Silicon Valley Blogzine

See and Smile :)

2008-08-15T16:52:00.001-07:00

See and Smile :)

2008-08-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Pedal your way on the information superhighway

Incredible India Wins First Gold in Beijing

2008-08-10T21:48:00.000-07:00

Truly a glorious moment for Indian Sports. Hope this is just the beginning of India having a presence in International Sports. Abhinav Bindra ended the 28 year drought by bringing Gold to India.

What was even more surpirising was some beat me to updating his wikipedia entry :)

vallyblogzine does not stand a chance in spelling bee

2008-08-10T21:11:00.000-07:00

I thought I had uncovered a spelling blunder on a recent trip to Ghirardelli Chocolate Factory. How could a factory that claims itself to be a mecca for chocolates make such a huge mistake I mused. Came home and did a quick verification. Made me realize that I should not be allowed anywhere in the vicinity of Spelling bees.

Green Tourists

2008-08-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

It's a cult in San Francisco to be green. Don't beleive me? Maybe these pictures will convince you.

Segway Assembly session in full swing.

Hybrid Taxis rub shoulders with Horse carriages

Mr.Clown uses totally organic eco friendly vegetable dyes to color himself.

Ok, I admit, I was pulling a fast one about Mr.Clown :)

See and Smile :)

2008-08-09T23:02:00.000-07:00

Took some interesting snaps on a visit to San Francisco. Will be releasing them in phases.

Talking to the Tanzanian Home Ministry - Part 2

2008-08-07T21:15:00.000-07:00

More faxes sent, more calling cards, a conversation with the Police chief later i've tracked down my mother's file. I was thrilled that I had uncovered the needle in a haystack. So now for the sad part of the story.
The processing required US $25 to be sent along with the initial application. My mom said she had $25 in cash and would send it along with the application. Mr.Smarty Pants (me) screamed at her for not being thoughtful on such things. I told her i'll take care of that part. Promptly went to Bank of America and got a Cashier's check in favor of the ministry, walked straight to a FedEx office nearby and sent the package to India for my mother to send it along with her application. Needless to say I felt pretty proud of myself. Now when I called and spoke to the Police chief he said the application was stalled because they expected cash and not a cashiers check. Apparently encashing the cashier check would cost them and was not acceptable. Send cash through DHL or FedEx he advised. I did a mental revisit of everything my mother said. There was a mention of $25 (no mention of check, DD, cashier's check, in favor of etc). So why did I use my intelligence?

My mind quickly worked out a brief synopsis of the damage:

Cashiers Check for $25 + FedEx to India - $70
Calling Cards to Tanzania - $20
$25 cash + FedEx to Tanzania - $115
Lesson learnt by Mr.Smarty Pants - Priceless.

Talking to the Tanzanian Home Ministry

2008-08-05T22:11:00.001-07:00

I am in the process of trying to do the impossible. My mom needs a good conduct certificate from the criminal investigation department of the ministry of home affairs in Tanzania for her to obtain the US green card. She lived in Tanzania between 1974 and 1983; The US consulate has provided us with information on where we can obtain this certificate which according to the documentation they provided should take 2 weeks. It's going to be almost a month and we have no idea what the status on the paper work is. So here I am now trying to determine what the status of the paperwork is. So far I have managed to establish a phone conversation with a person in the ministry who has asked me to Fax details of the case again. I have faxed the information but now I have to call again to know what the status on the "requesting status request" is. Add to that timezone differences, language differences, bad international calling card quality and you know what I am up against.
On the bright side I got a phone number from the Internet and a cheap calling card all courtesy of the internet (can't imagine what we would be doing without the internet and internet commerce) and above all a fairly courteous individual at the other end. Hope this story has a good ending.

Monkey On

2008-07-29T15:49:00.001-07:00

Yahoo! has had a beta service called Search Monkey that has been picking up some steam off late. Apart from some of the cool plugins for linkedIn, Yelp and such I have seen some very valuable plugins off late especially for software developers.

Check out the Java Documentation once you add the Java Doc Plugin.

To add these plugins go to the Gallery

Pick and choose whatever you like.

Lost in Translation

2008-07-25T11:10:00.001-07:00

With the Olympics round the corner, China better gear up if this sign translating the name of the chinese restaurant is any indication. More on this here

Sweet!

2008-07-25T10:20:00.000-07:00

Rajinikanth's next movie Kuselan is all set to open in the US. I have heard Rajinikanth fans are what one would call a notch above the rest. Have had friends having Rajini prefixed to their names so the attendance register would have "Rajini Prabhu", "Rajini Bhaskar"... You get the idea!.

Of late it appears there is a mini industry attempting to come up with creative marketing techniques to advertise Indian films abroad. First we heard about Akshay Kumar's cut out being erected in Toronto for his latest movie. Now how can our thalaivar fall behind.

So what is the latest whacky idea? Rajinikanth Candies!!! Don't beleive me? I present Uniform Resource Locator as evidence

Follow-up on the blog level post.

2008-07-20T21:37:00.000-07:00

I was curious to find out how the blog readability test worked so I tried out some of the most widely used sites. The results cleary illustrate the flaws in the tool or Google really needs to rethink it's usability :)
As an aside it appears that an IQ of a junior high student should suffice in understanding what women want. I guess I should have paid more attention in my junior high classes. Oh well!

Google

TV Reviews

What Women Want?

Beware : You are entering Genius Territory

2008-07-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

If you find the content of my blog ridiculous and don't get what I am trying to say, it's not on account of my horrendous writing but because according to this rating my blog requires you to be mensa certified. I really did not realize I had the ability to write such profound stuff. Time to get some tips from sundar's blog

Movie Reviews

You think you can dance

2008-07-18T13:26:00.001-07:00

A resounding Yes, this couple can. Check it out for yourself.

What are your favorite sites?

2008-06-27T22:07:00.000-07:00

Time had an interesting article about the 10 sites we cannot live without. I guess this list varies from person to person and from the list I would say I can live without most of those sites. Youtube was prominent in it's absence.

Step Back UN - Make way for Oil

2008-06-19T18:42:00.000-07:00

Oil Oil everywhere not a drop to burn say the republicans as they would like to start drilling in ANWAR and off the coast of Florida and California. They face an uphill task as the democrats are strongly opposed. So one way around this stalemate could possibly come in the form of an surprise package. Drilling off the southern coast of Florida was a problem, but what about the northern coast of Cuba. Given the hypocrisy we've seen in the past with the "not in my backyard" we may actually see a breakthrough in US-Cuba relations. I beleive Oil and not UN holds the key for world peace.

Hooray!!!

