Daily Thoughts

Moving to Wordpress

2006-04-26T07:43:00.001-07:00

I discovered the joys of wordpress moving there to Ramblings Please update your links on the same.

Hearsay

2006-04-25T20:20:00.000-07:00

Humans have always gossiped. From time immemorial, we talk about things, that are really not important to us. This is the only way, human beings bond. However in today's context, this gossip turn into factual information, and if one probes leads to pure and fanatical hearsay.

For example, a few days ago, there were riots in Bangalore, due to Dr Rajkumar's death a lot of things said to each other during conversations was hearsay, like "Hey do you know that the riot crowds were brought in truckloads just to create riots","There is defnitely a hand of the opposition party to conduct these riots", "The police have stopped responding to the riot group in fear of their lives, bad policing".

All this got me thinking why hearsay prevails, here are a few reasons why I think, do add in more if you have any

a. Gossip is fun: Just because we can talk on any topic not being based on facts, we take for granted that whatever we say passes by without any factual backing to it.

b. Society of Trust:We are a socitey of blind trust, if an elderly person utters some words, then we accept it as though it must be true. None of us and sit back to think if they are correct. This is especially true in religious and superstitious matters.

c. Laziness:We are lazy to find the actual facts. We never out in efforts to test the waters.

d. Mass mania:Having a greater amount of group orientation than individuality, also to a certain extent attributes to accepting hearsay. This could be more to do so with peer pressure, that we belong to a group and the group thinks/acts in a certain way, so do I have to do it.

To a certain extent all the religious books are written on hearsay too, but I rather not discuss that here.

Hearsay is one of the most dangerous elements, trust in a person does not mean to say you have to believe everything he/she says, "The Waters MUST be tested".

hearsay,life,work

Barcamp history

2006-04-22T03:57:00.000-07:00

Barcamp history was given by Chris and Tara, on how it started and where it is going. Interesting stuff, may Orielly rest in peace.Bangalore BarCamp

Pink Go Marketing-Riya.com(Tara)

2006-04-21T22:36:00.000-07:00

How do you go marketing your concept of any idea, Tara from Riya dot com, gave in a wonderful idea of Pink GO marketing. An interesting way to look at community/amateurs, rather than just looking at the elite, when you are bootstrapping your company.BangaloreBarcamp

The Art of Scrum: Bangalore Barcamp

2006-04-21T22:25:00.000-07:00

Bangalore barcamp started with a bang.Art of scrum was the first session, given by a Project manager in yahoo. An interesting session, can make a whole lot of changes in life...BarcampBangalore

Barcamp Bangalore Countdown Begins

2006-04-21T10:04:00.000-07:00

Barcamp bangalore is just a few hours away. It is being held at Yahoo(Inner Ring Road Koramangala) Bangalore between 1000 to 1930 on 22.04.2006

I would be speaking on Mashups in the Enterprise and Sathish would be talking on a surprise topic. Will keep everybody posted on that. Till then.....
barcampbangalore,barcamp,bangalore

Cross-Pollination

2006-04-20T22:19:00.000-07:00

I've always been wondering, how my German colleauges are so damn efficient.( By the way if I've not mentioned before I work for a spftware company, and I'm in the field of Forensic Accounting.)

One consistent reason I've seen is that they have a serious hobby, other than software writing. This OTHER is the most important term. Coding, software designing is fun, if you are in that field. Some of us, come back home and hack away at our own projects, that is good, however not tooo good either.

Having a hobby which is different, other than what you do at work really helps to cross-pollinate ideas.

So what is cross-pollinate ideas?

Most of us in India atleast stick to a single profession throughout our lives, you don't wake up one morning and decide that you have to buy a farm outside your city to grow vegetables to sell it off. Or learn/teach music. This kind of an alternate profession, would give insights and ideas, which could always be carried back to your first job, if you ever decide to get back, or the ideas from your earlier profession could be carried into your latest one.

Since not many of us do this, hobbies are the best ways to pollinate ideas from a different world. Pollination in the true sense is within a species of flowers only, however I'm saying think beyond. Learn something new, do something different, and carry that learning, that method, that lifestyle into your current job.

Some people do have hobbies, but never stick to it deep enough, that they can carry the ideas from there.

Trust me to survive in todays world, you have to constantly innovate. You can stay ahead in two ways, either be really fast, or change directions extremely fast. Now consider how many times can you be really fast(take Roger Bannister for eg.. once he broke the mile record, everybody started breaking it). Changing directions is far easier, to change directions, you have to have new ideas, and the best way to have new ideas is to learn from other professions,fields,hobbies ...

So hobby fsat, build models, get to being a photographer, run the marathon, cook something, learn tea/wine tasting( I mean seriously).....
change,innovation,life,philosophy,work,cross-pollination,hobby

The Ancient Roots of Today's Financial Tools : HBS Working Knowledge

2006-04-19T20:54:00.000-07:00

From HBS Working Knowledge: The Ancient Roots of Today's Financial Tools: Take a bank check. Most people assume this financial convenience is fairly new, certainly not more than a century or two old.

But according to William Goetzmann, a visiting professor from Yale University who is fascinated by financial instruments as windows on technology and innovation, bankers' checks written in Greek on papyri appeared in ancient Egypt as far back as 250 B.C. Papyri preserved well in Egypt thanks to its arid climate, but Goetzmann thinks it's safe to say such checks changed hands throughout the Mediterranean world.

My Car Stereo was Stolen :-((

2006-04-19T20:25:00.000-07:00

Early today morning, the car started to scream, since we live in a small locality, all the cars are parked on street sides.

The thief was extremely smart, he knew he could not force an entry into the car via the doors, as they are secured with the auto lock, he opened the gasket of the rear window and squeezed an entry into the car and ripped the cd player out.

Made a dash through the opened section and escaped.

Well am not too sad, it was an old player, which was virtually dead, was planning to change it anyway.

I wonder if there is any security system against opening the rear glass, if anybody does know, please do let me know about it.

Abhyasa and Vairagya - Part II

2006-04-16T20:28:00.000-07:00

I discussed in Part I about the method Patanjali describes to study/learn. However learning is just one wing of the bird, without two, there is no flight. The second wing is Vairagya(Renunciation). Vairagya, here is not about leaving worldly pleasures and going to become an ascetic(this is the extreme for of Vairagya). It is all about leaving, expectations, feelings and any emotions, attached to your work/learning.

A lot has been written by business gurus in the recent years about Emotions and Work. However nobody has dared to define the thin line between the two, Patanjali has explored that. One must be attached to the learning/work, in such a deep way, that Emotions, must not be dettered for a long period of time, when an emotionally disturbing situation occurs. Vairagya is that. It is all about leaving everything else, money,emotions, all worldly things, when one is involved in learning. One must forget everything else for that infinte moment of, What am I going to benefit? What is my salary? What is my next position? How can I make people feel good about me? All one has to do is to direct these questions, towards the learning, rather than expend energy on such .

This has to deepened for deeper learning, if somebody decides to spend their time in the software industry writing business applications, then so it must be, one has to have a deep desire to do only that and nothing else. If something else suits you, then catch hold onto that path, but STICK THERE. Jumping companies, jumping fields, can always give growth money in a short term, but when it comes to life itself, think about what are you going to answer to your kids, programmed in Java/C.... Or you are an expert in writing software for Heart monitors, in financial applications, in search engines..

to get to this stage, you need both the wings, Abhyasa and Vairagya, to reach perffect balance and harmony. It is extremely difficult to manage both of these units, as the vagaries of the human mind, always push you towards materialistic pleasures and the easy paths of life. If one can master this then by what Patanjali says, you are closer to God(ie... your learning/work which becomes Godly to you). I guess that is why he says God is omnipresent and is everywhere in everybody, however only the true souls can see it. Yes only the true souls can see it, the true souls who have learnt and learnt to renounce things in life for a higher meaning and living.

Think about what should be written in your obituary about what you worked in your life, Java/C.... or a creator of a new breed of applications for the human advancement.Yoga,life,learning,work,entrepreneurship

From Passionate User: Pushing your skillsets

2006-04-11T21:36:00.000-07:00

Are you doing anything to keep up your skills? Some of you don't have a choice--especially if you're doing client work where each new job 'forces' you to learn something new. But for those of us who--like me--are mostly working on our own stuff, we can get... a little lazy. The techniques we've been using are like old friends. Doing it the way we've been doing it feels comfortable and less riskyLearning

Abhyasa and Vairaagya- Part I

2006-04-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

Post my Bored blog, I noticed a few things in my daily reading which is a solution to some of the problems mentioned there. Oops I forgot to mention, I've been reading Yoga Sutras by Patanjali. A book written by BKS Iyengar, the famous Yoga exponent. Patanjali taks about 2 aspects of life, to achieve peace and satisfaction.

a) Abhyasa: Abhyasa, is nothing but repetive learning and practice. As to what Iyengar says, one must never stop learning and practising what one has learned. Learning is categorised into 5 states:
1. Learning by watching,reading,congnitively thinking and reasoning.
2. Learning due to misperception and misconception.
3. Learning during sleep(ie.. in dreams)
4. Learning from memory
5. Learning due to Experience.

All these 5 learnings are to be learnt and practiced in fields of one's own interest. As to Patanjali, he states that if you do not know what you are interested in and cannot learn and practice about that subject indepth, then living is a waste(woah this is scary).

Again he subcategorises Abhyasa into various levels

1. Mrudu(Soft): One is just experiencing the topic: It is just like a beginner from college who touches and feels his way into topics which he has just been reading
2. Madhyama(Intermediate): Here abhyasa becomes usable, that is you start using the skills in a limited manner. People who are in the industry for about 3-5 years fall under this category.
3. Kathina(Expert): When you are in a state of taking decesions on the topic with relative ease, then you are in this state. This is the most dangerous state of all, as one thinks, he/she knows everything. What we know is just 20% the rest 80% is the critical knowledge, which comes to use only in special cases.
4. Samadhi(Eternal): Here one becomes totally oblivious to how the topic is being dealt by him/her. i.e.. It becomes a subconcious reaction.

I can relate the above 4 states to a driving experience. When one learns to drive, they are aware of all senses, about pusing the clutch, when to change gears, the sweaty back et al.. Once you can drive, you are aware, but not to a large extent of identifying pushing gears etc.. You concentrate more on where you can take the car, is the gap between two other vehicles large enough for your car to go. You learn to parallel park and reverse, you are still aware in these cases but not in basic driving. You reach an expert stage when you can do a parallel park and drive with ease, but remember, you are still not aware of the pitfalls when driving at high speeds, on highways, high speed through narrow lanes, or for that matter of fact in a n emergency situation, like floods, say in bad terrains. Samadhi is reached when you can drive in any condition, sleeting rain, sand storms, ugly road(not just basd ones), impossible terrain, horrible traffic, and also do all this with ease and talk to the person casually without cursing any situation.

So all one has to do is take a topic of interest as Patanjali says and try to spend most of the time in Levels 1,2 and 4 and spend the least amount of time in Level 3. This ensures a continuous learning and expertise in a subject of your choice. With this one can reach true learning.

Long enough on this one, tommorow in Part II, I'll discuss Vairaagya(Renunciation).
yoga,knowledge,learning,work,entrepreneurship

Bored!!

2006-04-09T21:05:00.000-07:00

What do you do, when you are frustrated with life, when you are tired of doing the same old thing, when you are bored???

These feelings are surprisingly increasing in our Society(India) especially among the software professionals in the age group of 24-35. I've been noticing that people in this age group has a lesser attention span than most of the CEO's of large corporations.

When I mean attention span here, I mean to say the sticky rate to organizations. i.e.. to what extent are people sticking in organizations for a long time and for wht purposes. We see young people jumping from one company to another for various reasons, I could think of these
a) Monetary: This is the weakest reason of all to jump, especially with more business coming into our country, I see no reason why somebody jump companies for just money

b) Not getting to do what you want to do:Well this one is something one has to figure out on their own. Are they clear on what they want to do in the first place? I have a friend, who has jumped 4 companies in 5 years. Look at his record, He jumped his first company for monetary reasons, he jumped the second one, just because he felt the company does not have exciting projects(look at point 3 on how to handle this), he jumped the third one, because he did not work on VC++, he jumped the fourth one, because he was not promoted, and now he is in his fifth company. I guess he will soon run out of reasons, and will have to cycle through the old ones, whe he will start feeling the prick of doing the mistakes over again. Mind you all these companies are global ones, some of them are in Fortune 100 list too.

c) Not having a challenging job:Not every time would you get to do the best work. You cannot be in the limelight for long, remember "Today's Laurels are tommorows compost". So when one project leads to another, you will defnitely not have a challenging job everytime. And moreover, you cannot give your best every time, if every single moment is challenging. If you ever face a situation like this, do what Dave Pollard writes, makes a lot of sense.

d) Not being promoted:Dude come one, if somebody thought you are good, for the next level, you would be there by now. So what is the secret of promotions, though I've never been promoted, a wise man said, the day you make your boss redundant, you can take his/her place. What and absolute truth, however not many understand this.

I've seen a complete anti-thesis to this one too. I've met a few guys from really large corporation, who have spent being developers for 25-30 years(yes trust me on this). What motivates them to do this. It is only one thing, they are passionate at what they do. They JUST LOVE IT. Yes lots of them quit their jobs at some point of time, to pursue something else, I guess that is justified as they explored one area atleast completely. After talking to them I see they are wanting to enrich their lives with each experience of theirs. Many of them have varied hobbies, which keep them occupied. They look at life as a whole experience with family,friends,interests, and work. It is a more balanced approach.

Indians have always been known to work for extra hours, for weekends etc... We as people are not building a character. If I ask a question to many of my friends, "What did they do on their weekend?", the only answer I get is I watched a movie, went shopping, met friends, went bowling/karting, slept at home(as I was tired), watched a cricket match, read a book. etc...

Not many say, I went hiking/climbing. I'm building a model of a train/plane. I attend dance classes, I cooked something new. I mapped my locality(cartography). When we find people out of our country do all these things we think it is something great, well it is not.

So people put down your work, catch up on something you have missed in your life, don't just look at work,money,the next project, look beyond. Think what can you tell your grand kids other than than Java,C and that manager of yours asking you to stay back in the office. THINK.
work,software,life

Guide to flirting

2006-04-09T21:01:00.000-07:00

I know this seems like a hot plate topic, but defnitely a good read and some good pointers here for people who want to use this.
SIRC Guide to flirting: "Flirting is much more than just a bit of fun: it is a universal and essential aspect of human interaction. Anthropological research shows that flirting is to be found, in some form, in all cultures and societies around the world.

Flirting is a basic instinct, part of human nature. This is not surprising: if we did not initiate contact and express interest in members of the opposite sex, we would not progress to reproduction, and the human species would become extinct.

According to some evolutionary psychologists, flirting may even be the foundation of civilisation as we know it. They argue that the large human brain - our superior intelligence, complex language, everything that distinguishes us from animals - is the equivalent of the peacock's tail: a courtship device evolved to attract and retain sexual partners. Our achievements in everything from art to rocket science may be merely a side-effect of the essential ability to charm."flirting

Summer Poerty

2006-04-08T09:48:00.000-07:00

Back to writing poetry after a very long time. Was doing this in my 11th, but then somehow was lost.Anyway here is one for the Summer.

Summer Summer

O Summer, Summer, how you are here,
No respite for me far or near.

Early morn I wake,
in response to your harsh bake.

Through the day I'm drowned in sweat,
I feel you are the hottest this yeat, I BET.

Clothes shed from Jeans to shorts,
from sweats to sleeveless,
in the relentless heat of yours.

Yet you burn bright,
giving hope to me that it would be better in the night.

The hum and drone of the little guy,
makes me squeam and cry.

I run for the windows and spray,
only in vain and terrible dismay.

All night in bed I rock and roll,
with the mosquito playing on my never resting soul.

CALM DOWN, CALM DOWN, Summer, I pray,
for the heat of yours is yet to cross may.

O Summer, Summer how you are here,
No respite for me far or near.

poetry,summer,bangalore

Pop Goes the Cell Phone

2006-04-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

From WorldChanging: As TechOnline points out, 'In less than five minutes, trained workers at recycling centers can manually disassemble a computer and sort all of its plastics and its ferrous and nonferrous metals in preparation for recycling.' But five minutes costs money. Today most cell phones and other small electronics are shredded instead of taken apart for recycling, because the disassembly time is too expensive for the amount of material reclaimed.

What have you done for the environment?

2006-04-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

What have you done for the environment today? Nothing since you are a Software Engg, well here is something to think of....
Via Creating Passionate Users: As many of you may know, New Zealand is facing a serious energy crises. In what could only be considered an extremely brave move, the Webstock conference site has been completely redone to save power. Recognizing the wasted power from downloading all that CSS, javascript, and graphics--they've gone back to 1997-style simple HTML with no pictures, scripting, or style sheets. Enivironment,Saving Energy,Web,html

Google Romancing.

2006-04-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

Google is now romancing. Very soon, you might want to find your mate, by just hitting the "I'm feeling Lucky" button. Dating sites, get ready to be washed out. The search industry is hitting high, with Google getting into every concievable consumer vertical. Initially it was job sites, now it is dating. What next, recommending the best sperm banks to fit your profile?? hmmm nice venture I guess.

Well anyway it turned out to be an April Fools Joke from Google. It might as well be just real a few months down the line....google,Romance,Dating

Topics Pending in Barcamp Chennai

2006-04-02T20:23:00.000-07:00

There are still a lot of topics pending in BarCamp Chennai(Happening on 8 and 9th April 2006). If anybody is interested, please do have a look at BarCamp Chennai. Some interesting topics are being missed, make the best of it. barcamp,barcampchennai,chennai,Web 2.0

QCodo, a php development framework

2006-04-01T05:25:00.000-08:00

QCodo is the latest on the blocks, php development framework. I really like it more than Rails. Reason? Last year, a few of us including Sathish came up with this idea to generate code based on Database Designs for php, we are still working on it. I guess Mike Ho(Creator of QCodo) thought about this long ago(hence we could not take it further :-))

Anyway, now that this framework is out, it seems worlds apart, I'm no expert to make comparisons between Rails and QCodo, but one thing I do know is that both frameworks over a period of time would mature itself and deliver to the right section of users. A few years ago, the hype created that Java could do everything was there(and it did create), now ruby(Rails) has it. In the future who knows???? Probably languages might cease to exist and you might code by just talking to your computer. (Dreaming)...

QCodo, do check it out.
Tags:qcodo,ruby on rails,ruby,php

1000!!!! Yipeeee

2006-04-01T05:21:00.000-08:00

My blog has hit 1000, thanks to all whoo read my blogs. If you have and comments/suggestions for improvements, or you want me to discuss some topic, please do let me know. THANK YOU ALL

Linux-PCQLinux a true winner.

2006-03-30T09:59:00.000-08:00

For those who have been following my frustrations with Linux over the past few month, excuse me. I'm writing this blog from a Linux window, feels good. Feels even better that a Distro given by an Indian magazine PC Quest(It is their inhouse development) works, better than the famouse distros. If magazine houses can do this, what about actual commited development companies towards new distros in India. We could take over the linux market by storm :-))
Tags:Linux,PC Quest,india

Speaking at Bangalore BarCamp

2006-03-28T19:29:00.000-08:00

Yours truly will be speaking at Bangalore BarCamp on April 22nd on the topic of "Mashups in Enterprises". My first time in such a conference, butterflies running all over. If any body does have any examples or case studies, please do let me know as this would really help me.barcamp,barcamp bangalore,bangalore

Addendum to Linux a pain in the neck

2006-03-27T21:56:00.000-08:00

Last time when I wrote that I was a failure installing Linux due to the ASUS motherborad, I manged to sell the comp, which was a new one. I bought a whole new computer with new specs, this time Intel one, and ofcourse the SATA hard disk format as nobody is selling otherwise.

