) on how to use deep breathing or breath-control (praanayamam) for calming us down, de-stressing, and he even says, filling us up with energy. [link]

Shall we dance ...

2006-05-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

Off-topic post: Saw this classic movie on tv last night - Richard Gere at his best. I should say that J-Lo (Jennifer Lopez for the uninitiated) has done a pretty good job too. The two dances their way to glory. The waltzes, the quick steps - wow. They really had done their homework right. I can understand that J-Lo probably learnt dancing - since she dances most times in her music videos - but I bet Richard Gere had to learn a lot of new stuff. Amazing. Ofcourse my fav piece of music was the spanish gypsy dance piece. We used to have this piece as a 45rpm vinyl record once upon a time (we still have the record I think, but we certainly dont have a player.

Yaay. I am not spam.

2006-05-16T19:44:00.000-07:00

It was heartening to see that blogger declared my blog as a non-spam blog and qualified me as a human. I will not have to type in those unpronouncable word verification thingies any more. GC, the human.

Endless pools

2006-05-16T10:11:00.000-07:00

Point to note: This is probably one of the first ever times, I clicked on an online ad in a webpage. Endless pools is one of the coolest concepts I have ever seen in a long long time. This thing is basically dubbed as the treadmill for swimmers. It is a small swimming pool (13x8) - the makers claim it can make it through any standard sized door. It has some mechanism by which blowers blow waves against the direction you swim. So in the small space, you just keep swimming hard, but you dont move (just like in a treadmill). Is that not just way too cool. [link]

Circular kitchen

2006-05-15T09:30:00.000-07:00

Just checked out this very cool modular kitchen. This one rocks the boat totally - redefines modular kitchen actually. I quote "This kitchen can actually be treated more like an appliance rather than a rigid fixed room.". [link] Truly amazing.

Google Finance

2006-05-13T23:08:00.000-07:00

Check out finance.google.com. It is still in beta. A clone of finance.yahoo.com, with all the ajaxy goodness that comes with all google products. My rating : very good. You can track your portfolio with it. It keeps tracks of your last few stock searches. One very cool feature that I noticed was the ajax/flash graph which tracks the stock price. On the side of this graph is the list of press releases from the company under study. When you point to each of these press releases, a pointer shows up in the graph, giving the reaction in the stock prize when that press release went out. I think this is very cool. Often times, you will see important press releases going out, and the stock prize going up or down as a reaction to the release. Check out finance.google.com

Hiatus

2006-05-08T19:40:00.000-07:00

Howdy readers ... I apologize for the long hiatus in blogging. I just peeped in today and thought I would let you all know that I would be back at my blogging desk after mid may. I have some deadlines at work, and am busy having fun at home, which basically boils down to no time :). Have fun. Fellow Indian bloggers, be wary of the heat, and stay safe.

desktop zen ?

2006-04-19T18:52:00.000-07:00

Ok, it has been quite a while since I blogged. Let me see if I can crank up my engine again. :) Do you want a desktop like the above ? Looks very MACish right ? AJ in his blog describes how to get there. He believes that reducing visual clutter can lead to leaps in productivity. I totally agree, and I would also add that it increases the 'coolness' factor. This desktop sure looks cool. [Link]

Tweak your windows to peak performance

2006-03-06T18:19:00.000-08:00

Gina Trapani at lifehacker.com has a wonderful how-to on how to tweak your XP setup for better performance (both the computer and yours). She did this after she had to reinstall windows after reformatting her hard drive. She shares her 'gyan' (knowledge in hindi) on how to best tweak XP. Great stuff. I am going to do this. Will update on this blog how it went. [link]

Speaking Tips at Mezzoblue

2006-03-01T19:47:00.000-08:00

Dave Shea, over at Mezzoblue, has an awesome post on speaking tips. Some very neat takeway tips from there. I have not heard him speak, but I have read that he has an unique way of presenting stuff and is pretty good. [link]