2008-06-11T10:02:00.000-07:00

So India beat Bhutan in overtime in Soccer. The entire population of Bhutan including the king of Bhutan were at hand and seated in the first row in the stadium to see the mighty Indians given them a 2-1 drubbing. The King accepted defeat and hinted that the Bhutanese goalkeeper's reflexes were not good enough to stop the Indian goal in the last minute. He suggested the queen might undergo extensive goalkeeper training from Schumacher in Germany. Prasanetajit Banerjee the victorious captain of the Indian team was overheard growling to the Bhutanese captain "You better start training your 3 month old baby prince right away if you want to stand a chance against my battletested Indian Tigers in the next Good for Nothing championships".

IT Sucks!!

2008-06-07T22:48:00.000-07:00

This is in response to Sundar's post about the IT profession. On a purely personal note, when I go to desi birthday parties I see some odd dudes hanging out all alone playing hockey with their nans and koftas in the corner. I try to go and make small talk with them and almost always they are non IT dudes who just don't know how to blend in. To me talking to these dudes is refreshing, it's enriching and almost always a learning experience. I learn about FDA fast track for drugs, hear about how someone invented a cashew opener in Mangalore and now being exported to every African country, how there is a plan to orally dispense insulin just like the mist that cures bronchitis, how someone determines the optimal temperature of oil to fry nachos. Ok enough examples, you get the idea. The choice of listening to this anytime beats out listening to why Yahoo! should get acquired, or why twitter is cool or why facebook is not worth 15 billion or playing hockey with stale nans and kofta balls.

Kitchen Remodelling and Marriage

2008-06-07T22:12:00.000-07:00

When someone recently asked me if I had marriage jitters prior to getting married, I scrubbed my memory to go back into the tape archive in my brain. No record found came the response. So when I bought up this topic she said she did not find any record of jitters in her brain archives either. So here were two individuals who were either oblivious of what they were in for or were totally indifferent to the whole idea. In any case we now understand what marriage jitters are now as we are attempting to remodel our kitchen. The contractor gave us a picture of the would be new kitchen and gave us the dimensions, told us about the embellishments and the financial damage the whole episode would cost. We signed on the dotted line and now have new kitchen jitters.

Feelings in the family after Hillary Clinton lost

2008-06-07T22:06:00.000-07:00

My Mom : Is it really over?? Are'nt there more primaries?
Wife : I knew it, America is a country of MCP's; Now watch Obama will not even bother with considering her for the VP slot as he'll feel inadequate and insecure
Son : Is it over? Can we now switch back to sponge-bob on tv?
Daughter : Whatever!!
Me : Now that Obama is nominated, Mccain should start working on his concession speech.

Show Me The Money

2008-05-23T17:46:00.000-07:00

Satya Nadella, the key executive for Microsoft Live Search had this to say while shutting down the Book Search initiative.
"We believe the next generation of search is about the development of an underlying, sustainable business model for the search engine, consumer and content partner," Nadella wrote."

This translates to "show me the money" and not necessarily all hard problems are worth pursuing. Now that Microsoft has thrown in the towel, will Google follow suit on this one?

Steve Ballmer Egged.

2008-05-19T15:55:00.000-07:00

Check out this video out where the Microsoft CEO is being egged by an irate Hungarian customer.

I Like Obama

2008-05-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

Why do I like Obama? He talks with conviction and makes the tough choices. He could have easily followed the herd instead he took the harder route on the merits of the case. Good call Obama. Here's what he had to say on Mccain and Bush's so called Tough Talk.
"They aren't telling you the truth. They are trying to fool you and scare you because they can't win a foreign policy debate on the merits," said Obama. "But it's not going to work. Not this time, not this year."

Mechanics of Business

2008-05-15T07:24:00.000-07:00

If I were to take a course in business strategy I woul probably get an F-; Here's why. Today Verizon and Mozilla announced support for LiMo a rival wireless platform to Google's Android. I can totally understand why Verizon would do that, they own the networks and they want to own the data going over the networks as well. Now why would Mozilla do that. Unless my memory is failin me, was google not the company that pumped in millions of dollars into Firefox which one can easily say is the flagship product from Mozilla. What am I missing?

Cyclone Nargis

2008-05-08T21:54:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons I read blogs is it points me in directions that may be of interest to me. It stimulates me and I start digging deeper. One such instances was Lakshman's blog about Cyclone Nargis. I was in Chennai when the Tsunami hit and though it did not affect me in any way I did know of people who lost their lives just because they happened to be at the Marina beach for an early morning walk. It took me a few days to recognize the magnitude of the devastation. What has happened in Burma is no different. I think this disaster has even softened the military junta which has started letting military aid flow in.

I urge people to contribute since this is a tragedy of gargantuan proportions and given that in the Internet era it takes all but minutes for such tragedies to make way for more popular headlines, it's upto us to all of us bloggers to keep it alive. In case you are wondering how you can help, here are some basic tips.

1. Go with an organization which can help most effectively in such times. E.g. Doctors without borders, Red Cross etc.
2. See if your company matches your contribution.
3. Mobilize as many people as you can think of to contrubute.

I decided not to include gruesome photos of the devastation and instead include the snap of two lovely burmese kids to symbolize hope. Hope!

Eeadichan copy

2008-05-07T15:23:00.001-07:00

Jellyfish

2008-04-28T22:10:00.000-07:00

OK, I am not trying to show off my photographic skills since I have none.
This was a photograph taken by my 4 year old son. He seems to have a better eye for photography than me that's for sure. While we are on the subject a very interesting tidbit

Jellyfish lack a brain, heart, bones, and gills, and are composed mostly of water. Their bodies are thin enough to allow oxygen to pass from the water directly into their internal organs.

No brains ==> No thinking.

No heart ==> No Girlfriend/No Boyfriend/No Broken hearts/No Marriage/No Love

No bones ==> No broken bones after fight with wife (ah forgot! No wife)

Wow!, this is one heck of a creature.

Kids say the darndest things!

2008-04-24T19:07:00.000-07:00

A conversation that occured as part of our yearly doctor's visit

Doctor : What do you want to become when you become big

Twin A : Mechanic

Dad (in thoughts) : Ok, no more handyman expenses. Phew!!

Twin B (after a long pause) : cooker

Me (in thoughts): ?????????Prestige????Hawkins??????

Doctor : !!!!!!!!

Mom : ??????!!!!?????

Twin A (taking charge of the situation) : A!, Do you mean Chef?

Encyclopedia Britannica

2008-04-20T15:24:00.000-07:00

When I was a kid I remember going to a friend's place and staring at an entire collection of Encyclopedia Britannica. Let's just say this friend was very rich. So when I got to know the entire collection was now available for free I could not resist the urge to sign up. People had written obituaries about Britannica what with Wikipedia and Web Search engines making any information a matter of a few keystrokes. I thought this was an awesome chance for them to prove the critics wrong.

I promptly decided to fill out the form when I caught the line in CAPS.

Start using Britannica's premium service immediately. Just complete this one-page form, then confirm and submit your order in Step 2!