With this, I was armed. (Or so I thought). I installed Ubuntu this time, as I read from their site, that they can sit on any hardware or almost. Well the installation went through smoothly, however(there is always one), once I start the system, it hangs at "Starting Hotplug Subsystem" or such message, and never does anything.

Well here it is again, Windows is much easier to install and it recognises anything you throw at it. No wonder Linux is not popular for the common crowd. For heaven's sake, somebody understand, this world is not filled with Linux geeks, so make operating systems for the common man, this would help popularise the product itself.linux,windows

Andaman Part - II

2006-03-26T23:56:00.000-08:00

Cellular Jail: Also in the earlier days called as Kaalapaani, one of the worst prisons in the history of Indian Independence. A reminder of the people who fought so hard for our independence, was a place filled with painful memrobilia. The entry is itself was not a cheerful one, a small entrance, with towering walls of prison ensured, that the person coming in would feel the unwelcomed reception. Was built around 1906, and used for the freedom fighters who could no longer be handled on the mainland. A painful scene was the windows for every cell, which were sized 3' by 1'. Once Gen Walker, the incharge of the Jail said, "In this world, there are 2 Gods, one up there, whom you all pray, and one myself, to whom you should pray. Remember gentlemen these walls are intentionally made short, we know you have no way to escape, you listen to me, you are safe, else only your God should save you".
Towering Walls of the Jail
Entrance to the cells
Cell Windows
Crazy times they were. The prison was 8' wide and about 12' long. The whole design of the prison is that there is a central watch tower from which 7 wings spread out in all directions.Model of the Jail.

Every wing had a workshop, within which the prisoners were forced to work in inhuman conditions. The prisoners themselves have said, that they had grind oil out of coconuts, which in their villages a couple of oxen would get 16 pounds a day, the prisoners were forced to pound out 80 pounds!!!! It is really inhuman. If they did not do the Quotas, they were wipped and thrown into the human waste which was to be cleaned by them.

There is a small museum honouring the brave prisoners and also a flame lit in their memory. In the evening, there was also a light and sound show about the prison itself. A must visit place in Port Blair. More photos of Andaman is here. andamanisland,andaman,cellular jail,kaalapani

Andaman Part I

2006-03-26T23:30:00.000-08:00

It was late in the night, a train chugged along the track, towards a filled platform. A train from Bangalore to Chennai Central, takes about 6.5 hrs.

We left Bangalore at 22:30, and were expecting to arrive in Chennai at 0500 hrs. Any sliup would cause complete chaos in our schedule to catch the flight to Port Blair. Lucky we arrived on time. Once there, with my incredible capability of speaking broken Tamil, I went to the pre paid auto counter and hired an auto for the airport.

Chennai is a beautiful city in the mornings, not very hot, a cool breeze, one can almost feel the saline content in the air. However one I sat in the auto, I forgot all this beauty, the only thing I remember as to how I use to gulp down air everytime the auto driver avoided(I guess not intentionally) the traffic. The roads were wide and nice, but our Auto Driver had a special knack of going to close to other vehicles and then at the last moment swinging away from them. For the first time, I prayed to God, will all my heart. I also noticed, that it is just not the auto driver who drove in such a fashion, even commoners(not the call center cabbies or bus drivers), drove the same way.

Limb and life unhurt, we reached the airport. At the airport, it was Supreme confusion, the police there were not sure whether they could allow, passengers, with the air deccan printout, after quite a wait, we were let in. The airport inside looked good. We checked in our luggage and were feeling ravenous. (We here is my wife Ashwini and I). We hobbled towards the Taj breakfast counter, and asked for sandwhiches and coffee. Coffee was not bad, true to speaking of Chennai standards, however the sandwiches were horrible. I saw people having a similar experience with the other food groups too.

Somehow the first impression about Chennai, was not a great one, except for the roads and the early morning weather.

Chennai is the south hub for Indian flights. All types originate and end there. We saw new flights like Paramount Airways who serve the section between Air Deccan and Kingfisher doing very well there. The traditional Chettiar families who own mills/jewellery shops in coimbatore or Chennai, fly regularly. Flights were there even to places like Madurai. This kind of connectivity is required in Karnataka too, no idea when this would come in.

We were called in for the Flight to Port Blair(Code: IXZ), and comlpeted security check and boarded the plane. Not too much to say about Air Deccan, a decent service for the price taken.

Chennai to Port Blair is a two hour ordeal, I call it this as there is no entertainment and no magazines that one can flip through for these two hours. It is a distance of about 1400 Kms to be covered.

I was expecting to see the islands reefs when landing, however was pretty cloudy. The first glimpse of the island was the coconut trees lining the beaches, what a sight it was, wish I could take a photograph.

The plane landed smoothly. Port Blair airport is an extremly small one. It is used by the Airforce, Navy and Commercial aircrafts. All commercial aircrafts, from Kolkata and Chennai, landings and takeoffs are through by mid-day. The city's main road passes through the airport runway, whenever there is a plane taking off, this road is closed, like a crossing at the railway crossing.

The departure and the arrival are nearly the same place here. Walked out into the open and the Resort had arranged a car for us to be taken to the Jetty.(The resort here is Wild Orchid Resort run on the island of Havelock...) The driver said that we could freshen up in their offices and since it was still 0930 hrs, and the ferry to havelock left only at 1340, we could go around Port Blair's Cellular Jail and the aquarium and the beaches. andaman, andamanisland

Bar Camp Bangalore Update

2006-03-26T21:31:00.000-08:00

BarCamp Bangalore, is finalized on April 22 2006 at Yahoo Bangalore.
Timing: 0900 to 1700
Address:
Yahoo! Software Development India Pvt. Ltd.
4th floor, "Esquire Center"
#9, M.G. Road
Bangalore - 560 001.

Check their site at http://barcamp.org/BarCampBangalore
Tags: barcamp,barcamp bangalore, bangalore

Bar Camp Bangalore

2006-03-24T02:12:00.000-08:00

A few of us Yahoos are going to be in Bar camp Bangalore, tentative date on 22nd April.Check it out here Bar Camp Bangalore

Andaman Calling

2006-03-15T21:04:00.000-08:00

I'm off to Andaman for a week's vacation today, for those who do not know about Andaman, it is a pristine island off the east coast of India, a great place atleast on the postcards, let me see how it is in reality.

Day 0. 16.03.2006:
Bangalore-Chennai(Via Chennai Mail) 23:15

Day 1. 17.03.2006:
Chennai-Port Blair(Flying) 07:20
Port Blair - Havelock Island(Ferry) 13:30

More later.....

For more on andaman check out Andaman IslandsPS. this link is not for promotion, just for information.andaman,india,islands

How to Save the World

2006-03-14T00:23:00.000-08:00

Dave Pollard writes: "As part of my research for my book The Natural Enterprise, I had the chance this weekend to speak informally with a group of young people (in their 20s and 30s) about whether they would ever consider starting their own business. Most of them like the idea of doing so, but confess to being afraid to do so, to the point most would never even seriously consider it. Here are the ten reasons they gave for this, along with my thoughts on how a Natural Enterprise could overcome these fears." entrepreneurship

Golden Ratio

2006-03-13T23:11:00.000-08:00

Golden Ratio phi, most of us know this because it has been popularised in the book "Da Vinci Code". It is defined as the divine ratio and the perfect ratio, as the ratio defining beauty. A few days ago in Discovery Channel, an episode was aired on, how scientists calculate beauty. It was seen that every thing in nature which is beautiful follows the principle of the Golden Ratio, the ratio between the length of the face to the width of the face, between the bones in the fingers...

But have you ever thought about beauty in products, check this site out Muthu.

Golden Ratio truly divine in the best form of ipod. ipod, phi, golden ratio, product design

Salads, Juices and Sandwiches.

2006-03-13T23:01:00.000-08:00

Thirsty, hungry, fat, health concious, then this is the place for you "Pure and Natural", an oasis for any of these and some other stuffs like Lassi, Salads etc...

The menu is filled with many options for every section, I love their Miso Burmese Salad and Lemon and Mint Juice.

Interiors are good too, they have a nice couch and good tables to sit around with friends or families. Located on a nice quite road(reminds me of Inner Paris Avenues) next to National College Jayanagar, gives a feeling of old college going days.

A must check out place, for the health and non-health freaks.

Pure and Natural is open from 11.00 am to 11.00 p.m. and is at 260/79, 2nd Main, 7th Block, Jayanagar. bangalore,food,salads,juices

Bar Camp Chennai

2006-03-13T22:09:00.000-08:00

Bar Camp Chennai is happening between April 8th to 9th. This is an event where people are made aware of the Web 2.0 movement in India. Check it out here Lots of Topics are discussed and many people to meet. Be there or Be Squared. barcamp, barcampchennai, chennai,web 2.0

Weather Woes

2006-03-12T23:37:00.000-08:00

Weather, one of the most important aspects of our lives, it changes the way we work,live,eat.... BUT we choose to neglect it.

For quite sometime, I've been seeing the changes in the weather systems.
I live in Bangalore, and have been here all my life. From the early days, I've been a part of most of the important roads of Bangalore.

During the early 80's I distinctly remember the raintree lined avenues and the Gulmohar roads. Bangalore always had a beautiful climate,during winter we used to get to 11 degress and during the summers we never got above 28 degress.

But things had to change, the boom of the software world here, has given us the Silicon Valley of India, in lieu of the tree lined streets, we see bare-boned building. The effect of this.... yes temperature rises, now in summers we have temperatures upto 38 degrees. Summers in old Bangalore(I talk pre 1995) were plesant ones, it used to be bright and sunny during the day and towards evening,, we used to have gentle showers, all this in the month of April and May. During May especially, after the showers the roads used to be filled with the petals of the red Gulmohar which gave the tinge effect for sunsets.

But now all I see is abrupt weathers, in the month of March,we have had heavy downpours, to my best rememberance, this has not happened before. Today morning, it was foggy, imagine, for all these years, there was no fog in summers and now suddenly we see one.

With all these changes, let alone our children surviving, I wonder whether we would be able to survive all this.

Maybe i'm too nostalgic, but either we turn back the wheel of time in someway or the other, I need my good ol Bangalore back. bangalore,pollution

O'Reilly Radar > Entrepreneurial Proverbs

2006-03-10T02:29:00.000-08:00

" I gave a talk at ETech on Monday called 'Entrepreneuring for Geeks.' I've given this general talk a few times now -- how can the more technically minded among us move into making companies of our own? I really enjoy the talks because I really enjoy entrepreneurs;"O'Reilly Radar > more..:

An excellent writeup on Becoming Experts by Passionate Users

2006-03-08T10:37:00.000-08:00

Creating Passionate Users: "The only thing standing between you-as-amateur and you-as-expert is dedication. All that talk about prodigies? We could all be prodigies (or nearly so) if we just put in the time and focused. At least that's what the brain guys are saying. Best of all--it's almost never too late." more...

From Brij Singh: One More Idea » Blog Archive » Running FM station with only $1

2006-02-24T03:52:00.000-08:00

I like the fresh and no-holds barred approach of Rajdeep Sardesai’s IBN channel. Using a mixture of aggressive tone, sting led scoops, limited citizen journalism and lot of inexperienced news anchors this channel stands out from the pack with it’s freshness."

Wearable game weaves clues into cloth

2006-02-22T20:29:00.000-08:00

Wearable game weaves clues into cloth | CNET News.com: "That's because Edoc Laundry's first line, expected to launch March 1, literally weaves an episodic, multimedia game into the fabric of the garments. The Seattle-based company is believed to be the first to attempt such a fashion feat."

From Genuine Curiosity Blog: Incompetence is wonderful

2006-02-19T21:38:00.000-08:00

Various learning models I've encountered over the years talk about four stages of learning. I just read an article by Peter Bergulnd that reminded me of this - here's an excerptmore..

Addendum to the above writeup: I think we here in India reach Concious Incompentence very early, by looking at others, whereas we do not reach for Unconcious Incompentence. We always look for new things to happen/take over, but not master one thing properly. Especially todays generation, always want new things before even they could master old ones. Nobody believes in the 80/20 principle. Sometimes we think that we know a lot, yes we do know a lot 20% of it, which is used in situations only 80% of the time. However to solve problems of the rest 20% we need 80% of the knowledge.

Constant Concious Incompetence must go in this direction of trying to understand the rest 80%. This is when we can change the way we look at life and the way we live.

From Atanu Dey: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

2006-02-19T21:23:00.000-08:00

The prime directive that the Buddha gave to humanity was as simple as it was wise: First do no harm; then try to do good. Easy enough to state but it is astonishingly hard to follow for the average human being. Granted that the occasional human has flashes of genius, but these are rare and therefore shine brightly against a backdrop of all-pervasive darkness of the general stupidity of humanity at large. No one, present company included, is quite exempt from moments of supreme stupidity and random acts of senselessness. Stupidity is as much part of our human condition as our much vaunted rationality. Which is why it is so difficult to follow the Buddha’s directive: we are just not smart enough.more...

From Firefox:Spread Firefox don't be a fanatic

2006-02-19T20:45:00.000-08:00

Note: This article has been re-written to communicate the ideas originally expressed more clearly.

In my opinion it's ridiculous to have "loyalty" to a company. I base my evaluation of products only on their own self-worth and merit as a product, and not on any pre-conceived opinions about the company that develops it or distributes it. Generalizing about the software of one company as a whole is, frankly, narrow-minded and readily worthy of ridicule. A comment such as 'Note also that Firefox users are in denial about the greatness of Microsoft's products.', would display a bias for Microsoft products and discredit whoever said it. Both sides are doing this, and often our side is a bit ruder about it. Of course you can often expect that if one application from a company is good that they have applied the same level of standard to their other applications, but you still have to try them out to see what you think of them.more...

Line56.com: Oracle Acquisition Predictions

2006-02-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

Oracle has acquired open source embedded database specialist Sleepycat, but the company's interest in open source companies may not stop there.

There's already been widespread speculation about Oracle's possible interest in JBoss (middleware) and Zend (development/scripting tools), but now an alert from AMR Research discusses other potential targets in open source business intelligence. Click here to find out more!

AMR named Actuate, JasperSoft, and Pentaho as Oracle's possible BI targets. "Each would give Oracle the ability to expand further into open source as it moves up the stack from middleware components and tools to more of an application flavor."

Oracle has good reasons to get deeper into open source, argues AMR, with such moves "enhancing its stake as a ubiquitous technology platform provider, a la IBM. A traditional software purchase model alone would eventually stymie Oracle's growth objectives."

From Premshree Blog: Yahoo User Interface Library

2006-02-13T20:44:00.000-08:00

Premshree's (品速力) Personal Weblog: "Yahoo! just released the Yahoo! User Interface Library, under a BSD license. From the website:

The Yahoo! User Interface Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, HTML and AJAX. The UI Library Utilities facilitate the implementation of rich client-side features by enhancing and normalizing the developer's interface to important elements of the browser infrastructure (such as events, in-page HTTP requests and the DOM). The Yahoo UI Library Controls produce visual, interactive user interface elements on the page with just a few lines of code and an included CSS file. All the components in the Yahoo! User Interface Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses."yahoo

Valentines Day?? Something to think about

2006-02-12T21:09:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine(Mayukh Debnath) gave a beautiful analogy of what Valentines Day is, I quote him "We are supposed to start Tax Planning from the beginning of the year, but only during the end of the year we focus on out Tax saving investments, so what we need is a noose around our neck to do that, Valentines day is something similar. we are supposed to like a person all year round, but we get a day just to show that on Valentines Day".Valentines Day

Small devices Big Changes

2006-02-12T17:55:00.000-08:00

I've always wondered, where the world is going to. Smaller chips, but faster throughput. Smaller music players, smaller computers, smaller laptops, smaller... well everything. ALMOST.

You don't see core changes, such as smaller electricity generators for the same amount of electricity to be generated. Smaller cars acheiveing off-road status,smaller cities sustaining growth in a sensible way. again ALMOST. Look at this article here We see in this case that smaller wind turbines producing the same effect of large turbines. If this can be done, in a low cost manner, it could revolutionise the world. But lo wait up. Things cannot just move because a small group is actually trying to do this. Do we think that a large country like US is going to stop using Oil?

Oil, it is the most important business for US. In the second half of the last century, they have waged wars,economically weakend countries to their knees(Quoting the idea from the book Confessions of an Economic Hitman). Do you really think that they woud promote such a technology to become viable? I don't think so, as long as Oil is controlled by them, alternative technologies would never surface. If not them, the OPEC, would align themselves to US to stop such a technology-shift(Bungling for humanity) to happen.

Alternative fuels, such as Bio-Diesel,Ethanol... are all fine, as long as still they are in the low consumption stage, if anybody has/will invent a technology to run cars on Water economically, this would never come to the forefront at the moment, till OPEC and US walk hand in hand.US,Oil,Energy,Biofuels

Demo 2006: Simplify and ice cream from ZDNet.com

2006-02-08T21:14:00.000-08:00

Demo 2006: Simplify and ice cream

Demo host Chris Shipley called upon the tech industry to simplify, simplify, echoing Henry David Thoreau. Personal computing has become much too complex…individuals are becoming overwhelmed…which has moved personal tech to point of diminishing returns.' Chris contends that many people may just sit out the market, and that the complexity and overload may stop or slow down acquisition of new technology until applications, devices and services don't have a steep learning curve or require a permission slip from an IT department. Simplify–this is the challenge, how to make computer more simple for individual.' She doesn't suggest dumbing down technology, but to simply bring it back from the 'brink of diminishing returns.'

She also noted that for many products, the line is blurred between professional and personal use. 'The difference between business and consumer is fading…we have to smarten up technology to make sure the products we buy as individuals meet our needs as business executives,' Chris said.

The first demo was a vending machine–MooBella–that makes ice cream. The machine creates the flavors (96 combinations) and flash freezes the ingredients (with a Linux-based software system), delivering scoops within 45 seconds. The vending machine can communicate sales data, track inventory and receive machine alerts. 'It takes ice cream where no ice cream gone before,' said company president Bruce Ginsberg. The company hopes that Starbucks will add MooBella machines to its stores, but for now the company is in test mode and looking for funding–beyond the $36 million already invested. "

When the Disruptor Breaks the Ceiling

2006-02-08T01:26:00.000-08:00

The following entry was submitted by InnoBlog reader, Juan Pablo Vazquez Sampere. He is the Managing Director of Stratemic in Spain. He had the following to say about Openoffice and it's impact on Microsoft:

Openoffice.org has gone portable. The open-source office productivity suite has just introduced a sustaining innovation to build on its existing disruptive innovation path and to separate this product from the rest of the software-gadget-like products.

They have introduced a new simplified version of its office software that runs from a USB drive. This innovation allows non-consumers to use the Openoffice.org suite on computers not connected to the internet or that don’t have Openoffice.org installed.

But, why do I say non consumers when a user that wants to use the Openoffice.org software has it already installed in his personal computer? Because, according to the “jobs-to-be-done” theory (see The Innovator’s Dilemma Chapter 3) until now, the consumer was unable to use the software in all circumstances. In addition, this innovation is not like the previous sustaining innovations the open-source community has included in Openoffice.org. It is built upon the convenience differentiation factor allowing Openoffice.org to disrupt Microsoft Office inside its value network for the first time.

Before, Microsoft Office was the only office productivity suite that worked on any computer no matter whether or not it was connected to the internet. Now Openoffice.org can offer consumers this disruptive product in the same circumstances as Microsoft.

What are the possible reactions from Microsoft to this disruptive competitor? The value network has now been broken. Microsoft should make sure the sustaining innovation with on-demand Microsoft Office Live builds on improvements that not only will be valued by more demanding (and hence higher margin) consumers but will also be valued by lower-end consumers. If these two types of consumers are not seriously addressed in Microsoft’s strategy, they could find themselves serving only the very sophisticated upper end tier of consumers with the corresponding market shrinkage and loss of first-mover advantage.