Google pages

2006-02-25T05:58:00.000-08:00

I tried out googlepages today. My personal opinion : It is a good webpage creating tool for grandma at home. If grandma can do gmail, she can now create a webpage. That is how simple it is. Not sure if someone who has more tech skills would like it though. The AJAXy interface is good but too restrictive. I like to see my html tags. Well, one more positive in this whole thing is memory - they give you 100 Megs even for the free version - Geocities does not give you that much (but hey they let you even upload html created by you. So overall : + Phenomenally simple to create a webpage + No bandwidth restriction + Free version gets you 100 Megs (no one else gives you this) + No ads (like geocities forces on you) - but how long will this last ? - Restrictive - Cant see html tags - Cant create your own html and uploade - System was pretty unstable as of this morning and I see several bloggers complaining the same. Go check out my page though at http://gcmouli.googlepages.com/ TDavid from 'MakesYouGoHmm' blog also has a good analysis. [link] Update: Ok, I take back my words. You can upload your own html into googlepages. I just tried it and it works. I guess, I will have to agree that googlepages does seem viable now. Though, I am not sure if it is stable enough yet. My sister tried to create a page today morning and it did not allow her to do so. She got a message saying that, due to heavy system overload, they are not accepting any more invites.

One hour brainstorming session --> Heart behind the Digital Camera

2006-02-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

Washington post has a beautiful article on how the heart behind the digital camera - the CCD (charge couple device) was born. Pretty interesting story. Two guys who were afraid that their funding might get cut - do a one hour brainstorming session and come up with the brilliant idea. [link]

He (boss) called every two or three days, and Boyle and collaborator George E. Smith soon got the idea that their funding might disappear unless they invented something in a hurry. So they did.In a one-hour brainstorming session in late 1969, Boyle and Smith drew up the basic design for a memory chip they called a "charge-coupled device," more familiarly known as a "CCD."

Something else that was very funny in the article.

In the late 1980s, Kodak developed the professional "Kodak Digital Camera System," which debuted -- with a 20-megabyte hard disk and a backpack to run the electronics -- at the 1991 Super Bowl.

Productive Meetings

2006-02-21T18:12:00.000-08:00

Hm. No, it is not an oxymoron. You _can_ have productive meetings. Merlin Mann from 43folders lists out 9 tips for effective meetings. Very concisely put. A must read for people who chair meetings. [link]

List of awesome shareware

2006-02-21T08:55:00.000-08:00

There is another looooong list forming at Listible - yes ! the same place where last week, we found a list of web2.0 apps. This list contains a large number of fully free software (free-ware). Some of them are common like firefox, notepad2, ad-aware etc. Some are neat apps - that are actually nice to have, but not mandatory for every user. Nonetheless, an excellent one place to look for freeware. [link]

Sleep on it ...

2006-02-17T23:42:00.000-08:00

First of all, apologies for posting not-so-regularly. Unfortunately, work is taking the better of me these days. I would still update this blog on a semi-regular basis. Please do stay tuned. I am going to try and get the RSS feed of this blog up and running. So you guys can tune in to that too. As for the subject of this post, I just read an awesome article from New Scientist, which suggests you to sleep on big complex decisions. According to the article "the conscious mind should be trusted only with simple decisions. Complex decisions should be left to the unconscious mind". I would love that. Read the full article here.

Steve Pavlina Reloaded

2006-02-11T23:53:00.000-08:00

Sunday personal development madness. Here are three awesome articles from the personal development guru, Steve Pavlina. Very nicely written.

How to have a more focussed day [link]

Feeble excudes [link] : This article is awesome. Three of the most feeblest excuses - "I dont have time", "I dont know how", and "I dont have enough money for it"

Time Management [link] : A slightly long article, but well written. It says that "using time management systems like GTD is only half the problem solved". You should follow the age old way of "plan it, do it".

Tommorrow ....... DIY Planner Ver 3.0

2006-02-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Everyone is eagerly waiting on the DIY Planner Ver3.0. Dougj and his team has been working feverishly for this to happen. Just a reminder everyone, peep into www.diyplanner.com tommorrow and check it out. If you like it, show some love towards dougj and his team. [diyplanner.com] [note] I know that this post is being posted one day late. Something goofed up in bloggers' mail-the-blog-post feature. It just put this guy in draft mode, and never published it. I am publishing this now anyway. But folks, go to diyplanner.com. Its got some awesome templates.

List of Web 2.0 resources

2006-02-10T20:20:00.000-08:00

Listible (another Web 2.0 service) is listing out a set of Web 2.0 services out on the web. Wow. It is a cool list out there. Go check it out.
It is growing, the list is growing. It was 46 last night. 51 today morning.

