Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Mobility....Game Changer

"Ten years from now, how will we describe how the world is different due to mobility, and how mobility has changed the rules of competition." - Think about it....Got it off the Tech dirt WIKI, I think it was put there by the director of strategy of Sprint mobile service

Monday, July 17, 2006

No rowing today...because of Tsunami

Tsunami hits Indonesia killing 40 people, so no rowing today just to be on the safer side. Need to try again tomorrow.

Coffee World

Coffee World, I have gone to the one at Koramangla, Bangalore quite a few times, when i was stuck there for a good part of a year, sometime back they opened shop in Chennai. I have always found them to be pretty good, thier sandwiches are particularly good.

I was there last evening got an Indicom WIFI cupoon got my self a cup of cold coffee and sat down to plough through my email.

I enjoyed the experience quite a bit, the variant of cold coffee which i ordered, i didnt like much but the browsing exprience was good convinient and fast.

Great job guys!!!

Its a great place for a small blogger meet up.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

zizu's head butt animated

Check out this animation of Zizu's head butt...here...Good laugh. But wasnt that funny when the real thing happened.

Large Outlook Attachments - Problem

GigaOM....Peer to Peer file sharing start-up, Pando Networks has developed a cool little plugin for Microsoft Outlook, that allows people to send large files right from within Outlook. It makes sharing big files such as Powerpoints, videos and large sized PDFs a breeze.

via GigaOM

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

How to make Wealth? - Paul Graham

All Paul Graham's posts/essays are a must read, please start with the one titled "How to Make Wealth". This is a simple , clearly articulated view.

7 Blasts in Mumbai

First the rains....than the riots, now the blasts, couple of days back i sent out a set of text messages, to my friends in Mumbhai to check if they were ok after the rains...than i did the same after the riots....today i am doing the same thing to make sure none of them are effected by blasts...What the hell is happening ?

As per the news there are 140 people killed in Mumbhai, But the one thing i dont understand are why are the Cellular/Telephone networks down?

Chennai 2010

I have been thinking about what chennai is going to be like in 2010, Please chime in with your views....the specific areas of interest at this time are:

IT Services, How that business is going to grow in this city and impact the same.
Real Estate, Today it looks crazy ...How are thing going to be after some time, what are the areas of growth going to be? How is the city going to expand?
Traffic/Road Infrastructure - Are we going to be the next bangalore.
Water/Power/Fuel, How are things going to be !, Water has been a big problem in the past and continues to bother us, power might not have been a big issue but what does the future hold in store.
Other Infrastructure - Airports etc - if i understand right we have an airport coming up in Sriperumbathur.
Industry...What is the industries that we have in place...what are the kind of industries we are going to have in place moving forward, Auto & Auto Ancilary are quite prevalent here, what else?...Where?

Amazing Wigs

i was reading in todays economictimes about how students in Indonesia are paying good money (1000-3000$) to get wigs made with cellphones built into them to allow them to cheat in exams.

Hi-tech copying is going to reach new levels over the next couple of years.

Sunday, July 09, 2006

I was checking out the Brainstorm 2006 Conference blog (here),

What is Brainstorm 2006?
Brainstorm brings global-minded business leaders together with leading thinkers from government, science, art, academia, entertainment, technology, and other key fields to explore both the present and the future. The gathering will have a special focus on technology and its impact, now and in the future. How does the new connectedness change business, society, culture, and daily life around the world? Brainstorm—even more so than other FORTUNE conferences—is guided and organized by our editors. Our group is kept small to promote a high level of interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas.

There were quite a few bloggers there, list here.

Below is a summary from the notes of Ross Mayfield(check out the post) on one of the sessions from the conference conducted by Diana Farrell, McKinsey Global Institute.:

Macro
1. Shifting centers of economic activity
2. Overburdened public sector
3. New Consumers
Social & Environmental
4. Social Life in a Connected World
5. Turbulent Tides of Talent
6. Social Cost of the Free Market
Business
7. Limited Resources, Unlimited Demand
8. New Global Industry Structures
9. New Science of Management
10. New Economics of Knowledge

Note to Radio Jockey's / Producers - Radio Mirchi / Suryan FM

On an average I am in the car for about 2-2.5hrs on weekdays and 3-3.5hrs on weekends, and my entertainment is

1. The Radio
2. Movie / Music CDs that I carry
3. Podcast that I have written into CDs

Radio I am inclined to as I expect something new and there is some form of people/social interaction (people calling in). Of course I would like it more if there was some variety the channels we have in Chennai are only for Tamil Music, I would like it if we had channels with english/hindi music, which should come in sometime. But this post in not about lack of variety but more about the current set of programming.