Will Microsoft Office Live up to the challenge? Are infrastructural innovations capable of acting as a platform to introduce a sustaining innovation that will capture the next higher margin consumer and, at the same time, neutralize the disruptive competitor? Will Microsoft’s rigidities prevent them from reacting appropriately with Office Live?

Only time will tell …

CNN.com - 25 words that hurt your resume - Jan 20, 2006

2006-02-05T23:41:00.000-08:00

CNN.com - 25 words that hurt your resume - Jan 20, 2006: "So, you're experienced? Before you advertise this in your resume, be sure you can prove it.

Often, when job seekers try to sell themselves to potential employers, they load their resumes with vague claims that are transparent to hiring managers, according to Scott Bennett, author of 'The Elements of Resume Style' (AMACOM).

By contrast, the most successful job seekers avoid these vague phrases on their resumes in favor of accomplishments."more...

Indians alright by somebody ruling them?

2006-02-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

I'm writing back after a very long time. Hope I can increase the frequency.

Yesterday(Sunday), I had a lot of time to think about things other than home and office, what struck my mind(during a nice hot showers where all ideas come to me), is that we Indians are being ruled.Here is my point of view.

Pre-Independence we were ruled by the British, which, with great difficulty were sent back. Now we are being ruled by MNC's.

India as a country, atleast in the IT sector is thriving because of MNC's. These multinationals who come here in the name of Globalization, actually come here for cheap labour only. Not for the quality of work that we can do. When I spoke to quite a few friends of mine who are from various MNC's the trend that I saw that emerged was, that none of the teams here in India, actually do breakthrough work for the company, they do other activities like testing,minor developments,support and maintenance and some amount of consulting. A lot of the work in terms of new innovations happening are still with the base countries.

I think I completely agree with such a business model of MNC's, because they want their countries to to grow, they want to make use of their population, their youth to develop new products no outsource the same. (Globalisation is this...)

However what I ask is , what are we doing to innovate more here? We work for MNC's for their products, but nothing is coming from India, take it IT, take it automobiles(I consider TATA as a true Indian brand making cars, others are assembling cars). So where is all the innovation going/happening??

Innovation in India is not HAPPENING. With people accepting mediocrity, things are not moving. We do not stand for our principles other than in Cricket(now I doubt that too), to say India is not a service country but we CAN DO INNOVATION. We are still happy with being an outsourcing country.

Somebody was mentioning that we are more concerned with power play and heirarchy in the society rather than real outputs. I don not know where this stems from, somebody says the caste system, however Suraj(a good friend of mine) says that caste system was made so that work can be distributed. I agree to this point, the question still remains is why no innovation now?

What we have to look at in the future is, we should be able to drive innovation into teh minds of everybody, in every process, in every industry, in every life. Every Indian must build a value system and live up to it. Every Indian must take pride that he/she drives around, uses a music system, uses a mobile..... "Made in India". Till then, we are going to be ruled by others as British ruled us.

Think about this friends, it is really a sorry state of affairs.india,innovation,mnc

Reports: Disney close to Pixar deal | CNET News.com

2006-01-24T01:44:00.000-08:00

Walt Disney Co.'s board of directors has given its approval to make an offer to buy Pixar Animation Studios, the independent studio responsible for hits such as "Toy Story" and "The Incredibles," according to published reports.

After day-long meetings on Monday, the entertainment giant's board gave Chief Executive Robert Iger the right to offer Pixar close to $7 billion in stock for an acquisition deal, the New York Times reported, citing "people briefed on the negotiations." The Wall Street Journal offered a similar account, saying the purchase price would offer a "small premium" for Pixar's shares. The company's stock closed Monday at $58.27, giving the company a market value of $6.93 billion.

The deal must still be approved by the Pixar board, and several critical details that could prevent its completion remained outstanding, several reports warned. more...

reveries magazine » Archive » indiOne Hotels

2006-01-18T20:50:00.000-08:00

n Bangalore, you can get “spotless” hotel rooms, complete with “free wireless internet and 17-inch flat-panel TVs” for just $22 a night, reports Pete Engardio in BusinessWeek (1/23/06). That’s if you stay at the indiOne Hotel. Elsewhere in “booming Bangalore” hotel rooms “are so scarce that you’ll be lucky to pay less than $200 at a second-rate hotel.” But at indiOne, “an ambitious experiment by the Indian Hotels Co., a unit of Tata Group known mainly for its Taj luxury hotels … the goal is to re-invent the budget business hotel and prove it’s possible to make money selling quality rooms at reasonable rates.”more... Tags:Bangalore

Math Will Rock Your World

2006-01-18T19:24:00.000-08:00

Math Will Rock Your World

Math Will Rock Your World A generation ago, quants turned finance upside down. Now they're mapping out ad campaigns and building new businesses from mountains of personal data

Neal Goldman is a math entrepreneur. He works on Wall Street, where numbers rule. But he's focusing his analytic tools on a different realm altogether: the world of words.

Goldman's startup, Inform Technologies LLC, is a robotic librarian. Every day it combs through thousands of press articles and blog posts in English. It reads them and groups them with related pieces. Inform doesn't do this work alphabetically or by keywords. It uses algorithms to analyze each article by its language and context. It then sends customized news feeds to its users, who also exist in Inform's system as -- you guessed it -- math.more.. Tags :Math

Sydney Morning Herald:Stamp of approval for disposable camera - Breaking - Technology - smh.com.au

2006-01-16T21:58:00.000-08:00

The posties of Australia could be in for a bit of a shock.

Rather than delivering conventional postcards, they could soon be dropping off high-tech digital postcards - ones with built-in flat screens that can play a slide show of photos taken by the sender.more...:

Business Week: How Apple Could Mess Up, Again

2006-01-16T20:15:00.000-08:00

Apple is doing phenomenally well these days. It seems it's doing a textbook job of maintaining huge market share in digital music players, long after most experts thought that share would erode. And it's doing so with the same proprietary strategy that many thought would never stand up to an onslaught from the likes of Microsoft, Wal-Mart, and Yahoo!. Can Apple keep it up?more..

Is 37signals The New Google? by Mitch Wagner

2006-01-15T18:49:00.000-08:00

Is 37signals the new Google?

What am I, a psychic? How the heck should I know?

I don't know whether 37signals will grow from the plucky little startup it is today to become a multi-billion-dollar world-shaking powerhouse. But 37signals does have the zesty, refreshing, flavor of a little company called Google, ca. 1998. 37signals demonstrates its spunkiness in its application suite available on the company home page, and further described in this podcast interview with co-founder Jason Friedmore..

Steve Jobs Keynote by Guy Kawasaki

2006-01-10T22:16:00.000-08:00

Lessons from Steve's Keynote
I attended Steve's keynote address at Macworld Expo San Francisco this morning, and I took a picture of most of the slides that he used. I couldn't capture them all because of the special effects he was using.more...

Line56.com: ERP Underused and Difficult

2006-01-08T22:40:00.000-08:00

ERP Underused and Difficult
European ERP experiences as reported by PMP Research highlight both challenges and opportunities for vendors; despite everything, ERP still foundationalERP

The Indian Economy India & America: Natural Allies?

2006-01-08T22:36:00.000-08:00

India & America: Natural Allies?
January 6th, 2006 by Prashant Kothari

“What’s good for General Motors is good for America” said the the auto-makers’ executives during its heyday, in the 1960s. Not necessarily true — then, and now.

However, is it possible that what’s good for India is good for the US?

Charles Wheelan, in his Naked Economist column on Yahoo, thinks so and cites four reasons to back his claim, starting with the most obvious india,america

Next Big thing

2006-01-04T22:49:00.000-08:00

What do you think the next big thing is? Is it Artificial Intelligence? Is it smarter Technology, Smaller Mobiles? Well I think it is McDonalds, KFC... opening up Fuel Stations all over the world next to their outlets. Why read here...

Soon you might just be eating your favourite chicken / burger and generating fuel for your car too. fuel,vegetable oil,biodiesel

Tech's new resolutions -What Google,Apple,Microsoft must shoot for in 2006

2006-01-04T22:34:00.000-08:00

B2 Report: Tech's new resolutions - Jan. 4, 2006: "This is the time of year when everyone makes extravagant promises to themselves and others. Why should the technology industry sit out the ritual?

So I'm offering New Year's resolutions to the powers that be. These aren't predictions, but they're well within the companies' reach. Here are my self-improvement tips -- and they didn't even have to ask."more...

“Let the Good Times Roll” by Guy Kawasaki

2006-01-04T00:34:00.000-08:00

“Let the Good Times Roll” by Guy Kawasaki: "If only I could get paid for answering the question, “How can I get people to evangelize my product?” I would be able to stop working and play hockey every day. Alas, there is no way to get paid for this information, so I give it to you for free."

Times of India: SMS Power

2006-01-01T23:05:00.000-08:00

PUNE: Making a wish at the popular Shree Siddhivinayak temple in Mumbai is now just an SMS away. The temple, famous for its celebrity devotees including Big B, has tied up with a mobile content provider for a service where people can send their prayers via SMS.

The prayers will be compiled and kept in a 'wish box' inside the temple. With close to 10,000 SMSes flooding Lord Ganesha's inbox in just a week's time, it seems this hi-tech worship is fast catching on.

Although this is the first time the temple has used SMSes, it has always been an advocate of technology to make worshipping convenient.

The temple has an official website that allows devotees to book a puja online, buy devotional items at the e-shop and view live webcasts of the temple.

According to Sanjay Bhagwat, the temple trust's CEO, "Technology has become a vital part of everyone's life and the latest service we have started is to make praying convenient for people who may not be able to visit the temple. Not everyone can come to the temple, but the faith is always there." Says Shashi Kumar, business development manager of Mauj, the telecom solutions company which is providing the service, "Though we have not publicised this service on a large scale, the response has been good.

Now, it is convenient to make a wish at any time, from anywhere. We have also been getting repetitive SMSes from people. Many want to make a wish every day, something they wouldn't have been able to do unless they went to the temple on a daily basis.

Of course, despite technological worship, there are still thousands of people who visit the temple daily and wait in serpentine queues for Ganesha's blessings. In fact, Bhagwat says, the number of devotees visiting the temple has increased over the years.

"According to data, more than a crore devotees visit the temple every year and the number is increasing. We have close to 20,000 people coming inside the temple daily, and this does not include those who take darshan from outside.

Tuesday is an auspicious day where some 40,000 devotees visit the temple," he adds. According to popular belief, any wish made at the temple is always fulfilled.

Deccan Herald: Plusses of Bangalore Traffic

2006-01-01T22:25:00.000-08:00

A brand new year, a brand new day. But some things never change. Like the traffic on Bangalore’s roads.

A brand new year, a brand new day. But some things never change. Like the traffic on Bangalore’s roads.

I know several self-appointed experts who say once you have driven through the maniacal maze that is Indian traffic, you can drive anywhere else in the world. I used to agree with them until I analysed the situation more closely, thus becoming a self-appointed expert myself.

Upon this close analysis, I discovered that Indian traffic meanders along. It is almost impossible to find a straight stretch of traffic. This is especially through within city limits, where people cut lanes faster than a hot knife through even hotter butter. Shining examples are the pioneers of zig-zag traffic — the auto rickshaw drivers. Observe an auto and you shall see it moves not unlike a crab — always sideways, never straight. Unless of course, the crab (read auto rickshaw driver) is so drunk that he starts moving unnaturally (read straight). So what should we do to these drivers? There is no answer! Indian traffic comes with its banes and boons. The banes are innumerable. There are, however, two heaven-sent boons.

Boon 1:

It restricts brain drain because the Indians who go abroad find that they are unable to drive in foreign traffic, which is more often than not orderly. Zig-zagging has become an old habit and as the saying goes, “Old habits die hard”, and in a certain Bruce Willis’ case, it dies hard with a vengeance. Thus, most Indians are forced to return to their motherland for want of Indian traffic.

Boon 2:

Ever heard of sibling rivalry? Well, Indian traffic has the power to induce brotherly qualities among motorists. Explicit profanities spew from mouths in all directions, thereby extending one’s vocabulary in every language known to man. In some situations, if a person hangs around the scene long enough, he might also get a basic introductory course to the art of street fighting, for free. So, if you have ever nurtured dreams of going abroad, I would strongly recommend that you employ a chauffeur here in India.bangalore,traffic

Linux- a pain in the neck???

2005-12-30T09:25:00.000-08:00

Recently I tried to male a concious move to Linux instead of running on Windows due to Ethical reasons. I have a new computer, with AM64 processor with a SATA hard disk and a VT8251 chipset. The surprising part is even though I'm not a computer guy I had to learn all this, because I just could not instll Linux on this configuration. I tried all of the so called distros(Fedora Core 4, Mandrake 2006, Ubuntu Breezy...). All I found was "No valid devices were found on which to create new filesystems". Eventually I got to know that the chipset which I bought was not compatible are releasing some kind of a patch in 2006. Moreover I also found a patch for linux itself, which is a pure C code. I wonder how a non computer releated guy like me install that. Hmmm I need a genie to do this kind of stuff. Strange, I've alwys heard that some of the richest minds on earth are those in the open source community of which a large percentage are involved in writing something or the other for Linux and we have this dammed platform, where a common user cannot use.

Well back to XP which is more reliable than ever at this moment and Long Live Microsoft , even if you charge, something works(that is how I'm writing this). Anyway I've lost all hope in the Linux community, even after posting countless messages in various forums,nobody dared to answer this question, or direct me to a previous message. Atleast for microsoft I can acll up whenever I need them. It is better to pay for something, rather than get a free lunch.

In conclusion "Is Linux a pain in the neck??", NOPE NOT AT ALL, it is a pain in the a**.linux,mandrake,fedora,windows Operating Systems

New Scientist Breaking News - Space 'spiders' could build solar satellites

2005-12-28T22:40:00.000-08:00

A mission to determine whether spider-like robots could construct complex structures in space is set to launch in January 2006. The spider bots could build large structures by crawling over a "web" released from a larger spacecraft.

The engineers behind the project hope the robots will eventually be used to construct colossal solar panels for satellites that will transmit solar energy back to Earth. The satellites could reflect and concentrate the Sun's rays to a receiving station on Earth or perhaps beam energy down in the form of microwaves.

The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency will launch a satellite called Furoshiki on 18 January 2006, which will conduct three experiments to test the idea. The satellite will be deployed from a rocket on a sub-orbital trajectory. This means scientists will have only 10 minutes of microgravity in which to perform their tests before the craft starts its descent back to Earth and eventually burns up in the atmosphere.

The first experiment will see three small satellites detach from the mother ship and stretch out to form two corners of a triangular net with their mother craft forming the other. Onboard cameras will be used to verify that the net, which measures 40 metres on each side, remains as steady as possible and that the daughter satellites do not get tangled in the web.
Web crawlers

Next, two smaller robots, called RobySpace Junior 1 and 2, will crawl out of the mother satellite and manoeuvre themselves along strands of the web. Such spider robots could one day be used to fit pieces of a large solar array or reflector on top of the netting.

The prototype robots, built by engineers at the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Vienna University of Technology, will test how well they can crawl along the net in the absence of gravity. Each robot has a set of wheels that can grip both sides of a netting line to prevent it from floating off into space.

"I hope that we can demonstrate for the first time that it is possible to move along a very thin, free-floating net in a controlled fashion," says Leopold Summerer from ESA’s Advanced Concepts Team.

While the robots are being deployed, a ground station will command the mother and daughter satellites to synchronise their microwave antennae and beam a signal back to a receiving station on Earth.
First step

The mission will last only a short period of time but will cost much less than an in-orbit experiment. "We wanted to try a satellite experiment which provides us with a very long experiment time," says Nobuyuki Kaya, an engineer at Kobe University, Japan, who is working on the satellite’s microwave experiment. "But we have no budget. We thought, well, this is just a first step."

A satellite capable of beaming one billion watts of solar-generated electricity back to Earth would probably need a solar panel with an area of one square kilometre. But spider robots could also be used to build massive communication antennas or a shield to protect satellites from orbiting space junk.space

Erika Jonietz:A new service from Kirkland, WA-based Inrix predicts traffic slowdowns by crunching road sensor data, weather, history, and local events

2005-12-28T20:17:00.000-08:00

In the interminable battle against traffic, a growing number of government and private initiatives offer U.S. drivers high-quality real-time traffic data and even short-term predictions of travel time from, say, one freeway intersection to the next.

But most of the forecasts don't extend beyond 15 or 20 minutes. Though a veritable traffic jam of companies has sprung up to offer data, they generally inform commuters of snarls as they occur, which is often too late for drivers to change their plans.

Now, actual traffic prediction -- forecasts of congestion levels hours and even days in advance -- is on the horizon. It's coming from Kirkland, WA-based Inrix, founded in 2004 by former Microsoft executives Bryan Mistele and Craig Chapman and former Expedia executive Seth Eisner.

The company uses algorithms that originated in the labs of Microsoft Research; its technology is the first fruit of Microsoft's initiative to license intellectual property to venture capitalists and startups.

The Inrix software starts with a mass of data obtained from government agencies -- real-time traffic flow and incident information from gadgets installed on highways, including toll-tag readers, cameras, radar units, and magnetic sensors embedded in the pavement. Inrix then adds speed and location data from computers and Global Positioning System (GPS) units in vehicles owned by trucking and delivery companies. These vehicles effectively act as mobile sensors, and Inrix buys the data they collect. Finally, Inrix adds up to two years of historical traffic flow data, weather forecasts and conditions, and even local road construction schedules, school calendars, and dates of events like concerts and athletic contests.

The company's proprietary statistical models combine all this data to provide not only a snapshot of current traffic flow but also predictions about expected congestion and road conditions over the next several hours and even days. Each city requires its own unique model; the model for San Francisco alone contains about half a terabyte (500 gigabytes) of data, says Oliver Downs, Inrix's chief scientist.

Inrix plans to have models for the 30 largest U.S. cities available by the end of 2005 and to provide traffic predictions to drivers through partnerships of various kinds. It announced its first partnership, with digital-mapping company Tele Atlas, in September.

Tele Atlas will offer Inrix services to all of its customers, which include companies such as MapQuest and T-Mobile Traffic. Inrix plans additional partnerships, with companies such as cell-phone operators, traditional and satellite broadcasters, and in-car navigation services.

Approximately 3,000 drivers in the Seattle area have been using a prototype service based on Inrix's technology. Traffic information is delivered via smart phones, and sections of the city's highways show up as green, yellow, red, or black, depending on the level of congestion. The phones also display estimated times until roads will either clear or become jammed. The company says that the service correctly color-codes routes about 88 percent of the time when forecasting conditions up to 48 hours in advance.

The goal, says Mistele, is to provide drivers with truly useful information about traffic, such as the best route for a delivery van, the ideal time to leave work, how to reroute a trip to avoid an accident, or even an estimate of travel time from a New York City hotel to Newark Airport next Thursday evening. And while the cost to individual consumers will be set by resellers, current traffic services range in price from $20 to $120 a year.

Without doubt, there is a market for the kind of service Inrix has created, says Mark Dixon Bunger, who covers telematics as a principal analyst for Forrester Research. But predicting how well the company will do may be even trickier than predicting the traffic. "What is easy to say is that they've got great backing and they've got great finances. They're in a much better starting position -- but it is a starting position -- than most other companies."

In fact, Inrix already received $6.1 million in first-round venture funding in April from August Capital and Venrock Associates. If Bunger's forecasts hold up, traffic prediction and dynamic routing will begin to make an impact in the marketplace within about five years. And if drivers have any luck, those predictions will mean they spend less time in gridlock.traffic

From Tom Peters: Chip to Tom

2005-12-21T19:21:00.000-08:00

Chip Bell to Tom Peters (12.20.2005): "If you were asked to be the keynote speaking coach to a new company CEO eager to do a great job, what is the one thing you would advise the CEO
to do (or not do)?"