[link]

mailBIGfile

2006-02-08T17:35:00.000-08:00

Check out mailbigfile.com. We all have had situations when we needed to send someone a really big file, and hotmail or gmail stuck their tongue out at us. Now you have the answer. I am going to try this out today. If this work, I will add an update to this. Update: This thing works like a charm. Very very cool

No Credit Needed: List This

2006-02-05T22:32:00.000-08:00

Amazingly productive sunday for none other than our own No-Credit-Needed. Very encouraging post. Check it out. No Credit Needed: List This

ATFs 24 days to better finance

2006-02-05T00:22:00.000-08:00

The big man of PF blogs AllThingsFinancial has started an amazing 24 day tutorial on how to get your finances into order, and start saving/investing etc. These tutorials are a collection of good links from other PF blogs. So there is a lot of variety.

Today is the fourth day - basics of investing [link]

Catch Day1 - Day 3 here, here and here.

Kamasutra worm ... would hit on Feb 3

2006-02-02T19:31:00.000-08:00

Dear readers:

Be careful while opening attachments (any attachments) on Feb 3. The now much acclaimed Kamasutra worm is said to hit on this day. It is said to have the dubious distinction of being the first virus/worm which "blogs". Everytime it infects a computer, it goes and accesses a webpage with a webcounter in it - thus marking one more success on its part.

For more info, read the yahoo news article here.

I want to retire early ... and then what ?

2006-02-01T00:29:00.000-08:00

A very cool article on what to do after an early retirement. We say that we want to do a lot of things. But once after retirement, most folks just couch it up in front of the TV with a bag of chips. How not to do this .... .

The article says, that is based for people in the US, but on reading it, I think there are several nuggets of info that are common world over.

[link]

Quotes for Presentations and Laptop hacks ...

2006-01-26T00:23:00.000-08:00

Presentation Zen my favorite presentation critique/info site has a great post today on places to get some good quotations from. Ofcourse topping the list is the Tom Peters site.

Go on, steal some quotes .. and make your presentation snazzy.

[link]

Gina Trapani, Queen of Lifehacker.com has a great post on laptop tips. Good set of must-do tips if one has a laptop.

[link]

How to get great sleep ...Zzzzzz ...

2006-01-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

Psychologytoday has an excellent (albeit pretty long) article on how to get good sleep. It gives some excellent detailed information on how and why insomnia happens. More interesting is some of the medical data given (which I did not know before) about how we get drowsy and feel sleepy (or other wise).

The following paragraph is amazing - most of us who have night-outs during college can relate to this. Looks like there is a medical reasoning behind this.

Circadian rhythm guides the body through cycles of sleep and alertness. Ironically, it issues its strongest alerting force in a burst lasting from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., perfect for dinner-party repartee (although you may not remember the bon mots -- short-term memory is sharpest around 7 in the morning). After 8 p.m., alertness begins to fade, permitting us to doze off. This same system makes us sleepiest in the early morning, from 4 a.m. to 6 a.m. Stay up all night studying for an exam and circadian forces will make you drowsy near dawn. Stick it out for two more hours, though, and you'll start picking up steam again. "You don't need sleep to actually get alert," Spielman points out.

Also, about the way our brain functions with respect to day and night (light and dark).

The circadian system is tied, albeit imperfectly, to cycles of light and dark. We have dedicated sensors on the retina that deliver the daytime/nighttime message directly to the pineal gland tucked deep inside the brain. In response to darkness, this tiny nodule of brain tissue produces the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, broadcasting the sandman's message to brain areas that govern everything from body temperature to protein synthesis to hormone production to alertness.

Wow, just the other day, I read in Keiths column (in todone.com ) that watching tv or working on the computer just before sleeping is a bad idea - because the bright light emanating from either of these can fool the brain into thinking that it is day time.

Read the full article here. [link]
(thanks lifehack.org)

To de-tech or not to de-tech

2006-01-23T20:23:00.000-08:00

Doug from diyplanner.com has an excellent writeup on whether or not to de-tech. De-tech is by the way a nice cool term for moving away from technology. He explains in the post as to how, one should not think that we should move away from technology completely. We should open. De-teching is not a religion.

The best advice I can possibly give those people looking to the "Analog Revolution" for some sort of salvation or release from their shackles: don't take anything too seriously --it's not a religion, or even an idealogical movement-- and don't look at de-teching as an all-or-nothing affair. Keep your mind open, and don't automatically assume that technology must or must not be used to solve your issues and lead a creative and productive life.

[link]

Proactively prevent procastrination

2006-01-23T10:18:00.000-08:00

An excellent article in Lifehack.org which narrows down the 2 or 3 main causes of procrastination, and gives advise on how to tackle the root causes, so that procrastination does not occur at all in the first place.

