Today I was riding down the elevator when an advertisement flashed across the mini screen . It said " the bloggers in china have surpassed 20 million mark" . There is a cambrian explosion of businesses waiting to happen in China…

Games bring the best amongst us. It shows our IQ, EQ , if used properly is the right mode for recruiting.
Google time and again uses this techinique for recruiting.This time for content writers in India

Via WSJ.com :

One popular use of social-networking site Facebook.com is to flirt with other members. As it happens, Facebook Inc., the start-up company behind the Web site, has been doing some serious flirting of its own.

People familiar with the matter say the company has held separate acquisition talks with Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Viacom Inc. over the past year. Now, say some of these people, the start-up is in serious discussions – again – to sell itself to Yahoo for an amount that could approach $1 billion.

Bubble Motion , an innovative use of a technology..I just love the way something is put to use which is probably,in the hindsight looks as a bloody obvious need in the market.

The service is launched in Pune. ’ll be interesting to see if the result is same as Malaysian market.

FICO , a concept which helped banks to remove the human element out of credit decisioning process, thus making lives simpler. One metric could encapsulate a whole lot of information relating to the payment history , outstanding balance, length of credit, depth of credit and recency of credit. Improvement of FICO score was always considered a healthy option for a person as it would give way to a lot of incentives like low buy down points, lower mortgage interest rates,etc. I was always of the opinion that FICO was a great win-win for everybody. Banks get to appraise credit worthiness of an individual and disciplined individuals get better rates..

People rarely succeed unless they have fun in what they are doing. - Dale Carnegie

Little things make a lot of impact in a company. There is a a simple practice of having free bagels with cheese on every Friday morning in a company and I had a chance to overhear quite a few conversations of the employees. This was placed in such a way that employees from various functions could come and talk over while they were having bagel in the morning. It could be their weekend plans, their department stories, etc..People infact looked forward for Friday bagels..From a company’s standpoint, they hardly cost anything..But from an employee’s feel good standpoint, it is great investment.

“I don’t believe at all the creative is some inborn talent. Creative People believe they are creative and less creative people believe they are less creative. " Michael Michalko( Thinkertoys)

Another brilliant essay by Paul Graham .. The power of Marginal

We learn so so much from failure and in fact it is one of the best learnings anybody can have(even though they are costly). A popular adage is that the smart learn from other’s failure.Yes, it is probably right, but more often than not, the kind of learning which is associated from actually failing oneself is something valuable. Be it failing to ride a cycle or  be it failing to stay afloat in water, or failing in a business, they give immense learning to any person. Every failure helps us in understanding ourselves better in our decision making skills, relationship skills, people management skills, etc…

Carmax is the walmart of used cars. It had to happen as the industry was not organized. Its inspiring to know that this company has held its head straight for the FIRST 7 YEARS MAKING LOSS..Now it is breakeven its operations and has become a force to reckon with in the US Market. Studying the way they manage the inventory, sales locations etc would make a really interesting business case

“Accountants are in the past, Managers are in the Present and Leaders are in the future " - Paul Orfalea ( Kinko’s founder )

This cropped up in my mind specifically because a lot of people around me started sneezing in my office yesterday. Considering that the weather was bad , its logical that they would have caught cold. But the number of Bless you’s that were floating around the office was a little odd..Just was curious to know what’s the origin …I realized that that there is no concrete reason , though there are some wide spread beliefs about the usage..some of the odd reasons are as follows :

Florida in USA is one state which has the maximum number of old people. Financial companies all over the world are setting up customer labs in this state to study the psychographic behavior of these customers because by 2025 , most of the USA would look like Florida.  10 trillion USD is going to shift from one generation to another in the coming 10 years. The retirement rollover market is worth billions.

“Even a fool is thought wise if he keeps silent,”  - Old Testament

Keeping silent and being in a state of inaction is the worst thing to happen for any individual.