TP: (A) Read 2 books. (1) Bossidy (& Charan) on execution ... Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Main takeaway: Bedrock #1 for corporate success is a "culture of execution." (FYI, Bob Nardelli did this brilliantly at Home Depot, despite pressure to do sexier stuff first.) (2) Read Lou Gerstner's book ... Who Says Elephants Can't Dance: Inside IBM's Historic Turnaround. Main takeaways: Listen first, then do vision no matter how high the pressure for a "scintillating vision." Also, you must tackle head-on the extant culture head; Gerstner reluctantly did this and did it well, but Carly Fiorina didn't at HP (she led with "vision").

(B) And: LISTEN! LISTEN! LISTEN! (The answers are already out there, typically among the most exercised and disenchanted.)

(C) And: COMMUNICATE! COMMUNICATE! COMMUNICATE! (Esp: Keep the board informed of everything, especially hiccups!)

(D) And: Work proactively in every "little" which way, each and every day to "live" and "ooze" INTEGRITY! (Integrity begets trust which begets a good place to work which begets performance.)

(E) And: Remove or marginalize ASAP the career "career corporate politicians."

(F) And: "Do a GE": Elevate HR to the head table on the Right Hand of God, with great HR talent and an HR seat with equal power to that of the CFO. (Again, Nardelli did this spectacularly at Home Depot!)

Chip: "One thing" is cute ... but the above SIX are musts! Use all six of 'em, but do NOT feel free to choose "the best one"—SIX or naught!tom peters,CEO

That Blur? It's China, Moving Up in the Pack - New York Times

2005-12-21T19:03:00.001-08:00

That Blur? It's China, Moving Up in the Pack - New York Times: "SHANGHAI, Dec. 20 - Many economists have long suspected that official government statistics here provided only a shadow of reality.

With China's announcement on Tuesday that its economy was considerably bigger than previously estimated, economists and financial prognosticators are scrambling to rethink their assessment of China's rise and its role on the world stage. China's new figures suggest that it probably has passed France, Italy and Britain to become the world's fourth-largest economy."china,economy

Governments Tremble at Google's Bird's-Eye View - New York Times

2005-12-21T19:03:00.000-08:00

Governments Tremble at Google's Bird's-Eye View - New York Times: "When Google introduced Google Earth, free software that marries satellite and aerial images with mapping capabilities, the company emphasized its usefulness as a teaching and navigation tool, while advertising the pure entertainment value of high-resolution flyover images of the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the pyramids."google earth

Java - Is it going to Stay?

2005-12-19T00:05:00.000-08:00

I know that this debate can go on for long and hot. However I still want to poke into it as some of the paradigms which we are looking can change dramatically over the next few years.Bruce A Tate an evangelist for Java and the co-creator of the spring framework has serious doubts as to where Java is going. Personally I feel the same too. Java as a language and the framework that surrounds it is too complex currently. We have every now and then a framework/technology comes up related to Java to confuse developers. Agreed that developers are a lot who love to learn new programming languages/paradigms, but the way Java or .Net for that matter is going to to complicate frameworks more. First there was simple Servlets and JSP, then came along templating frameworks, such as Tapestry etc....

Even .NET is getting complicated day by day than actually getting simpler. Strange that nobody is thinking about making frameworks easier for developers. What we think is as simple is actually comlpex for beginners to the language/framework.

HOWEVER I found Bruce A Tate talking about new trends in programming/frameworks, which shows the new age stuff which could change the world.You could read it here.

This gives us a new angle on framworks like rails etc.. I've been trying out this and will keep this area posted with my findings.java,ruby

Next-gen RSS reading platform (Attensa) demos power of Attention.xml

2005-12-18T23:52:00.000-08:00

Next-gen RSS reading platform (Attensa) demos power of Attention.xml by ZDNet's David Berlind -- Now that I've had a chance to see Attensa's solution in action (here at the Syndicate Conference in San Francisco), I can understand why John Palfrey's RSS Investors venture capital outfit selected the company as one of its initial investments (valued at $9 million). Like Newsgator, Attensa offers RSS subscription software that works inside of [...]

rss

Two drops of Blood Changed my life.

2005-12-15T20:16:00.000-08:00

Early friday morning, Kormangla-Bangalore, it is serene next to the lake, but a traffic jam is building up. On the east side of the lake, an artic coloured Maruti Swift(the latest car in the small-mid segment), has crashed into the back part of a truck carrying sand. Is it negligence on the part of the driver or apathy of our truck drivers/police to let trucks in that part of the road, I know not. But what I defnitely saw was two spots of blood spattered on the broken wind shield, the whole front part crushed and the steering wheel touching the front seat. Now I'm no expert on car crashes and their stability, but I can defnitely say, the driver and the co-passenger, if not dead, they were defnitely critically injured. Is it the fault of the car manufacturers, to build such a car, without sufficient test.Is it the fault of the truck driver, If it the fault of the police, or is it my fault to turn in the direction of the accident?

However one statement is fixed in my mind. At the moment I have a small car, but when I'm buying a new car, I defnitely would not go for a small car in this city. Maybe I will not get any parking space, maybe driving will be difficult as I cannot squeeze through traffic, but my wife and my future kid would be safe.bangalore,accident,traffic

How to Disrupt and Replace the (Distorted) 'Market' Economy

2005-12-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

Dave Pollards The paradox of the economy is that we buyers have all the power, but there are so many of us and we are so uncoordinated that it is the sellers who effectively wield power -- they tell us what they have to sell to us, what the limits and restrictions are, and, thanks to oligopolies' ability to fix prices, what we will have to pay for them. more...

Bangalore : Will it Survive?

2005-11-24T19:16:00.000-08:00

Business week writes Bangalore is the city of dreams. It is the city where failure is a stranger, and expectations climb as high as the booming Indian stock market. Bangalore today accounts for a large slice of India's revenues in outsourced services and offers a model that cities around the world are emulating. Many American companies view it as an place to pursue innovation, while American knowledge workers see it as a threat to jobs.
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It's also a city where the clock is ticking.

The ugly truth is that, while this southern Indian city of 7 million may be a global center of information technology and other services, business in Bangalore is essentially a "me, too" activity with little true innovation. Multinational corporations come to reduce their costs, and the Indian companies set up shop to offer services to whomever wants to reduce risk as well as cost.

A WINNING PLACE. It's a comfortable and, so far, highly profitable arrangement. But it's not what India needs in the long run. The growth rate for such services as information technology and business-process outsourcing cannot be sustained. The cost pressures on outsourcing and offshore providers from a booming local economy, combined with competitive price pressures from rivals in many parts of the world, will slow the expansion.

The first reaction to slower growth will be to lower prices, but the pressure on margins will demand more creative solutions. How can Bangalore sustain its strong position beyond 2007, and what is the right model for other regions and cities aspiring to a winning place in the race towards the globalization of innovation?

The answer lies in vigorous, robust, and innovative tech companies that can develop new products for the world. These companies will be a new breed, with the ability and nerve to generate ideas and then use science, technology, and engineering to produce high-value results. Most -- perhaps 90% -- of all such attempts will fail, but the successes will sustain the regeneration of the economy.

TECH ADVENTURES. Silicon Valley is the benchmark example for this concept of serial innovation. The micro economy running from San Jose, Calif., to San Francisco has given birth to generations of risk takers who have taken technology to market and, in the process, changed the world. The globally recognized names of Hewlett and Packard, Wozniak and Jobs, Page and Brin, are representative of the many individuals at smaller companies who engage in innovation risk as a way of life.

Bangalore must build such an environment if it is to prosper. India has done it before -- the space program is an example -- but it has never done it on a sustained basis. The key component of "serial" has been missing from innovation. Until it reaches such a level, Bangalore cannot be said to have a truly innovative technology sector and will continue to rely on cost arbitrage-based information technology and other outsourced services.

How will such a climate of innovation come about? Despite the success of India's space and defense initiatives, serial innovation cannot be dictated by government. Nor can it be created by multinationals, which are too risk-averse for such adventures on a sustained basis. It will happen when enough entrepreneurs and venture capitalists enter the field, and when failure is accepted as part and parcel of success.

NO RISKY BUSINESS. The instances of serial innovation in Bangalore are few, indeed almost nonexistent. Bangalore has a number of wonderful technology service companies that meet and beat their clients' expectations on a regular basis, but are they really driving and building a culture of innovation? I think not -- everything is just a bit too easy.

In a recent interview with Knowledge@Wharton, Vivek Paul, late of Wipro (WIT), said: "India lends itself to lower risk and more processed activities, rather than taking a gamble...if you look at that service business as leading to innovation and product outcomes, the answer is absolutely not."

Bangalore is full of bright engineers and businesspeople. There is ambition and there is expectation. There's cash in the pockets of professionals and in the coffers of the successful companies, but there's no compulsion to take big risks.

CONSTANT UPHEAVAL. Today, unlike in California, there are no tectonic plates to disturb the Bangalore serenity, no fault lines that can spur individuals to take a chance with something outside their comfort zone. These exist as a natural phenomenon in Silicon Valley, where upheaval occurs constantly and there is continuous regeneration of ideas. Bangalore wants to be compared with "The Valley," but first must come the earthquake.

This earthquake could be caused by a severe downturn in the economy, or by some spectacular business failures, or by major mergers or acquisitions. It could even be the result of an organic movement among the professionals who today are driving the Bangalore miracle from the inside.

Any of these events would bring bright and resourceful individuals onto the street in sufficient numbers that a new ecosystem of innovation would emerge. Many would fail, but there would be enough successes. These would inspire more attempts, and the failures would provide the learning ground that is vital for serial innovation.

PAINFUL RELEASE. The impact of such a revolution would be felt around the world. Businesses in the developed world would see new reasons to invest in India and to take more risks in product innovation. Engineers and entrepreneurs in developing countries would be encouraged to follow the Bangalore examples, with resultant step increases in global innovation.

Bangalore has a surfeit of great talent. There is plenty of money to fuel innovation, there is ambition, and ideas are plentiful. What's needed now are the right conditions. Old and new money has to be extracted from safe havens such as real estate and put in the hands of people willing to take risks.

This, in turn, will lead to a steady stream of new products and innovations. The change may be painful, but it will also be a release. Bangalore will then begin to realize its true potential as a global center for serial technological innovation -- and break away from the bonds of an outsource services model that is rapidly becoming a global commodity.bangalore,innovation

Irving Wladawsky-Berger writes: Business Process Innovation and Social Networks

2005-11-23T22:04:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago I participated in a breakfast roundtable in Palo Alto on Social Media and Web 2.0 hosted by Tony Perkins, founder and former editor-in-chief of Red Herring, who now leads AlwaysOn, an interactive online network.Read More...
Relavant Tagsinnovation

Cliff Reeves: What happens when business data is liberated?

2005-11-23T21:09:00.000-08:00

What happens when business data is liberated?

I often get asked where I think the opportunities are for innovators and investors. Well, business data is about to become accessible as never before. There is opportunity here for any innovator who know how to get the best out of the data historically locked away in business systems.

We are about see a transformation in business applications. Mary Jo Foley hints at this future in an eWeek article today, but I think there's a lot more to be said. Realtime dashboards (mashboards) will select and combine Information dynamically from rigid, structured systems like Oracle and Siebel. Situational applications (like email) will let us look up inventory, accept orders and submit bills, without ever seeing the SAP system that actually carries out the transaction. As a result, software innovation will centre on components that offer access and insight into business systems. IT's focus will be managing interfaces and metadata.

IT and by major ISVs are adopting web services and service-oriented architectures, and that's making the back-end systems accessible. Microsoft Office Smart Tags and the Information Bridge Framework (IBF) give business users the access they need. Accessibilty will get a major boost from Office 12 and the (virtually unnoticed) Sharepoint Business Data Catalog (BDC -- noted by Stefan Gossner here; with an insightful view from Eli Robillard, and another from Joris Poelmans).

Here are a couple of real-life examples of mashboards and situational apps:

A major oil company built a mashboard based on OSISoft's Realtime Performance Manager, RtPM). Using it, a refinery operations manager sees an alert on an overheating pump. Clicking on the alert (actually a symbol for the pump in a schematic of the whole refinery) he sees the real-time data (temperature, pressure, throughput, etc) as well as a list of situation-specific information located and presented dynamically -- such as maintenance records for the pump, people who can help (the authors of the maintenance records, people near the pump, the department responsible for that area of operations, etc). The operations manager can check the maintenance data for clues, send an SMS or IM to someone nearby (maybe ask them to go and kick the pump), or notify someone he's about to turn the pump off.

We developed this situational trading application as a proof of concept for the same oil company, using IBF. In it, an oil trader receives an email in Outlook with an order for December delivery of 100,000 bbl of Brent Light Crude, conditional on a price ceiling. Outlook has recognized that "Brent Light Crude" is a company product type and subtly highlighted the words. In the background Outlook asked IBF to identify for the trader, all the company's back end systems that she can access for product-related transactions: checking prices or inventory, for example, or placing orders. The trader clicks on "Brent Light Crude" and from a series of options she selects "Pricing." IBF queries the back-end system (in this case a trading Exchange) and presents option prices for Brent Light Crude in a task pane alongside the email. The task pane includes additional options, such as "check inventiry" and "place order." The trader places the order and IBF extracts related information (such as purchaser) and initiates the the appropriate SAP transactions -- verifying credit, placing the order, initiating an invoice. The trader is presented with a pre-filled email (actually an Infopath form embedded in an email) that confirms the request, which she sends to the purchaser.

Not many commentators have picked up on this but, as Office meets ERP systems, it will democratize business intelligence in much the same way that desktop word processors democratised document preparation. This will put a premium on people and innovation that can provide easy (situational) access and insight. Email and portals are the likely situational applications and mashboards, and insight will be provide by innovators like Metapraxis (board-level insight into company performance), Tableau Software (data and relationshop visualization) and CXO Systems (business and IT visibility).

Jazz in Bangalore

2005-11-22T21:09:00.000-08:00

"A pinch of Jazz", concerts of Jazz in Bangalore are rare and here is one coming up.

William Joseph International Academy For Performing Arts Presents

An Evening Of Classical And Jazz Music. A Tribute To Maestro
J.T.William Joseph
Sunday 27 Nov. St John's Amphi Theatre -Koromangala 6:30pm

Admission To The Concert Is Free So Do Come With Family And Friends.
The Evening Would Feature Dr. Ashley Williams Jazz Piano-Vocals. Also
Performing Will Be -

Aarti Desikan-Sowmya Venkatesh- Gauri Burde-Divya George- Vocals
K.N. Prakash- Classical Guitar
Johnny & Pranav- Piano
Violin Trio- Prafulla- Dawn- Dr. Giles
Admission To The Concert Is Free So Do Come With Family And Friends
Oops Dont Forget To Bring Your Wollens And Something For The Mosquitoes

For Detail Contact 98442 75837- 9844077004Jazz,Bangalore,music in bangalore

Bangalore Habba is back; events to start from December 2

2005-11-22T20:07:00.000-08:00

The Hindu

Parallel show in Mandya, Mysore, Dharwad, Mangalore, Tumkur and Chikmagalur

Bangalore: The annual city festival, Bangalore Habba, is back and has become more broad-based than last year. The habba will be celebrated from December 2 to December 11 at various venues around the city.

This year, parallel events are to be held in six towns — Mandya, Mysore, Dharwad, Mangalore, Tumkur and Chikmagalur.

According to the organising committee, led by Nandini Alva and Padmini Ravi, the pre-habba promotional events are on with Festival Stories, organised by Kathalaya, going on at 40 schools in Bangalore, till November 30.

Much attention has been given to Kannada theatre, music and literature this year. The inaugural ceremony at Ravindra Kalakshetra on December 2 will be followed by a theatre presentation: Typical T.P. Kailasam by the Vedike troupe. Street theatre will be another component with plays staged by Voices at Bangalore Centre near Mayo Hall, Big Bazaar in Banashankari, on Mahatma Gandhi Road, at Jayanagar, Koramangala and Indiranagar, on Brigade Road, Residency Road, Commercial Street, Cunningham Road and in Malleswaram and within Cubbon Park. Besides entertaining people, the street plays will carry messages.

The concept of " neighbourhood cricket" will be given a boost with tennis ball cricket tournaments between teams representing the south, north, east and west of the city. In all, 16 teams will play the matches.

December 4 will see the rage of city youth, a Drag Race at Jakkur airfield. Motor sports enthusiasts and speed loving amateurs, can race on a quarter-mile strip, open in different categories to cars and motorbikes, Indian and imported models. The same day will see a Vintage Car Rally.

With the aim of reaching out to all sections of Bangaloreans, there will be a Bangalore Habba Golf Tournament organised in association with the Karnataka Golf Association, on December 2. Youth who seek thrill are to be given a chance to experience adventure sports with the Adventure Maze to be offered from December 2 to December 8, coordinated by Chandrasekhar of "Escape".

Now, for some "highbrow" events for the artistic and intellectual side of the city: The Art Espressor to be held from December 2 to December 8, will be in association with British Council's Culture Care and will see prose and poetry readings at Café Coffee Day outlets in Indiranagar, Frazer Town, Koramangala, Malleswaram, on Brigade Road, Commercial Street, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Cunningham Road, Lavelle Road, BEL Road, at Garuda Mall, Bangalore Central and Infosys and Wipro. There will be a Book Lounge at Palace Grounds to create a space for the literary-minded and an outlet for Kannada writing. Bangalore Central has emerged a major supporter of the habba, offering space for events at their malls. Dance, music, theatre and fashion events have been planned for these venues.

A film festival, supported by the Kannada film industry and other Southern film chambers, will be held during the habba. Kannada, Hindi, Tamil, Telugu and Malayalam films will be screened at special shows at cinemas. There will be a Food Festival at a number of venues, in collaboration with Nammura Hotel. The flavour of the season will be culinary specialities from different parts of Karnataka.Bangalore,Bangalore Habba

Who Has Time For This?: How To NOT Write A Business Plan

2005-11-22T20:05:00.000-08:00

David Cowan:

Entrepreneurs often ask me for a sample business plan they can use as a model for their fundraising efforts. They are surprised when I send them a powerpoint file.

It's always a good idea to put down on paper your plans for the business, so that your team can build consensus around objectives and metrics. Make it as thick and wordy as you like (though show some restraint--over-modeling the future only wastes your time). I'm sure that Brad Feld's upcoming series on business plans will become the authoritative online reference for this kind of internal operating document."

SAP to acquire Khimetrics

2005-11-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

CNet: SAP AG announced Tuesday plans to acquire retail software maker Khimetrics, a privately held start-up that develops analytical pricing and forecasting technologies that will bolster SAP's presence among retailers.

SAP's pending acquisition of Khimetrics comes months >after it lost a bidding war against Oracle for retail software maker Retek. SAP plans to enlarge its retail software suite with Khimetrics' revenue management and pricing software. Financial terms were not disclosed and the deal is expected to close in January."SAP

Line56.com: ERP Apps Vendors: Who's Ahead

2005-11-21T03:03:00.000-08:00

AMR recently released its enterprise resource planning (ERP) survey, which saw a big opportunity for vendors in 2006.

Now here's a look at who those vendors are, in order of the frequency of their appearance on evaluation lists:
Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS): 58 percent
Oracle: 57 percent
SAP: 49 percent
SSA Global: 32 percent
Infor: 25 percent
Geac: 24 percent
Lawson: 22 percent
Intentia: 21 percent
IFS: 19 percent
QAD: 17 percent
Activant: 15 percent
Epicor: 14 percent

The list does not itself reflect a pecking order of ERP vendors by revenue or other metrics of success, but it tells you who is going to be most involved in 2006's bake-offs. In that sense, the list is an indicator of momentum.