Account Information
Subscription Type: FREE ACCESS FOR 1 YEAR 0.00 (USD)
Why would they offer this for a period of 1 year only. Is it to attract to lock in people and show how valuable their content is?
It's hard to comprehend who comes up with these buisness decisions. I just have a feeling they have let one more golden oppurtunity slip.

Cat on the wall

2008-04-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

While having a conversation with a colleague I mentioned I was "cat on the wall" when it came to making a decision on the matter we were discussing. This colleague of mine was an English major and he had a puzzled look on his face. I patiently explained to him that this was a popular adage used to imply indecisiveness as in the cat was capable of jumping on either side of the wall. He said he had been exposed to a number of adages and he had never come across this. Determined to prove him wrong I searched for the phrase on the web but the number of search hits on both google and yahoo were paltry at best. Yahoo! provided the answer from its question answer service which made me ponder if this phrase possibly has its roots in Tamil I realized that this could be because this probably had its origins in tamil "madhil mel poonai". Have you heard the phrase "cat on the wall" ?

Stock pick.

2008-04-16T22:52:00.001-07:00

It's been a while since I provided a stock pick but here is one I felt was compelling enough for me to share. This is a Commodity index ETF and goes by the ticker symbol DBC. Bought it two weeks back and it is already up 10% what with wheat and oil prices sky rocketing. So the next time you fill gas at the pump there can actually be a reason to be smiling :)

Why?

2008-04-13T15:46:00.000-07:00

In Tamil there is a saying that children and god are alike mainly to reflect their purity and innocence. This village in India seem to have taken this literally.

I hope the child gets the immediate medical attention it needs. I don't see why the Child protection services are not getting involved to control this circus?

Who are linking to my blog?

2008-04-11T21:21:00.001-07:00

If you wanted to find out who have linked to your blog, you can get that information using a tool called Site Explorer.

Take a look at this link and click on "inlinks" to see how many people have cited your site.

A lot of complex technology goes into doing this. Check it out, it's fun.

No more excuses you squatters

2008-04-11T17:09:00.000-07:00

All you squatters who say that too much of work prevents you from getting any excercise, your excuse is not going to fly anymore coz there's some multitasking you can do while at work.

Quotable Quote.

2008-04-10T15:39:00.000-07:00

I picked this up on one of the blogs. Made me ponder.

During grad school at Northwestern, me and some fellow class mates had the pleasure of spending half a day with Warren Buffett.
Buffett said if you have 20 great ideas in your life you’re doing very well……this was a couple of years ago and at that time he said he hadn’t even reached 20 yet.
He returned to Omaha from NY because they tried to come up with 20 great ideas before lunch. Unplugging from the clutter and noise certainly hasn’t hurt him any. It’s a good lesson.

Should I head to Omaha where I can escape all the chaos that Silicon Valley offers? Nah!, I'll stay. And on another note my idea counter has been initialized and the quest has begun.

At last something to cheer about!!

2008-04-09T13:44:00.000-07:00

It was a tough day at work. Deciding to take a breather, I opened my news feed and voila a news item stared at my face that made my day. It was almost as if God custom wrote that news article to cheer me up. So without further ado I would like to share the article with my massive blog audience. I know, I know you think I am being sarcastic. But seriously, don't you think being better than Maldives a country of 14 people is something to be proud of. Falling a mere 6 places from the 148th place to the 154th place in the heavily competitive sport of World soccer in my dictionary calls for opening up the champagne bottle. I would like to start an online campaign to include soccer along with hockey as our twin national sports. Any takers??

Non violent ice hockey brawls!!

2008-04-07T12:06:00.002-07:00

Even I thought the title was an oxymoron until I saw this.

I hereby nominate these two players for the Nobel Peace Prize for showing utmost restraint.

Toddler Conversations in Silicon Valley

2008-04-05T21:14:00.001-07:00

Son : I think dad should throw his rusted Nokia phone into the dustbin. I feel embarassed to see him lug that piece of junk when we go out. I literally run for cover when he gets a call in parties.

Daughter : When we go out to parties I always go and stand near Ashwin's dad and hold his hands.

Son : Why so?

Daugher : He has an Iphone.

Valleyblogzine rated "Top 100 Blogs to watch" by Time Magazine

2008-04-01T10:22:00.000-07:00

I am very thrilled to announce that Time magazine has listed my blog as one of the top 100 blogs to watch in 2008. To rub shoulders with other popular blogs such as Techcrunch and scripting news is truly an honour. What was truly surprising was this honour was bestowed on me in such a short while since I have been blogging for just 7 months now. My traffic numbers probably have something to do with it. In any case click here for a complete list of the blogs to watch in 2008.

Rajaram's Tryst with the law

2008-03-30T09:41:00.000-07:00

Rajaram iyer was late for his IIT JEE physics tuition. His mom had insisted that he have a couple of more idlis inspite of him being 30 minutes late for his tuitions. She told him that his professor would understand. He quickly picturized a scenario where he was explaining the reason for his delay to Professor Balasubramaniam. He shuddered at the thought of having to face the professors choice abuses and the fact that he would become an object of ridicule of his friends. He quickly dodged his mom and escaped on his run down hero cycle. He raced down the crowded TTK Salai. He made an amazing left turn in the busy Music Academy junction that would have made Lance Armstrong proud only to be stopped by a pot bellied constable. The constable gave a very disapproving look. He kept shaking his head which reminded rajaram of the look his father would give him everytime he would have to go through the tirade of getting the parent's signature on the report card.

Do you know how to read quizzed the constable. Stunned by the question rajaram stuttered in the affirmative. Rajaram then made what he thought was a very sharp observation where he saw a maruti suzuki make the same mistake. He pointed out to the constable why he was being singled out when pretty much every one else was doing the same mistake. The constable's total indifference made rajaram shudder. The constable then came to the "matter". He was a master at this art. He started sympathizing with rajaram all of a sudden. His face seemed to indicate that he was rooting for rajaram and for this matter to end quickly. He said he would take care of the "matter" with minimal fuss and it would cost all of 100 bucks. Dealing with the bigger pot bellied SI would prove to be at least 5 times more expensive. Rajaram had a torn 5 Rs note in his pocket that his mom had given him for filling air for his run down cycle. He was getting late for his tuition and needed to do something quickly. Rajaram decided to wear a beggar's look. His impoverished physique lent credibility to his story. He told the constable that he was deviod of any money whatsoever. He further mentioned that he would go request his Income Tax Inspector dad that constable uncle had requested 100 bucks to smoothen out a case and his dad would be very happy to give him the money. The constable started perspiring which was unusual for the music season month of december. Rajaram's signal had turned green and he happily whistled forward only to face the music of his physics professor

World's oldest recorded sound.

2008-03-29T10:11:00.000-07:00

Ever wondered how people sounded in the year 1860. Well here is a sample of the world's oldest recorded sound.