[link]

Tracking emails and Lifehacker pack ...

2006-01-20T20:07:00.000-08:00

Ever gotten an email that you want to trace the sender. Check the following link out which gives you detailed instructions on how to do this (even with free email engines like gmail/yahoo/hotmail) with beautiful screenshots.

[link]

Gina Trapani from Lifehacker is at it again. Close on the heals to the Google Pack, Lifehacker has released a lifehacker pack - an amazing set of must-have programs. Check it out.

[link]

Information Week looks at Software companies in India

2006-01-20T20:00:00.000-08:00

A wonderful article in Information week, where a reporter spends a week down in India, touring the software giants and seeing how much of opportunities abound and how much more of challenges and hurdles exist.

The closing paragraph:

Microland showed us a 14-page job description for a staff position, filled with details about the technical capabilities required. The attention to detail, technical and management skills, and professionalism demonstrated by these organizations--and their talk of 30% savings--had a calming effect on my IT colleagues listening to their pitches. There are still questions to be answered through reference checks and pilot programs, but I'd say India's outsourcers have a good chance of winning another customer.

[link]

Standing ovations, best photos for your ppt, and financial planning ...

2006-01-19T18:37:00.000-08:00

Guy Kawasaki has a fantastic list of things that is a must if you want to do a really good speech. I have not heard him speak, but he is famed to be a very good speaker himself. He says that it took him 20 years to get to the point where he is. The post is titled "how to get a standing ovation" very aptly. All of us would want something like that. [link] Lifehacker, in its infinite wisdom, has a post giving us ideas on how to find the best free photos on flickr. Searching for a nice graphic for your ppt, or your desktop wallpaper, or maybe just the event that you had missed while you were out of town. Scroll down to the comments and check out the first link - the commenter searches for nature photos - and yes he does find some very good ones. [link] Ramit is at it again, with his second installment in his personal finance makeover for 2006. I have got to admit that he is good. Check out some of the stuff he says about how important saving at a young age is. Highly recommended read. And if you havnt read this first installment read that too. first article [link] second article [link] Remember Tew, the young college guy who was making money the enterprising way - yeah the milliondollar webpage guy. This was a guy who was selling small pixels of his webpage for $100. ANd his target was a million dollars. And oh yes, he did it - until yesterday, hackers cripped the website and asked for a ransom ! I think the site is back up now. Tew promptly informed the FBI, the smart guy he is. Good luck dude. I think it was a great way to have earned your money - you deserve to keep it. [link to story] [link to the milliondollar webpage]

Geeks, coffee warmers and the like ...

2006-01-19T09:32:00.000-08:00

I am going to change the way I update this blog a it. Instead of updating it during various times during the day, I am going to collect all the links during the day, and then blog it once.

Are you a geek ? Are you proud of it ? zdnet has a nice article on how geekiness as a personality trait is becoming increasingly popular, with more and more gadgets such as Ipods and smart phones coming.

[link]

Do you drink coffee ? Do you at times forget about the coffee that you just brought and get immersed in work ? Then you should check out this gadget - an USB coffee warmer !

[link]

Ok. Lets assume that you are good at email. You are always to the point. You write in bullets. You change your subject lines at the right moment - to avoid long threads getting lost. But are you frustrated that people around you, are not that good at email. Lifehacker has some really cool and subtle ways to teach your co-workers, friends, emailers, how to use email efficiently.

[link]

A white board which you can move around anywhere you want, and even stick it to the wall nearest to you. Hm. Stick it to the wall .. where have I heard this before. Oh yeah, the 3M folks are making this one too.

[link]

WhiteBoard Photo Software

2006-01-18T08:31:00.000-08:00

Just came across this software. Just amazing. Have you ever been in a situation (or situations) where you have just had an hour long discussion in front of a white board (and your company does not have one of those electronic white boards) - and you want the scribbles on the white board for later reference. Ok, if you are the geek that we all are, you would whip out your digital camera and take a snap. These do come out ok. But check out the following link. This is a software which will take in the digital snap, crop the white board, do color correction, keystone correction etc - and give you the output as if you were working on a white sheet of paper.

Check out the before-and-after link.

[link]

Images for Presentations

2006-01-17T20:30:00.000-08:00

My favourite presentation tips site - PresentationZen has a post up which gives some inexpensive and some free resources to get quality images for PPTs. These make your presentations look very professional.