The survey demographics do not skew towards the lower end of the market, in which Microsoft has its historic stronghold. Forty-five percent of respondents were from enterprises with over $1 billion in revenue; and 19 percent were from the mid-market ($500 million to $1 billion). As such, the results are good news for Redmond in that, at least in ERP, it has significant traction at the enterprise level.

The distance between Oracle and SAP is also intriguing, as SAP has long been the leading global ERP player. As such, the survey will be good news for Oracle as well, since the company is enthusiastic about overtaking SAP.ERP,SAP,microsoft

Sal Walton teaches Google what Microsoft didn't

2005-11-20T19:38:00.000-08:00

Play to your strengths. That's the key to success in any industry. This is the week I promised to explain where I think Google is headed, and playing to the company's strengths is key if they are going to do what I think, which is effectively take over the Internet. Oh they won't steal it or strong-arm us. They'll seduce us into giving it to them. And I am not at all sure that's a bad thing.

Google's strengths are searching, development of Open Source Internet services, and running clusters of tens of thousands of servers. Notice on this list there is nothing about operating systems. There are many rumors about Google doing an operating system to compete with Microsoft. I'm not saying they aren't doing that (I simply don't know), but I AM saying it would not be a good idea, because it doesn't play to any of the company's traditional strengths.

The same follows for the rumor that Google, as a dark fiber buyer, will turn itself into some kind of super ISP. Won't happen. And WHY it won't happen is because ISPs are lousy businesses and building one as anything more than an experiment (as they are doing in San Francisco with wireless) would only hurt Google's earnings.

So why buy-up all that fiber, then?

The probable answer lies in one of Google's underground parking garages in Mountain View. There, in a secret area off-limits even to regular GoogleFolk, is a shipping container. But it isn't just any shipping container. This shipping container is a prototype data center. Google hired a pair of very bright industrial designers to figure out how to cram the greatest number of CPUs, the most storage, memory and power support into a 20- or 40-foot box. We're talking about 5000 Opteron processors and 3.5 petabytes of disk storage that can be dropped-off overnight by a tractor-trailer rig. The idea is to plant one of these puppies anywhere Google owns access to fiber, basically turning the entire Internet into a giant processing and storage grid.

While Google could put these containers anywhere, it makes the most sense to place them at Internet peering points, of which there are about 300 worldwide.

Two years ago Google had one data center. Today they are reported to have 64. Two years from now, they will have 300-plus. The advantage to having so many data centers goes beyond simple redundancy and fault tolerance. They get Google closer to users, reducing latency. They offer inter-datacenter communication and load-balancing using that no-longer-dark fiber Google owns. But most especially, they offer super-high bandwidth connections at all peering ISPs at little or no incremental cost to Google.

Where some other outfit might put a router, Google is putting an entire data center, and the results are profound. Take Internet TV as an example. Replicating that Victoria's Secret lingerie show that took down Broadcast.com years ago would be a non-event for Google. The video feed would be multicast over the private fiber network to 300+ data centers, where it would be injected at gigabit speeds into each peering ISP. Viewers watching later would be reading from a locally cached copy. Yeah, but would it be Windows Media, Real, or QuickTime? It doesn't matter. To Google's local data center, bits are bits and the system is immune to protocols or codecs. For the first time, Internet TV will scale to the same level as broadcast and cable TV, yet still offer soemthing different for every viewer if they want it.

As for the coming AJAX Office and other productivity apps, they'll sit locally, too. Two or three hops away from every user, they'll also be completely backed-up by two to three data centers down the line. Your data never goes away unless you erase it. Your latency and system response are as low as they can possibly be made for a network app.

And remember the Google Web Accelerator that came and disappeared? It's back! Only this time the Web Accelerator will have the proper hardware and network infrastructure to make it worth using.

This is more than another Akamai or even an Akamai on steroids. This is a dynamically-driven, intelligent, thermonuclear Akamai with a dedicated back-channel and application-specific hardware.

There will be the Internet, and then there will be the Google Internet, superimposed on top. We'll use it without even knowing. The Google Internet will be faster, safer, and cheaper. With the advent of widespread GoogleBase (again a bit-schlepping app that can be used in a thousand ways -- most of them not even envisioned by Google) there's suddenly a new kind of marketplace for data with everything a transaction in the most literal sense as Google takes over the role of trusted third-party info-escrow agent for all world business. That's the goal.

All this is based, of course, on Google's proven network and hardware expertise. Have you seen Google's Search Appliance? They ship you a 1U prebuilt server. You connect it to your network, fill out a simple configuration screen, and it scans and indexes your web site (or sites) for you. Google monitors and manages it remotely, and sucks up the data and adds it to theirs. You just plug the thing in and turn it on. It just works. You need do nothing else to keep it running. Google understands how to do this stuff. Microsoft definitely does not.

And there lies the differences between the two companies. Last week, I wrote about Windows Live and Office Live as Microsoft's best attempts at pretending to be Google. And Google will do those kinds of applications, too. But they'll build them atop a network infrastructure that Microsoft can't match.

But that doesn't mean Microsoft customers will be denied access to the Google Internet. Quite the contrary. Google would be insane to exclude Microsoft customers, which will be as welcome as any other. Only Google will be benefiting far more than Microsoft from that usage.

Google has the reach and the resources to make this work. There are only so many fiber networks and they'll be BUYING service from those outfits -- many of which are in or near bankruptcy. Say the containers cost $500,000 each in volume and $500,000 per year to run. That's $300 million to essentially co-opt the Internet. And you know whose strategy this is? Wal-Mart's. And unless Google comes up with an ecosystem to allow their survival, that means all the other web services companies will be marginalized. There will be startups and little guys, but no medium-sized companies. ISPs, which we've thought of as a threatened species, won't be touched, but then their profit margins are so low they aren't worth touching. After all, Wal-Mart doesn't try to own the roads its goods are carried over. And the final result is that Web 2.0 IS Google.

Microsoft can't compete. Yahoo probably can't compete. Sun and IBM are like remora, along for the ride. And what does it all cost, maybe $1 billion? That's less than Microsoft spends on legal settlements each year.

Game over.

And yet next week I'll take it one more step.Sam-Walton,Google,Microsoft

Hindu: Abdul Kalam's vision for Karnataka

2005-11-20T18:45:00.000-08:00

Abdul Kalam's vision for Karnataka

The Hindu

The President unveils 11-point plan, wants economic activity spread across the State

# The goals set Achieve 100 per cent literacy by 2012
# Increase per capita income to Rs. 75,000 by 2009
# Develop tier-two cities such as Mysore and Mangalore
# Create Metro rail system for Bangalore

Bangalore: President A.P.J Abdul Kalam on Sunday set the Government and the legislators of Karnataka thinking and placed before them an 11-point agenda for development to transfer the State into an economically-developed model State over the next four years.

He was addressing a joint sitting of the two Houses of the Legislature at a function held at the ornate Legislative Assembly chamber, heralding the inauguration of the "Suvarna Karnataka" anniversary, the 50th year of the reorganisation of the State.

In an inspiring address, Mr. Kalam played the role of a think-tank and he wanted the missions he was placing before the legislators, debated in depth by the State Legislature, which is one of the few bicameral ones in the country.

Quoting from the development radar of the Planning Commission, Mr. Kalam pinpointed the problems of Karnataka, which he noted has a "core competence". He also noted that the Government of Karnataka has already chalked out a road map for the State's full-fledged development. Karnataka has 19 per cent of its population living below the poverty line.

"The first mission is to elevate all of them and bring smiles to their faces". It could be done by focused development leading to higher per capita income and better quality of life. The literacy rate in the State, which stood at 67 per cent, should be increased and emphasis laid on spreading literacy among women. The State should aim at realising the goal of 100 per cent literacy by 2012," he said.

The per capita income of Rs. 26,000 estimated in 2004-05 could be almost trebled to Rs. 75,000 by 2009. An investment-friendly climate should be created to open employment avenues to the two million unemployed or underemployed persons of the State, the President said.

The 11 missions he exhorted the State to take up are textiles, energy (bio fuel mission and power through municipal waste), horticulture, agro-processing, water management, tourism, preparing paramedics and technicians with quality training, creation of industries for knowledge products, grid connectivity for sustainable growth, providing urban amenities in rural areas and development facilitators. Noting that the high revenue information and communication technology industries are concentrated in Bangalore, which occupies one per cent of the area of the State but has 14 per cent of the population, he wanted economic activity distributed across the State to ensure homogenous growth taking into consideration the core competence of the regions.

There is need to develop tier-two cities such as Mysore, Mangalore, Hubli-Dharwad, Belgaum, Gulbarga and Madikeri. Reliable air connectivity, construction of four to six-lane roads and fast train services. "I have seen Bangalore in 1970s, 1980s , 1990s and now. Bangalore's economic growth has far exceeded the growth of development facilitators. The core attraction of Bangalore as a development facilitator is getting slowly eroded," Mr. Kalam said. The President, who was a Bangalorean right from 1958, noted that the "road capacity in Bangalore has reached a saturation point. This can be achieved through alternative possibilities such as creation of metro rail system and early commencement of the project is a necessity". He also emphasised that the development of the city should not be at the cost of its greenery, which makes Bangalore beautiful.

Mr. Kalam also wanted the Government to turn its attention to development of entrepreneurship among the youth.

Chief Minister N. Dharam Singh spoke of the dynamism of the State in thinking and action.

Governor T.N. Chaturvedi said that Karnataka is already foremost in many areas and it will keep up the momentum of growth.karnataka,bangalore

Dave Pollard: Wikis: A Tool for a Democratic Revolution in Business?

2005-11-18T00:12:00.000-08:00

The best part of my visit to San Jose has been, perhaps not surprisingly, the social networking between the KMWorld & Intranets presentations on social networking. To any conference attendees visiting How to Save the World for the first time: Welcome! Some highlights of the presentations:

Tom Davenport described some research he's done with Rob Cross on the social networks of identified high performers in organizations. Relative to other people in their companies, these high performers:

* Have larger, deeper social networks
* Have more people from outside their organization in their networks
* Are more sought out for advice and information
* Are more aware of who to go to and where to go to get critical information
* Have more new (to the organization) people in their networks
* Invest significantly more time in their networks

Nothing remarkable in this, perhaps, but interesting. Think about the people in your organization or network who you think are most effective -- do they fit this profile? Will social network mapping 'out' the 'leaders' who surround themselves with a small (often sycophantic) cadre of advisors as the ineffective, out of touch, isolated organizational weak links they really are?

Ross Mayfield of Socialtext and Many 2 Many fame had lots to say about wikis, of course, but also made some awesome comments about how social networking disrupts many 'political' aspects of business and society and ushers in Extreme Democracy:

* Wikis can evolve to be more than just collaborative content aggregation tools; they can be platforms for collective knowledge that could replace entire corporate Intranets (Dresdner Bank is already doing this), and also replace e-mail (other than one-to-one messages) and most 'managed' collaboration 'spaces'.
* Wikis are becoming a lot less intimidating with the addition of WYSIWYG entry screens that eliminate the need to learn those unintuitive formatting codes.
* The biggest cultural barrier to wikis is also their greatest potential value and power -- they engender shared trust and shared responsibility by offering participants unrestricted collective ownership of all content; the space and the collective knowledge in it belongs to 'us' (the participants, jointly) not to 'them' (the company).
* Today, over half of the US GDP consists of transaction (clerical, management and administrative) costs -- i.e. 'non-productive' costs that are passed along to the ultimate consumer and which, in a 'perfect' market economy, would be zero; eliminating hierarchical, 'managerial' and paper-shuffling non-value-added work could therefore more than double productivity and halve cost, and in the process would massively shift organizational power and authority to the front lines (and eliminate a ton of expensive, overpaid executive jobs).
* Clay Shirky has said"Process is an embedded reaction to prior stupidity." In a world where every situation is different and everyone knows their own job better than their boss does, process is simply a dysfunctional imposition to try (fruitlessly) to prevent recurrence of a specific human error. A perfect example of this is 90% of the ever-changing and seemingly arbitrary processes in what is laughably called 'airport security' (this week I've discovered that they've decided allowing cell phones turned on within 100 feet of customs booths is a security risk, but on some domestic flights they've stopped asking for picture ID). Clay and Ross assert that wikis and similar 'democratic' social software tools promise the end of process in business. And eliminating the need for process also eliminates the need for most management. It is replaced by collective self-management.
* The value of information is in its currency and movement. "Word and .pdf format is where information goes to die".
* The standard for good social software is: Social, Simple, Open. Not: Powerful, Multi-Featured, Sophisticated, Integrated, or even Secure.
* As the cost of forming a group using social software nears zero, under-represented groups in society and business will start using such software to find, articulate and aggregate their voice, and agitate to rectify their under-representation until that voice is heard.
* What is holding back simple, open, social software from becoming an extremely powerful, democratic social, political and business tool is the digital divide.

Ross agreed with me that the biggest drawback with wikis today is difficulty of navigation. I told Ross that wikis need "a map that shows you where you are". I have a half-formed idea that there is a great opportunity to allow the sections and pages of wikis to be generated and indexed visually by mindmaps. The mindmap could serve as a cognitive representation of the entire landscape of the wiki, so it could be used not only to spontaneously and collectively create the organizational framework of the wiki, but to visualize and navigate that framework as well.

Ross co-presented with Jim Bair, who I also had the chance to talk with at length. Jim described IBM's prediction that we will soon see software that will allow people to more powerfully browse and organize blog content, both of single users and of multiple users as a collective repository. Think of the entire blogosphere as a single large collective knowledge repository that you can reorganize, filter and index according to your own way of looking at that content, or as a giant conversation that you can re-thread in a way that is most coherent and meaningful to you.

I had the pleasure of having dinner with Dave Davison, who has been a consistent champion of my AHA! per project. We shared some interesting ideas about the project that you'll see on these pages soon.

This has been, for me, an outstanding conference. Wish you were here.

Dr. Aniruddha Malpani writes: Leveraging Technology to Make Doctors More Productive

2005-11-16T01:26:00.000-08:00

Everyone agrees that the healthcare industry in the US is a mess. This is a major multi-billion dollar opportunity and India can provide a solution , if we learn how to leverage technology intelligently to make our doctors more productive. Indian doctors are world- class; as is the Indian IT industry. If we marry these cleverly, we can significantly improve patient care all over the world. In the past, we helped to support healthcare in the US and the UK by exporting our doctors ( the "brain-drain"). We can now export our services instead.

Today, the major bottle neck for efficient healthcare delivery in the US are doctors. Doctors are few and far between, and are an expensive resource ( after all, it takes a lot of time and money to train a doctor) . How can we make better use of this scarce resource ?

Today, unfortunately, most of their time and energy is spent on paperwork (�documentation� ); and talking to insurance and HMO clerks for authorization. This creates a lose-lose situation. Doctors are unhappy and frustrated; and patients are angry because they perceive their doctors as being uncaring and rushed ; and are frustrated over the long waits for appointments. For example, it can take an infertile patient over 3 months to see a consultant in the UK today !

The solution I'd like to propose is the use of technology to leverage a doctor�s productivity. ( This would not apply for emergency situations, but for medical care for cold �elective� problems, such as fever, diarrhea, and chronic illnesses such as arthritis and asthma, which constitute about 90% of all medical care episodes.)

We need to change the model of the consultation � the entry point into the healthcare system. At present, a consultation is inefficient and time-consuming. Traditionally, this has been � face to face �, but this is an archaic model. It�s time for a makeover ! After all, communication technology has changed everything else � why not this too ? Businessmen conduct conferences and meetings efficiently online � why can�t doctors and patients ?

We need to replace the consultation with a better alternative ! I agree this may cause a certain degree of discomfort , because the visit to the doctor is still the �holy cow� of medicine, because medicine is based on �doctor patient contact �. However, is this really needed ? Isn�t there a better alternative ?

Telephone diagnosis is now routine for many specialties , and has been proven to be safe and effective. This confirms that options to the traditional real world consultation are viable alternatives we need to actively explore.

I am going to offer my solution based on my personal experience. As an infertility specialist, I am a resource in scare supply. It takes me about 60 min to do a consultation, and I can manage to do about 4 consultations a day . I am in private practice, and have a wait list of 2 weeks. It also takes the patient a total of 3 hours of their time ( to commute to the clinic and to wait for their turn) to come for a consultation. How can we make this more efficient ?

What do I do in a consult ? Primarily, like most specialists, I take a history; review the records; and then formulate a treatment plan. I don�t need to do a physical examination for the vast majority of patients. ( Many studies have shown that over 80% of medical diagnoses can be made based on the history !)

I have therefore designed a structured questionnaire on our website, which anyone anywhere in the world can fill up online and email to me . I can review it and reply by email and it takes me an average of about 5 minutes to reply to each query. I know what the key points on the form are; so that I can quickly look for these; and then guide them accordingly. Most problems are ones I have encountered before ( after all, I am an expert !); and most questions are ones I have answered before, which means I can reply much more efficiently

This is actually a better model than a face to face consultation ! In fact, a personal consultation may not be the most effective or efficient way of providing the doctor with medical information ! I know this may be iconoclastic, but patients are often confused, disorganized, or embarrassed. By subjecting them to the discipline of filling up a structured form when they have the time to do so , they can provide the key bits of information the doctor needs much more intelligently !

I can also provide reasons for my recommendations , and additional references if needed. Patients are much less stressed out ( studies have shown patients forget half of what their doctor tells them during a consultation) when they email me, which means they remember and retain a lot more of what I tell them, because it�s all in writing. Moreover, this can be an iterative process, because they can ask more pointed queries , which I can reply to.

It�s much easier for me too, because I can reply in my pajamas; and for complex problems, I can refer to my medial journals ! I can also �refer � patients to online information resources, so they become better informed about their problems.

It�s also much easier for my patients because they can ask me queries at their convenience; and they have a written record of what their options are . Patients can also think about their queries; discuss their options with family members; organize their medical records; and structure their thoughts. I now �see� 25 patients in the virtual world ! I find these patients are much better informed and have more realistic expectations, which makes treating them in the real world much easier. This model would work well for all chronic illnesses, such as diabetes , arthritis, hypertension.

One of the limitations of this model is that no personal physical examination is possible, but this is not essential for solving problems in many specialties today. Not only can a history provide a lot of useful information; the record of the primary doctor�s physical examination notes; as well as the results of imaging studies can be very valuable, which often means that a personal physical examination is not even required in the first place.

Medical experts in world class hospitals have been providing second opinions to patients from halfway across the world ( without examining or seeing them) for many years. Doctors are also used to providing useful medical advise on the telephone. Why can�t we use these models to improve the doctor�s efficiency ?

US doctors have become so petrified by the possibility of being sued anytime they write anything down, that they have got paralysed into inactivity ! They can no longer think of innovative ways of providing medical care, because they are so worried about possible medicolegal liabilities . There�s no reason why Indian doctors should allow this irrational and misplaced fear to immobilize them ! We need to capitalise on this opportunity !

We can use this model intelligently and �extend� it using physician extenders. Using a � learned intermediary� ( who could be a nurse , community social worker , family member or caregiver) can help to extend the utility of this model. Maybe a �targeted � physical exam can be done by a trained physician assistant or nurse, who can make house calls and video conference with the doctor ? This could also be done by �expert patients� or peers, for example. I agree that the �human touch� is important; and that an online consultation can be impersonal, but this is no reason to throw out the baby with the bath water.

Doctors have a lot of expertise �we need to tap this intelligently. Many attempts were made in the past which attempted to use �artificial intelligence� to help the doctor to make the right diagnosis. Most of these failed, because I feel their goal was misplaced. Rather than try to use technology to replace human expertise, it would make more sense to use it so that to multiply its efficiency. Amazon�s Mechanical Turk was developed to help solve specific internal data processing problems that required human judgment and intelligence.

It's a clever marriage of information technology and human intelligence. India has lots of medical intelligence, and we can leverage this...

The key would be structured questionnaires designed for each specialty which the patient would need to fill up. The concept could easily be extended to allow family doctors to seek a medical opinion from specialists.