RJ/Producers you have my attention, which is the most critical currency in an attention economy, please use it wisely and let be benefit from the same...and so can you.

You guys are riding a wave, one because of the novelty of the radio programming content, but I think that is coming to an end, to sustain the audience please improve the content.

When I was thinking of these things I was reminded of a movie , "Good Morning Vietnam", Check out ...its might not be educational but great fun to watch nevertheless.

A good litmus test for your content will be , if you think it is worthwhile to record the session/program and put it up as a podcast for people to download, I assure you, simple yesterdays interview of Nandan Nilkeni & Naryan Murthy on Times Now (TV) if it was available as a podcast / VLOG, I would definitely download it.

Saturday, July 08, 2006

New found appreciation for Wiki's

When I was visiting SAPPHIRE'06, I met with Ross Mayfield, of SocialText, he is as expected an aggressive promoter of the usage of Wiki's inside and outside the enterprise. At that time I was not a believer in Wiki's but subsequently I have turned into a complete believer.

For the last month I have been using it extensively for collaborative document development and organizing & brain storming (collaboration) with multiple location teams, the experience has been great.

The Wiki's I have tested out till now are

1. Wetpaint
2. Jotspot
3. Socialtext

Quote of the day

Today I was reading the book by Amartya Sen the Argumentative Indian, Here is an excerpt from the book , which is a quote by Rabindranath Tagore from his poem "Gitanjali" which expresses Tagore's view towards politics and culture, nationalism and internationalism, tradition and modernity.

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;....
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into deary desert sand of dead habit;...
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake."


These points are applicable as much now as they were than.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Web 2.0 User

For sometime now i am trying to move all my activities to the web , that is mving away from the need to have my laptop/ HDD with me at all times...and thus far i have been reasonably successfull.

Bookmarks - Delicious
Email - Gmail
Calendaring - GCal
RSS Reader - Bloglines (Newsgator on the web on & off...but its just too slow.. bloglines is lighting compared to it, i wonder why?)
Documents - Realistically, i just leverage the word processor that is available in the PC i am connecting from (Open office in most cases) but am confortable using Zoho Writer for the same. Also now i am very happy using Wiki's for the same, currently i am checking out Wetpaint.com
To Do - I am not a big to do users, but i enjoyed the experince provided by rememberthemilk.com

I still havent gotten around to using box.net fully, that is going to be my storage platform.

Wouldnt it be great if we had a search product,similar to the desktop search, which would search all the above listed applications / platforms and provide me with one window with the results.

Zimbra - Inputs

Was evaluating ZIMBRA, Would love to get feedback from any end user here who has experience using / setting up / running the same.

Row row row a boat...gently down the stream

For the last 3 months i have been rowing quite regularly when i am in town, infact at this time it is once a day must do activity, i can confidently say that it has become a habit now! And a habit which i am quite happy about.

I joined in January the Madras Boat Club, but didn't start rowing till April. We row on the famous (infamous) Buckingham Canal, which is alternatively know as the "koovam"(tamil), well this river that flows through Chennai/Madras was (is still is i think) used as the exit point for most sewage.

The water might be dirty and there are days & places where it stinks but the experience is still great.

I am still in the learning process and have a feeling that it is going to be a long one, But i have graduated from Pleasure Boat >> Out Trigger >> Maiden Scull...still have to go a long way in thier hierarchy, While parallely doing the pairs.

Best part, this will probably be relevant to the people who are familiar with the Geography of Chennai / Madras, it is possible to row from the Club all the way to the Besant Nagar Beach via the broken bridge and that i assure you all is a fantastic experience, i have been there only twice, but its a great trip, it about 7-10 km of rowing but its a great sight.

More later.

Is this blog dead? - NO

Its been 69 days since my last post on this blog, so the few readers of this blog who are wondering if this blog is dead or if i am ...the answer is NO, I am very much alive and this blog is on its way back.

Why haven't i been writing ?
Well, it started with me being a little busy with my new role, than it was me traveling and finally because i was spending a significant amount of my blogging time at the CIO-Weblog.

But these are only secondary reasons, the primary reason was that i thought it was time to rethink this blog, give it an angle, i wanted to find ways for this blog to deliver more relevant content/value/use to all its stakeholders = myself & you!

So why start blogging now, have i figured out what exactly i am going to do? - NO i still haven't figured the whole thing out, but i have a few ideas and am going to try a couple of options and see how things work out. But for the process to succeed the one thing that i do need a lot of is feedback, please give me a lot of it.You are spending your valuable time & attention at this blog, so help me to make sure you get the best for it.