[link]

Getting sucked in by a new job

2006-01-17T20:18:00.000-08:00

Fast Company has an amazing article titled "Thrown into the Deep end". This is about an Internet company guy, decides to leave and join his competitor as CEO, when his older company had been acquired by Google and shelved. The article is not about what he was before and after. The article is about how he got sucked into the new job, how he felt like having been thrown into the deep end of an olympic sized swimming pool in the middle of winter ! Good read.

[link]

10 steps to planning for retirement

2006-01-17T07:35:00.000-08:00

A new financial blog I stumbled into today .. No BS Finance. Nice name too. Follow the 10 steps to planning for retirement series. Very nice and practical.

[link]

Lack of Professionals blogging

2006-01-16T22:41:00.000-08:00

NY Times technology division has a nice write up on how and why there is a dearth of blogs about business travellers. After reading it, I would say that the reasons given are exactly the same reasons, why a large number of professionals in other fields also do not blog. We are always paranoid about our anonymity getting lost somewhere in the middle. For instance, one business traveller says that, sometimes just disclosing which city I am visiting can give my competition ideas. These are just some ideas that float through all our minds. We would not be writing as candidly, if we knew our bosses were reading it. Add to the fact that there were a slew of people who got chucked out of their jobs after their employers found references to them in their blogs.

Oh well, do read the article though. It is a good read. [Link]

Down with piles

2006-01-16T20:50:00.000-08:00

Oh no, we are not talking about the medical problem piles .. we are talking about the piles of clutter on your workspace. Look around you now. Are you a piler ?

Keith (from to-done.com ), who now writes a regular monday column in lifehacker has a nice article on how/why to reduce clutter and piles around you. Good read. I am going to try this out sometime this week. (yeah yeah, he says do it NOW!).

Read the article here.

(Thanks lifehacker ).

Body Area Network

2006-01-15T21:47:00.000-08:00

Ok. The name defenitely sounds cheezy. But that seems to be one of the 15 new tech concepts for 2006 according to Popular Mechanics Magazine. Lets see what that means:

Body Area Network (BAN)
Like everything else, implantable medical devices are going wireless. A new in-body antenna chip from Zarlink Semiconductor is in preproduction, and should appear in pacemakers and hearing implants this year. By transmitting data to and receiving instructions from nearby base stations, BAN chips can reprogram your heartbeat at your doctor's office or make a diagnosis from a bedside wireless monitor at home.

Wow. That defenitely sounds dangerous to me. What if the heart beat programmer gets into the wrong hands.

Possible bad scenario:

Hey .. I dont like you, let me lower your heart rate to ... heh heh zero.

Possible good scenario:

Romeo to his girlfriend: hey dear, let me make your heart go .... ooomph. :)

There are some other interesting tech concepts too. Read the full article at the PM magazine website here.

Dining room in a box

2006-01-15T20:28:00.000-08:00

Yes. The title says it all. An entire dining table set for 6 - Japanese style which fits inside a box.
Check this out here .

(Thanks Cory, from BoingBoing)

I. Cringely from PBS predictions for 2006

2006-01-14T23:11:00.000-08:00

Check out I, Cringely's predictions on technology for 2006. He does this every year, and he has been doing this for years now. Each year, he also evaluates his predictions from last year. Apparently he usually averages about 80+%, his truth percentage has dropped to 73% for 2005. Check it out anyway. Makes an interesting read.

Read the full article here.

The war is on ...

2006-01-12T01:47:00.000-08:00

Ok. I am now officially on an apple roll :)

According to this money.cnn.com article, Steve Jobs is now on a war footing - not against Wintel (they just kissed and madeup), not against Microsoft (they still do the MS office for macs). But against a whole lot of companies like Adobe, Yahoo, Google etc. Their new iLife software suite makes things so much cooler and easier, that it is creating jitters around. The iLife suite has a webpage creator which can do blogs by drag-and-drop. The new iTunes can create podcasts. Hmm. Curiouser and Curiouser.

Read the full article here.

Zoho Writer

2006-01-12T01:05:00.000-08:00

Very very cool online wordprocessing tool. You can import word and open office files in. But again, like the point I made in my OpenOffice post, the coolest clincher I see in this app is the export-to-pdf feature. I tested this out and it is brilliant. Amazing.

You need to see this for yourself. Click here.