Every specialist need a core of critical information on the patient, based on which he formulates a treatment plan using his expertise and experience. While it may not be possible to capture his experience, reasoning skills or experience, by providing him with the core information he needs efficiently, his expertise can be used much more productively !

This business model would allow expert doctors ( even those who have retired and are no longer in active practice ) to generate more revenue; and also allow patients easier access to medical expertise inexpensively ( because they would no longer be compelled by geographic constraints to going to expensive doctors in the US; or to wait for months and months on a NHS waiting list). This may even galvanize doctors in the US to reduce their expenses; and force them to become more efficient and patient-responsive ! The benefits for insurance companies are also enormous, because these consultant doctors would provide objective evidence based advise, with no vested interests ( since they are not going to be actually treating the patient). doctor

Dave Pollard Writes: Business Models

2005-11-16T01:23:00.000-08:00

Alex Osterwalder and I have been exchanging e-mails on the subject of business models. Alex's blog is devoted entirely to this subject, and the graphic above is his 'business model model', showing the nine 'building blocks' for such models from his synthesis of reading on the subject. The right side of the model is about how the business generates revenue, while the left side is about how it manages costs and hence generates profit.

I've been advising clients and prospective new businesses how to document and evaluate their business model for years, and in my experience there are three types of business models, that organizations look at in sequence:

1. Viability Model: How the idea/project/plan/business will make money, and with which partners. In some cases it is actually about How the idea/project/plan/business will fill an untapped need, and with which partners. Such a model outlines the research that will be done to ensure the value proposition is compelling (i.e. customers want and are prepared to pay for it), that the business has, or can acquire, the competencies and resources needed to deliver it, and that it makes strategic sense for the organization (e.g. it's consistent with their mission and values and does not cannibalize existing business). This model culminates in a go/no go decision.
2. Formation Model: How the idea/project/plan/business will be set up. This model is focused on capital and infrastructure that must be in place before operations can begin: human capital (what people will be involved in what roles), intellectual capital (what knowledge, technology and know-how must be put in place), physical capital (what premises, equipment and supplies will be needed prior to start-up), financial capital (start-up money, and where it will come from), and social capital (organization, alliances and relationships that will drive it). This model culminates in a launch.
3. Operating Model: How the idea/project/plan/business will operate. This model describes the ongoing activities of the organization or project -- what megaprocesses it will entail (e.g. R&D, purchasing, sales & marketing, manufacturing, distribution, service, back office support, and management decision making), what budgets and other resources it will require and use, and what roles will be played by who.

This sequence of models can apply to anything from a simple marketing program to the launch of an entirely new business.

It's been my experience that most businesses put insufficient work into the viability assessment, the wrong kind of thinking into the business formation decisions, and too much emphasis on the details of the operating model, and hence on 'micromanaging' the operations to ensure they conform to the operating plan.

The reason for insufficient work on viability assessment is that it's tedious, and the people who are championing the idea have already concluded that it's viable. That's why in Natural Enterprise I encourage an almost excruciating amount of attention and research on viability up front, tough, shoe-leather-wearing work with potential customers, suppliers and partners until you know that it fits a need, that you have the competencies to fill that need, and that you have some competitive advantage in doing so.

If that time and effort is invested, the whole approach to business formation changes. The people and partners who will play the key roles will already be onside and will have essentially self-selected to play those roles. Much of the start-up capital may come in the form of advances from customers who have already indicated an interest in the product or service, and who have been active partners in its design. The total amount of capital will be less, capital needs will be rather obvious, and may be already forthcoming, if the viability assessment has been done well first.

At this point, I think, trust takes over. You have the right people in the right places. They know what they have to do and how to do it. They're motivated, and focused on the customer. Why do you need an elaborate operating model at this stage? Not only will it be telling people what they already know, it will be getting in the way of them doing their job effectively, by imposing the inevitable standards, paperwork, and approvals procedures. And worst of all, it will discourage improvisational thinking and continuous sustaining and disruptive innovation, and will be contributing to what David Ehrenfeld calls "a society managed to death".
So the business models I have helped develop have been heavy on the Viability phase, creative in the Formation phase, and light on the Operating phase. The hardest part is telling entrepreneurs, before they've laid out a penny but after they've invested a lot of sweat equity, that the Viability assessment indicates they don't have a sound business model. More often than not, that's the right message, and failure to heed it is the main reason for the staggering failure rate of entrepreneurial enterprises.

But giving them that message at the outset is a lot easier than telling them, after spending years of effort trying to make a flawed business model work, and investing their life savings in it, that they should pull the plug.

Deccan Herald:Log on, adopt a pothole!

2005-11-15T20:05:00.000-08:00

Bangalore’s potholes-related woes has gone beyond complaining road users and umpteen newspaper columns. The city’s yawning, gaping potholes have now become a subject of web world discussion, facilitated by a dedicated website — Bangalore Potholes

The website reflects the craters that fight for space on nearly all roads in the City. It has an updated list of potholes, with pictures and captions, an interactive forum where citizens can submit their inputs and a link to ‘potholes across the world’. It also has an ‘Adopt a pothole’ project, where residents can take up the job of repairing a pothole.Bangalore,Potholes

Dave Pollard Writes: It's Easy to Be Brave From a Distance

2005-11-15T19:50:00.000-08:00

I saw the title of this post on a local veterinarian's sign today. Apparently it's from Aesop's Fables, though I'm not sure which one.

One of my best-received articles was the one I wrote last year on courage. At that time I said that I disbelieved most of the common wisdom about courage: That it's in all of us, that it's false bravado, or moral strength, or superior character. I ascribed it instead to love: "If you love life, others, your world, enough, perhaps you can summon up the courage to do anything." And I agreed with this wonderful quote from right-wing blogger Bill Whittle:

And in this imperfect, flawed nation of ours, perhaps more than anywhere else on Earth, I think about the courage it takes to be poor, to face that sickening knot of worry and despair that comes with not having the money to pay your bills. For there is no more steady and enduring courage than that of a poor family, especially a single parent, who fights a never-ending battle of brutal hours at miserable pay, of perennially unrealized dreams, and of the desperate, numb agony of disappointed children. For people like that, who force themselves to work two jobs while we sleep, to avoid the temptations of crime and dependency while surrounded by luxury and wealth the likes of which man has never known…well, that is dogged courage of a sublime nature that passes all understanding.

And I wondered aloud why day after day, despite my passionate beliefs about what was wrong with the world and what needed to be done, I sat at the computer, and wrote instead of acting. Did I not love the world, Gaia, and its needlessly suffering people and animals enough?

Since then, I've received some solace and, at the same time, a prod, from philosopher John Gray, who has persuaded me that no amount of energy, organization and ingenuity is going to prevent the end of civilization by the end of this century, but has also refocused me on what I can do and should be doing to make things better here and now at the local level, and to create some working models of intentional communities and community-based enterprises and economies that can help those who survive the end of our civilization to live in peace, harmony and comfort.

Supposing you were suddenly blessed with a benefactor who offered you $200,000 per year tax free for the rest of your life. The only condition is that you not accept any money from any other source for doing anything. If you work, it has to be for free. if you gamble or invest, any gains have to be given away. What would you do? Just retire and 'do no evil', living a life of ease with loved ones, minimizing your footprint? Write the book you've been putting off? Do work for charity -- locally? in an inner city or impoverished rural area near you? in a struggling nation? Study and learn and make yourself a better person, and then take it from there?

OK, now I'm going to change the supposition. Now you have instead a one-month sabbatical, $25,000 to spend, and a guarantee that your job or other source of income will be intact once the month is over. Same conditions on other income during that month. Would that change your answer? If so, why?

Back to the first scenario. It's now a month later. Honestly, have you started yet, or are you still thinking about it, unwinding, "in transition"? What's holding you back?

Now, just to up the ante, add to both scenarios a $10 million grant that you can spend on any one project, with the proviso that neither you nor any family members can directly personally benefit from the money. What do you spend it on? I'm willing to bet that you make faster progress spending the money than you do changing your lifestyle. If I'm right, why is that?

Here's my answers to the questions above, and why I think they're probably close to what most people would do:

WhatToDoI would start by writing my three or four books: First clean up Natural Enterprise, a book about models for establishing your own joyful, socially and environmentally responsible business. Then my novel The Only Life We Know, which tells the story of a model for intentional community. Then the book The Gift Economy, which outlines a model for a new community-based economic system. And finally, perhaps, The Cost of Not Knowing, a book that explains why we choose not to know or act about huge potential dangers.

The reason I would do that is that, if we're wise, we do things that are at the intersection of what we're good at, what we love doing, and what's needed. The market, I think, doesn't yet know that the world needs the models I outline in my books, so they won't, right now, pay me for writing them. My 'benefactor scenario' would solve that problem for me, moving the writing of these books from intersection 2 to intersection 3 in the chart at right -- and ending my procrastination.

Once these were written, I would start working full-time and simultaneously on making AHA! a reality, creating a new Intentional Community, and facilitating the creation of Natural Enterprises by young people -- for the same reason: these activities would then be in intersection 3 for me. There are some other things on my Getting Things Done list bit they're things I'm not good at and would need a lot of time to become good at. Even under this scenario I know these would never get done, though I expect I would spend some time acquainting myself with people who are good at these things.

In the second scenario, with only a month, I fear I would be much less likely to do much different from what I'm doing now. A month isn't enough time to make a significant change in what we do, if we know we have to go back to former behaviours at the end of it.

The $10 million grant would be easy to part with: It would be simply a matter of deciding whether to finance AHA!, or a new Intentional Community, or a 'school' to 'teach' Natural Enterprise, or a new animal welfare organization -- or all four. In a month, the money would all have been given away.

Why? I believe it is human nature (a) to only change when we have to, and (b) to avoid risk until and unless the current pain is high enough that the fear of changing is less than the anguish of not changing. There have been a number of studies that confirm this to be true for most of us. Lack of money (and the fear of not having enough) are currently holding me back from jumping into my writing and then real model creation, bringing the subjects of my books to fruition in the real world. For me to give up the current comforts of home, routine, and lots of time with family, for a cause, no matter how worthy, will only happen when either my intolerance for the status quo gets much higher, or the (financial) risk of that change gets much lower. In this scenario that financial risk is lowered. And giving away money for something you believe in, when if you do not give it away you lose it, is easy -- you have nothing at risk and you do not have to change.

Does that mean I lack courage, for not doing it now, anyway, with no benefactor or safety net? Perhaps, but I'm not so sure. Look at the best-known heroes of history and myth. They fought for what they did because the anguish of not changing was so high and so immediate, that they had no alternative but to be brave. There was no distance between them and the demons they fought and vanquished. There was no choice but to change. They had nothing to lose.

And how about the poor, the ones that live with this anguish every day? They are of course brave, because there is no distance between them and the grinding daily struggle to survive and make a life for themselves and those they love. The fact that they have no choice but to be courageous does not diminish their courage. It simply explains it.

If I lack courage it is perhaps not daring to eliminate the distance between me and the potential sources of anguish that might raise that level of anguish to the point I might do something heroic. If I were to go to Darfur and see how the people there are living, if I were to see first hand how animals in factory farms and laboratories are treated, if I were to witness the day-to-day misery of the poor and suffering living just a few miles away, that might change everything. That would change everything. My risk aversion, or cowardice, prevents me from staring that truth in the face, because I know I would have to do something, anything, now and for the rest of my life, if I really knew what I fear is happening now in our world.

That is my Cost of Not Knowing, and the reason that, for now, I keep my distance. There is no courage in that, but also no shame. I'm merely human, after all.Business

Ken Thompsons a new paradigm from nature - The Bumble Bee Bio Teams

2005-11-13T21:25:00.000-08:00

Bioteaming:Why virtual teams need more than internet technology to succeed

1. Introduction

Over the last ten years organisational teams have become much more distributed and complex. Despite the number of technologies available to assist team and group working it is still exceptionally difficult to manage such teams. In some ways these technologies can actually make things worse by distracting the team members into technology experimentation rather than the harder challenge of learning to work together.

I propose that even if we fully master the technology of teams there will still be something major missing which will stop our teams operating with the speed and agility we need. We need to look to natures' most successful teams to see what are the secrets of their longevity and dominance over millions of years of evolution. I will explain how they all share a small number of common natural principles which we can apply to our organisational teams.

I call this approach "Bioteaming" and I will introduce its main concepts in the first part of this article. In the next part of the article I will show you how you can begin to "bioteam-enable" your current team support environment to allow your teams to become faster and become more responsive.
2. The changing nature of organisational teams

It is now rare to find a team who all know each other, sit in the same work area day by day, work the same hours, work within the one organisation, have a common business culture and enjoy prior history of working together. Today's' teams are a complex alliance of staff members from different organisations, departments, professions, locations, using different technology platforms, with different technology backgrounds and engaging with varying levels of involvement from core member to part-time member to occasional reviewer. These are very different beasts to the kind of teams many of us grew up with. I believe that the difference is so significant that we need a new name for such teams - the Virtually Networked Team.

"Virtually" means that the team will be dependent on Internet technologies much more than before. Less obvious but equally significant is the fact that "virtually" also means that the team operates with "virtual capacity" where virtual is used in its original sense of "not physically present". This means the team constantly grows and shrinks its active membership throughout its lifetime which makes it much harder to maintain a coherent sense of team and purpose.

"Networked" means that the team is made of individuals who are not always part of the same organisation and even when they are, rarely share common reporting lines rendering a "command and control" approach ineffective

I define a Virtually Networked Team as a team pulled together by one or more co-operating organisations to achieve some important, urgent and specific objective such as the:

* planning and launching of a major event

* designing and running of a new programme or initiative

* developing and market testing of a new product

* running of a major campaign to open up a new market sector

* design and implementation of improved business processes

* planning and execution of a change management and training initiative

In today's organisations, supply chains, alliances and networks Virtually Networked Teams are now the dominant means for getting big things done!

3. The challenges and problems faced by these teams

So why is it more difficult to operate a Virtually Networked Team than a traditional team?

The Virtual Factor

It is very difficult to manage the involvement, commitment and trust building of a team operating "virtual capacity" because members constantly dip in and out of the team and some of them may never be present together in any physical meeting

The Network Factor

A Networked team does not share common accountability structures, business cultures and professional sensibilities. This makes it hard to agree standards, accountability structures and sanctions for non-performance.

The Technology Factor

It would be great if the team could take a week out to iron out glitches, play with and learn the team technologies before the project starts. This is rarely the case and new technologies show up as intrusive and as real obstacles to getting "real work" done particularly in the early stages of team formation.

The Business Factor

Today's rapidly accelerating business environment with its "Just do it - now!" business culture is not news to anybody. However when you overlay this on top of the complexity already there in Virtually Networked Teams due to the Virtual, Network and Technology Factors it just makes things all that more difficult. Doing a complex thing is ok if I concentrate and take my time. Doing something very fast is ok too if I can focus on it. But doing a complex thing very fast is altogether much more stressful

4. Statistics on Virtually Networked Teams

Virtually Networked Teams are a relatively young phenomenon in Management Theory terms so there is actually little hard evidence available for how well or badly they have been performing.

However one of the earliest forms of Virtually Networked Team was the IT Project Team. By its very nature such teams are cross-functional and thus Networked as they involve a mix of professions (e.g. IT, Change Management and Business Staff). They are also Virtual as they grow from small analytical teams through large development teams to medium size implementation teams adding and dropping members along the way.

Quite a lot of statistics are available about IT Project Teams and they are shocking - here are a few typical ones:

* Only a third of change initiatives achieve objectives (OPP Survey May 2004)

* 74% of IT Projects are unsuccessful (Standish Group Report 2000)

* Only 1 in 5 IT Projects are likely to bring full satisfaction to their organizational sponsors (OASIG Study 1995)

These numbers provide early but solid quantifiable evidence that there is something significant missing or wrong in the way Virtually Networked Teams are operating in today's' organisations.

5. Are Internet Technologies a solution to these problems?

With the emergence and maturing of a vast array of corporate strength intranets, extranets, portals and a multitude of supporting communications tools there is a huge potential for technology to bring real gains to teams. - particularly those which are physically distributed or highly mobile. Few people would dispute the potential benefits of effective communications technology or a private asynchronous team room or a shared real-time whiteboard for a Virtually Networked Team. However, in practical reality these technology-led benefits have not been fully realised.

Typically teams trying to be more effective through technology run into the serious problems in trying to make it work for them including:

1. Technology adoption problems where the investment needed to learn the technology greatly exceeds the potential benefits

2. Accountability issues where the team find it much easier to break virtual commitments than verbal ones

3. Team mobilisation is effectively ignored by technology - although it could be immensely useful. Many team problems could be avoided by a more structured approach to initial team setup including goal setting, roles, risks, skills and accountabilities.

4. New Working Practices which are novel and unfamiliar and are just too difficult to adopt

5. Overfocus on Technology and Process and not on production of results

So I believe that Internet Technologies are certainly part of the solution and also part of the problem too. They may be necessary but they are certainly not sufficient!

6. What else is needed ?

The fundamental thing missing from Virtually Networked Teams today is recognition of the dynamic and living nature of the team itself separate from its members.

A networked business team is a living thing in itself. A Virtually Networked Team is more than the sum of its members. An ant colony, one of natures' best teams, has a life of its own - albeit intimately connected to the lives of its members. In organisations we treat our teams mechanistically. We think of our teams more like clocks, highly predictable as long as you keep winding them up, rather than colonies which must be carefully nurtured and are inherently unpredictable.

Interpretation of the team as a whole, living entity, allows more insightful selection of the best course of action. The team is in itself a super-organism and as such it needs to be treated in ways that enhance and support its complex and interconnected nature. If you can see the team as a whole, and not as the mere aggregation of the individual parts that make it up, you can discover how much more productive, reliable and efficient a virtual team can be.

Once you have this new interpretation it automatically forces you to rethink how you should nurture, organise and support such teams and implies radically new approaches to:

* Team Mobilisation and Change Management

* New Processes and Practices

* Team Support Technology

* Ongoing Team Coaching

7. What is Bioteaming

Bioteaming is about building our organisational teams on the natural principles which underpin the most successful teams in nature.

Nature's most successful teams, in increasing order of size, include:

* single-cells and multicellulars

* the human immune system

* the nervous system (including the brain)

* micro-organisms such as bacteria

* ants, bees and termites

* jellyfish

* geese

* monkeys

* dolphins

* big cats

* forests

* rivers

* ecosystems

* the earth

The most respected theories to have emerged recently on evolution [2] suggest that survival of the fittest is only half of the story with many species co-evolving together in a form of long-term collaboration known as symbiosis. A good example is our symbiotic relationship with the bacteria in our stomachs which help us digest our food!

Lets look at a few simple examples of natures' bioteams:

Ants

Ant colonies are arguably the most successful team on the planet - they are so dominant in nature that even despite their tiny size they make up 10% of all living things by weight on the planet. No matter where you are in the world, it is said, if you are outside and you look down carefully you will probably see an ant. Ants have no overall leader - the Queens role is simply to reproduce. Even with their tiny brains Ants use Swarm Intelligence to solve complex route planning problems as efficiently as our best computers [1]

Geese

Flocks of geese fly amazing distances constantly rotating which bird handles the extra responsibility and air resistance of leading. A goose can fly 70% further in a team than by itself due to the optimisation of slipstream effects through the "V" formation. If a goose falls behind two birds will automatically drop out of formation to care for it (or until it dies).

The Earth

The Gaia hypothesis states that all the different species on the earth work together as a team through mutually interacting ecosystems to maintain the climate and atmospheric composition at the optimum for life. For example vegetation contribute to regulating the earths temperature through the reflection of sunlight. Different types of vegetation survive better in different temperatures thus creating a self-regulating thermostat [4].