An interesting scenario of google’s future:
Via BusinessPundit :
Society is only beginning the transition into all this collectivist business nonsense (yes, I know I was guilty of it too), so we still have a way to go before people realize the value of expertise and the flight to quality begins. The web has its fads, just like everything else. But back to Google…my prediction is that someday they will offer a premium service that has no ads, a nice junk site filter, and will charge a monthly fee.

A totally wierd concept, but seems to be working

Via FARK.com:

During all of 1999, Fark got 50,000 pageviews.

During all of 2004, Fark got over 400 million pageviews.

We’re not sure what we’ll get during 2006, but at this rate by the end of the year there will be more people reading Fark than will be alive on the planet at that time. It will be interesting to see how that works out.

An article in wsj quotes that there are a number of trading platforms available for helping peripatetic customers stay in touch with their money like www.thinkorswim.com , www.siebertnet.com , E trade, Fidelity, www.mbtrading.com ,www.alphatrade.com .

Here’s another side of the story : Most online brokers offering software-based trading applications that an investor downloads and installs have packages that run only on a Windows-based machine. So, there is a clear gap for a firm to provide these services

“Reading is a means of thinking with another person’s mind; it forces you to stretch your own.”
- Charles Scribner, Jr

I picked up this book after I sensed some similarity between the book and my new assignment, value maps. It was definitely a worthwhile exercise, in the sense that it gave me a thorough understanding of Strategy maps and Balance scored card. The understanding does put a lot of my experiences and learning’s in a holistic perspective. To begin with, I was always skeptical of the word, ‘strategy’, not only because it figures out as a prominent word in the bull fighter software, but also because it is used by so many people in so many circumstances that it had lost significance to me.

Investment in Analytics tools pays off says Accenture…With so many MNCssetting up their back offices in India, hopefully the next killer Analytics tool should be from India…

Via Yahoo Finance:

1. A lawyer to create investor contracts and such, at a charge of $400 an hour, or about $30,000 a year

         2. Back-office outsourcer to handle stuff like shareholder communications runs as much as  $75,000 a year

3. Optional compliance consultant ($15,000-ish), who ostensibly would keep the regs away

200,000 is the basic infra cost..There is track record that you need to bring to the table and one needs to have a superb power to speed network,,,

Via WSJ.com

The 401(k) retirement plan, one of the most important savings tools available to Americans, is about to get a makeover.Some of the new features that would be part of the new plan from 2008 are Automatic enrollment, Automatic increase by employers, investments in higher yielding investments.
Why is it being changed?
The problem is, too many people are making bad decisions, such as
leaving their money parked in low-yielding investments instead of more
suitable choices.

“Over the last year, the average rate for a home equity line of credit has jumped from 6.58 percent to 8.22 percent, while the average credit card rate has shot up from 12.4 percent to a little above 14 percent”

Given the above facts , one would be really wary of the strategy adopted by various mortgage banks who give a piggyback HELOC to a customer along with a First Mortgage. The HELOC acceptance rates are going to go way way down.

" We must be the change we wish to see. "
 - Mahatma Gandhi

This company Bluedot was launched at gnomedex 2006. The founder says that " Either there are only social networking sites OR only information based sites..There’s nothing to connect them..So, we came up with this idea where one can use Social Networking for information"

Hmm…I do not agree with him. Wisdom of crowds is clearly established beyond doubt in the media. Digg is a superb example in that league..Now why would I depend on lets say friends for information where there is a whole world outside to give me a wider variety of information. Music makes sense because I can hang out with people who like similar bands, etc etc…Music , videos, entertainment, fashion are all tastes of individuals and it is possible that social marketing and such needs/wants gel …But what’s information got to do with social marketing. If I want some info on Finance related stuff, I will probably go to seeking alpha. If I need some info on Mortgage , I would probably check on some Mortgage info aggregator. Why is social networking rearing its head in this space…Something is wrong with the model…anyway market will soon decide how the bluedot story pans out.