Scott recorded someone singing an excerpt from the French folksong "Au Clair de la Lune" on April 9, 1860, and deposited the results with the Académie des Sciences in 1861. The existence of a tuning-fork calibration trace allows us to compensate for the irregular recording speed of the hand-cranked cylinder. The sheet contains the beginning line of the second verse-"Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit"-and is the earliest audibly recognizable record of the human voice yet recovered.

Click here to be part of some audio history

Rajaram's Tryst with a Filipina.

2008-03-23T14:13:00.000-07:00

Rajaram Iyer was nervous in spite of being in the midst of friends. He had been away from this gang for a long time and this reunion was something he had long yearned for. He had left his friends as a nerd who had the reputation for being all work and no play. He was keen on changing that image. He started recounting an incident and the whole room came to a pin drop silence. This was after all a brahmin talking about his escapade with a filipina that even a couple of bystanders joined in to listen. The master story teller started weaving his magic.

"I feel like a true chrisitian walking towards the holy father to confess and seek redemption for my sins. I did not realize it would be this hard. I do not want to appear boastful but I have had my share of escapades with filipina women. Quite a few actually. I prefer to go to places where they accept credit cards including American Express. The place I go to has a frequent visitor discount. Filipina women are very affordable. You typically have an ensemble cast to choose from and once you have identified who you plan to spend the next hour with, you are right away draped in a towel. There is tagalog music in the background. Free water sport is thrown in the mix. They startle you with icy chill water and in spite of your shrieking they giggle and yell back something in tagalog and go back to doing what they consider to be a fairly entertaining ritual. Did I mention you get all of this for 9-10 bucks. You tip them as you please and service with a smile is always their motto."

The room was stunned. Jaws were wide open. Rajaram Iyer had grown up people thought. Iyer had a look of satisfaction in his face. Mission accomplished he wrapped up

As they say in Master card ads "A filipina haircut for 9 bucks priceless!"

Does Tibet stand a chance?

2008-03-14T21:35:00.003-07:00

There was talk of an agitation in Lhasa against the Chinese Police. If you did not notice there was a reason I mention "Chinese Police" and not "Police". No prizes for guess where I stand on the issue :)
However since I was not very familiar with the whole history behind the Tibetan occupation, I decided to read about it on Wikipedia

Some commonalities emerged in terms of some of the long standing problems in this world

1. The British are almost always involved. They seem to have an knack for being part of all screw ups.

2. There is an accord of some sort which over time fails to hold weight. Though in this case one accord involving tibet was fairly interesting

In early 1913, Agvan Dorzhiev and two other Tibetan representatives signed a treaty in Urga, proclaiming mutual recognition and their independence from China. However, Agvan Dorzhiev's authority to sign such a treaty has always been - and still is - disputed by some authorities.

This accord involved Tibet and Mongolia declaring their independence from China. I guess they forgot to invite China for the talks.

3. It's the economics stupid! This adage alway holds good. The world has recognized China's occupation of Tibet. Even India has decided to focus on how it can leverage the growing Chinese economic influence for it's own good. It's the green in the pocket that matters not the green in the park.

I will however end this post on an optimistic note by hoping against hope.

Do your bit to save the tiger.

2008-03-08T20:14:00.000-08:00

NDTV has been on the forefront of making changes in many cases where the Government has failed and make the voice of the people heard. There are already signs of some change since there was a mention of a fund for saving the tiger in the National budget. Let your voice on this matter be heard by
signing up here and help protect the Tiger.

Apple Vs Mac - Friday Evening Fun

2008-03-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

A fairly old clip but I watch it every once in a while just to admire this brilliant piece of advertising. Now do you want to buy a PC or a MAC? I was a PC guy until very recently. My home desktop still is a PC but my work machine is a powerbook. Needless to say I never use my home desktop.

Spot the difference?

2008-02-25T17:15:00.000-08:00

This is going to be a tough one. Can you spot the difference between these two photos.
Of course you don't get points if you said one had a train and the other does not :)

Update: The photo of the Tibetan antelopes with the high speed train was doctored using Adobe photoshop. More on this interesting story

This ain't candid camera

2008-02-21T17:56:00.000-08:00

Rolling Camera, Action!. No this is no movie shooting, this is the real deal.

Vote for Obama!

2008-02-05T10:40:00.000-08:00

Title says it all. Why?. I think he does not come across as a politician that's why. Add to that inspiration, fresh ideas, unbushly and you get the idea. I need to talk to Webster about adding "Unbushly" to the dictionary since there is no other way to explain the myriad of things that can be told with that one word.

Australia gives it back to murali

2008-02-02T11:13:00.000-08:00

Muralitharan had a knack of foxing the aussies with his doosra. Not having a sound reply on the field they decided to take him off the field. So they decided to toss eggs on him when he was walking the streets of Hobart.
So take that Murali, you give us ducks and we give you eggs! Continue the sporting tradition Aussies!!

Back to blogging.

2008-02-01T16:44:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since my last blog post. Though I did not envision the hiatus to be this long as they say "things happen". So expect more frequent posts going forward. To rephrase our governator "i'm back".

Check this picture out

2007-11-01T22:26:00.000-07:00

I saw this photograph on a friends blog. Could not resist sharing it.

Ain't this a nice way to start a friday.

Open Social Mafia: Stealth Operations in silicon valley

2007-11-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

In what is being hailed as a coup of sorts, Google has announced a platform strategy called OpenSocial. I'll leave it to the pundits to decrypt whatever this thing means but I was interested in the following sequence of events.

1. Marc Andreessen announces that Ning was going to partner with Google on OpenSocial.
2. He comments in the same post his view on where Myspace was with respect to this whole opensocial thingie.

Where's MySpace?

Beats me.

3. Myspace announces soon after that they will work with Google on OpenSocial. Apparently this talk has been in stealth mode for close to an year.

I would have expected someone as resourceful as Marc to have had better insight to something as big as this. Apparently not.

Spot the similarity.

2007-11-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

Who knew growing long hair was a symbol of unruliness? It appears that Shoaib Akhtar, M.S.Dhoni etal are going for a chop of their locks. This is supposedly indicative of more responsible behavior on their part. Sreesanth, where does that leave you?

Blogs Vs Newsgroups.

2007-10-28T22:15:00.000-07:00

So I had this interesting exchange with one of my friends about blogging. I was saying how blogging was a new paradigm shift in how people express themselves. No more editorial control, you have a thought just go ahead and scribble it up for the entire world to see. I was sold on blogging being a phenomenon but found significant resistance from the other end, he is after all someone who is still not sold on the need for a cell phone. Then he threw in a surprise punch almost as an afterthought. He said blogging was pure hype and had existed with a different name "Newsgroups". I almost instantaneously dismissed it. Then he got me thinking and increasingly I felt he had a point, though I am not fully sold on it. I am still to do some deep thinking on this front. But for starters he and this other person seem to agree. If this were a tennis match my friend is up 15-0. But the game has just begun. To be continued..