8. How does bioteaming work?

There are about a dozen characteristics bioteams have in common; here are three to start with:

Self-Management

The most well known trait of a bioteam is Self-Management or Autonomy. Basically each team member manages itself and does not need to be told what to do. This is different from most organisational teams which use "command and control" - wait till told and obey orders. So bioteams operate as "self-managed teams". This does not mean that there is no leader but that every member is a leader in some domain.

Application of this trait allows a team to successfully address the fundamental problem of accountability in a Networked Team Structure.

Non-verbal broadcast communication

Bioteams have superb communications, which do not rely on direct member-to-member communications. For example ants predominantly communicate through scent trails - different scents mean different things and the intensity of the trail determines whom the communication reaches [3]. Ants don't have to meet each other face to face to communicate and they don't wait for replies to their communications by the other members.

This is hugely relevant today in our teams with multiple locations and every one working different hours where members can't physically meet that often. It also shows us that whilst face-to-face communication has an important place a team can often achieve its goals without it.

Application of this trait helps us to design the team's communications in a way which eliminates communication bottlenecks and redundancies.

Action-focused

Another trait is that bioteams solve problems and learn by rapid experimentation and evolution. Bioteams have very concrete goals which are hard-wired into the members genetically but the members don't have any actual strategies or plans for achieving them. They work by rapid experimentation and feedback. If something works and solves the problem it gets reinforced within their collective set of responses for the next time - if not it dies. Bioteams are action-focused - they act first and ask questions later!

Application of this trait enables us to design simple team member rules of behaviour and feedback mechanisms to enable a team to rapidly evolve improved effectiveness

9. Summary

I have shown how teams in organisations have changed in the last ten years and suggested a new name for the kinds of teams we now see - Virtually Networked Teams.

I have highlighted the problems these teams face and shown that technology is both part of the solution and part of the problem. What is missing in these teams is recognition of the dynamic and living nature of the team itself separate from its members.

I have identified that this new understanding can be achieved by adopting a new emerging discipline Bioteams where we learn from natures' most successful teams.

I have introduced some of the principles of bioteaming and indicated how their application immediately addresses some of the major team problems we encounter today.

In the next part of this article I will further develop the characteristics of Bioteams and Bioteaming and show how you can immediately start to incorporate them into your current virtual team technologies and processes to make your teams more effective and more satisfying for teams members.bioteams

Dave Pollard Writes: The Personal Creativity Cycle and the Organizational Innovation Cycle

2005-11-13T21:09:00.000-08:00

The Personal Creativity Cycle and the Organizational Innovation Cycle
CreativityCycle

Bengt Järrehult, the KM Director for Swedish paper & packaging company Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget, has come up with a model for creativity that synthesizes some of the more analytical approaches with some more right-brain approaches like those in Creativity Inc, by Jeff Mauzy & Richard Harriman, and Presence, the book by Senge et al that I recently reviewed.

Creativity Inc outlines creativity practices that entail learning new competencies, establishing a facilitating environment, and offering creativity programs. The keys to creativity, its authors say, are intrinsic motivation, curiosity, making and breaking connections, and honest idea evaluation.

Bengt explains his cycle, diagrammed above, as follows:

* Draw Inspiration: You are challenged and/or inspired by something.
* Exercise Personal Courage: The healthy tension between curiosity (opportunity) and fear (risk), when appropriately encouraged and reinforced by healthy sense of self-esteem, drives you to explore the opportunities.
* Break Connections: You break the existing connections in your synapses to free your mind (using TRIZ, lateral thinking, meditation and other techniques) from established, limiting patterns.
* Open Yourself: You stay in limbo, i.e. with a completely open mind, and draw on input from outside sources, especially those that intersect and synthesize multiple disciplines, and add your own internal sensory, integrative and inductive inputs.
* Create New Connections: You draw on a balance of intuition, emotional intelligence and rational intellect to choose and make new and better connections to convert ideas into opportunities. These opportunities then drive the innovation process.
* Feel the Reward: The creative process is its own intrinsic reward, a much stronger motivator for more creative effort than externally-offered rewards. The joy you receive from the creative process strengthens your self-value and self-esteem and provokes even more creativity.

Not coincidentally, there is a lot of the 'suspending' and 'letting go' elements of the Presence model in Bengt's model. This is a personal creative process. Now let's put it together with the organizational creative and innovation process we developed for AHA!:

CollabInnov

So, to reiterate Bengt's personal creativity cycle, we, as individuals, (1) draw inspiration, (2) exercise personal courage, (3) break connections, (4) open ourselves to input from without and within, (5) draw on intuition, emotional intelligence and rational intellect to create new connections, and (6) feel the reward -- the joy that this creative process gives us (outer circles of this chart).

Creative organizations invite us to apply this creative process to organizational creative and innovative tasks. In organizational creative work, we collectively (a) learn, (b) listen/observe, (c) explore, (d) understand, (e) organize, (f) imagine, (g) reach out, and (h) brainstorm (leftmost 8 boxes of the inner circle of this chart). In organizational innovation work, we collectively (i) canvass the 'crowd' for confirmation that our ideas meet a genuine need, (j) design, (k) experiment, (l) question/challenge, and (m) realize the idea into a successful offering (rightmost 5 boxes of inner circle of this chart). All six elements of individual creativity in Bengt's model are applied in all 13 aspects of the organizational creative and innovation process.

These are both cycles, and ideas and actions pass through their intersections and give them momentum dynamically, much as electrons are exchanged in chemical reactions. For example, you might be reading about a new type of plastic that dissolves inertly in water, and later about the problems with sorting and recycling of packaging materials (individual creativity cycle step 4). You connect the two learnings together (step 5), and get excited about the possibilities (step 6). You are inspired (step 1) to invent a packaging material that can safely be washed down the sink. You overcome the fear of being thought foolish for such a radical idea, the fear that someone has probably already patented it, the fear that nothing plastic can really ever be harmless to the environment (step 2), and are propelled by your courage to start thinking boldly about the possible applications of such a technology in all kinds of packaging (step 3).

At any point in this personal cycle, you may be drawn into, or create, an organizational group that can explore this idea and do what needs to be done to bring it to fruition. It might start with learning from a business colleague more about plastics, and sharing what you know so far (step a), or a casual brainstorming with trusted colleagues over lunch (step h). Someone in the organization may hear about your exploration and authorize a group to explore it (step b), or to design a prototype (step j & k). The personal creative cycle can thus intersect with and be propelled by the organizational creative and innovation cycle at almost any point, and vice versa.

Some of the articles I have been reading lately (notably this one by innovation guru Michael Schrage suggest that there may be three more steps in the innovation cycle between (i) canvass and (j) design:

* champion -- do whatever needs to be done to inform and persuade people in the organization that the idea makes sense, and overcome resistance to it
* obtain sponsorship -- find the person or people in the organization needed to get the project approved, and persuade them of its value
* obtain resources -- identify and get approval for the time of various people in the organization, the money and other resources needed to implement the idea

That would increase to 16 the number of steps in the group/organizational cycle. I welcome comments from readers on this revision to our model, and how to integrate it with Bengt's in a graphic way that is not overwhelming to understand.

Why is there so little innovation in most organizations today, when there is so much creative talent and so many ideas and so much information floating around? My hypothesis:

Organizations rarely invite people to apply their personal creativity to organizational challenges, so the available ideas and talent are largely unused and eventually dry up. This is because most organizations (a) are not set up to tap this talent, (b) don't really trust most of their employees to be able to apply their creative abilities and imagination in a productive, effective way, and (c) are averse to true innovation, as Christensen explains, because their intense focus on customers discourages them from doing anything different from what has satisfied customers to date -- i.e. what they're already doing today.

Organizations are not stupid. They have achieved success by effectively meeting customers' needs. They are not motivated to change what they're doing until something averse happens -- dropping revenues due to a competitor's disruptive innovation or a dramatic change in the economy, buying criteria or demographics. Too often, by the time this happens it is too late.

Successful organizations should be anticipating such averse events and bringing either sustaining innovations or disruptive innovations of their own to preempt such events. They should be putting in place an environment that encourages their employees and others (including customers) to apply their personal creative skills to help in that effort. And they should trust their employees and customers to be a vital force in the organization's innovation efforts, and put in place programs to demonstrate that trust and tap that creative talent.

Failure to do so represents not only a squandered opportunity and a waste of talent, but also guarantees that most of your employees will be bored, disengaged and disinterested in the organization's success beyond their own personal interest, and likewise guarantees a largely indifferent and unloyal customer base.creativity,innovation

The Hindu: Bangalore Book Festival

2005-11-09T18:45:00.000-08:00

10 lakh books to be on display

Bangalore Book Festival opens on Friday

# Fair to be open from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
# Entry fee fixed at Rs. 10
# M.S.S. Murthy to be felicitated on Friday
# Several programmes scheduled during the fair

Bangalore: With 270 stalls, 10 lakh books and the presence of leading international and national publishers, distributors and booksellers, the third Bangalore Book Festival, which opens on Friday, promises to be a treasure trove for book lovers.

Balaram Sadhwani, President, The Bangalore Booksellers and Publishers Association, who is organising the fair, said last year there were one lakh visitors and twice that number were expected this year during the festival which will be on till November 20.

The covered venue is Palace Grounds with entry from the Mehkri Circle underpass. It will be open on all days from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. with an entry fee of Rs. 10. "Schoolchildren coming in groups will pay no entry fee," Mr. Sadhwani said.

Governor T.N. Chaturvedi will inaugurate the event on Friday morning with Minister for Irrigation and Transport M.Mallikarjun Kharge as chief guest. Kannada poet Chandrasekhar Kambara preside over the function.

The association has given special attention to smaller Kannada publishers this year, realising they cannot afford normal stall rentals. They will be accommodated at a separate Kannada Mantapa where table space will be provided courtesy of the Kannada Books Authority.

The stalls themselves will have books from publishers in Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi and Urdu besides the latest English publication. A number of cultural and competitive events have been arranged on most days. These will be at an audtiorium named after K.V. Subbanna.

On November 11, a senior bookseller, M.S.S. Murthy, will be felicitated followed by a music programme by the Prayoga Range troupe. On November 12, there will be a talk on "The media and reading habit" by Ravi Belagere of "Hai Bangalore" and Vishweshwar Bhat of "Vijaya Karnataka." November 13 will see a quiz conducted by N. Someshwar, quiz master of doordarshan's "That Antha Heli". The next day being Children's Day will have a talk for children on personality development, given by author and counsellor B.V. Pattabhiraman.bangalore

Dave Pollar writes: The Atomization of Software

2005-11-09T18:41:00.000-08:00

Reader Bill Burcham talks about one Open Source phenomenon that had not occurred to me: Just as business is likely to atomize into a World of Ends--
many small specialized, networked businesses each doing one or two things really well, self-organized collaboratively with their customers to produce integrated, customized, even Peer-Produced goods and services perfectly attuned to each customer's need--

it is very conceivable that software offerings could atomize into a World of 'Microapplication' Ends --

many small networked software developers, each designing small pieces of code that add useful functionality that can be plugged into existing Open Source applications.

There is no reason why these microapplications couldn't also be Peer-Produced -- co-designed by the customers who need them.

So, for example, it would be nice to have a microapplication that would add wiki functionality, or maybe podcasting functionality, to blogs. The wiki 'plug-in' to a blog would produce what is called a bliki. It would allow any reader of the blog to add his two cents to an article right in the body of the post (instead of in the comments thread below it) -- to become in effect a co-author of the article. The miniapplication would have to allow the original author some simple control e.g. the ability to tag readers' additions and changes and 'inline' comments in another colour, or to display them only as pop-ups or scroll-overs, or to remove them if she thinks they detract rather than add to the article.

This opportunity to create atomized software only arises as a result of (a) open access to the code of existing applications so that designers can add in or plug in in a simple, modular way, and (b) emerging standards and protocols like Ajax that make modular design simple, so add-on/plug-in miniapplications need not be tweaked for each similar application they are adapted to. For example, a wiki miniapplication for one blog tool would ideally work for all blog tools without the need for additional coding.

This would require that the basic functionality of core applications (like blogs) evolve quickly to a single, simple set of standards with a stripped-down or modularized set of functionalities. This probably won't appeal to designers who like to design an elegant and complete product, and it will essentially destroy 'brand', but it offers the promise of immensely more value and flexibility to customers.

Rather than imposing such standards using some ISO-type oversight organization, I'd like to believe these standards could evolve naturally using methods to capture the Wisdom of Crowds. Customers would first have to realize they have the power to demand such standards. They, we, need not settle for sloppily designed, bloated, buggy, over-engineered, proprietary, memory- and processor-hogging applications.

If we could achieve such standards, incorporating modularity, flexibility, openness and organic design in the software domain, this might serve as a model for the future design of physical objects, like cars and houses. Instead of cars being designed to discourage 'non-factory' improvements, wouldn't it be great if we could design (intentionally create) our own car, by simply selecting a chassis and engine from a standard set, and then adding whatever additional functionality we need, from a million choices offered by a million lean, adaptable entrepreneurial companies? And then when our needs changed, wouldn't it be great if we could simply 'pop out' and resell the modules we no longer require, and add new ones that meet our new needs?

It's all possible.We just need to flex our ingenuity and our consumer and voter muscle to make it happen. The Internet, a freed market and the imaginative possibility of Open Space Business will look after the rest.

HBS: the art of leadership

2005-11-08T03:39:00.000-08:00

by Sharon Daloz Parks

The phrase "the art of leadership" is certainly well worn. But consciously recognizing the practice of leadership as artistry has received little attention.1 For now, I simply suggest that art, artist, and artistry be given a more prominent place within the lexicon of leadership theory and practice.

Affirmation and resistance
The image of artist, cast as a metaphor for those who provide acts of leadership, immediately evokes two primary responses—affirmation and resistance. Those who think of themselves as artists in the conventional sense of the word—for example, painters, sculptors, musicians, writers, architects, photographers, and some athletes and gardeners—may pick up the metaphor with ready enthusiasm, recognizing that incorporating their artist-self into their practice of leadership opens into a horizon of powerful possibilities. But those who suffered through their last required art project in school, or who hold the stereotype of an artist as nonrational, asocial, marginal, or soft—may cast a more jaundiced eye upon this metaphor.

It is highly likely, however, that the jaundiced eye belongs to someone who in some aspect of his or her professional or personal life exemplifies the power and qualities of an artist: the ability to work on an edge, in an interdependent relationship with the medium, with a capacity for creative improvisation. (Entrepreneurs and some politicians, physicians, and educators, for example, are akin to artists, seeking to bring into being what has not yet taken form.)

Working on an edge
Within any profession or sector, one of the primary characteristics of the artistry of leadership is the willingness to work on an edge—the edge between the familiar and the emergent. Harvard University professor Ronald A. Heifetz honors this edge when he speaks of the capacity to lead with only good questions in hand—and that acts of leadership require the ability to walk the razor's edge without getting your feet too cut up—working that edge place between known problems and unknown solutions, between popularity and anxious hostility. Artistic leadership is able to remain curious and creative in the complexity and chaos of swamp issues, often against the odds. As we have seen, those who practice adaptive leadership must confront, disappoint, and dismantle and at the same time energize, inspire, and empower. The creativity that emerges from working on this paradoxical edge is integral to adaptive work, building out of what has come before, yet stirring into being something new and unprecedented—the character of leadership that is needed at this threshold time in human history.

Interdependence with the medium
Artists work within a set of relationships that they cannot fully control. In regard to the practice of leadership, one of the most potent features of thinking like an artist is that the artist necessarily works in a profoundly interdependent relationship with the medium—paint, stone, clay, a musical instrument, an orchestra, a tennis court, a slalom run, or food. Artists learn "everything they can about the medium(s) with which they work . . . what they can expect from it and where it will fall short."2 A potter, for example, must learn that clay has its own life, its own potential and limits, its own integrity. The potter develops a relationship with clay, spending time with it, learning to know its properties, how it will interact with water, discovering that if you work it too hard, it will collapse, and if you work with it, it will teach you its strength, your limits, and the possibilities of co-creation. "Even in drawing," notes an architect, "though we think of the artist as imposing something arbitrary on the page, when you draw even a single line on the page, it begins to speak back to you. The kind of pencil you use and the tooth of the paper will affect the message. The design emerges in the dynamic interaction of the relationships among architect, pencil, paper, client, site, building materials, budget, and contractor."3

The practice of adaptive leadership requires the same awareness of working within a dynamic field of relationships in which the effect of any single action is not entirely controllable because in a systemic, interdependent reality, every action affects the whole. On the other hand, if one learns to understand the nature of the system that needs to be mobilized (the underlying structure and patterns of motion), he or she can become artfully adept at intervening in ways that are more rather than less likely to have a positive affect in helping the group to move to a new place, creating a new reality.4
Those who practice adaptive leadership must confront, disappoint, and dismantle and at the same time energize, inspire, and empower.

Linda St. Clair, who served as a highly successful personnel manager for manufacturing in a major technology firm, is keenly aware of how her earlier experience as an artist-director of theater productions informed her practice of leadership within a corporate context. "When I was at my best in the corporation," St. Clair tells us, "I helped the people who reported to me get what they needed to be effectively creative. Over time I got to help select a talented team, but it remained my responsibility to be clear about what we were supposed to be doing as an organization and enable every person within the system to know how the work of each one contributes to the whole!"5

Heifetz and his colleagues regard giving the work back to the group as a hallmark of adaptive leadership, and recalling her experience in the theater, St. Clair confirms the same: "More even than a captain of a team or the conductor of an orchestra, in a theater production at some point the director has to let go and know that the cast will make critical decisions." But the director isn't the only one who has to learn how to give the work back. There is a whole constellation of artists who are giving the work back to the group, within a system in which no one is fully in control. The playwright gives the play to the producer, who gives it to the director, and thus, St. Clair contends, the director has a sense of stewarding something. "You are not the playwright, the producer, or the actors. Something came before you and will come after you. It doesn't mean that you don't have a critical contribution to make and gifts to give. The same is true in a corporate context."

"A part of your role," she continues, "is to practice an anticipatory imagination, asking the question: 'What will be needed to get there with comfort?'" Which means, in part, attention to timing—or to what Heifetz refers to as 'pacing the work.' There is a set date for the opening night. "By the time dress rehearsal arrives," says St. Clair, "the director has given the work away, becoming an observer, taking notes, but talking about it later—becoming less 'a director' and more a coach, guide, mentor, companion, ally."

In Heifetz's terms, a director in a theater production must exercise both the functions of authority—maintaining equilibrium within the social group—and the practice of leadership—mobilizing the social system to create a new reality. "One of the vital tasks of the director," St. Clair continues, "is to comprehend a dynamic complex of interactions." This includes appreciating the artistry of many others: set design, lighting, casting, acting, costuming, makeup, sound engineering. Each and all must create something new. While helping each part to move in a common direction, the director needs to be mindful that every part needs to be as creative as possible, honoring everyone's artistic power—and all the conflict thereof. Tough decisions have to be made, and the director (authority) must be willing to do so—jointly when possible—which means a lot of interaction and process.
In the corporate context, this concept of rehearsal and practice remained central.

"Rehearsals can be a dynamic, creative time," she says, "and good directors hold back from making 'world-without-end' decisions early on so that unforeseen possibilities have room to emerge." Good directors dwell in a significant measure of ambiguity—again, that edge between the known and the unknown. "We have to play a bit—practice," says St. Clair.

Later, in the corporate context, this concept of rehearsal and practice remained central. She continually reminded her people, "Try it out. We aren't making decisions yet, we can try out 'what ifs.'" The day came when the sign on the corporate "war room" was changed to "music room." "You have to get the metaphors right," she insists. "We are trying to create something, not destroy something."

Theater, leadership, and teaching are all communication arts requiring constructive feedback in a demanding, consultative mode. St. Clair sees parallels with jazz. "As you are playing, you are listening to one another, intuitively modulating into new possibilities, a more effective product, and a more successful organization."