Wow. Its all Apple news today ....

2006-01-10T21:21:00.000-08:00

Check out a minute by minute commentary of the latest MacWorld talk by Steve Jobs. I have always been very impressed with this presentations. This one keeps up the standard. Check it out here at your friendly engadget site.

Interview with Woz

2006-01-10T21:04:00.000-08:00

Forefront, a magazine from UC Berkeley has an interview with Steve Wozniak. Woz and Steve Jobs created the first Apple Computer.
The interview is a nice read.

Read the interview here.

Portable Open Office

2006-01-10T01:00:00.000-08:00

If you have not used Open Office, you should try it out. It is a free open source MS-Office equivalent. It is compatible with Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Lotus etc etc. Pretty versatile I should say. You can open an office doc and save as an office doc.
By far the best feature, I have used/like in OpenOffice is its ability to export to pdf.

For those who have used/who use OpenOffice, there is a new portable open office executable available. This could be loaded onto a USB jump drive for an office software on-the-go.

Go to the OpenOffice site here.
Get Portable OpenOffice here.

(via lifehacker)

Wearable screen for the video IPOD

2006-01-09T03:42:00.000-08:00

Wow. A wearable screen which looks like the spectacle frame, the optometrist uses. Well, this connects to your video IPOD. Having a screen so close to your eyes, make it feels like you are watching video on a 105 inch display.

Check it out here.

Happy Holidays and a wonderful New Year

2005-12-29T18:56:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers

I will be off for a about 2 weeks. I am enjoying the last week of this year at my home town - away from work. First week of the new year, I will be attending a conference. I shall (hopefully) be back to blogging around the 10th of January. Until then, have a great holidays, and wish you all a very happy and prosperous new year.

mouli

Hard drive rivals unite ...

2005-12-21T01:17:00.000-08:00

Seagate buys Maxtor for USD 1.9 billion. Read more here.

$100 laptop

2005-12-20T21:10:00.000-08:00

Remember a while back, MIT developed a $100 laptop. This was an experiment. It was decided that, if it could be done, it could be used to make computing available to the masses in developing countries. Well they did it. Looks like, there is now a Taiwanese company which wants to mass market this computer. The coolest thing that I found in this was, the computer actually works using wind-up power ! Wow. Read the $100 laptop page here.

Run linux on your windoze PC

2005-12-19T20:41:00.000-08:00

A nice how-to from J_K9 on how to get a linux distro running from inside windoze, using the new free VMWare player. I am going to try this out some time. I have always hated rebooting to run linux - and VMWare was not free at that time. The how-to is pretty detailed. Read the how-to here. (picture courtesy the J_K9 webpage)

Rules do not deter the committed ...

2005-12-19T02:56:00.000-08:00

Just read an article by Steve Pavlina titled "Rules are no obstacles for the Committed". Very good read. I should say a little boastful, but inspiring none-the-less. I think he probably has every right to speak highly of his deeds. They are indeed things to be proud of.

A small snippet:

Steve: I've decided to do X.

Cowardly Lion: Bock bock bock. Cluck cluck cluck. I'm scared.

Steve: Step aside please. Coming through.

Cowardly Lion: Huh? What? Um, OK.
Cowardly Lion goes home and ponders what it might be like to live as something other than a cowardly lion for just one day. Cowardly Lion obeys previous conditioning by flipping on TV to help eliminate such socially disruptive thoughts and feelings. Cowardly Lion begins feeling "normal" again (ca. 1984) after noticing that friendly TV characters universally agree that people like Steve are broken, anti-social, and wicked and that Cowardly Lion is in fact perfectly normal, average, and socially acceptable.

Read the full article here.

Amazing panoramic view of Paris

2005-12-14T18:07:00.000-08:00

Disclaimer: Large file download. But if you have a broadband connection, it is well worth it. Dialup guys might want to rethink. Paris by night

Flickr How-To

2005-12-14T17:59:00.000-08:00

Ben Bishop has a wonderful how-to for flickr. A lot of us have seen/used flickr - but for those who are considering moving to it, this how-to is a storehouse of information - written in very simple english. Well written Ben.

Check it out here.

(thanks lifehacker)

PC Inspector

2005-12-13T22:06:00.000-08:00

Nope, that is not the local cyber police. This is a software that I just noticed on lifehacker, that is supposed to be an easy-to-use file recovery program. This is freeware. Lifehacker says it in a humorous way, and I have to reproduce it here :)

If you've accidentally erased a few important files that you would kill to have back, put down the gun and try out PC Inspector.