Health and wealth - A valley perspective.

2007-10-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

I make it a point to go for an annual physical. This time around I did not have any form of excercise to my credit since the Doctor had made it very clear that changing channels with the remote would not count. My feeble attempts at becoming the next Jian Jialing in ping pong were also fast waning. The tests thankfully went off without incident and I promised the doc that I would get back to swinging the paddle. Just to give a perspective of the state of health in the valley, one of my close friends had climbed the Kilimanjaro with effortless ease, Vinod Khosla completed the $5 Billion Cerent deal with Cisco hanging off a cliff in Machu Pichu (ok maybe I am exaggerating), one of my other friends almost beat Rogger Bannister in running a sub four minute mile and the Asha Marathon will soon be giving the Boston Marathon a run or its money. So, here's a handy tip, if you need any inspiraton on this front, stop reading this blog and check out what this adventurer has done. And now, the next time you ponder why a robotic remote that would walk to where you are parked on the couch is yet to be invented, think again!

Sidhuism

2007-10-25T21:43:00.002-07:00

Navjot Singh Sidhu is famous for his quotes which are typically packed with punch and laced with humor. Here is what he had to say about the three versions of Cricket, Test, One Day and 20-20.

Comparing the various forms of cricket with music, Sidhu said, "Test cricket is like classical music which has survived since ancient ages. One-dayers are like film music that leaves people enthralled and T20 cricket is like disco and rap which provides occasional pleasure in short bursts."

Devils Advocate.

2007-10-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

Here is the clip from the Devil's advocate where Karan Thapars repeated reference to Godhra prompted Chief Minister Narendra modi to stage a "Walk Out".

Browser Challenge : FireFox vs Internet Explorer

2007-10-23T10:45:00.000-07:00

I have always been under the impression that though Firefox is popular and I use it, the world still uses Internet explorer. So the stats on my blog as to which browser the traffic came from came as a complete surprise to me. Here are the stats.

FireFox : 57.94%
Internet Explorer : 36.51%
Safari : 3.97%
Mozzilla : 0.79%

These stats are not part of a scientific study to analyze a trend but does this bode well for Microsoft?

Mudhalvan Narendra Modi

2007-10-20T08:18:00.000-07:00

I remember the scene in the tamil movie "mudhalvan" where the TV journalist Arjun asks the Chief Minister some embarassing questions to which the CM abruptly ends the interview. Fiction you say, I say not. This scene was re-enacted on my favorite program "Devil's advocate" where the TV journalist Karan Thapar put Narendra modi on the hot seat repeatedly asking him about Godhra. Modi, apparently upset with this removed the microphone and staged a "walk out". Want the gory details?

Pepsico CEO

2007-10-20T08:14:00.001-07:00

What does Rajinikanth, Jayalalitha and the Pepsico CEO have in common. No, the answer is not they all drink Pepsi to beat the Chennai heat :)
Indra Nooyi, the CEO of pepsi and rated the top businesswoman in the world has bought a huge 4100 sqft apartment in Poes Gardens. More on this scoop here

LCD

2007-10-16T21:31:00.001-07:00

Flat panel displays such as LCD's and Plasma's are on the top of the shopping list for most people. LCD which stands for Liquid Crystal Display has someone taking the term very literally. Philips has launched a television set with diamonds encrusted on them.

Philips also unveiled the one-of-its-kind diamond-encrusted Ambilight flat TV. Created in association with New York-based jewellery company A.Link, the 42-inch piece features 225 carats of about 2,250 individual diamonds set into a floral pattern around the edges of the frame.

I think this is one of the cases of someone going too far.

Meeting someone world famous

2007-10-16T21:18:00.000-07:00

I am meeting someone world famous tomorrow afternoon. Readers of this blog are encouraged to take a guess. This post will be updated with details on the meeting with this person.

Hint: This person is from the Indian sub-continent. Ok I know that might not be much of a clue given that the Indian Sub-Continent is all but 1Billion+ people strong. But that's the only clue you folks are going to get.

Update: So the world famous person I was referring to was Mohammed Yunus. They say the hallmark of greatness is simplicity and Mohammed Yunus truly lived up to that. His speech was down to earth about how everyone can make a difference. He asked people to stop considering big problems like World poverty and hunger as a whole and split it up into smaller chunks that an individual can tackle. He said if he is able to come up with an innovative way to eliminate hunger for one person, then replicating the solution is easier. Words of wisdom from a genius! and I was truly honored to rub shoulders with him (literally :)

It's not immaterial after all.

2007-10-15T15:26:00.001-07:00

The popular saying when I was in school was people doing material science engineering would never get to savor material pleasures (read money!) given there was a severe dearth of jobs in that field. You want to be an idealist, this is the field for you was the popular adage. While there was a frenzy to get into Computer science there was a severe drought of students in fields like Material science. A number of students used to jump ship to computer science and the university promptly banned this practice. Well , fast forward to 2007 and now we are beginning to hear and entirely different story. This article seems to indicate that the folks who stuck it out potentially stand to gain and actually make a difference to our lives. If you want an example, all of Apple's latest innovations have been possible on account of the work of material scientists and device physicists. So the next time you listen to a tune on your shiny Ipod pay a silent tribute to those hardworking Material scientists.

A video to bright up a sunday night.

2007-10-14T21:36:00.001-07:00

Here is a "Ready Set Mumbo" video to bright up a gloomy sunday night. OGIM (Oh god it's monday) but on the bright side TGIF is only 5 days away :)

Kanimozhi

2007-10-14T15:18:00.000-07:00

Tamil Nadu could easily vie with states like UP and Bihar for having the worst set of politicians. Here, the political machinery is focussed on erecting statues, nurturing animosity towards the opposition, playing the caste card and fanning lingual fanaticism. Subsidies are doled out in plenty during elections with no consideration to the exchequer. Battles are fought on TV channels where the only news you get is opponent bashing. The electorate no doubt is disenchanted. Dayanidhi Maran provided some releif at least for the IT sector, bringing in a good deal of new investment to Tamil Nadu. He soon turned out to become a tad too powerful much to the discomfort of the DMK top brass. Stalin was the heir apparent and they had to nip the maran bud before it became too powerful. However Stalin did not have the suave urban charm that Dayanidhi exuded to be able to connect with the increasing BPO/IT/OMR/ECR/Mayajaal crowd. They needed a chennaite with a prep school upbringing.
Enter Kanimozhi the daughter of Karunanidhi seems to be a diplomat par excellence. The following interview with Karan Thapar shows we have a fairly good politician in the making. I am not much of a gambler but I'm betting on her playing a very prominent role in the DMK in the years to come.