This week , the marketing guru - Philip Kotler dished out gyan to Indian corporates, salient points being

• R&D must be market-ready
• Numbercrunching is more than calculating market shares
• Co-creation is the mantra(Four seasons hotel chain - customer always gets the same room whenever he visits)
• Expand Market size - (quoted GE)
• Strategic Trajectory needs to be adopted by Indian Brands (quoted Haier - Chinese consumer durable company)

Most of us are familiar with the famous Wired magazine issue which had a cover story titled -The Long Tail. It was written by the editor of Wired magazine, Chris Anderson. The article became immensely popular among the business and geek community for it offered a simple framework by which the various forces were shaping the internet market place. The author also started a blog and I had managed to read quite a few of the entries. Given this background, I really did not want to read a full fledged book on “The Long Tail” which came out recently. But the fact that the entire framework, logic and examples would be at once place was enough to lure me in to buying it. It turned out to be a No-Regrets decision.

Yes, the world’s largest retail company has ventured in to online. It has created a myspace clone called school your way . Why should it work ? There’s already myspace which has a pretty good community and customers comes back to the site because of music recommendations of each other. It would be interesting to see the strategies walmart would adopt to make this site popular.
What offline advantages would it leverage ? Food for thought !

Ridiculous fish : This is a stunning way to stop comment spam. No scratchy hard to figure out pictures, captchas.. so simple,yet so powerful.

I randomly picked up this book at a discount store at MG Road Bangalore with no expectations whatsoever. Subconsciously I was probably carried away by its slick design and small size. In the hindsight , it turned out to be the best book I have ever read on leadership. The way in which the whole stuff is written in the form of a fictional short story leaves the reader to stretch his imagination and cull different aspects from the book. Its a book about Larry,  a highly competent, technically capable person who is given an assignment which requires him to act as a leader. Even though he is best as an individual , he clearly starts missing the deadlines of the project and finds himself in a situation where the entire project would be a failure. Through a fortunate holiday that he takes amidst the chaos, he realizes that leadership is all about three important aspects :

An epigram is a short poem with a clever twist at the end or a concise and witty statement. They are among the best examples of the power of poetry to compress insight and wit.The epigram originated in Greece as a form for inscription on a monument or grave, hence the word ’epigram’ from the Greek words meaning ’to write on’. Epigrams were thus much shorter than lyric poetry which developed from forms designed for performance accompanied by musical instruments

A wonderful article which would make anyone interested in iMac
Via   Fast Company :Why one should buy iMac :

When people shop for an iMac, I love that the discussion is now much more egalitarian, more accessible, and more open, instead of being about technologies that many people don’t understand. I like that you can go into a store and have a discussion about which color you want. That’s something that the whole family can do. That’s exciting. We’ve made the whole process of buying and using computers more accessible.

Ting - a one word for capturing the intuition moment , is a short business fiction story written by Arupa Tesolin. The main points in the book are as as follows

1. Say Yes to intuition - Implies that there is no such thing as natural gift that only a few people possess. One can develop intuition only when one believes that he can develop intuition skills

2. Do nothing for five minutes - This allows the thoughts to come to us and not the otherway round

In the last few days I was reading a book titled - ‘In Praise of Slow’. I picked up this book at the local store mainly because of the title which was rather eye catching. Eye catching because most of blurbs we see in the media, the books we read are about speed, doing things at a faster pace, eating foods hurriedly, juggling with multiple schedules all at once, reading 200 blogs daily, trying to chalk out every slot of the day etc.

Consider an hypothetical example. There is a wheel which has 2 colors painted on it , red and green on each half of the area on the wheel. When the wheel is rotated against the needle , it either stops on red area or the green area. The events that is of discussion in this example , i.e the needle being on the red area OR the green area is completely random.

The theme of the book by Paul Ormerod revolves around three aspects, they being, firstly, the pervasive nature of failure, secondly, the patterns between biological extinction of species and firm failures, and thirdly the way one can deal with this failure.