Go the PC Inspector page.

Can this man change M$ ?

2005-12-12T04:21:00.000-08:00

NY Times has an article about Ray Ozzie - the new CTO at Microsoft. The article talks about how Microsoft bought Groove Networks, the company that Ray Ozzie had founded, primarily to get Ozzie. Ray Ozzie has been enlisted primarily to get Microsoft to 'rethink' and 'refocus'. Ozzie would be heading Microsoft towards the web services model . Though, they do not really admit it, this is to counter Google and several other small startups who are begenning to show up their web-services - which can potentially hit Microsoft where it hurts - revenue. Lets see what happens.

Read the full article here.

Be sure to peek into the leaked-out memo from Ozzie - a longish read, but a worthwhile glance. So the giant is indeed noticing what is going on.

Yahoo buys del.icio.us

2005-12-12T04:10:00.000-08:00

Just read on Wired that Yahoo bought the tagging service del.icio.us . Being a big fan of the del, I hope this does not get sucked up into any slow yahoo app. If it gets integrated into the new Web 2.0 'ajaxy' interface, that yahoo is working on, then I have no problems :) Read the article here.

How Many Bloggers does it take to change a LightBulb

2005-12-09T21:02:00.000-08:00

Excellent satire over at Meticulously Underthought. Wonderfully written. Bravo !

I thought of posting some nuggets - but that would spoil the whole thing.

Go and read the full article here.

friday/holiday fun

2005-12-08T20:19:00.000-08:00

Not sure if I would ever use this. But it defenitely is worth noting down. Ever been amazed at how beautiful some people's presents are. Neat bow ties on the ribbons etc. Well, Just saw an link on lifehacker, which shows that it is not indeed rocket science, nor does it take too much time. Check out the how to at the simplehuman blog. (pic coutesy : the simplehuman blog)

Personal finance Added

2005-12-08T19:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Readers: Planning to add some personal finance articles as well in this blog. The ones that I post would not really be geared to a specific country (US or India). The posts would be more of a generic nature - like saving, budgeting, etc. GCM

America's High-Tech Quandary

2005-12-08T17:45:00.000-08:00

A brilliant article in DesignNews, which I found through an ACM news letter on how the US is appearing to lose its technical edge. A very third party-ish neutral article, urging the people of the US to wake up. The article is laden with facts - some of them which surprised even me. I usually do not write about US-bashing, but this article is a genuine plea.

Some nuggets:

China is headed toward a million engineers a year ... and India isn't far behind

"Numbers aren't everything," adds Orsak of SMU. "But it's a lot easier to find a diamond when you're searching through ten times as much material."

Some contend that China's national will in this matter is similar to the one it applied to sports more than two decades ago. Back then, China's desire for a powerhouse basketball program resulted in a "genetic conspiracy" that culminated in the birth of an 11-pound, 23-inch boy named Yao Ming, says a new book titled Operation Yao Ming. Yao, whose father was 6'-10" and whose mother stood 6'-2", was quickly funneled into the Communist sports machine. He grew to the extraordinary height of 7'-5" and became a national icon.

Today, China is said to be applying a similar form of national will to engineering. And, as it did 20 years ago, its desire for success is trickling down from the top. Heads of state are applying their engineering knowledge to a desire for the country's biggest companies to "get more than mere pennies on the dollar" for the products created there. By developing intellectual property, instead of merely specializing in knock-offs of existing designs, Chinese officials hope to grab a bigger share of every economic pie, much as Microsoft does in the U.S.

Interest in engineering among American students is dwindling, particularly at the Ph.D. level, where 51 percent of the students are now foreign-born. Moreover, applications to U.S. engineering schools are down 60 percent from China and 40 percent from India during the last two years, suggesting that our foreign spigot may be running dry.

For many, the most frustrating part of the entire phenomenon is engineering's lack of appeal among American-born students. A combination of factors—salaries and public image, as well as offshoring of jobs to Asia—has made engineering appear undesirable to high school kids who might otherwise choose it as a career path. Add to that the fact that it's generally recognized as the toughest undergraduate curriculum in American education, and that many of its students increasingly see their college experience as an extraordinary grind, and the result is that worst of all cultural images: uncoolness.