The Australian Juggernaut

2007-10-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

When it comes to Cricket it would be fair to say that the Australians are the undisputed champions of the world. Save for a period when the West Indies under Clive Lloyd did the unthinkable, the australians have pretty much dominated this sport. Gavaskar nailed the reason for this supremacy. Here is what he had to say

Just about every cricketing country has tried to copy the Australian system and its method, but the fact remains that it’s unique and pretty much inimitable because those who pull-on the Aussie cap have that ‘X’-factor, self-confidence and a mateship that no coaching manual can ever teach.

Have not been much of a Gavaskar fan but it's hard to disagree on this assessment.

Big home for the Little master.

2007-10-12T11:46:00.000-07:00

The little master Sachin Tendulkar has decided to buy a 9000 sqft home in the posh suburb of Bandra. We will most likely see a "bollycricket walk of fame" in Bandra very soon given that Cricket and Bollywood are probably the fields commanding maximum influence from the common man.

Bronze medal.

2007-10-10T12:05:00.000-07:00

Can you folks take a guess as to who is the bronze medalist when it comes to web search. The answer is not MSN, not Ask but Baidu. The chinese web search engine is ranked third after Google and Yahoo! as per Comscore's lates reports. Surprised?, don't be. This is going to become a global phenomena as the Chinese are on target to dominate the world by the end of the century. So my favorite fruit starting today is going to be mandarin oranges :)

Real Star not a Bollywood Star.

2007-10-02T21:40:00.000-07:00

This was how Rajdeep Sardesai referred to Sunita Williams. Enjoy the clip.

Search Assist from Yahoo!

2007-10-02T21:26:00.000-07:00

This is a shameless plug for a new Yahoo! Search feature called Search Assist. Try out Y! search either at search.yahoo.com or in the Y! home page www.yahoo.com
Try typing queries where you have a hard time spellings as is typical with queries involving queries with Indian Last names which are notorious for being generous with the number of syllables. Give it a spin and hopefully you wont have to go back to that other nasty search engine :)

Neither Indian Nor Chinese Cuisine

2007-10-01T15:21:00.000-07:00

Temptations a restaurant on Castro st in Mountain view has come out with a new cuisine. I call it "Neither Indo Chinese" cuisine. They claim the food they serve is Indian-Chinese fusion. Seeing the long wait time and the menu card that is prominently displayed outside I thought I had discovered a gem. I went ahead and ordered more than the entire family could eat. We ordered Gobi Manchurian, Chilli Panner, Garlic Naan and Vegetable Hakka Noodles. I thought this was a slamdunk order and I was going to be one happy man at the end of the meal. Meanwhile destiny had other ideas. The food was awful. Every item was neither indian nor chinese. They seem to have taken the bad aspects of both cuisines and fused them. More Ajinomoto and more oil was the motto. In any case this place is no temptation. On the positive side the service and decor was good but hey I'm there for the food so I can tolerate bad service and bad decor :). In any cas the wait for good gobi manchurian continues.

Vendy Award for popular dosa king

2007-10-01T15:14:00.000-07:00

Dosa the king of crepes gets attention and so does Dosa kumar who runs a dosa cart in New York. I read an article about him quite a while back and today it appears he has won an award for his service. I call it service because popularizing this awesome mouthwatering snack is just that. So have fun reading this article . And finally, fellow readers do your bit and visit his dosa stall if you happen to be in the area.

Update: Check this article which has an interview with the king himself.

India beats India

2007-09-22T16:59:00.000-07:00

Ok, call me crazy but India did beat india in the 20-20 semi finals according to rediff. Here's the clip.

Powered by a gusty knock from Yuvraj Singh , India turned in an inspired performance to beat India by 15 runs and storm into the final of the Twenty20 World Cup in Durban on Saturday night.

Even an esteemed site like rediff got carried away given the unexpected outcome of this game. The more you think about it maybe the writing was not a faux-pas. Possibly India had to defeat it's own lack of confidence to start shining. This victory is hopefully only the beginning. Chak de India!!!!

Surya in Solvang

2007-09-14T17:32:00.001-07:00

Surya is going to shoot in Solvang. I am guessing a bit but you can safely put money on this guess since here is the exact news blurb. I am not aware of any Danish town on the outskirts of Berkeley so Solvang it is.

The latest news is that Vaaranam Aayiram will resume its next schedule in US by end of September. Gautham and his unit will be flying off to California on 29th and shoot for over a month at the University of California, Berkeley Campus and a Danish village in the outskirts of the town.

Universal Health Care.

2007-09-14T17:08:00.000-07:00

With the presidential debates getting hotter and the standard issues such as universal health care cropping up again, it was nice to read this article from the respected Mayo Clinic. I hope something concrete emerges out of the time they have invested in this huge effort to make universal health care a reality. I just hope the pharma and insurance lobbyists in Washington do not throw a wrench on this noble cause.

Yahoo! Microsoft and Cricket

2007-09-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

If you are into cliffhanger's the India-Pak 20-20 cricket match was definitely a treat. You can follow all the 20-20 action you want in this microsite
It appears that Yahoo! is doing it's bit to promote cricket (BTW does anybody need to promote cricket in India I wonder!). So it seems like Google is a bit behind on this given that Microsoft has had it's share of cricketing limelight as well

Me 2 Nah Me 4.

2007-09-10T10:01:00.000-07:00

AMD launched a Quad Core Opteron. This in my opinion is really a "me too" launch given that Intel has had the quadcore processors in the market for a little while now. It is a clear signal that AMD has become the follower again. When you have a company like Intel as your competitor you really can't afford to slip and sadly AMD will need to regroup and focus on it's core strength "innovation" again.

Sports Galore.

2007-09-09T22:16:00.000-07:00

This weekend proved to be a bumper bonanza for sports lovers. Here are the games I keenly followed

1. India vs South Korea: It looked like the women of Chak de India have rubbed some of the fire they showed on screen off screen to their male counterparts. The Indian team gave a 7-2 drubbing to the Asian tigers (Yes, I know there are no tigers in south korea but they are still considered the Asian tigers). In any case the Indian team was flawless winning all their games in the Asia Cup. I am no fan of K.P.S.Gill but hopefully with this victory the focus will be less on politics and more on this beautiful game. I have officially redefined who will henceforth be called an Asian tiger.
2. Roger Federer delivered in what is becoming a routine effort to win the US open. It has been a while since I watched serious tennis but this US open was a real treat. Fedex as he is popularly called for his rocket serves played such great tennis even when he was pushed against the wall to possibly become the greatest tennis player ever.
3. The NFL season is back in full swing. The Patriots have become deadly because of the lethal combination of Tom Brady and Randy Moss. They made mincemeat of the Jets. I am predicting "Brady-Moss-Touchdown" will become a commentary we will get to hear very often.

Devious Mind.

2007-09-07T10:44:00.000-07:00

My mind often goes into a mode where it tries to detect conspiracies. Upon reading the news article that the US Economy got a boost on account of "Back to School" sales, me and my mind had a conversation.