Is the failure pervasive ?
A look at the history of firms shows clear evidence that the life time of a company is not really long. Hannah, a noted researcher analyzed all the firms the top firms between 1912 - 1995 and observed that only 13% of the firms survived. Sometimes technological revolution makes brings this vast extinction, to name a few, printing technology in Venice brought to death 80% of the firms which started operating in the printing space, the early industrial revolution from 1900-1920 saw only 99% of the firms leading to failure.

Via Chicago Tribune :

I’m with the latter group, mostly because, whenever I think about new technology and its potential to go mainstream, I remember the Rule of the VCR. Every household had one. They were easy to set up and use, and using them fully offered people the great benefit of watching TV on their own, not the network’s, schedule. Yet in more than 9 out of 10 homes, the VCR might as well not have had a “record” button; it was put to its simplest use, playing tapes.

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites. As you click Stumble!, you’ll get high-quality pages matched to your personal preferences. These pages have been explicitly recommended (rated I like it) by friends and other SU members with similar interests. Rating these sites shares them with your friends and peers – you will automatically ‘stumble upon’ each others favorites sites.

My long wait for a Digicam is over. My friend is going to bring one, on the coming Monday.Here’s how it looks like…Can’t wait till I can get my hands on it

Nowadays, topic  blogs are not as many as compared to universal rant blogs. Even amongst the topic blogs, the owner of the topic blog slowly starts writing about his/her own personal experiences , like sharing a photograph of his vacation  etc. Its fair on the blog owners part to write about all that stuff  , like I do on this blog. But somewhere my friend and I felt that there is a need for atleast a few topic blogs . Hence my friend and I have decided to write blog entries for very few specific areas. To begin with, we have started a blog on numeracy, where we would try to look at various issues from a quantitative perspective.

There was a series of blasts in Mumbai and one piece of technology is being used as a part of rescue operations - Blogs  -  http://www.mumbaihelp.blogspot.com/ . This blog was started during the Mumbai floods last year. Slowly it has grown in to a good resource database for support services , thus complementing the efforts of govt. police and formal agencies.

The life of wisdom must be a life of contemplation combined with action
M.Scott Peck

Microsoft to be fined up to 2.6 M USD by European union as MSFT has failed to give complete and accurate information about the Windows O/S. Rival companies claim that it deters them from providing server software compatible with Windows.

Is it right for any union to fine a company ? Should MSFT  provide all the information that is needed ? Why should it provide the information ? In the times to come, MSFT itself might want to get in to other products which might help them cement their ties further with its customers. Who decides whether a company is misusing the power to skew the market ? On what basis can one decide that a firm is exploiting the customer / would exploit the future in the case of status quo?

“There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts” - Tim Harford is one of the most refreshing statements coming from an economist.  A few refreshing comments from an economist in the book make me sit up and read the book cover to cover twice so as to digest the content in the book, which examines some seemingly obvious phenomenon and uncovers the underlying truth behind them.

           People Power
           Video Unlimited
           Personalize It
           Carbon Killers
            Buy It Now
           All-Access Economy

To read about them – its here  Wired Trends:

Via Wired:

McCoy , a monk from Wisonsin, had to save the brotherhood from financial ruin. His solution: dust.

The idea came to him while he was replacing the toner cartridge for the abbey’s laser printer. Peeved by the high price, he searched online for a better deal and found several manufacturers that refill used ­cartridges with powdered toner for a fraction of what new ones cost. McCoy opened an account with the intention of ordering not only for the abbey but also for local churches and businesses.

Via O’Reilly ONLamp Blog

$data   ,  $data1

The power of Marginal:

A technique for determining when you’re on the right track. You’re on the right track when people complain that you’re unqualified, or that you’ve done something inappropriate. If people are complaining, that means you’re doing something rather than sitting around, which is the first step. And if they’re driven to such empty forms of complaint, that means you’ve probably done something good.

“If I asked people what they wanted, they would have said ‘faster horses.’” - Henry Ford