Read the full article here

More on teaching your kids money-matters

2005-12-07T22:15:00.000-08:00

As a followup to a post on Dec 4 about spilling the money guts, I read today in pfadvise which said it all. The author was wanting to write an article on why we should teach our kids about finances - and since he did not have kids, he goes to a friends place who has a teen, who was an expert in finances at home.

Read the full article to see how the author was pleasantly surprised.

As I was thanking my friend for his help and about to leave, we heard a voice from the other room. "Don't forget to turn off the lights when you're done in there," his son reminded. My friend rolled his eyes and I laughed. It was the only time I've ever heard a kid reminding their parents to turn off the lights and I guess that in itself says it all.

Five Deadly Sins of Business

2005-12-07T01:47:00.000-08:00

WSJ (free feature) has an article from the Late Peter Drucker on the five deadly sins of Business. Wow. Amazing. Read it to believe it. That guy was a genius. This article is a reprint of his article from 1993.

The five sins are:

worship of high profit margins and of "premium pricing"

mispricing a new product by charging "what the market will bear.

cost-driven pricing.

slaughtering tomorrow's opportunity on the altar of yesterday.

feeding problems and starving opportunities.

Read the full article here.

Shrug effect

2005-12-04T21:50:00.000-08:00

Ramit Sethi in his blog I will teach you to be rich, writes an excellent piece on Sucess and the Shrug effect. He talks about how, when we compare ourselves with a famous person - lets say a CEO, we tend to put ourselves behind and compare, find excuses to prove why we are not there as the CEO and then shrug it off. Very well written.

Some snippets from the article:

CEOs don't just magically flip a switch and start wearing a fancy suit one day, directing their staff to do this and that. Getting to the top isn't about knowing how to execute a leveraged buyout, or negotiating anti-dilution provisions, or whatever. (This is true for both CEOs and other successful people in other domains!)

It starts earlier. For that CEO, it probably started when he took a paper route in junior high, or started a Web site in high school, or designed an interesting product in college. It started by knowing how to get in touch with the right people and learning--through lots of experience and failure--that senior executives are just people. They're regular people who started their path to being extraordinary by taking small steps.

He defines the shrug effect as :

Pointing at someone successful, attributing it to external factors, and shrugging because you don't have identical qualities.

Read the full article here.

Golden Quadrilateral Project features in a NY Times article

2005-12-04T20:10:00.000-08:00

A nicely written by rather lengthy article (read 7 pages) in NY Times details how India is building its roads slowly. The British concentrated on building the Rail network in India (which I must admit, they did very well - seeing the extremely vast system that is present today - read the wiki page). The last time, roads were buit in such a grand scale was ages ago - when Sher Shah Suri built the Grand Trunk Road (GT Road). The previous goverment in India, led by Vajpayee of the BJP party had kick started this project of building a vast highway network. This project was to connect the 4 large metro cities of Delhi, Mumbai (Bombay), Chennai (Madras), and Kolkata (Calcutta) by 4-lane and 6-lane super highways. Governments have changed, but thankfully, most of the projects are still going on. This was mainly because Vajpayee had established an autonomous body to oversee this project. I personally have been some stretches of this road network - and I should say, it is a pleasure to drive on these roads.

I do not totally agree to some of the points made in the article, but then it is written by an observer/reporter who spent one month in India and wrote the article. I would excuse and forgive him, for the reason, that, he only wrote what he observed.

Read the full article here.

'Talk about the money'

2005-12-03T23:02:00.000-08:00

Motley Fool, at biz.yahoo.com, writes an excellent piece titled 'Spill your Money Guts'. He talks about how we should talk about our financial matters more openly. The one really cool thing that struck me in the article was, to start talking about the financial guts of the family to kids, when they reach a certain age. I totally agree. Talk about saving, talk about budgeting, talk about 'what it takes for papa to provide food and shelter for the family'. I think it is very important for junior to know all these at a young age.

Read the full article here.

On The Road to a 6-figure blogger

2005-12-01T20:46:00.000-08:00

No, I am not talking about me. I write for the pleasure of it, and for archiving these nuggets that I find on the web. I am talking about Steve Pavlina and his personal development blog. He claims that it is not (at the moment) his primary source of income ; but maybe next year it will be. November alone brought about $4700 through earnings on his website. He says that it is a 33x increase than his January 2005 earnings. At this rate, extrapolating, he claims that 'maybe' his 2006 earnings through the website would be about $100,000.

Read about this and some more of his ideas (disclaimer: some of them wacky) at his blog post today.