Me: Wow!, Back to school can help boost the economy?
Mind: Daa!!, it happens every year. Why do you think kids don't wear uniforms in this country? It's part of a conspiracy by the retailers to force consumer to buy "color" dresses

Me:Wow! Walmart reduced prices on 16,000 school products to entice shoppers. I wonder why "Back to school" does not work any magic on the Indian economy?
Mind: How many school products did you deal with? Let me give you the list
a. Wholesale uniform supplies from a marwadi store in Parrys for you and your entire apartment complex.
b. Camel/Natraj Geometry Boxes: Camel for the rich and Natraj for the wannabe rich
c. Ratna store tiffin box with lifetime warranty for you, your children and your grandchildren.
d. Lifetime supply of books/brown paper from Vijaya stores.

Me: Wow! you're smart.
Mind: No you're dumb.

Do you want to roll on the floor laughing?

2007-09-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

I know the first working day after a long weekend is always not very pleasant. Here is a video that will cheer you all up. Feel free to ROTFL.

Silicon Valley To Silicon City

2007-09-03T21:38:00.000-07:00

The World is flat remarked Thomas Friedman. With the introduction of a direct flight between San Francisco and Bangalore this is becoming closer to reality. This is going to be a welcome boon for folks travelling to other cities in the south as well since domestic connections between Bangalore and other southern cities are a plenty. Flying to India is no longer going to be a voyage but more like what it should be. So folks, time to plan your next long weekend :)

Weekend Observations

2007-08-27T12:05:00.000-07:00

Here are some observations during my hectic shopping weekend.

1. Ikea charges money for plastic bags. On one hand people were stocking up logs of lumber but doing their bit by not buying plastic. I guess I just don't get it, at least not yet!
2. Palo Alto has a lot of dog lovers. Being a Hindu I believe in rebirth and as of this weekend I have decided to do a lot of good karma so that in my next life i'd be dog in Palo Alto. I figured that is the only way i'd get to enjoy the Palo Alto lifestyle.
3. Nieman Marcus should be renamed Needless Markup.
4. William Sonoma had a salt and pepper crusher set for $100. I got hypertension right there and decided salt was not good for my health.
5. Kids wanted to know why we did not get windows. Did not understand until I remembered that I had told my wife that we'd only do window shopping in Stanford Mall.

Counting Puzzle

2007-08-23T21:57:00.000-07:00

I am teaching counting to my kids. So in the process of doing some web surfing I found a puzzle combining knowledge of counting and alphabets. So here is the puzzle. Count the number of F's in the following sentence.

FINISHED FILES ARE THE RE-

SULT OF YEARS OF SCIENTIF-

IC STUDY COMBINED WITH

THE EXPERIENCE OF YEARS.

The answer to the puzzle is here

It's just not cricket

2007-08-22T23:12:00.000-07:00

While Indian cricketers flounder in England, a lone Badminton star Sridhar did India proud by beating the World number one in the World Badminton Championship and reaching the quarter finals. I was appalled to read an article where this one in a billion ace was seeking sponsors. I know life is not fair but this in spite of our cricketers embarassing the country time and time again.... Well, it's just not cricket.

If it's too good to be true it usually is!!

2007-08-22T13:59:00.000-07:00

This adage has been there for a long time and aside from "Don't invest all your eggs in one basket" is probably equivalent to the ABC of investing. So when I saw the following comment from an irate investor who was hoodwinked as part of this huge scam , I did not know whether to pity this person or to just be angry and yell "What were you thinking?". Haven't you seen enough movies where this theme has been beaten to death!

"About Rs 10 lakhs that I had invested went down the drain. The firm said that one can withdraw the returns on a monthly basis, and also that the money invested will double in just 6-months. I never thought we were being fooled," says Mythili an investor.

Hoodwinkers would be around as long as you are willing to be hoodwinked.

World Wide Worry

2007-08-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

If you follow Indian News it is hard to miss the story of the murder of 16-year-old Adnan Patrawala, who was allegedly abducted and later killed by his friends. There is a raging debate if Internet censorship should be introduced to curb social evils occuring on the net.

My worry is on a different issue altogether. The net always had a huge wealth of information. With the price of computer becoming affordable and with initatives such as one laptop per child the internet is acting as a huge equalizer. A poor kid in rural Tamil Nadu could very soon have the same information as a kid in California. If you look at the Alexa rankings for India you'll see that Orkut is ranked #2. Wikipedia is ranked #12. Clearly India has it's work cut out to balance between the Fun/Social component and the Knowledge/Information components of the internet.

illegal exception: Programming in legal

2007-08-21T14:26:00.000-07:00

A good number of programmer geeks would have seen this message every once in a while when you write bad code. Before non-programmers dismiss this post this is not a post on how to avoid this pitfall so rest assured you can safely read further.

A friend of mine told me about making a will that would bequeath all our assets to our kids. He told me the cost would amount to something in the order of $2000. He went on to add that one could get a better quote if one were sane enough to jump though all the legal jargon and fill all the paper work by themselves. I found all of this too hard to comprehend. My kids getting my property after we die is as simple as it gets. My thinking would be unless otherwise stated they would get 50-50 (almost like the default label in a switch statement). Too much of programming makes you think only in terms of logic (if/then/else). It appears the Legal language is foreign to this programming paradigm. Apparently they speak a different language if you go by this post.

Skype and Grandma

2007-08-20T09:53:00.000-07:00

You know a software has hit the mainstream when your eighty year old grandmom in India complains when it does not work. I knew skype has become like electricity where people just expect it to be on. So it is no wonder that the skype outage has been on top of techmeme for a while. She obviously was not interested in the following reason.

Normally Skype’s peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly.

She's just relieved and happy that she can enjoy the goo-goo's of her grandchildren all over again.

Google's CPR

2007-08-14T22:12:00.001-07:00

No that was not a typo. I am not talking about CPM but CPR. What you ask? Well, it looks like Google is focussed on spoiling Microsoft's money churning office business. How do they plan to do this? By giving CPR to Staroffice. This on top of the slew of productivity apps they are developing on their own. The take is that the web productivity suite they are creating is for very small businesses who want something quick and free while Staroffice is geared towards businesses which want a serious productivity suite that is as competitive as Microsoft's. Two years back when Eric Schmidt announced the partnership with Sun I was sure as hell that Staroffice would do what Firefox is doing to IE. But I am now mature enough to understand that not all that Google touches turns into gold. To Google's credit they have figured out that the Office business is huge and has enormous potential to grow. Traditionally Google's strength has always been the ability to be viral and build an ecosystem around their products. Office productivity suites are a logical way to virally attack the same consumer in the office. So while all this is fine and dandy the flaw so far has been that they have chosen the wrong horse to run the race. Staroffice has not made much headway against it's formidable rival. Having the blessings of Google is not going to help either of these two partners. Microsoft will continue to happily cash in their checks.