Excerpted by permission of Harvard Business School Press from Leadership Can Be Taught by Sharon Daloz Parks. Copyright 2005 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation; all rights reserved.

Sharon Daloz Parks is director of leadership for the New Commons, an initiative of the Whidbey Institute in Clinton, Washington. She has held faculty and research positions at the Harvard Divinity School, Harvard Business School, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.leadership,art

InformationWeek states Microsoft, SAP Team Up Against Oracle

2005-11-08T03:32:00.000-08:00

Under a multi-year licensing program, SAP can embed and sell Microsoft's upgraded database with its enterprise applications platform.
By Paula Rooney & Rochelle Garner
CRN

As the Dec. 1 official release of SQL Server 2005 approaches, Microsoft and key ISV partner SAP are preparing a major assault against a common enemy: Oracle.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said Monday at the SQL Server 2005 launch event that the Redmond, Wash., company has developed a set of go-to-market programs with SAP to take market share from Oracle. Under the effort, Microsoft signed a multiyear licensing program with SAP that allows the ISV to embed and sell Microsoft's upgraded database with SAP's enterprise applications platform.

One Microsoft Business Solutions (MBS) partner said the multiyear licensing pact is part of Microsoft's ISV royalty program and won’t worry Microsoft's Dynamics partners as long as the pricing is fair.

"We're also a part of this, and what it does is give an ISV an ability to bundle SQL with their software, only for a significantly reduced price," said Simon Chan, president of Iteration2, an ISV and solution provider in Irvine, Calif. "It will cause concern in the MBS community if MBS partners are not allowed to bundle at that reduced price. I can't imagine that Microsoft will not offer a similar type of deal for MBS products, as well for this single-use royalty program."

Microsoft and SAP also unveiled a "Migrate From Oracle Now" campaign that offers customers who defect from Oracle to a Microsoft SQL Server-SAP implementation a 50 percent discount on licenses.

Microsoft and SAP have edged closer together as Oracle continues to consolidate the enterprise applications market through its acquisition of PeopleSoft and J.D. Edwards and, more recently, Siebel Systems.

Microsoft's first database upgrade in five years will support up to 93,000 concurrent users on SAP, or more than 10 times the largest SAP enterprise implementation, Ballmer told thousands gathered for the SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 and BizTalk 2006 launch event in San Francisco. Microsoft and SAP have more than 20,000 joint customers, he added.

Oracle, for its part, announced support for Microsoft's Visual Studio 2005, which also was launched at the event. Oracle said it will offer a free plugin for Visual Studio 2005 that enables tight integration between Visual Studio 2005 and Oracle Database 10g. SAP,microsoft

Times of India says: Sanjay Dasgupta breathes his last

2005-11-02T20:30:00.000-08:00

Sanjay Dasgupta, Karnataka’s first IT secretary, died in Bangalore on Tuesday following a cardiac arrest. He was 51. He was the brain behind putting Karnataka on the IT map. After his tenure at the IT department, Dasgupta went on to head the State Tourism department and was later on deputation as the chief of Action Aid, an NGO.

When Karnataka was taking its first tentative steps in creating a global brand in IT in 1998, it created the post of a secretary, empowering him with a role to attract investors. Sanjay Dasgupta was picked for the job.

As new secretary, Information Technology and CMD, Karnataka State Electronics Development Corporation (Keonics), Dasgupta declared that the government would pull out all stops to retain Bangalore as the premier location for the IT industry. He then set up a technical support group that was entrusted with the day-today task of addressing the industry’s problems.

A definite sign of Dasgupta’s creativity is ensconsed in Bangalore’s annual IT carnival BangaloreIT.com which became India’s only pre-eminent tech show. “We were chatting one day and he (Dasgupta) came up with this idea,’’ recalls STPI’s B V Naidu.

It was during his tenure that special attention was paid to hardware. This, when 50,000 software engineers passed out from campuses as against a mere 500 in hardware.

“It is necessary to set right the imbalance immediately and we should set up of an exclusive zone for this sector,’’ he had said seven years ago. But the initiative is yet to take off.

In 1999, Dasgupta also mooted a school for internet studies as well as one for IT entrepreneurship in conjunction with giants like IBM. Software exports originating from Bangalore had then crossed Rs 1,700 crore, a 73% increase from the previous year’s Rs 980 crore and Bangalore alone had accounted for 57% of the national software exports.

“He was more of a visionary, a person who worked on concepts. And, this was when IT was just beginning to take off here. He was not the typical bureaucrat who followed the trodden path but came up with ideas that were way ahead of our times,’’ says Vivek Kulkarni, former Karnataka IT secretary, who succeeded him both as the Special Department Commissioner in Karwar and later as the IT secretary of the state.

After his tenure at the IT department, Dasgupta went on to head the State Tourism department and was later on deputation as the chief of Action Aid, an NGO.Bangalore

CNET News says:

2005-11-02T20:15:00.000-08:00

Germany's SAP lodged a complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office on Friday, challenging an $88.5 million contract awarded to Oracle by the U.S. Air Force.

SAP's complaint ultimately could put the lucrative contract up for grabs. The complaint comes as Oracle and SAP, the world's biggest maker of business software, increasingly have engaged in public combat--from a wrestling match over acquisition of Retek to verbal barbs between the CEOs--amid a rapidly shrinking market for enterprise software applications.

"SAP firmly believes that the Oracle proposal does not reflect the best value and lowest risk solution," Steve Peck, SAP Public Services president, said in a statement. "We look forward to a formal review of the process, procedures and selection criteria for this award."

SAP alleges that the Air Force Expeditionary Combat Support System (ECSS) bid proposal called for technology that had the best features for--and relevance to--the agency's mission and the lowest risk.

"The U.S. Air Force wanted a 'best value' solution based on mission capability and lowest risk which, when combined, are significantly more important than price," according to a statement SAP issued.

SAP noted the Air Force's written evaluation of the bids stated SAP "far exceeded Oracle in the required mission capability criteria and was rated the lowest risk offer."

A representative from the Air Force was not immediately available to comment.

Bob Wynne, an Oracle spokesman, said in a statement regarding SAP's complaint to the GAO: "We are excited to be the product platform selected for ECSS after the Air Force's exhaustive evaluation...We're looking forward to working successfully with the Air Force and their implementation partners to achieve the program's vision."

The Air Force is required to submit a report to the GAO by Nov. 30, outlining their bid evaluation process. Oracle and SAP will receive part of the report, or its entirety, when the document goes to the GAO, said Daniel Gordon, associate general counsel and head of the bid protest unit for the GAO.

The companies will have 10 days to respond to the Air Force's comments, and the GAO must issue its recommendation by Feb. 6.

The GAO does not have the legal authority to require a federal agency, such as the Air Force, to act in any particular manner. But in practical terms, agencies typically follow the GAO's recommendations, Gordon said.

"The GAO could ask the Air Force to fix the problem and redo the competition, but it is rare that they would ask the agency to award the contract to a competitor," Gordon said.

He noted that one-third of protests filed with the GAO tend to dissolve in the first month, usually due to a protester withdrawing the complaint, the agency rescinding the contract award and restructuring the bid request, or the GAO dismissing the protest.

Previous Next By the second month, another third of the complaints tend to drop off for similar reasons, he added. As a result, the GAO usually finds that of the 1,000 protests filed annually, only 250 usually require its recommendations each year.

"Of these cases, the protesters win about 22 percent of the time," Gordon said.

For Oracle, the ECSS contract is a large addition to its existing work with the Air Force, Charles Phillips, Oracle's president, said at a recent analysts luncheon in New York.

"This (ECSS contract) is an important win because now we're already doing (the Air Force's) financial management and we're already doing human resources and now we're doing the entire supply chain," Phillips said. ECSS is the resource planning tool for the Air Force. Oracle,sap

Ruby on Rails chases simplicity in programming |

2005-10-31T20:56:00.000-08:00

Ruby on Rails chases simplicity in programming | CNET News.com: "Can one man and a mantra of 'radical simplicity' change the world of Web development?

David Heinemeier Hansson, a 26-year-old Copenhagen native, has built a 'framework' to help Web developers be more productive and has released the package of tools through an open-source project.

His software, Ruby on Rails, only out for a little more than a year, has started a buzz among the legions of developers and high-level executives that track the trend-driven world of software development." Ruby,Ruby on Rails

Joel on Software - Monday, October 24, 2005

2005-10-24T21:52:00.000-07:00

Joel on Software - Monday, October 24, 2005: "Something Rotten in AdSense

Google AdSense is a system for web publishers of all sizes, from big newspapers to tiny bloggers. They sign up with Google to place a small box full of text ads on their site. You've probably seen it, but if you haven't, check out Michael's techInterview site for an example.

Advertisers pay Google to have their ads appear in little sidebars. Well, that's not technically correct. Advertisers actually pay Google if anyone clicks on those ads. In turn, Google gives a percentage of the money to the web site owner. As a web site owner, you can make some serious spending cash this way. Popular sites make hundreds or thousands of dollars a month.

The minute you put AdSense on your site, you might start thinking, hmm, gosh, what happens if I click on the ads on my own site? Will I make more money?

Probably not much. This problem, called clickfraud, is a tricky one, and Google claims to have algorithms to prevent it. They won't tell us what they are, justifiably, I think, because that would it easier to defeat the algorithms. Still, how would you explain complaints like this one from an advertiser:

When I activate my AdSense campaign, not much more than 5 minutes go by before they are all over it.. Multiple clicks from the same Internet IP's in Malaysia, Poland, Hongkong etc. (I tried to exclude certain countries in my AdSense account, but they seem to go through proxies, so its not much use)..

Tried just now and within 2 minutes I had around 20 clicks, which were clearly fraudulent (they seem to use some kind of tool - no pictures on the site were loaded according to my log). I guess that was around €20, which went up in smoke there. The super-duper top secret internal Google clickfraud prevention system, which is supposed to deduct the invalid clicks at the end of the month, only seems to catch an extremely small fraction of the clicks, but not nearly enough. I can't see which clicks I actually pay for in the invoice from Google, so it's a bit hard to say.

When you connect the dots, what seems to be happening is that scammers are doing four things.

1. First, they create a lot of fake blogs. There are slimy companies that make easy to use software to do this for you. They scrape bits and pieces of legitimate blogs and repost them, as if they were just another link blog. It is very hard to tell the difference between a fake blog and a real blog until you read it for a while and realize there's no human brain behind it, like one of those Jack Format radio stations that fired all their DJs, or maybe FEMA.
2. Then, they sign up for AdSense.
3. Then you buy or rent a network of zombie PCs (that is, home computers that are attached to the Internet permanently which have been infected by a virus allowing them to be controlled remotely).
4. Finally, use those zombie PCs to simulate clicks on the links on your blog. Because the zombie PCs are all over the Internet, they appear to be legit links coming from all over the Internet.

There might be a technical solution to this, although I can't think of one offhand. The minute companies start cutting checks to "affiliates" at the end of the month that are based on nothing more than clicks, you're bound to get the AllAdvantage phenomenon. AllAdvantage was probably one of the most spectacularly stupid business ideas to come out of the first Dot Com bubble: a company that paid you to look at ads. That's because they fell victim to one of the better business ideas from the first Dot Com bubble: hiring armies of low-paid workers to look at AllAdvantage ads.

Eventually, it stops benefiting the advertiser, and the advertiser figures it out, and stops paying for the whole charade.

It is important to remember that AdSense is just one part of Google's revenue. A more significant part is AdWords, which covers the ads that appear on Google's own site. AdWords are still susceptible to some fraud, although you can't make money clicking on those ads, so it's much less of a problem. There is a minor problem where advertisers hire clickers to click on their competitors' ads, which cause their competitors to waste money, but that's penny-ante stuff, and rare enough that advertising through AdWords still works well.

Still, with Google rapidly approaching 50% of the global search market, they can double the number of searches they get on their home page, but not much more than that, unless they can get more page views somehow. Which is why they are frantically trying to sign up non-fraudulent web sites for AdSense (they call me every two months) and constantly seeking new sources of ad inventory, which sounds a heck of a lot like what the web portals of the 90s tried to do.

This is where Google is actually hurt by the long tail world of millions of small sites. It's easy to evaluate the top 100 or 1000 web sites to make sure they're reasonably legit. It's much harder to monitor 1,000,000 blogs to make sure that none of them were machine generated for the purpose of scamming AdSense revenue. Still, I don't think Google has a choice: I predict that you'll see a massive expulsion of smaller AdSense sites by Google, and it better happen soon, or AdSense will ruin Google's reputation among advertisers, something which could be deadly.google,adsense

They make hay while it rains in Bangalore

2005-10-24T21:50:00.000-07:00

Deccan Herald

First the good news: Like Mumbai, Bangalore too has its share of good samaritans — strangers who will willingly lend a helping hand as you find your way in waist-deep water, give a push to a stranded car, and flash a cheerful smile as you groan over your soiled clothes.

Now the bad: Good deeds, in Bangalore, cost money.

For holding your hand while you wade your way out: Rs 15. For pushing a two-wheeler: Rs 100-Rs 150. For pushing a two-wheeler: Rs 250-Rs 300. For repairing a vehicle: Rs 300-Rs 500.

The local population around Hosur Road has hit upon a profitable business proposition overnight. Over a hundred villagers from surrounding villages have posted themselves next to the flooded Hosur Road, waiting, and praying, for the passing cars and two-wheelers to get stuck in the submerged stretch. Fortunately for them, this situation is not a possibility, but an eventuality, on this clogged road where the water level has reached over three feet. There are over 10 mechanics on the job, making the best of the situation. Each had an army of at least 10 younger boys, who were responsible for bringing in customers-in-distress for help. Thousands of broken down vehicles were pushed or repaired by these men over the last two days, and many have managed to earn up to Rs 10,000.

“There is nothing wrong in charging money, because we are, after all, providing a service,” says Shankar, a resident of Bommanahalli. One of these “helpers” admitted to having a differential rate chart. IT professionals are charged more, and so are owners of swanky cars. This reporter, who was at the site, was let off at a discounted price of Rs 25.">Sights, sounds and smells from Bangalore: "They make hay while it rains in Bangalore

Deccan Herald

First the good news: Like Mumbai, Bangalore too has its share of good samaritans — strangers who will willingly lend a helping hand as you find your way in waist-deep water, give a push to a stranded car, and flash a cheerful smile as you groan over your soiled clothes.

Now the bad: Good deeds, in Bangalore, cost money.

For holding your hand while you wade your way out: Rs 15. For pushing a two-wheeler: Rs 100-Rs 150. For pushing a two-wheeler: Rs 250-Rs 300. For repairing a vehicle: Rs 300-Rs 500.

The local population around Hosur Road has hit upon a profitable business proposition overnight. Over a hundred villagers from surrounding villages have posted themselves next to the flooded Hosur Road, waiting, and praying, for the passing cars and two-wheelers to get stuck in the submerged stretch. Fortunately for them, this situation is not a possibility, but an eventuality, on this clogged road where the water level has reached over three feet. There are over 10 mechanics on the job, making the best of the situation. Each had an army of at least 10 younger boys, who were responsible for bringing in customers-in-distress for help. Thousands of broken down vehicles were pushed or repaired by these men over the last two days, and many have managed to earn up to Rs 10,000.

“There is nothing wrong in charging money, because we are, after all, providing a service,” says Shankar, a resident of Bommanahalli. One of these “helpers” admitted to having a differential rate chart. IT professionals are charged more, and so are owners of swanky cars. This reporter, who was at the site, was let off at a discounted price of Rs 25."Bangalore

Food of the future to be developed on the base of molecular biology and genetics from PRAVDA.Ru

2005-10-23T22:50:00.000-07:00

Food of the future to be developed on the base of molecular biology and genetics - PRAVDA.Ru: "NASA makes sandwiches, which stay edible for several years

In addition, NASA studies food products, which will be able to satisfy personal needs of a particular consumer taking into account his/her allergies and other peculiarities of human organism. It is scientific alchemy rather than ordinary culinary techniques. Laboratory engineering rather than traditional industrial processes. Food that will be in the supermarkets and restaurants in the future will not have visual differences from that of today. However, it will be manufactured, processed and cooked in a different way. The future is near: 'functional foods' - foods and drinks with added vitamins, minerals and fatty acids omega-3 - will look tastier (just for reference: the manufacturing of these products accounted for 800 million euros in Europe in 2004). However, the main surprises - products developed in molecular studies, genetic discoveries and space research - are still to come."

Molecular gastronomy has a flavor of the future in its name. In other words, molecular gastronomy is the analysis of physicochemical laws while cooking and the use of recent discoveries for creating unusual recipes. This is a new tendency, which appears in Europe mostly and has restaurant chefs, matter physicists and experts on chemistry among its participants. The starting point was the notion that there is a surprising molecular linkage between different products (for example, chocolate and caviar, asparagus and liquorice). Its discovery can lead to invention of unexpected mixes.

Englishman Heston Blumenthal is considered to be the founder of molecular cuisine: he is the first youngest chef who has already 3 Michelin stars in his 39. In Italy the most famous representative of the new trend is Davide Cassi, specialist in matter physics at the University of Parma. "Except for some recipes all the technologies which are used in scientific gastronomy (such as liquid nitrogen freezing) will be applied at home kitchens. As a result, menu will be enriched thanks to "molecular dishes", Cassi says.

New technologies left their mark on another sphere, which will play the main role in the future. That is flavors and odors, synthesized in laboratories. Especially when it comes to the laboratory of perfume elaboration of Swiss perfume giant Givaudan. Contributing to the elaboration of more than 20 thousand artificial odors (300 for strawberry only), biologists from the multinational company organized an expedition to Madagascar forests in search of molecule, from which new aromas could be extracted.

Scientists claim that these fragrances are identical to natural ones on the molecular level. The only difference is that they will be the results of chemical processes.

In this sphere the impulse comes from NASA. L'Advance food technology of American space agency specializes in preparing foods for space missions. Such technologies as microwave ovens were developed thanks to its research. The immediate task is to make products stay fresh for longer period. "Products, which can be kept for months or even ages without losing their nourishing properties and vitamin quality," Michele Perchonok from NASA claims. Techniques that are used include high-pressure treatment, pulsing electric fields, and high frequency sterilization. A sandwich prepared in this way turned out to be edible in seven years. The results can prove useful during the mission to Mars (although it seems that nobody dares to taste this sandwich yet).

The elaboration of artificial meat from animals' muscle cells grown in test tubes is under way in the University of Maryland laboratories. "The substitutes of meat for vegetarians already exist. They are developed from special mushrooms processed in the way that their tissue is not different from that of meat," the author of the book "The Future of Food" Brian Ford recalls. "We will witness nothing new in this sphere in the next few years."

Food science may soon be united with molecular biology and genetics. At least that is the goal of nutrigenomics, which tries to study connection between genes and particular food products for creating personal diets depending on genetic profile of a person. "People show different reaction to food depending on their DNA", says biochemist and biologist from the University of Davis, California, Jim Kaput. "At the moment we are studying the effects produced by olive oil in people who consume it versus those who do not. Taking all the population into account, we will be able to prescribe more effective diets in the future. It used to be a mere fantasy and in 10-15 years it can become a reality."

Food of the future, whatever it might be, will be kept in special packages that will provide for the safety of the product, determine when it gets out of order and inform the consumer about this. The crucial point in this case will be nanotechnologies, or the possibility of matter control on atomic and molecular levels for creating new materials.

It is not accidental that such multinational corporations as Kraft in collaboration with 15 universities of the world opened a nanotechnological laboratory a few years ago. The first goal was to tighten control over overall production chain. More pretentious goals are set for the future: manipulating the matter on molecular level can help in creating the products that will identify consumers' needs, his/her allergies, lack of any substances and will be able to supply those substances in amount needed - all this with the help of nanosensors. The future looks promising.or black. It all depends.nasa