Between friends and foes

(Don't they look similar?? :-)

As Google announced new OS this week, and Bing made advances - rivalry between two tech titans is getting interesting...

Picture Courtesy - WSJ and related article

Trust and Fraud

Today, Bernanrd Madoff gets lifer for his gigantic fraud/ ponzi scheme that hammered US Financial system. Madoff's fraud was discovered only 6 months ago - and verdict is already out with 150 years of punishment.

Perhaps, what Madoff is to US, founder of Satyam - B Ramalinga Raju is to India. Satyam's fraud came in light around similar time as Madoff's, and he did exactly what Madoff did - took trust out of the system...

Looking back - Madoff is already convicted and is in jail, and as our Indian judicial system goes - matters are still under investigation, at least few light years away from final conviction...

Story of the Graduation Commencement Speeches

Update: 50 Must Watch - Incredible/ Historical Speeches

Today I graduated from Carnegie Mellon, and as part of the commencement, we had a chance to listen to the finest commencement speech by Google CEO - Eric Schmidt



It was a great speech - and definitely the one that will make every single Carnegie Mellon graduate proud.

But speaking of commencement speeches - Steve Jobs commencement address at Stanford remains historic one




Just blogging - two of the the finest commencement speeches together - connecting the dots, and graduating with the Information...

Don't be afraid of polarizing people

I am not talking about Political parties here, but rather - designing products. Some products will appeal to most, but there will be certain products which polarize people. And more likely or not these products will serve 'niche' markets and can actually make decent money!

Google is being central in search engine space... But I always believed there are areas around this central space which should serve niche areas. yes Google is the best - but it only fulfills 80% of my needs - I need niche product for remaining 20%...

This week, I found one - WolframAlpha- they call themselves computational knowledge engine... Search Engine product designed to address computational queries. You can find more information here

If these guys manage to churn out successful venture - there will be more people going after more niche products. And that could be beginning of the end of Google's super monopoly. If not - I don't see any threat to Google in foreseeable future. So lets wait and watch the alpha launch...

Just for the kicks

Do you like predicting what would be next? Do you like thinking about the future trends? Do you say - "oh I knew it" - after the result? Well... at least I do... And hence, I am sticking my neck out and predicting the result of the Indian General Elections 2009 - (well who cares about my predictions ? ok - read the title of this blog then)

Form of Government - Coalition (no brainer)
Leading Party - Congress
Opposition Party - BJP
What about others? - Sorry no predictions here.

Alternative scenario could be - unstable government with outside support of Congress, and then we will have reelections soon. But otherwise - its UPA/ Congress back in power.

Ok do you like to predict? Go ahead - and write your predictions in comments box.

Finally - I liked these readings here, here and here.

Origin of 'Soap' Operas - And Great Depression

Today media is filled up with stories of recession and comparisons to great depression. But funny things happened during the great depression. As with the economy Proctor & Gamble - a producer of household items such as soaps, was heavily suffering through economic tumult during the period of great depression. But P&G came out much stronger company towards the end of recession. How did the soap giant beat the Depression? Companies marketing team started heavily advertising on afternoon spots, and even started its production house to create radio shows and TV shows aimed at housewives. These shows turned out to be so successful - that these shows were further recognized with the name of 'Soap Operas'. Of course, P&G came out as much stronger corporation.

Vote Chooser - Indian Version

Recently I came across this interesting site - VoteChooser.com This site is simple way to allow people to decide to vote between Obama and McCain based on their respective policies. Site poses simple 10 questions - and bang you know whom you should support at the end of the questionnaire. (By the way, I was supporting 7 Obama policies out of 10 total questions).

Since, Indian general elections are around the corner, I thought building similar website would be very useful. Despite many differences, most of the Indian politics revolves around UPA, NDA, and Left forming two and half major fronts. So the concept is simple - posing 10 questions, answers to which should lead you to vote for either NDA or UPA alliance.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find 10 differences at policy level between UPA (Congress) or NDA (BJP)! I checked Congress's website - a major party in UPA alliance and BJP's website again a major party in NDA alliance for possible publicly declared manifesto/ policy document. But there is nothing on those two websites.

So my quest for VoteChooser Indian version has hit the major road block in the absence of 10 major differences between two poles of Indian politics. Irony is that parties representing 1.2 billion people do not have policy agendas on things that matter such as infrastructure, education, health care, foreign affairs etc. This is surprising, may be I am missing something. Any suggestions? Can you lead me to form those 10 questions?