Facebook?

whats all the new hype about facebook about. One stuff is about how you can add your own applications around the social networking site something they technically call open sourcing application development. what it basically means is that you can add stuff like say a free gift application to the site where people can use that to give free gifts to their friends online. Now Facebook turned down a billion dollar acquisition offer from yahoo last year. There are rumors of it going to be acquired by MS at 6 billion. The company denies all of that however and says it will go public! It recently acquired Para Key founded by the same guys who built FireFox.

Take a bow!

Dilbert sundays are the best - probably bcos it just has more of the strip - Check this one out!

Dilbert on Management consulting

Here is what consultants almost did to Bajaj Auto

"take the case of Bajaj Auto. Abraham Joseph, head of R&D at Bajaj Auto, says that McKinsey advised against the Pulsar project – though McKinsey has publicly denied that this was ever the case.
“McKinsey’s recommendations were extremely conservative. They said we should stop the Pulsar project mid-way. They were against us making any new products,” says Joseph.
Rajiv Bajaj, president, Bajaj Auto, however, took a strong stand against the McKinsey recommendations, going so far as to threaten to walk out of the company if they were implemented. His father and chairman Rahul Bajaj eventually gave in.
“Nothing happened with the report. It just went into a drawer and was forgotten,” says Rajiv Bajaj. Today, the Pulsar is a money spinner for Bajaj Auto."

Time to remove APM

I think this is the right time for the Indian government to remove the administered price mechanism in petrol/diesel prices. I cant understand why the government should give subsidies to people who have huge cars or even bikes for that matter. With no elections near by and inflation at a 14 month low at 4.03% and expected to go down further, the government can easily pass on the mantle of setting petrol prices to the private sector and by the time the 2009 elections come, no body will think of the govt as the price setter for fuels and it can easily withdraw itself from the blame of high fuel prices in a market economy

Grand Buffet(t) Lunch

Thanks to my friend, Anand's Suggestion I got this great title. With an Indian - Mohnish Pabrai - winning the buffet's annual buffett - here is a galaxy of videos of my investment guru for those who cant afford the lunch yet:) I hope someday I will be able to afford that and warren will still be alive and kicking then. Enjoy

The MBA Talk




Charlie Rose Interview - 2007



Right after he donated the money



With hilary on the campaign Trail





At the 2007 Annual General Meeting



CNBC Interivew - Part 1

A different iphone review

Time iPhone review

E-mail and web-browsing are unbelievably great. Ditto the crisp music and video playback. Everybody I called with the iPhone remarked on the crispness and clarity of the audio. For the iPhone, Apple has brought to market a revolutionarily smart, sensitive touchscreen and created an entirely new user interface to match it, all in one go, so seamlessly that my 3-year-old daughter — and I apologize for going to this place, but the fact is striking nonetheless — had no trouble unlocking the iPhone and dialing with it (even though she believed that she was playing a musical instrument).

Voice mail — you pick and choose visually what messages you want to hear — and Google Maps are ridiculously useful. The user interface is crammed with smart little touches — every moment of user interaction has been quietly stage-managed and orchestrated, with such overwhelming attention to detail that when the history of digital interface design is written, whoever managed this project at Apple will be hailed as a Michelangelo, and the iPhone his or her Sistine Chapel (Steve Jobs can be Pope in this scenario). If you're not a reviewer, chances are you won't even bother to look at the manual. Translucent, jewel-like, artfully phrased dialogue boxes come and go on cue. Window borders bounce and flex just slightly to cue the user where and how you're supposed to drop and drag and scroll them. When you switch the phone to "airplane mode" (no electronic transmissions, for use on planes) a tasteful little orange airplane slides into the menu bar, then zooms away when you switch out again. (This was so pleasurable that I repeatedly entered airplane mode while using the iPhone, even though I wasn't actually on an airplane.) As soon as my phone realized it belonged to someone with a nonsense-name like Lev, it started correcting typos like "Leb" and "Lec" to match.

Walkday

I tried not taking out my bike yday and decide to walk to various places instead. The bangalore weather was so awesome over the weekend that it made a lot of sense to walk around. So I decided to walk towards my friends Udu's house and convinced him to walk with me till the breakfast place and returned walking as well. Then in the evening whilst going to my friends I decided to walk again albeit only 1/3 of the distance. While returning I walked about 2/3. Walking alone is much better than walking with someone else because you can maintain your own pace and walking with an Ipod really helps I guess!

I will try repeating it over most weekends! lets see how it goes!

iPhone vs Sivaji

Many claim that the iPhone is one of the most hyped product launches ever in history! I beg to differ - the iPhone is tech alright but I think in recent times, Sivaji was the most hyped product/service launch ever - that too with minimal advertising. While the iPhone hype seems to have died down (there are no more queues outside Apple/AT&T stores), the sivaji hype is still alive and kicking!