Disclaimer: I have been wrong before on such predictions :)

India's Infrastructure Woes

2007-08-13T09:48:00.000-07:00

Prabhakar Raghavan, the head of Yahoo! Research has a very different spin on India's infrastructure woes.

LinuxWorld 2007

2007-08-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

Just got back from Linux World 2007 at the Moscone Center. This is my first trip to Linux world and I was impressed. I saw a huge breadth in the crowd. Got to meet some sisters from church ministries to CEO's of companies asking if I had a CEO opening in my company :)
Technology wise the companies that were taking center stage were the usual suspects Intel, Oracle, IBM and HP. Vmware also got a lot of attention and was one of the more popular booths. Amazon had a booth showing off their web services stack. There were quite a few backup solution companies. O'Reiley was a very popular booth. Overall the conference had a very good mix of companies covering a broad spectrum.

Walled Gardens

2007-08-07T17:07:00.000-07:00

Walled Gardens, Freedata, Vendor Lock-in are become increasingly common terms in the social networking dictionary What do they all mean? This post covers this topic very nicely. Some points to ponder

Is your stand alone data interesting or is the cloud interesting?
Is your network big enough to be able to make meaningful inferences?
Will this inference be useful to you and your network only?

Clearly social networking poses a whole slew of interesting challenges. What initially did not seem to be a computer science problem is slowly turning out to be as deep rooted in computing as coal is to newcastle.

It's a mad ad world.

2007-08-07T14:09:00.001-07:00

In case you are puzzled to see the ad in a post don't be. This is what I am met with in every site I go. Annoying irrelevant ads. Maybe they would be relevant if I were planning to pursue an Associates degree of some kind. Is'nt that exactly what contextual ads are supposed to be. What logic did facebook utilize to serve me this ad. Clearly there is a lot of work to be done on this front. Right now these ads are just plain annoying. And I am not surprised that an eminent site like valleywag :) has blasted facebook's ability to monetize.

Dravid prefers an upset Zaheer

2007-07-31T11:32:00.000-07:00

Today was yet another historic moment for Indian Cricket. I wish such moments are not historic and just routine or maybe it would'nt be so special if it becomes so routine :)

It was nice to hear Dravid remark the following.

"If he is going to do so well everytime after he gets upset, I would rather like him to be upset"

It appears that Indian cricketers do well when they are upset. So instead of a coach what we really need is someone to upset them. Maybe this video will kindle your memories on what I mean.

Youtube outage.

2007-07-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have reasonable evidence to indicate that there has been an outage in Youtube. If you do a general search you will see that even for the most common terms the latest videos you see are at least three days old. I tried searches on "soccer", "animation" and "obama" and the videos I saw are at least three days old.

Update: Looks like youtube is back in business.

Twitter : Elegant and Simple.

2007-07-27T11:03:00.001-07:00

If you want a simple and easy explanation of what twitter is you need to look no futher than this post from Dave Winer. The key take away for me from his post was monetization is something that will follow once you have a compelling product that has a viral following. Lastly, I feel compelled to post this cool snippet from the New York Times about twitter. Can't recall the last time I actually read out a telegram. Darn!, I feel like I should have saved those precious relics :)

TWITTER IS THE TELEGRAPH SERVICE OF THE INTERNET STOP IT LETS YOU BROADCAST SHORT MESSAGES ABOUT YOURSELF TO ANYONE INTERESTED STOP IT JUST RAISED MONEY FROM UNION SQUARE VENTURES STOP.

A stock to buy

2007-07-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

I like to place bets on technology. Whether I make money or not there is an adrenalin rush in understanding the technology behind a company and rooting for it. So I am going to share with you folks companies I will be investing in. Some information that will be useful for you.

These posts will be only about companies that I will be investing in henceforth and will not include companies I have already invested in.
My track record on investment has been pretty decent save for some money I lost during the dot-com meltdown.
Holding period for investment in these stocks is medium term (1-2years)
Of course use your common sense in investing and as they say in Finance lingo "Don't ever put all your eggs in one basket"
Always remember that 30 second speed juggling with words following any investment related commercials. I think it has something to do with market fluctuations and risk :)

Ok without further ado here's my pick

AKAMAI : This company is in the business of providing infrastructure for content delivery. A very niche business with very few players such as Limelight networks. Can a new player like Google come by building their own CDN? Possible, but very unlikely this would happen. So Akamai is going to rule in this space for a while. Video streaming is going to be huge going forward and all of that is going to go through Akamai's infrastructure. So I'm pretty gungho about the prospects of this company and for icing on the cake the stock is near its 52 week low. The possible downside risk is not being able to maintain margins on account of having to discount longer term contracts. But like I said I feel pretty strongly about the technology so the other things that wall street likes to over analyze would hopefully fall in place.

Nostradamus Predicts.

2007-07-25T13:52:00.001-07:00

I will be doing posts titled "Nostradamus Predicts" in regular intervals where I will gaze into my crystal ball and make some predictions about potential acquisitions and mergers. So here is the first in the series

Amazon will acquire Netflix

Why? you ask. Here's why

a. Netflix is synonymous with dvd rentals.
b. Netflix fits into the E-Commerce hub theme Amazon wants to dominate
c. Netflix is in trouble right now so Amazon may get a good bargain
d. Ultimately it is the Netflix user base that Amazon would be frothing to acquire.

Clearly there is downside on account of the Blockbuster model proving to be more successful but who better than Amazon to take on this challenge.

Zuckenberg the next Jobs?

2007-07-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine sent me an article from a magazine I revere for it's balanced coverage "The Economist". This following is a snippet fron the article.

Facebook is generating so much excitement this summer that bloggers are likening Mr Zuckerberg to Steve Jobs.

Is'nt that a bit too much. Steve Jobs has been in the industry more than Zuckenberg's age and possibly the entire Facebook board put together :).

Let us see what Jobs has accomplished so far.

1. Defined Usability through the Graphical User Interface
2. Created an alternative to the PC
3. Revived the Mac from the dumps.
4. Redefined the way one listened to music.
5. Redefined the way we thought of Animation

Of course the jury is still out on if he changes the way we think about phones.

What does Zuckenberg have at this point
1. Created a Social Network which is seeing a lot of traffic.
2. Created a paradigm shift in the way the Web would be used.

Ok, it's likely that Zuckenberg has done is impressive given his age. But can people cut the hyperbole. Comparing him to Jobs is nothing short of sacrilege!

Status Quo Politics.

2007-07-24T15:43:00.001-07:00

Barack Obama's bold statements that he would be willing to talk to the leaders of rouge nations is being ripped apart by Hillary Clinton. Apparently this statement is going to prove expensive for Obama especially in South Florida where a significant portion of the Cuban population still cringe from the atrocities committed by Castro. I however feel Obama has made a strong statement that feels like a breath of fresh air away from the bush "status quo" rot. He has also intelligently potrayed Hillary in the same light as the "unpopular" bush. Only time will tell if this bold move will help or hurt.